I'd like to share some observations.
1. Over the last 19 months, a friend and I kept track of how many
one-card draws to royals were missed/made. I finally hit on our
127th try. It is now 203 in a row since then and counting, for an
aggregate hit rate of one in 330. The a priori rate is, of course,
one in 47.
2. Bob Dancer (HimSelf) remarked in a VP booklet full of anecdotes
and such (I think it's out of print) that in his observation of JOB
and derivatives, when a given card was thrown to draw one to a
straight, another card of the same rank would appear, some
inordinate amount of the time, I think it was over 30%. He cross-
verified this with other players and was puzzled to the extent that
he felt compelled to publish it. The odds aginst receiving a card of
the same rank thrown are roughly 1 in 15, or six percent.
3. Over two million hands on Lucky Draw machines, specifically,
500,000 flush draws, tracked by myself and eleven other frequent
players: flush fill frequency was 6.1 to 1. Actual mathematical
expectation was 47/9 or 5.2 to 1. This resulted in one less flush
every 90 hands; enough to destroy any play. This alone explains why
players citywide lost on the LDs, even with huge theoretical
advantages.
4. Royal-less cycles this last 14 months for myself and others
reporting their stats have been: 650,000, 745,000, 800,000, and last
but not least, 1,100,000 AND COUNTING. This, as a practical matter,
is just about impossible. Now yes, you can sneer and say that we're
all crazy and misquoting our results, our mothers wear army boots,
etc. etc., but these are people who I know and trust.
TECHNICAL NOTE:
For those of you who believe that the installed "chip" is the sole
determinant of the RNG (and thus the outcome of the game), this is
simply NOT TRUE. There is a software program which "overlays" the
math processor in the chip. This is in volatile memory (thus the
term, E-PROM or Externally Programmable Read-Only Memory) and thus
is lost when power is shut off or the chip is physically removed.
What the software does is create an "array" (pseudo-array, actually,
for you programmers out there) which assigns a "value" and a "start
position" for each of the variables in the array, in this case the
52 cards in the deck (or 53 in JW, of course). Now, in a fair game
all cards are given equal "weight". But imagine, for example, the
effect of weighting Aces in Double Bonus just 5% less than other
cards. The drop in frequency of quad Aces AND royals would be
devastating. And COULD THIS BE DETECTED? ABSOLUTELY NOT! As soon as
the machine was opened up and powered down for inspection (and you
can't remove the E-PROM while there's power to the board without
receiving a nasty shock) the volatile memory would disappear, along
with the incriminating program.
Now, I'm not saying it IS done, ever HAS been done, ever WILL be
done, or has even been THOUGHT OF by those lovely casino dudes who
think about all of us in wet smoochy affectionate terms (because we
can beat them), but I simply wish to disabuse everyone of the myth
that it's 1)hard to cheat or 2)possible to detect.
Draw your own conclusions.
Is video poker truly random? Ease of altering results
TECHNICAL NOTE:
For those of you who believe that the installed "chip" is the sole
determinant of the RNG (and thus the outcome of the game), this is
simply NOT TRUE. There is a software program which "overlays" the
math processor in the chip. This is in volatile memory (thus the
term, E-PROM or Externally Programmable Read-Only Memory) and thus
is lost when power is shut off or the chip is physically removed.
What the software does is create an "array" (pseudo-array,
actually,
for you programmers out there) which assigns a "value" and a "start
position" for each of the variables in the array, in this case the
52 cards in the deck (or 53 in JW, of course). Now, in a fair game
all cards are given equal "weight". But imagine, for example, the
effect of weighting Aces in Double Bonus just 5% less than other
cards. The drop in frequency of quad Aces AND royals would be
devastating. And COULD THIS BE DETECTED? ABSOLUTELY NOT! As soon as
the machine was opened up and powered down for inspection (and you
can't remove the E-PROM while there's power to the board without
receiving a nasty shock) the volatile memory would disappear, along
with the incriminating program.
Now, I'm not saying it IS done, ever HAS been done, ever WILL be
done, or has even been THOUGHT OF by those lovely casino dudes who
think about all of us in wet smoochy affectionate terms (because we
can beat them), but I simply wish to disabuse everyone of the myth
that it's 1)hard to cheat or 2)possible to detect.
Draw your own conclusions.
While I am not discounting what you say 100%, there are a few
inaccuracies in your post. Firstly, an EPROM is NOT volatile memory.
Once programmed, it says there until it is rewritten or erased.
Secondly, you claim that once the machine is powered down, the
incriminating program would be lost. This begs to question, where did
the program come from in the first place when the machine was
initially powered on? It would have to be stored somewhere in the
machine in NON-volatile memory, which normally is a EPROM or now a
days flash RAM. Am I missing something here?
While I am not discounting what you say 100%, there are a few
inaccuracies in your post. Firstly, an EPROM is NOT volatile
memory.
Once programmed, it says there until it is rewritten or erased.
OK, this is splitting hairs. The chip in question, while not
technically an "E-PROM" as you are familiar with, is nonetheless
firmware--not hardware--that is programmed externally by software
and can be easily reprogrammed.
Secondly, you claim that once the machine is powered down, the
incriminating program would be lost. This begs to question, where
did
the program come from in the first place when the machine was
initially powered on? It would have to be stored somewhere in the
machine in NON-volatile memory, which normally is a EPROM or now a
days flash RAM.
The program itself could be innocuous. It would, as you say, be
loaded from RAM upon boot-up. What can be changed on the fly, by
someone who knows how, is the PARAMETERS the program uses. This is
done by a)user input or b)preloaded into memory some other way. A
benign version of this sort of thing is when they hold slot
tournaments and the RNG is fiddled with to make "jackpots"
ridiculously easy.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that even if the cheating program
(s) WERE in plain sight, they would be detectable as such. Could YOU
decipher 3800 lines of deliberately obtuse C-code, even if you WERE
an experienced programmer? Not a chance! And BTW, don't think for a
moment that Gaming Control employs anyone competent in this area--if
such a person existed, why would they work for the government, for
peanuts?
Anyway, I just wanted to point out one possible method that could be
used to create a dishonest VP machine. I'm SURE there are dozens
more that we haven't even THOUGHT of. Given the amount of money even
a weekend visitor stuffs into one of these machines, I think a
healthy caution and awareness are almost mandatory. Whether
you "agree" with me or not is utterly beside the point. If I AM
paranoid, it doesn't preclude the possibility of them being out to
get us.
Am I missing something here?
Possibly.
--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "mkl54321 <mkl54321@y...>"
<mkl54321@y...> wrote:
> While I am not discounting what you say 100%, there are a few
> inaccuracies in your post. Firstly, an EPROM is NOT volatile
memory.
> Once programmed, it says there until it is rewritten or erased.OK, this is splitting hairs. The chip in question, while not
technically an "E-PROM" as you are familiar with, is nonetheless
firmware--not hardware--that is programmed externally by software
and can be easily reprogrammed.> Secondly, you claim that once the machine is powered down, the
> incriminating program would be lost. This begs to question, where
did
> the program come from in the first place when the machine was
> initially powered on? It would have to be stored somewhere in the
> machine in NON-volatile memory, which normally is a EPROM or now
a
> days flash RAM.
The program itself could be innocuous. It would, as you say, be
loaded from RAM upon boot-up. What can be changed on the fly, by
someone who knows how, is the PARAMETERS the program uses. This is
done by a)user input or b)preloaded into memory some other way. A
benign version of this sort of thing is when they hold slot
tournaments and the RNG is fiddled with to make "jackpots"
ridiculously easy.
Granted, I've never worked on VP software, so any assertions are
based on what knowledge I have from watching machine interfaces when
slot techs work on them, as well as understandings from working in
the software industry.
While the C code may very well be obscure, the only way for the
casino to change the net results of machines is to change the
parameters of the machine, as you mention above. But for a parameter
to exist for a casino to change, it must be part of a well-documented
and defined interface. For example, to alter the probability of an
ace occuring, two things would have to happen. First, the code would
have to be written to make the probability of an ace subject to a
parameter. That would be visible to testers, but possibly hard to
find. But, second, there would have to be a parameter that would be
accessable to be changed on some screen only by "someone in the
know". To do that, the game manufacturer would have to blatently
violate the law by offering a hidden screen or mode that can only be
accessed if you knew the secret, so that connected techies could
change it for their own machine. And if anyone who knew about the
backdoor told the authorities, the slot manufacturer would be out of
business, since they wouldn't be able to be liscensed in the US. All
for a feature that doesn't benefit the slot manufacturer in the least.
mkl54321 wrote:
Whether
you "agree" with me or not is utterly beside the point. If I AM
paranoid, it doesn't preclude the possibility of them being out to
get us.
Exactly my reasoning in actively lobbying for a cessation to the
insidious floridation of our water.
- H.
And BTW, don't think for a
moment that Gaming Control employs anyone competent in this area--if
such a person existed, why would they work for the government, for
peanuts?<<
NO, but they could easily be well payed and work for IGT, etc.., and
be loned to the State, Government, whatever.