John F. Thomas, Jr., Esq. wrote:
> But once the hand is located, it's gold from there on out. It's
> interesting to think about the best approach that could be used
> there besides sitting and sneaking looks at a computer generated list
> which you would have to have) to decide your holds.Well, assuming that would be the case, and the casino wouldn't spot you
looking through either (a) a computer (illegal) or (b) a 3000 foot long
computer printout (bulky, but effective) and stop you,
Assuming things were as described in the hypothetical, there would be no need to do either 'A' or 'B' above, both of which would be stupid things to do.
and assuming that in
that sequence of 57 X 10^17 hands you'd get no repeated deal sequences of
say 1000 hands that repeat in a pattern (entirely possible -- in fact,
probable)
snip
As I said in my previous post, there are a number of ways that all of this could easily be avoided by a computer program -- even one using a very crude RNG (the timing gap between button presses is a very good example unless someone is talented enough to accurately time their presses with single-digit micro-second precision (ain't gonna happen). The whole speculation was based on the premise that no device was employed except a crude RNG that as somehow used to create/manage a game that was somehow absolutely predictable once the analysis was done. I can remember, for example, some CP/M programs that required manual selection of a seed for the RNG -- including some chess games -- and if you used the same seed, the game would be the same, so once you played it and remembered, you would always know what the next move would be. If you happen to have a game called 'FreeCell' on your computer, select game number 2 and it will show an A-s in the far left column, followed by a 3-h and then an A-h. So my assumption was that those vp machines were initially set up along similar lines; if there were not -- i.e., if it were not possible to predict the next hand, then obviously it wouldn't work -- but that's not what the other poster said.
Now, as for what you said about repeated deal sequences, you are correct if the machine would be set up that way. I was assuming, for simplicity of discussion, that the machine would be set up to sequence through every single possible10-card hand once before ever repeating a hand; this would make the drawings not random, but that is, after all, what we are speaking about here. If they were random, it would have been absolutely impossible to do what John Robinson's article apparently said. If the programmers had decided to combine randomly draw two full-cycle of cards within one sequence, then it would obviously be necessary to look at two consecutive 10-card hands to determine the exact place on the list. If the programmers included three complete cycles in their sequence, then the cheaters would have had to look at three sequential hands to locate their position on the list. Remember, the article apparently said that they got hold of a machine and analyzed it, presumably meaning that they would have understood all of that.
Frankly, I am doubtful that any of this happened in the first place, but I didn't read John Robinson's article, and I'm not calling him a liar or stating with conviction that he is wrong. It's just that I would be utterly amazed is this truly happened.
Cheers.
Bill Velek