It is always interesting (but not surprising) to me that people will be quite concerned with their experience with a draw that doesn't come repeatedly (as in the example, 2 cards to trips, or drawing 1 or 2 to a royal, etc.) and yet don't ever worry that the machine is "fixed" or in error if they get two royals within 5-10 min. of each other (OK, there are casino personnel who find this suspicious of a malfunction - but aren't we supposed to be smarter / more scientific than most of them are?).
The idea of counting cards dealt (as opposed to frequency of hands hit) to see if there is a reasonably normal distribution of all cards and especially that no card is "missing" from the deck is obviously the easiest way to determine if the machine is dealing from a full deck -- but will not address the concerns of players who think the machine is "programmed" / "fixed" to cheat the players out of a fair shot of hitting a big hand or a jackpot, while giving them "fair play" the rest of the time.
I wonder how much the likelihood of hitting a royal would have to be reduced by the machine in order to change the expected return to the player by 1% -- it is likely that a slight reduction in frequency of the "big event" (by slight, I certainly don't mean a very small reduction in frequency, but one that would not be easily noticed, given that the event is infrequent to begin with) would easily reduce the return significantly, while not getting too much suspicion (as is the case if something NEVER hits and is more frequently expected, as was the concern expressed in the post below).
I also wonder how much impact it would have, and how easily it would be detected, if the machine was set to under-deliver a common hand by something like 10% -- I'm sure we've all had those runs of hands where we just can't get a small pair to improve to a paying hand again and again and again -- so how hard might it be to detect it if this was happening "on purpose" instead of just by chance.
And if we run our statistics on our results and find that there's "only" a 10% or 20% probability that our bad results are due to chance, is that enough to say "bad machine" or do we just say "bad day"?
To me, the fact that a machine intentionally set to underpay could cause a casino to lose its license is sufficient to reduce my concerns -- it just seems like something with too great a penalty for a casino to take the risk -- although I certainly understand that such illegal conduct is not beyond possibility and I also understand that most such activity is conducted without serious consideration of the reality of the possible consequences. It's like the people on this list who clearly do not report their winnings and losses to the IRS honestly, and furthermore talk openly about it, without serious consideration of the reality of the possible consequences.
On the other hand, if we're concerned about a machine just malfunctioning, but only in the sense that it's underpaying or under-delivering big hands (ie, it's a machine problem, not a dishonest casino), that MAY be another story -- or in fact, the likelihood of such a limited malfunction that otherwise lets the machine function apparently "normally" in every other way, may actually be less likely than a just-plain-dishonest machine intentionally "set" to cheat the player.
Of course, if you're a recreational player like me, you're already "accepting" the half percent of your action that you're giving up (knowingly or not) -- but you certainly don't want it to be more than what you are willing to accept (I'd play a different game, like craps, I suppose, if I thought that VP was in fact returning much less than 99.5%).
--BG
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5a. What would it take?
I've noticed that more and more frequently when playing
multiplay games and
getting dealt 3 to a quad, I never get the fourth one on
any lines,
especially with Aces. I was just in Laughlin
playing 10-play and over and over
and over, no 4th to the quad. I probably had 3 Aces
dealt (playing DDB) at
least 10 times and never got the 4th Ace on any
line. Same thing for 2s,
3s, but also for the rest of the numbers, over and
over again. Frustrating
to the point of saying, what the heck is the matter
with these machines.
5-play also often shows the same lack of quads.