Anyone here know how an one-armed bandit (slot machine) works?

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Being a computer, it *cannot* be completely random - it can simulate random pretty well (or they could use a vintage Pentium with IEEE float point ..... :)

PS: Being a computer it is too easy to fake compared to verifying the proper operation; so of course it will cheat - like those online Poker sites!

True. Most use a hardware entropy to seed a fairly long cycle PRNG. It gets even harder to guess when numbers are removed rapidly during idle time. Infact, most processer idle time is spent cycling the PRNG.

Nigerian online poker? I can verify centrebet.com.au's poker is genuine!!

I used to like to play Keno and other stuff that used the ping pong ball. Trouble is, the machines are much better than they used to be. In the old days, there was always two ball machines. When one started to produce the same numbers, they would switch machines.

greg

The white house?

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Computers can easily be completely random by using any of a number of processes. They rarely do so as pseudorandom is much easier and simpler.

Poker? It's never necessary to "cheat" at poker, because usually most of the people you're playing against are so abysmally clueless. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

Those ping pong balls are worth a fair bit of money. Each one is weighted perfectly. Beleive it or not, the smaller numbers even have thicker paint. When the balls wear they are replaced. The cage is now dead.

I worked on a project once to replace the infamaous ball cage. USed a real RNG, a tundra RBG1210.

Cite, please.

Machine operations are inspected and certified by the Nevada Gaming Control Board. Supposedly, they have the teechnical expertise to determine if a game is "fair", as in random. The payoff ratios can be set by the operators, but they must still be random.

I don't really know about slot machines except from playing a few. They do vary the payouts of small money.

I always wondered about those skill machines. Seems like you can never stop the light from falling on a prize. There is a new machine that has blocks of lights going up. When you get to the top yo get the prize, some really nice prizes. My brother was informed by the tech that you can not get to the top no matter what your skill, if the machine has recently paid out. I always assumed that the odds could be varied by some control, but that speculation.

greg

My first night in a LV casino (stopped for cheap breakfast on the way to Utah) I inadvertantly won about $600 playing roulette. My wife made me leave. They have almost gotten all of it back since, about $20 at a time.

The point is that it doesn't need to be random, just unpredictable.

But since you're an Aussie, I can tell you how the machines here work. They generate a "deck" of typically 4000 plays using their PRNG, then transmit that up to a central computer that checks that the distribution is "ok", before authorizing the machine to play that deck. "ok" means that the average payout over the whole deck approximates the percentage required by laws etc in effect at the time. Consequently if you sit and watch someone playing and losing for a reasonable period, and hop on the machine when they run out of cash or get disgruntled, you have have a good chance of a positive return - by playing the "good" half of their remaining deck. Not that I have ever done such a thing... I have wondered whether some form of Tempest device could pick up the deck transmissions though :-).

Futzing with them has led to murder - unsolved AFAIK.

Excuse my laziness, but where is 'here'?

That sounds like a fairly dumb way of doing things. 4000 is a very small number, this would make things very predictable.

I gather from this that you don't know anything at all about the subject.

Am I wrong, and you're not an Australian in Australia?

Tell it to the TAB, who've been incredibly successful with this strategy for decades.

Richard: I got this from one of the engineers who developed this stuff. It might have changed now, it was some years ago, but he maintains that the systems deployed then are still in use... he worked for the TAB for more than a decade.

I am an Aussie in Oz.

Yup, worked for several Aussie TAB's and casino's, none I know do that. All gaming machines in Aus have no dependancy on anything. I think you will find the nevada laws are similar. Other US states are not far off either (few exceptions). Can't vouch for macau though, I have no idea what is happening over there.

I much prefer the race track.

There is a game here called "Trio" where one can bet on the sequence of horses and combinations for example chose one "certain" winner and any sequence of a group of seconds and "place" (1,2 and 3). Or any three in any order (for a vary expensive bet).

My favorite strategy is to play the horse that the odds say will be the winner (odds like 12 for a bet of 10) in with any combo of four garbage horses (with odds like 40 for 10 or more) for winner and place. It does not always pan out but when it occasionally does, one pulls the bet times a hundred maybe more.

The second is to bet on the jockey - there are about 3 jockeys here in Aarhus that usually manage to win. Normally the odds will reflect that; occasionally they arrive with a suspicious horse so the odds are like 40 for 10. This is where one will bet heavily because there is about 50% probability of the expert jockey pulling off a win *even* with the crap horse!

And only bet on 3-4 races out of the 12 going, but then betting real money when I do. I usually take DKK 400 and never "re-invest" winnings.

At the last race this year we took DKK 1800 home from just two bets: The trio above and DKK 100 on place & win to Birger Jorgensen at 40 for 10.

... Which, sadly, about evens out the year ;-)

There was an infamous hack where people would use a piezo lighter to spark to the chassis or the coin slot or similar, and the machine would count inserted coins. Which changes the odds of the game completely.

I also remember a story about machines using pseudo random numbers, and a programmer (or was it done through observation?) using this to win large amounts. The story goes on that casino owners were not amused and killed him.

For a more direct story, a friend woked in a casino. They would have sudden interest in some kind of game from a large number of foreign betters, who would play very small amounts for 1 or 2 days, and suddenly bet with the maximum - and took home full winnings.

The casino would claim this type of bug with the game manufacturer. In this case it turned out that the machine went through a cycle, and there was one game in the cycle where the outcome was predictable. ISTR it was a (simulated) horse racing type of game.

Thomas