Do The Casinos Cheat At Video Games Part2
"We'd be throwing our money away," I said. "We think we're playing a break-even machine and in reality we're being taken to the cleaners."
"It would be a dirty business," she said.
When AP and I arrived back in New York from our month-long sojourn in Las Vegas, I had an interesting surprise awaiting me. The September 1994 issue of Arnold Snyder's masterful, quarterly newsletter Blackjack Forum was in the mail. On page 35, Don Paymar, an excellent video-poker columnist and author [Video Poker Precision Play], writes about his own feelings, based on his own playing experiences, that something might be amiss on "at least some machines" in Nevada.
He recounts observations of "too often receiving a card of the same rank as the discard, primarily when drawing one card to two pair or to a four-card straight. For example, discarding the jack from 4-5-6-7-J (not necessarily in that order) on a common Draw Poker machine, we too often receive another jack." He admits that in a small number of trials, it would not be unusual to see this unusual event occur in three of 16 such hands—since anything can and does happen in the short run. But according to Paymar it's happening much more frequently than that.
He writes: "How about records of dozens of playing sessions, and during every session getting a card of the same rank between 25% and 55% of the time, with an overall average of 43% instead of the expected 6.4% (three in 47)?"
Whenever someone harps your fear aright, you figure there must be something in it. Well, Paymar had harped my fear all right. While neither my, nor Paymar's more extensive experiences playing Draw Poker machines were enough to scientifically "prove" that something was seriously wrong with these machines—whether deliberately or accidentally— it was enough to make me consider the "possibility" that this was so.
So I contacted my computer expert, Dr. James Schneider (see my book, Break the One-Armed Bandits!) to see if he could shed some light on the subject of possible casino and/or manufacturer chicanery in the world of video poker.
Frank: I'm interested in casino and /or manufacturers cheating at video-poker. How it could be done and whether it is done.
Dr. Schneider: It can be done in any number of ways but I don't know if it is done. I think in the United States there must be some laws about it.
Frank: In Nevada, Colorado, and New Jersey and maybe some other places, the individual states or casino control commissions have rules that any game that is represented by cards must deal from a 52-card deck and be random. The games with jokers would deal from 53-card decks.
Dr. Schneider: The shuffles have to be random? Frank: Yes…I think.
Dr. Schneider: You haven't actually talked to anyone from these commissions?
Frank: No.
Dr. Schneider: Or looked at their regulations?
Frank: No. It's a good point. I've just assumed that all the commissions have laws against such things because other writers have written that they do. The commissions are the next stop I guess. But let's discuss the random shuffle idea.
Dr. Schneider: A random shuffle doesn't preclude the house from having an edge. The payouts for the various hands would dictate what the house edge would be.
Frank: The machines show their payouts per hand and it's possible to calculate just what the house edge is. There's no secrecy there.
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Tags: poker machine, video poker