While I understand the arguments, and don't personally expect a 1/22
chance of winning a bonus jackpot, the idea of fiddling with
apparent
statistics just bothers me. People get a gut feel for probability
by
watching the world. Dice should behave like dice, cards like cards,
and wheels like wheels. Anytime you manipulate apparent physics to
fit a predefined goal, you whittle away at the general gut feel.
Great point. There is a name for this concept in control mechanisms
and user interfaces. I'll remember it later.
We are used to the analog world, and associate a wheel with certain
properties, dice with certain properties, ...
If there is a deck of shuffled cards on the table, and I pick a card,
I expect any of the 52 cards to be equally likely. However, I can
simulate a deck of cards in a computer program, even show the deck on
a screen, as it is being shuffled, and give you a Hold button, which
displays the selected card when you hit it. And I can program
different probabiities to each of the 52 cards, so I can skew the
distribution anyway I want it.
Take Super Times Poker. They show the SuperTimes number getting
juggled (and in my case, it always pauses tantalizingly at a large
number, before dropping down to a mundane level, and shifts to the
left), before settling down. Nobody associates the resulting number
to be from a uniform distribution.
But put the same set of numbers on a wheel, and spin it, and let it
settle. There is the expectation that all the numbers on the wheel
are equally likely. Well, to qualify that, they could put more two's
and three's and fewer eight's and nine's. Which immediately informs
the player that the likelihood of getting a x8 or x9 is much less
than a x2 or a x3.
It is a simple matter of Truth in Advertising. And being Honest, like
a regular business.
Consider the analogy of a Double Double Bonus game, where the quads
and kickers pay a whole lot and add to the excitement. True. But even
the most naive player knows that while they pay a lot, they are a
whole lot less likely. No one for a split second thinks that all the
outcomes in the 12 or 13 rows in the paytable are equally likely.
Symbols convey meanings. And they are used precisely because of that.
Would it kill the casino cheap suits to put a label on the machine
saying that "Not All The Bonus Amounts on the Wheel are Equally
Likely". Then all of this argument simply vanishes, even if I think
there is a certain amount of dishonesty in using the device of the
wheel to convey a certain amount of regularity in the outcomes.
All of this is strictly academic for me. I don't play the reel slots.
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--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "murphyfields" <jkludge@...> wrote:
