Archive for June, 2009
Do The Casinos Cheat At Video Games Part6
Dr. Schneider: That's it.
Frank: Assuming honesty.
Dr. Schneider: Assuming honesty.
I thought I had laid my qualms to rest about the possibility of casinos and/or manufacturers cheating at video poker, when I was reminded of a series of articles and letters in Blackjack Forum in 1992-93 concerning video blackjack. I quickly went through my back issues.
There was a highly revealing short piece by Joel H. Friedman titled "Beware of SEGA Robo-Dealers" in the December 1992 issue. After discussing the excellent rules and payouts for the SEGA Blackjack Super Magic Vision model, rules and payouts that give the player a better than five percent advantage— if the game were "honest"—Friedman writes: "So how can casinos make money with a game that has such favorable rules? The SEGA handout lists as a feature of their machine, 'Operator selected percentages from 84% to 99% in one percent increments.' It seems that the blackjack rules are fixed, but the house edge is adjustable.'
The SEGA machines did not meet the regulatory requirements of Nevada, since they represented themselves as card games, when in reality they were slot machines. The difference between the two is easy to delineate: randomly shuffled card games manipulate the payout schedule to give the casino and/or player an edge, whereas a slot machine manipulates the results. It's the difference between a dealer shuffling and dealing honestly or a card mechanic who can decide which cards will come up next in order to help the house or player win more. In video-poker parlance, the former is a random shuffle, the latter a non-random shuffle.
The conclusion of Friedman's article stresses that SEGA machines can be found in casinos all over the world—especially on cruise ships, in Asia and in Europe.
In that same issue, Allan Pell writes "that outside of Nevada and New Jersey [or any locality that strictly controls casino practices] no protection exists for the unsuspecting player. In effect, the manufacturers are cheating you—legally that is! Devices may lure players with great rules, but the software can defeat you with everything from peeking and dealing seconds, to programming that prevents you from getting a blackjack in your lifetime. This also applies to other video games—seven out more in craps, etc. The machines can be programmed to defeat you, regardless of the supposed odds of the game."
Okay, after finishing Friedman's and Pell's excellent and informative articles, one would think that the safest course for a video-poker, video-blackjack, video-anything aficionado would be to play in regulated casinos where you were sure of the game you were getting. Remember, you want a game where randomness dictates the fall of the cards, the roll of the dice or whatever; you want a game where the payout schedule can be analyzed to show just what the percentages are and that these percentages reflect what is actually happening vis a vis the game you are playing. Let me repeat—a slot machine does not have to tell you what percentages you face, it's programmed to pay back whatever the casino wants it to give back. According to Mr. Handle (see my book Break the One-Armed Bandits!) slots in his casinos are programmed from 83 to 99 percent and that is generally the range for most reputable casinos in the country.
However, the very next issue of Blackjack Forum (March 1993) had a truly disturbing letter from an anonymous individual in New Jersey discussing the video-blackjack machines in some casinos in Atlantic City—a regulated state. This individual writes: "Upon questioning casino personnel, and the New Jersey Casino Control Commission people, the following comments were made: the casino slot manager says these [video-blackjack] machines were registered as slot machines [italics mine] and meet all the NJCCC regulations pertaining to slot devices. The NJCCC person agreed, noting that the game is a 'randomly' dealt video-poker game with a set payout of anywhere from 83% to 99%, which meets the NJCCC requirements."
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Tags: card games, slot machines, video blackjack
Do The Casinos Cheat At Video Games Part5
Dr. Schneider: That's a little out of my field—why a casino would cheat. I still don't buy that they do. It would be dangerous—especially in states where the casino industry is regulated. Think of the impact on the public if it were ever proven that the video games are rigged. It would have a devastating effect on legalized gambling.
Frank: Probably. Yet, people still gamble in illegal gambling parlors where the house is composed of known crooks. But I do think you are right. Public sentiment would be a factor in keeping the casinos honest.
Dr. Schneider: That's the motivation for not cheating or programming such things as we've been discussing.
Frank: I've always wondered this—how can one program randomness? Isn't that a contradiction in terms?
Dr. Schneider: Yes, seemingly. Randomness is an interesting study because there are subtle, usually short-lived, patterns in everything. Randomness and probability work hand in hand. You therefore program randomness by making sure that the probabilities over a sufficiently long period of time work themselves out according to theory or as close to theory as to give you a 99 percent confidence rating in the integrity of the program. By the way sometimes they don't. Then, you have a problem. If you give yourself a wide enough range in your programming, millions and millions, or billions of trials, more than likely you will hit an approximation of randomness. That is good enough to assure an honest game.
Frank: Could a programmer program patterns into randomness and not be aware of it? And then it shows up?
Dr. Schneider: Anything is possible. It's unlikely that using the standard randomness programs that such a thing would happen but a chip could be faulty.
Frank: So you think what AP and I observed and what others have reported might be an error and not deliberate tinkering?
Dr. Schneider: It might be an error in either one of two
places. First, it could very well be a programming error. I still would find it hard to believe that a programmer would cheat in such a clumsy way or that the casino industry would risk such a thing. Therefore if that pattern which you observed is real, then I have to think it's a shadow effect, a faulty chip, or something of that nature. Not deliberate cheating. So that's the first place an error might be. However, the second place the error might be is with the observers. You might have noticed a short-term pattern that was ephemeral. Think of how many hands of video poker you played before you started to notice this particular pattern. You might have played hundreds or even thousands of such hands—four-to-a-straight—and never had the situation appear—or, it appeared within a few appearances of its expected frequency—six percent of the time or thereabouts.
Also think of how often that machine was played by others when you weren't there. Did they experience the same thing? So it could be that your observations are at fault, not the programming. The casino or the manufacturer is not cheating you. You are getting the game as it appears to be. The casino's edge is whatever is posted and that's all there is to it. This pattern isn't a long-range pattern, it's just a blip that comes and goes. You happened to catch the blip and recognize a pattern. That's how randomness works. At any point, there seems to be something meaningful, organized, and deliberate happening—except it really isn't and it soon disappears to be replaced by other seeming patterns. The whole is patternless—except that it fits our expectations based on probability theory.
Frank: So the only pattern—if the machine is
programmed properly—is based on long-range probability?
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Tags: casino industry, honest game