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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
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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