vpFREE2 Forums

Test of Randomness, ER, etc.

#1

Administrator,

If some of the serious players in LV would agree to send you their
session results on an ongoing basis would you consider posting them
to some sort of table on this site. If the data contained # of
hands, win/loss amount, # of royals, we should be able to confirm
the ER without the royal rather quickly. The ER of FPDW without a
royal is close to 99% and I would be interested in how quickly the
session totals converge to this value. This would disprove the
lower flush and/or quad occurences or any other irregularity with
hands below the royal.

Some may feel this is a worthless exercise, but I would also be
interested in seeing the number of winning versus losing sessions
and the average losing session for different games like FPDW and
10/7 DB and others. Jean Scott has shared some of her session
win/loss amounts to educate those who might want to move up in
denomination, but I would like to see all the details in an ongoing
test of full pay machines if possible.

I have received 2 royals in only 3 trips to LV, so I have been on
the wonderful side of randomness so far and have no reason to
suspect anything. I also believe there is no harm in keeping an
open mind and testing for other possibilities.

There is a FAQ on the long term, but does anyone know what the long
term would be if we excluded the royal?

Thanks for VPfree. I enjoy everything on here even the off topic
ranting and raving. LOL

Chris

#2

Hi Chris

Interesting idea. However, we have know way to know how good each
player is who submits results. I would guess many good players play
too long of sessions. Thus, due to long hours and too fast play, even
good players may not get best return. I guess that would make them
bad players.

It's a good idea though. By gathering results we can get an idea how
us "experts" do in the real world. Gee, this seems like a lot of
work. If I were the administrator, I don't think I would want this
task.

Here is a little result that is not so interesting to me.(If I would
have scored a few royals it would be more interesting.) In my last 10
day visit to Vegas I got 4 to royal 24 times on deal. 10 times on
dollar and 14 times on quarter. I don't play quarter that much. I got
one 4 ROY on a 10 play quarter. No FL, ST, pair or royal on any hand
on 10 play 4 ROY draw. No royals on any of 24 draws. No royals for
whole trip, 4 ROY draw or otherwise.

In the past I took a couple years and tracked total games played
(close estimate), $$ in and $$ out, straight flushes scored, 4 royals
on draw, 4 royals completed and total royals made. I played average
about +7 days a month. My results; everything seemed on the money.
Now I just track $ in and out. Last week I decided to track draws to
4-ROY. Why, I don't know.

\Cheers.....Jeep
.

···

.--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "kcace1024" <cy4873@h...> wrote:

Administrator,

If some of the serious players in LV would agree to send you their
session results on an ongoing basis would you consider posting them
to some sort of table on this site. If the data contained # of
hands, win/loss amount, # of royals, we should be able to confirm
the ER without the royal rather quickly. The ER of FPDW without a
royal is close to 99% and I would be interested in how quickly the
session totals converge to this value. This would disprove the
lower flush and/or quad occurences or any other irregularity with
hands below the royal.

Some may feel this is a worthless exercise, but I would also be
interested in seeing the number of winning versus losing sessions
and the average losing session for different games like FPDW and
10/7 DB and others. Jean Scott has shared some of her session
win/loss amounts to educate those who might want to move up in
denomination, but I would like to see all the details in an ongoing
test of full pay machines if possible.

I have received 2 royals in only 3 trips to LV, so I have been on
the wonderful side of randomness so far and have no reason to
suspect anything. I also believe there is no harm in keeping an
open mind and testing for other possibilities.

There is a FAQ on the long term, but does anyone know what the long
term would be if we excluded the royal?

Thanks for VPfree. I enjoy everything on here even the off topic
ranting and raving. LOL

Chris

#3

There is a FAQ on the long term, but does anyone know what the long
term would be if we excluded the royal?

for fpdw you should exclude the royal and deuces:
er=1.007619624-0.017667091-0.04074064=0.949211893 (~5% loss)
var=25.83461818-14.09809215-8.066232694=3.670293334

next winning hand is wild royal with a cycle time of ~557 hands

5x557= 2785 hands (could be considered "long term")

at 3000 hands, number of wrf and probs are:
0 0.46%
1 2.46%
2 6.63%
3 11.91%
4 16.06%
5 17.31%

5 45.18%

if you get deuces or royal, consider yourself lucky, it's not
impossible to go 4909x5=24,545 hands without deuces or 45282x5=226,410
hands without a royal

net (running total) losing streak probs for fpdw are:
0.9993468^(bets):
bets__5coin-quarters____prob
200______$250___________87.75%
800____$1,000___________59.29%
1600___$2,000___________35.15%
2400___$3,000___________20.84%
3200___$4,000___________12.36%
4000___$5,000____________7.33%
8000__$10,000____________0.54%

···

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "kcace1024" <cy4873@h...> wrote:

#4

median (50% prob) net (running total) losing streaks:

fpdw=ln(.5)/ln(.999347)= 1061 bets ($1,326 @ quarters)
aa=ln(.5)/ln(.999411)= 1176 bets ($1,470 @ quarters)
kobjoker=ln(.5)/ln(.999463)= 1290 bets ($1,613 @ quarters)
1300/9/6job=ln(.5)/ln(.999592)= 1699 bets ($2,124 @ quarters)
25/15/10loosedeuces=ln(.5)/ln(.999710)= 2390 bets ($2,988 @ quarters)
10/7db=ln(.5)/ln(.999876)= 5590 bets ($6,988 @ quarters)

···

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "kcace1024" <cy4873@h...> wrote:

Some may feel this is a worthless exercise, but I would also be
interested in seeing the number of winning versus losing sessions
and the average losing session for different games like FPDW and
10/7 DB and others. Jean Scott has shared some of her session

#5

If some of the serious players in LV would agree to send you their
session results on an ongoing basis would you consider posting them
to some sort of table on this site.

Yes, but I see many logistical problems.

There's likely to be considerable massaging of records
required for any participants, and deciding exactly how
and what to track presents a lot of trade offs.

I'll think about this further and come up with some ideas.
Discussion and suggestions are encouraged/welcomed.

vpFREE Administrator

#6

> If some of the serious players in LV would agree to send you

their

> session results on an ongoing basis would you consider posting

them

> to some sort of table on this site.

Yes, but I see many logistical problems.

There's likely to be considerable massaging of records
required for any participants, and deciding exactly how
and what to track presents a lot of trade offs.

I'll think about this further and come up with some ideas.
Discussion and suggestions are encouraged/welcomed.

vpFREE Administrator

I guess you might have to limit contributors to players where you
have direct knowledge of their ability to keep an accurate record of
the results. I realize this is probably putting a burden on you and
just a few players, but since we are only testing the randomness
below the royal level it should not take too long to get meaningfull
results. Thanks for considering the idea.

Chris

···

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "vpFREE" <vpFREE@C...> wrote:

#7

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "nightoftheiguana2000"
<nightoftheiguana2000@y...> wrote:

> Some may feel this is a worthless exercise, but I would also be
> interested in seeing the number of winning versus losing

sessions

> and the average losing session for different games like FPDW and
> 10/7 DB and others. Jean Scott has shared some of her session

median (50% prob) net (running total) losing streaks:

fpdw=ln(.5)/ln(.999347)= 1061 bets ($1,326 @ quarters)
aa=ln(.5)/ln(.999411)= 1176 bets ($1,470 @ quarters)
kobjoker=ln(.5)/ln(.999463)= 1290 bets ($1,613 @ quarters)
1300/9/6job=ln(.5)/ln(.999592)= 1699 bets ($2,124 @ quarters)
25/15/10loosedeuces=ln(.5)/ln(.999710)= 2390 bets ($2,988 @

quarters)

10/7db=ln(.5)/ln(.999876)= 5590 bets ($6,988 @ quarters)

Thanks for the reply nightoftheiguana. I am not sure if I
understand the equation above. For FPDW does 1061 bets represent
the point where you will have a 50% chance of losing 1061 bets (ROR)
or is it the point where you are just as likely to be above or below
breakeven. What does .999347 represent?

Let me rephrase my earlier question and define a short session.
Lets say I always play a session of 1000 hands/bets. What is the
probability that any one session will be a winning session.

Chris

···

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "kcace1024" <cy4873@h...> wrote:

#8

Hi Chris

Interesting idea. However, we have know way to know how good each
player is who submits results. I would guess many good players

play

too long of sessions. Thus, due to long hours and too fast play,

even

good players may not get best return. I guess that would make them
bad players.

It's a good idea though. By gathering results we can get an idea

how

us "experts" do in the real world. Gee, this seems like a lot of
work. If I were the administrator, I don't think I would want this
task.

Here is a little result that is not so interesting to me.(If I

would

have scored a few royals it would be more interesting.) In my last

10

day visit to Vegas I got 4 to royal 24 times on deal. 10 times on
dollar and 14 times on quarter. I don't play quarter that much. I

got

one 4 ROY on a 10 play quarter. No FL, ST, pair or royal on any

hand

on 10 play 4 ROY draw. No royals on any of 24 draws. No royals for
whole trip, 4 ROY draw or otherwise.

In the past I took a couple years and tracked total games played
(close estimate), $$ in and $$ out, straight flushes scored, 4

royals

on draw, 4 royals completed and total royals made. I played

average

about +7 days a month. My results; everything seemed on the money.
Now I just track $ in and out. Last week I decided to track draws

to

4-ROY. Why, I don't know.

\Cheers.....Jeep

Jeep

You are correct that the accuracy and record keeping would be
critical to this exercise. My guess is that the Administrator knows
of a few VPfree members in LV who would meet the requirements. I am
also glad to hear your results over a couple of years came out close
to expectation. I think others have claimed the same as well. One
issue that has come up though is that the newer machines may not be
random. I guess the test will have to be for specific types of
machine. Obviously, we will only test the machines that our
contributors want to play. Therefore, we can only prove that some
machines are random.

I now remember that the gamemaster at gamemasteronline.com posted
his session results over a period of several months for All
American. I thought if we had several players contributing data on
the same game we could total their results and determine the
randomness below the royal level rather quickly.

Chris

···

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "whitejeeps" <whitejeeps@y...> wrote:

#9

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "nightoftheiguana2000"
<nightoftheiguana2000@y...> wrote:
>
> > Some may feel this is a worthless exercise, but I would also be
> > interested in seeing the number of winning versus losing
sessions
> > and the average losing session for different games like FPDW

and

> > 10/7 DB and others. Jean Scott has shared some of her session
>
> median (50% prob) net (running total) losing streaks:
>
> fpdw=ln(.5)/ln(.999347)= 1061 bets ($1,326 @ quarters)
> aa=ln(.5)/ln(.999411)= 1176 bets ($1,470 @ quarters)
> kobjoker=ln(.5)/ln(.999463)= 1290 bets ($1,613 @ quarters)
> 1300/9/6job=ln(.5)/ln(.999592)= 1699 bets ($2,124 @ quarters)
> 25/15/10loosedeuces=ln(.5)/ln(.999710)= 2390 bets ($2,988 @
quarters)
> 10/7db=ln(.5)/ln(.999876)= 5590 bets ($6,988 @ quarters)

Thanks for the reply nightoftheiguana. I am not sure if I
understand the equation above. For FPDW does 1061 bets represent
the point where you will have a 50% chance of losing 1061 bets (ROR)
or is it the point where you are just as likely to be above or

below

breakeven. What does .999347 represent?

you have a 50% chance of losing 1061 bets, which also means 50% of
your net losing streaks will be greater than or equal to 1061 bets and
50% will be less than 1061 bets (so 1061 is the median)
.999347 is the risk number, call it R(1), then:
risk of ruin=R(1)^(net loss in bets)
(net loss in bets)=natural log(risk of ruin)/natural log(R(1))

Let me rephrase my earlier question and define a short session.
Lets say I always play a session of 1000 hands/bets. What is the
probability that any one session will be a winning session.

you can run that using:
http://members.aol.com/lotsie/poker.html
select deuces, stake=$300, retire=$300, run till coin in is $1250
(=1000 hands at 5 coin quarters), results:
.03% <-$300 (busted)
.46% -$300 to -$240
3.8% -$240 to -$180
13% -$180 to -$120
23% -$120 to -$60
21% -$60 to $0
12% $0 to $60
6.1% $60 to $120
5.3% $120 to $180
4.3% $180 to $240
1.4% $240 to $300
6.8% >$300

12+6.1+5.3+4.3+1.4+6.8=35.9% chance of winning session

N0=variance/(er-1)^2, for deuces=26/(.0076)^2=450,000 hands
at N0, your chances of being a net winner improve to 84%
at 4xN0, your chances of being a net winner improve to 98%

with one hand, your chances of losing are 55%, your chances of a push
are 28% and your chances of winning are 17%

also see:
http://www.jazbo.com/videopoker/curves.html

···

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "kcace1024" <cy4873@h...> wrote:

> --- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "kcace1024" <cy4873@h...> wrote:

#10

I'll weigh in a bit on the idea of tracking player experience to
assess machine fairness:

Among the most skilled players (which the experiment has most recently
been proposed to be limited to in order to avoid the affect of
strategy variation) I expect that this task has limited appeal, at
best -- this is particularly true of the most active ones.

It's time consuming, especially since the best measurement would come
from hands such as flushes/straights/full houses. Not only is the RF
cycle too long/variable to yield any practical assessment, a
casino/manufacturer would have to cut the frequency very severely (in
half?) to achieve a meaning increase in hold.

It would be far more effective to make a very slim cut in the
intermediate hand frequency. There's typically around 20% of game
return tied up in these intermediate hands -- who's going to really
notice a 1/10 or so reduction in hand frequency on these for a 2%+
greater hold (that represents about a 50% increase in actual net hold
on a 99% ER game after cb/cash bonuses are considered).

Detecting a slim reduction of this nature is going to require very
precise record keeping (far more extensive and frequent in the casino
than I'd care to make, for fear of drawing undue attention).

Then there are other practical considerations. Because of differing
hand frequencies between various games/paytables, data is going to
have to be meticulously separated for each play. Determination of
actual total hands played is feasible where there's an accurate point
system (such as Harrah's). But at other casinos, notably somewhere
like AC, there's only limited point tracking, if any. With the
precision required noted above, play approximations render the data
useless.

Finally, there's the issue of what's going to be targeted by the
measurement. At best, an overall assessment of a given type of
machine would be practical. Personally, since I expect that the
casino would be fully complicit in any machine unfairness, I'd only
expect some casinos to be involved. Once again, it's unlikely that
sufficient data for any given casino would be compiled to get a
reasonable test.

If you do go after machines nationwide, surely you have to go after
something more specific than, say, new generation machines
manufactured since 2000. Are you going to focus on the Game King
platform, and if so, it would seem that the best test would identify
the various chip sets employed.

I think you get my take on this ... it's a fool's errand. FWIW :wink:

- Harry

#11

> If some of the serious players in LV would agree to send you

their

> session results on an ongoing basis would you consider posting

them

> to some sort of table on this site.

Yes, but I see many logistical problems.

There's likely to be considerable massaging of records
required for any participants, and deciding exactly how
and what to track presents a lot of trade offs.

I'll think about this further and come up with some ideas.
Discussion and suggestions are encouraged/welcomed.

vpFREE Administrator

Even assuming that records of play were entirely accurate, I would
question whether the number of reported-upon hands would be great
enough to be statistically reliable.

My own knowledge of statistics is minimal, but it appears that the
Standard Deviation, for 10000 hands of jb96, would be around 440
coins.

Expected return would be 49770 coins. But, actual return would be
distributed between 48890 and 50650 only 95% of the time. Making
it "very difficult" to draw any reliable conclusion from one, or
even "several", 10000-hand samples.

···

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "vpFREE" <vpFREE@C...> wrote:

#12

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "Harry Porter" <harry.porter@v...>
wrote:

I'll weigh in a bit on the idea of tracking player experience to
assess machine fairness..... (followed by several excellent points

on how hard it would be to do a meaningful study)

I've got to weigh in with Harry on this, and relate a little personal
experience. I recently tried to help analyze the detailed play
records of a heavy player who had over $5 million coin-in over the
past year or so. The records were excellent as such things go -
detailed by casino and game and session and even machine, with royals
given separately so they could be excluded, and 4OAKs separated on
games where they particularly mattered. There were only 14 games
total played, so nice sample sizes for most games. In short, just
about the best you can hope for under the considerations that Harry
described.

And yet, we really were not able to come to any firm conclusions.
There was a significant deviance from expectation for one major
segment of the play, more so than one would think possible under the
law of big numbers. The deviance was not royal-related, but somewhere
in the lesser hands, and we were able to identify one subset of games
where it was most severe, but it was not a logical grouping (or at
least I could comeup with no logical reason why that type of game
would suffer a greater deviance than others). Other than that, the
deviance was spread pretty evenly over many machines at several
casinos. We found one machine that had had a large amount of play and
had a slightly larger percent deviance than the group as a whole, and
we are entertaining the idea of non-randomness on that machine.
However, if all the other play had been normal, the shortfall on this
machine alone would not have been noticeable in the players overall
history. Going just by the numbers, the most likely conclusion would
be that the player did not employ proper strategy, but knowing the
player and watching him play I know that not to be the case.

The conclusion I came to is simply that normalization takes longer
than we think. Yeah, maybe 84% of people (one standard deviation on
the bell curve) will normalize on a million or so hands. But the
other 16% is a large number in any group - out of the 3730 people on
this mailing list, about 600 of us will fall outside one SD. Around
20 or so will fall outside 3 SD's, meaning very extreme results, in
top/bottom half of the upper/lower 1 percentile. And those 20 are the
most likely to post messages here (10 of them saying VP machines are
non-random; the other 10 talking about how they have this VP all
figured out and you really ought to follow their strange advice, LOL)

In short, I'd like to see the study in question done for other
reasons, but it's not going to answer the non-randomness question.

On a related note, does anyone know how the various gaming
commissions test the fairness of VP machines? Seems like I heard once
that, for new machines at least, the casino is required to supply a
telelphone link and the GC's computers randomly call machines and get
downloads of a few million hands to analyze. Is that true or just an
urban legend?

#13

Two more quick notes. First, normalization is further complicated by
the mix of games and denominations most of us play. Consider all the
hands Bob Dancer has played. And yet, assuming he reported his play
accurately, he must have had a large deviance in dollar results terms
from expected (either that, or he played $200 million coin-in at an
0.5% edge in one year).

Second, some may recall a post I made several months ago where I was
comparing SAB to JOB and questioning the standard "variance" measure.
As part of that research, I ran a simulation of 5000 hands of each,
and repeated it 10,000 times to get a results distribution. IIRC, I
had to correct the JOB results for comparability purposes because the
actual ER in the sims turned out to be 0.10% more than expected. And
that was on 50 million hands (5,000 hands times 10,000 repetitions).
If JOB return can be 0.10% off on 50 million hands, how can we claim
to be surprised by a 1% deviation on a mix of games and denoms over
500,000 hands?

#14

On a related note, does anyone know how the various gaming
commissions test the fairness of VP machines? Seems like I heard

once

that, for new machines at least, the casino is required to supply a
telelphone link and the GC's computers randomly call machines and

get

downloads of a few million hands to analyze. Is that true or just

an

urban legend?

I'd also be interested in this; especially including some details on
how the hand-generation process works.

As best I understand the process, a series of pseudo-random numbers
is generated, using a well-recognized algorithm; whenever cards are
needed, the currently-available value is used to determine these.
When the machine is first started up, and at periodic intervals
thereafter, it is loaded with a "seed number"; given this, the series
of pseudo-random numbers is entirely predictable.

The "seed number" does change--many times per second--due to
operation of the algorithm.

Given a relatively-small sample--perhaps 1000--of dealt cards, and
the "seed number" which was in effect shortly before the sample was
generated, it should be entirely feasible to regenerate all numbers
which were available during the relevant period, and determine
whether the observed sequence of cards could have resulted from
normal/honest operation.

Casino managements would not know, until samples had already been
obtained, whether or not a given machine's operation was going to be
audited.

···

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "blaw57" <blaw57@y...> wrote:

#15

I can't pretend to fully understand this stuff, only enough to be
dangerous, but it worries me just a tad if it is truly a hard seed
number. That would seem possibly to be open to manipulation. Since
computers are unable to generate a truly random number out of thin
air and so must use a seed, I thought the recognized random method
was to use the system date/time as the starting point for an
algorithm that generates a seed number.

When I'm playing with friends and I get dealt 4 to a royal, I
frequently take out my watch and watch it closely for 20-30 seconds
before hitting the draw button. When asked why, I'll reply I'm
waiting for the random number seed to come around into the Queen of
hearts (or whatever card is needed) range.

> On a related note, does anyone know how the various gaming
> commissions test the fairness of VP machines? Seems like I heard
once
> that, for new machines at least, the casino is required to

supply a

> telelphone link and the GC's computers randomly call machines

and

get
> downloads of a few million hands to analyze. Is that true or

just

an
> urban legend?

I'd also be interested in this; especially including some details

on

how the hand-generation process works.

As best I understand the process, a series of pseudo-random

numbers

is generated, using a well-recognized algorithm; whenever cards

are

needed, the currently-available value is used to determine these.
When the machine is first started up, and at periodic intervals
thereafter, it is loaded with a "seed number"; given this, the

series

of pseudo-random numbers is entirely predictable.

The "seed number" does change--many times per second--due to
operation of the algorithm.

Given a relatively-small sample--perhaps 1000--of dealt cards, and
the "seed number" which was in effect shortly before the sample

was

generated, it should be entirely feasible to regenerate all

numbers

which were available during the relevant period, and determine
whether the observed sequence of cards could have resulted from
normal/honest operation.

Casino managements would not know, until samples had already been
obtained, whether or not a given machine's operation was going to

be

···

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "sphboc2003" <sphboc@a...> wrote:

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "blaw57" <blaw57@y...> wrote:
audited.

#16

Valid point. I agree that any procedure which allows the seed number
to be known prior to generation of hands is, in principle, exposed to
chicanery. Somewhat limited by the fact that only a small percentage
of the numbers are actually used; even so, advance knowledge that an
abnormal proportion of "aces and faces" were coming could be quite
valuable.

All that my proposal truly requires, however, is that the seed number
become known at some time AFTER the hands have been generated, and
the number in question replaced by another.

I can't pretend to fully understand this stuff, only enough to be
dangerous, but it worries me just a tad if it is truly a hard seed
number. That would seem possibly to be open to manipulation. Since
computers are unable to generate a truly random number out of thin
air and so must use a seed, I thought the recognized random method
was to use the system date/time as the starting point for an
algorithm that generates a seed number.

>
> > On a related note, does anyone know how the various gaming
> > commissions test the fairness of VP machines? Seems like I

heard

> once
> > that, for new machines at least, the casino is required to
supply a
> > telelphone link and the GC's computers randomly call machines
and
> get
> > downloads of a few million hands to analyze. Is that true or
just
> an
> > urban legend?
>
> I'd also be interested in this; especially including some details
on
> how the hand-generation process works.
>
> As best I understand the process, a series of pseudo-random
numbers
> is generated, using a well-recognized algorithm; whenever cards
are
> needed, the currently-available value is used to determine

these.

> When the machine is first started up, and at periodic intervals
> thereafter, it is loaded with a "seed number"; given this, the
series
> of pseudo-random numbers is entirely predictable.
>
> The "seed number" does change--many times per second--due to
> operation of the algorithm.
>
> Given a relatively-small sample--perhaps 1000--of dealt cards,

and

···

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "blaw57" <blaw57@y...> wrote:

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "sphboc2003" <sphboc@a...> wrote:
> --- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "blaw57" <blaw57@y...> wrote:
> the "seed number" which was in effect shortly before the sample
was
> generated, it should be entirely feasible to regenerate all
numbers
> which were available during the relevant period, and determine
> whether the observed sequence of cards could have resulted from
> normal/honest operation.
>
> Casino managements would not know, until samples had already been
> obtained, whether or not a given machine's operation was going to
be
> audited.

#17

>
When I'm playing with friends and I get dealt 4 to a royal, I
frequently take out my watch and watch it closely for 20-30

seconds

before hitting the draw button. When asked why, I'll reply I'm
waiting for the random number seed to come around into the Queen

of

hearts (or whatever card is needed) range.

Bless you for your patience, if you can

actually wait 20-30 seconds (an ETERNITY) to hit that draw button! I
can't wait an extra second to if that elusive Royal is there.

···

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "blaw57" <blaw57@y...> wrote:

#18

...snip

As best I understand the process, a series of pseudo-random numbers
is generated, using a well-recognized algorithm; whenever cards are
needed, the currently-available value is used to determine these.

From what I've heard the "currently available number" changes
millions of times per second. Only when the deal/draw button is
pressed is a random number selected.
  

When the machine is first started up, and at periodic intervals
thereafter, it is loaded with a "seed number"; given this, the

series

of pseudo-random numbers is entirely predictable.

True ... but of no use since millions of random numbers are discarded
between hands.
  

The "seed number" does change--many times per second--due to
operation of the algorithm.

I've never heard anything specific about how and when the seed number
is changed. Some rumors include 1) when a bill is inserted 2) After
long (?) delays 3) At specific time intervals 4) when machine is
opened 5) only at start up.
  

Given a relatively-small sample--perhaps 1000--of dealt cards, and
the "seed number" which was in effect shortly before the sample was
generated, it should be entirely feasible to regenerate all numbers
which were available during the relevant period, and determine
whether the observed sequence of cards could have resulted from
normal/honest operation.

This is not feasible since the sequence of cards is not the same as
the random number sequence due to discarding random numbers between
every hand.
    
Dick

PS. I don't think anyone on this board knows the exact inner workings
of any VP machine. My response is basically a reasonable guess based
on some direct quotes from IGT as well as rumor. I should also
mention that VP simulators like winpoker do not use continually
running PRNGs.

···

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "sphboc2003" <sphboc@a...> wrote:

#19

I am more like you Babe, I hit it pretty fast, but that reminds me of
a couple I played next to earlier this year. They were dealt 4 to the
royal, and they got so excited and went on and on almost like they had
already won, then they had to get out thier lucky penny and each one
rub on it and then set it on the machine and finally hit the draw
button. Well they got the royal and if you ask them it was all
because of the penny. It was pretty funny, although I believe I was
having a bad session and it didnt make me feel any better, but they
were typical players and I am sure the money has long gone back in the
machines. Sometimes randomness even looks kindly on the uneducated,
and thank goodness because it keeps them coming back.

Happy royals
Jim

···

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "jackessiebabe" <jackessiebabe@y...> wrote:

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "blaw57" <blaw57@y...> wrote:
>
> >
> When I'm playing with friends and I get dealt 4 to a royal, I
> frequently take out my watch and watch it closely for 20-30
seconds
> before hitting the draw button. When asked why, I'll reply I'm
> waiting for the random number seed to come around into the Queen
of
> hearts (or whatever card is needed) range.
>
>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Bless you for your patience, if you can
actually wait 20-30 seconds (an ETERNITY) to hit that draw button! I
can't wait an extra second to if that elusive Royal is there.

#20

define normalization

···

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "blaw57" <blaw57@y...> wrote:

The conclusion I came to is simply that normalization takes longer
than we think.