Interesting article

[Howard_Stern]

I do know that WMS (Williams) had a problem and a number of Midwest casinos
got burned. (Of course they sued Williams.) The programmer involved fled to
Canada. This did make the Chicago TV news several years ago. About that
time all of the Chicago Area WMS video poker games were either pulled or
had new chips installed. I do not know if this is the story related to John
Robinson's column or not. If you have Frugal VP, the Multi-Pay game was the
signature product on that machine. This machine had a second "problem" in
that many of them contained a BJ game that returned over 100.4% without
cheating.

[Original Message]
From: Bill Velek <billvelek@alltel.net>
To: <vpFREE@yahoogroups.com>
Date: 3/2/2004 12:39:30 PM
Subject: Re: [vpFREE] Re: Interesting article

John F. Thomas, Jr., Esq. wrote:

> >My understanding of VP machines was that the RNG was continuously
> >spinning thru the possible shuffles of cards, and when the deal
> >button was pressed it stopped on the current shuffle.
>
> Can someone please tell me why people continue to think this is

important?

···

It is not. As you correctly noted, it makes absolutely no difference at
all, yet it keeps coming up. I was mostly commenting on the idea that
someone might have beat the machines by using a computer to analyze the
RNG -- which was alluded to by another poster. Initially, I thought
like you did -- that they would need to have some huge BOOK that would
contain all the hands in sequence. But then I thought that the better
way would be to check a hand on each of several computers, and then go
to the room and analyze them; assuming that it was true that the RNG was
following a set sequence, even though very large, the player's computer
would still reveal, for example, that vp machine number three is only
700 hands away from a Royal if you will through away two of your
triple-Kings and hold the Kh and draw the other 4 hearts to complete a
Royal. You would then run down to the machine, kick somebody out of the
chair ... and commence playing using ... pick-one [max-ER, min-cost,
min-risk, or whatever you want] ... until you finally see your triple
Kings come up. You would then casually turn to the beautiful blond next
to you, show her your triple Kings, and then tell her -- "I feel lucky;
I'm going to throw away three of a kind and go for the Royal".
And then, if you really wanted to impress her, you could double-down 5
times in a row on the Royal, assuming that your computer program could
also analyze the RNG outcome for that, too.

I find it all difficult to believe, but it was interesting to speculate.

Cheers.

Bill Velek

vpFREE Links:

http://www.west-point.org/users/usma1955/20228/VP/Links.htm

Yahoo! Groups Links

[David]

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "Howard Stern" <howard.w.stern@e...>
wrote:

snip:

I do know that WMS (Williams) had a problem and a number of

Midwest casinos

got burned. (Of course they sued Williams.) The programmer

involved fled to

Canada.

I saw a TV program recently on Vegas cheats which focused on a Ron
Harris, a computer whiz who worked for the Nevada Gaming Comission.
Harris discovered that RNGs were not truly random but had repeating
patterns. He and a friend used this knowlege to win at video lotto
at Altantic City. They were caught and tried. The show interviewed
Harris who did not know whether the flaw in the RNG has been
subsequently corrected. The show did not specify how Harris was able
to ascertain the pattern of numbers.

Relating to video poker it would seem that if the RNG is cycling
till the instant of the draw, even if there is a repeatable pattern
(the RNG is not truly random), it would be imposssible to ascertain
where in the pattern it is at any time, thus effectivly behaving
like a truly random generator.

David

[Bill_Velek1]

d_richheimer wrote:

snip

Relating to video poker it would seem that if the RNG is cycling
till the instant of the draw, even if there is a repeatable pattern
(the RNG is not truly random), it would be imposssible to ascertain
where in the pattern it is at any time, thus effectivly behaving
like a truly random generator.

snip

True; that was exactly my point. As a matter of fact, because there is no such thing (at least that I am aware of) as an infinite RNG, the only way to get absolutely true randomness is to take a list that has only one entry for each possibility, and then make the selection from that list as random as possible by using some control that is humanly impossible to monitor and accurately influence. You could do something like take the microseconds delay between the end of the last game and the hitting of the deal button on the new game, and subtract it from the number of microseconds difference in the tenth previous game, and multiply it by the microseconds difference between pressing the hold button for card no. 3 and card no. 4 (the last time they were both pushed), and then multiply that by whatever number is generated by a finite RNG, etc. A computer could do all of that in a blink of an eye, and it would be completely beyond the ability of anyone to monitor or control ... assuming that they even understood what it is that is affecting the hand selection from the list.

Bill Velek