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Do The Casinos Cheat At Video Games Part3
Dr. Schneider: Cheating then would have to concern the actual randomness of the shuffle. That would be the first place to look. Perhaps the machine has been programmed to never allow a royal flush. Or, only allow the royal flush half or three quarters of the time. If I take the three-quarter example, when the cards are dealt out, any time a king of hearts comes up, the ace of hearts is behind it. Thus there can never be a hearts royal flush. Let us assume that machine deals out 10 cards, the first five of which are visible…
Frank: Parallel dealing.
Dr. Schneider: Parallel dealing. The other cards are behind these first five. So behind the king of hearts would be the ace of hearts—at all times. You would never know this because when you had three or four cards to a royal flush in hearts, you wouldn't discard the king of hearts so you wouldn't ever see the ace of hearts. Or, if a player made a mistake and did discard it, it would be a curiosity that the ace was behind it. What I've just described wouldn't even be a subtle programming technique. You could program a color in its place. Four to a royal in hearts are red, the discard goes and you receive a black card—you might even get a high straight. The programming could even specify that a normal flush appear. So, you program the machine this way. You have a sequence of 10, jack, queen, and king of hearts. The fifth card is the six of diamonds. Behind it is sitting the ace of hearts. When you discard the six, that ace will show and you have yourself a royal flush. Now, the machine senses the ace and simply substitutes a four of hearts. The player gets a flush but doesn't get the royal. The player would never suspect a thing. The player would be happy he received the flush, a little disappointed that he didn't get the royal and the casino has successfully cheated the player.
[Here I explained to Dr. Schneider my concern that machines I had played in Las Vegas might be substituting like cards for discards in four-to-a-straight hands.]
Dr. Schneider: Such a situation could be happening. However, I doubt that a programmer for one of these companies, even if he were told to cheat the customer, would do so in such an obvious and unsubtle way. After all, you picked this up quickly and anyone who played for a decent length of time would pick this up also. The four-to-a-straight hand occurs frequently enough that a like-card replacing a discard would certainly be noticeable—especially if it were 20 percent of the time or more as you indicated. If it is happening, there could be a problem with the random number generator's programming. It would be a programming flaw, not an attempt to cheat.
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Do The Casinos Cheat At Video Games?
This is the exact sequence that started me thinking along the lines for this chapter: jack of diamonds, three of hearts, four of spades, five of spades, six of clubs. I was playing the 9/6—4,700 coin Jacks or Better Draw poker machine at the Rio in Las Vegas. Naturally, I held the four cards to the straight and discarded the jack.
Bingo! Another jack popped up to replace the jack that I had discarded.
"That happens a lot, doesn't it," said the beautiful AP, my wife and playing partner, who was playing her own 9/6—4,700 coin machine right next to me. It was a statement of fact. "Does it?" I asked.
"I think so," she said. "I've noticed it a lot." "I'll look for it," I said.
The very next time I had a four to a straight, it happened again. This time it was a ubiquitous eight that made its appearance when I needed an ace or nine.
"It happened again," I said to AP. It's happened three times to me this morning," said AP.
"You think the Rio rigged the computer?" I asked.
"I doubt it," she said. "If this machine is rigged it would be the manufacturer."
"You think it's made this way?" I asked. "Every time four cards to a straight comes up, the replacement card is the same as the discard?"
"That would give the casino some advantage, wouldn't it?" she said. "But I doubt if it would be every time—otherwise people would notice."
"We noticed," I said.
The next several times either one of us received four to a straight the replacement card was not the same as the discard. Then it happened again.
"There are 47 cards remaining in the deck," I said. "Three of them are the same as the discard. That's three in 47. We're seeing it half the time wouldn't you say?"
"Well, we're certainly seeing it more than six percent of the time, which is what the real likelihood of it being." (6.38% to be exact.)
So for several weeks, we kept track of the phenomena. We played the same two machines every day for an hour or so in the morning. Gradually, the phenomenon began to proportionally decrease. The proportional number of times a discard was replaced with the same card on four to a straight flattened out. However, by the end of our little experiment, there was still a feeling that something was amiss with these particular machines.
"About 25% of the hands have been replaced with the same card," said AP, looking over our records.
"It's not really a very big sampling," I cautioned her. "If we played several thousand four-to-a-straight hands, we would get a much better idea of whether this was a normal fluctuation or if the machine's computer has been fixed in some way. As it is, we played a 110 of these hands—and in the beginning we were getting it a lot but it's trailed off. Who knows?"
"But think of it," she mused. "Any hand can be tampered with. We just noticed this particular one. What if there are others, so subtle that we didn't notice them?"
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