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Gaming GuruMore on Randomness7 February 2005
Dear Jerry, You are absolutely right. I've corrected the article. Thanks for catching my mistake. Best of luck in and out of the casinos,
Dear George, I loved the old Odd Couple TV series. One of my favorite episodes is when Felix is on trial and he riffs on the dangers of making assumptions. "When you assume," he said, "you make an ASS out of U and ME." Your conclusions about the frequency with which you'd see the 10X symbol are correct given your assumptions, but no reel-spinning slot machine works that way. The probability of landing the symbol on the payline is determined by the number of times the symbol appears on the virtual reel. The probability that the symbol will land one stop above or below the payline is determined by the number of times the adjacent symbols appear on the virtual reel. Slot designers generate these "near-the-payline" near misses by loading up the virtual reel with occurrences of the symbols near the 10X symbol. The virtual stop is still chosen completely at random, but the symbols don't appear on or near the payline with the same frequency because they do not appear the same number of times on the virtual reel. Sometimes it does seem as if the machine knows what is happening. You can be running low on funds and the machine turns colder than an Antarctic winter and drains you dry in no time at all. But then other times, the machine will give you a nice hit when you're almost broke and keep you in the game for a while longer. It's all random! Best of luck in and out of the casinos, Here's a reply from Phil, who started this discussion about randomness with pattern he saw while playing a slot machine.
Dear Phil, You ask, "Can you imagine the odds of this happening three consecutive times?" You're assuming the pattern you saw is very unlikely, but I think the pattern you saw is far more likely to occur than you think. You're thinking that only one out of the thousands (or tens of thousands) of combinations of virtual stops on the machine leads to the pattern you saw. Without having the layout of the virtual reels, there's no way to know exactly how many combinations result in the pattern you saw. Nevertheless, I do know that the blanks immediately above and below the jackpot symbol tend to appear pretty frequently on the virtual reel and thus have fairly high probabilities of landing on the payline. In addition, there's usually two jackpot symbols on each physical reel, each surrounded by blanks that appear many times on the virtual reel. That makes many more than one combination of virtual stops that leads to your pattern. Thanks for the kind words about my articles. I really appreciate it. Best of luck in and out of the casinos, Send your slot and video poker questions to John Robison, Slot Expert, at slotexpert@comcast.net. Because of the volume of mail I receive, I regret that I can't send a reply to every question. Also be advised that it may take several months for your question to appear in my column. This article is provided by the Frank Scoblete Network. Melissa A. Kaplan is the network's managing editor. If you would like to use this article on your website, please contact Casino City Press, the exclusive web syndication outlet for the Frank Scoblete Network. To contact Frank, please e-mail him at fscobe@optonline.net. Recent Articles
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