Slots Slot Machine Math

I saw this posted on @TravelFanboy twitter today and, as a math nerd, found this interesting.

If you want to know the broader context of why he is down this rabbit hole, a youtube slot guy, "The Professor", apparently is posting videos claiming that he has a full proof way to win on slots. Among his tips are to play in the morning when the slots are 'looser'. This started a whole back and forth about how slot tips like that are BS because math doesn't care about the time of the day.

Anyway, this video does a pretty good job explaining the logic of the programming involved and why tips like that are generally meaningless.

 

Great video and explanation of PAR sheets and how a machine works.

(I hope this thread does not waste time on the idiots that have a "system" to beat the machine.)

 

Interesting video.

The only ones dumber than these people are the ones that listen to them.

 

Just like "the Raja" (you can thank him for spam emails in the 1990s btw, Google that sh**---- ) lol "Im the #1 slot player in the world"-----how those rankings work bro? What are you #1 in? Making $100-$200-$500 bets? There is no strategy when pressing a button where the outcome is controlled by a computer. Youre not #1 in anything.

 

Well, they become #1 in selling systems to those who don't understand math, which is also how they're making their money. A few hundred years ago, it would have been snake oil in town square. Today, it's slot systems on the internet.

 

I thought everyone knew the only way to guarantee a slot win is to play between 11:06 and 11:12pm on the second odd numbered Tuesday of the month while standing on one leg

 

I've set a reminder for the afternoon of Wednesday August 24 to check if any big wins happened in Vegas under the circumstances you described during the six minutes of the night before. Just watch, that's when somebody will have hit the Megabucks!!!

 

Well yes, that's the beginner system. For those looking to step up to the big leagues, check out the Lucky Ned IncrediSystem®

https://www.bigempire.com/vegas/luckyned.html

 

I worked with a lady who must have had a system. About once a month she would come in in the morning and say she won on her way into work. I am assuming she always won because she never announced any losing visits on the way in . She never gave her system though.

 

Must not have won that much if she was still coming into work.

 

Exactly.

 

point is she only announced when she won. when any one tells you they have a system that system is only tell people when they win not when they lose

 

funny, I had this conversation with a coworker recently when she commented that I only send pics or tell her about my big wins. I asked her if she really wanted to hear "So I went to Foxwoods on Saturday and lost $500". She agreed that it's not a very good story.

Of course, I never claim that I only win. I just point out that the losing trips don't make for an interesting story.

 

I got a friend who said that about me once too that I only talk about when I win, and I said the same thing: Do you really want to hear about all my losing trips?

 

On the other hand, if we only had trip reports from people who won, we would have a huge decrease in the number of reports!

 

That's the issue I have with a lot of slot channels, they don't show the true play only the bonus rounds where they win big. There were/are a few that will show you the full session it takes to get to that bonus but those are few and far between. When I watch those kind of channels now, it is usually before an upcoming trip and it's to see if there are any new slots I might be able to find on the channels. We don't always get the newest ones here in STL so I use the channels to find new ones to play. I can't really enjoy a lot of the channels because they play at amounts I can't so seeing someone win 10k on a bonus round is fun until you realize they are playing at $150 a spin.

 

I once had a long conversation with a bartender who claimed she and her husband had eight years of casino experience and she was working on a business model where they would use cell phones to notify customers when certain video poker machines were ‘due’. Usually crazy doesn’t try to hide itself Vegas.

 

Oh, my trip reports have plenty of losing

That's interesting. I don't really watch slot channels so didn't realize that was an issue. I do watch Slotmassacre's VP channel, and he shows both winning and losing, but, again, since the winning is more interesting than the losing, it gets more airtime in the editing room. There's probably a better way to balance it, but I'd guess it wouldn't get the same number of clicks/views

 

Incoming nerdgasm text wall warning! As good as the partial info is in the OP video, he completely skipped over an entire and significant component of how a slot result is determined in reality, and it is that aspect he doesnt acknowledge exists, that makes computer based slots exploitable. He covered the half on how the PAR determines the hold probability, but that's only one part of several in the equation, and depends on the false position that the number compared to the PAR is truly random.

From a software engineer perspective, slots don't actually have random number generators (it's a deep technical rabbit hole I won't get into, but it's impossible to generate a random number from a computer). What computer based slots actually have, generally speaking, are pseudorandom number generators (PRNG), which for the cool people, can be translated to layman's terms as "totally 100% not random at all" wherein the exact timing, usually down to a tiny fraction of a second, that you press the spin button, is normally used as a "randomization seed." The PRNG runs the seed number through an algorithm or formula (trade secret) to calculate the final PRNG result number, which is then compared to PAR tables to determine outcome.

In hypothetical terms, the seed for any PRNG could be obtained from any source, but only an outside source that is not a computer or repeating machine of any sort, will result in the 'most random' result set possible from a PRNG over both short and long periods, because computers just run programs, the same way repeatedly over time, which eventually results in consistent patterns 100% of the time. To use timing as the external variable is pretty industry standard unless there is a specific need for a different input, because time is unique in that it's both linear and non-repeating; the same date/time combo only ever occurs exactly once from the beginning of time until infinity, and that will return very nearly random results when both sufficient precision and algorithm are used.

The algorithm and time seeded PRNG will still produce a 100% predictable result pattern for any given seed value, but misrepresents itself to the casual observer by changing the seed value on every run of the PRNG, which makes results over time NOT repeat discernable patterns, such that they appear random, but in reality, they still are not. They are 100% predictable 100% of the time if you have enough information (you don't). The program shown toward the end of the video is using predictable internally seeded randomization function of python, meaning the results aren't actually all that random, and with large enough data sample, will result in a consistent and likely discernable repeating pattern.



There are basically 4 relevant parts to the calculation of a slot spin result using a time-seeded PRNG: the precise timing of the spin, the PAR tables, the PRNG algorithm, and the final result. If you have the PRNG algorithm plus any 2 of the other 3, you can solve for the 4th. Without the secret algorithm, but a large enough data set containing the other 3 values, one could also eventually solve for the algorithm itself.

On any given machine and algorithm, spins at specific times will result in wins. On a properly programmed machine though, that time period of known win or positive EV, would be so short that even if you had all the code and all the data, or even a spreadsheet of all the precise times that would seed the PRNG to produce a result that matches up with a win on the PAR, you probably still couldn't hit them (i.e. if the precision used to seed the PRNG is down to say, the millionth of a second, and each of the million possible seed values every second produces a different final PRNG result, then you'd need to hit the button during one specific millionth of a second to produce a specific desired result, and factors like humidity can influence the time it takes for a button press to register on the motherboard by more than 1 millionth of a second, so you can absolutely program a PRNG to be close enough to random to make the large numbers outcome align sufficiently congruent with the PAR hold percent, AND be practically impossible to exploit even if handed all the winning possibilities ahead of time. It depends on good coding.

Let's say we have an algorithm that results in 1,000,000 possible outcomes. By changing the precision of the time-based seed, you could hypothetically get it to a place where there is a 2 second window that occurs once every 2 million seconds during which you'd hit the jackpot if you press spin, but by expanding out a few extra decimal places of precision on the PRNG seed value, the result from the same algorithm can be that there is 1 millionth of a second, every second, that will result in the jackpot. Both scenarios have a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of hitting the jackpot, but the former is easily humanly exploitable once every 23 days, while the latter is never feasibly exploitable because our brains and bodies lack the precision to make the machine register a spin at a specific millionth of a second, or even consciously distinguish a specific millionth of a second from another. We just aren't capable.

TLDR - Nerd stuff, maths, but timing absolutely determines the outcome of a computer based slot machine. A computer can't generate a random number any more than it can fall in love. But any person professing a 'system' to win at slots, based on vaguely defined periods throughout the day, is still completely full of shit, even though it might anecdotally and purely coincidentally have 'worked' 3 or 4 times in a row when he tried it - correlation != causation.

If ya dont want to take my word for it, look up "Aristocrat Mark VI exploit" on your favorite search engine. That happened in 2013 and or 2014. Below is an excerpt from a notice sent out by Austrian gaming company Novomatic after a model of their machines fell victim to a similar exploit in 2011 - note this is an obviously spun notice to their customer base, so take all those possibly, possible, allegedly qualifying words, and their air quotes around the word 'pattern' with a huge grain of salt. The only reason they were sending out the notice at all was that they knew it had already been successfully done real world.

"Through targeted and prolonged observation of the individual game sequences as well as possibly recording individual games, it might be possible to allegedly identify a kind of ‘pattern’ in the game results,” the company admitted in a February 2011 notice to its customers.​

 

I am sure the last post shares some really good stuff - I was able to pick out a little.

BUT - I got lost. Could be related to just leaving Happy Hour.