Finder's keepers losers
weepers?
26 November 2002
By Mark Pilarski
Dear Mark,
You always say check your machine for credits
before you leave. Is it true that if I went to
play a machine and there were credits left on it
by someone I could get in trouble with the
casino? Beri W.
Called "sea gulling" in gambling lingo, it is
illegal to specifically circle the casino
looking for credits on a slot machine. Not even
change on the floor. I've seen player impostors
given the heave ho (the dreadful permanent 86)
for making a full-time occupation of floating
the casino looking for easy pickings.
Fortunately I have never heard of an
unsuspecting patron walking up to a machine with
credits, playing them, and being shown the door.
Nevertheless, Beri, before you walk away from
any slot machine, don't forget to press the
cash-out button. Millions are lost each year by
gamblers forgetting their stored credits
(winnings).
Dear Mark,
I don't quite understand what is meant by a pay
cycle on a slot machine. Does it mean that over
one pay cycle, every possible combination on the
reel will appear? Melvin V.
Not quite, Melvin. The term "pay cycle" is a
theoretic expression used to describe the number
of plays required for the machine to display all
the possible winning and non-winning
combinations. But, because each and every spin
is a random event, a machine won't hit all the
possible combinations through any one specific
cycle.
Dear Mark,
Recently I got my first royal flush. That was
the good news. The bad news is I only had two
coins in it when it hit. Would I have still
gotten a royal flush had I inserted the maximum
amount of coins? Jennifer G.
No, but not for the reason you're probably
thinking. Many, many players believe that video
poker machines are programmed to avoid a royal
flush because the maximum amount of coins was
inserted. As stated many times in this column,
machines do not operate with artificial
intelligence programmed to hit royals when you
have less than the maximum amount of coins in
the machine.
The reason you would have received a different
hand, Jennifer, is because in the short amount
of time it would have taken to insert the
additional coins you didn't play, the machine's
random number generator (RNG) would have cycled
to another outcome. A video poker machines RNG
will typically continue to crunch those 1s and
0s until you hit the deal button. As many as a
million hands per minute. So unless you pushed
the deal button at the correct millisecond,
Jennifer, no, the proverbial royal flush with
five coins inserted would not have appeared.
Dear Mark,
Why has the term "odds" been so closely
associated with gambling? Terry K.
The laws of probability, Terry, on which odds
are based, are as highly respected a branch of
mathematics as geometry, trigonometry or
differential calculus. Odds are used in
business, science, military planning, mortality
rates and virtually all human
endeavors-including gambling.
Most gamblers don't realize it, but every time
they enter a casino the odds are 2 to 1 against
them no matter which game they play. First, you
go to war with the casino, which has an edge on
each and every bet, and second, we all must do
battle with the ultimate demon-ourselves.
There is your 2 to 1 against.
Dear Mark,
With all the different types of video poker
machines to select from, how's a customer to
choose which machine to play? Gerry B.
There are more than a hundred different video
poker machines to choose from. Games like Joker
Poker, Louisiana Jacks, Gator Poker, etc., offer
you a supermarket selection, but all have
different paytables needing distinct playing
strategies.
I recommend learning and limiting your play to
two, like my favorites, Deuces Wild and
Jacks-or-Better.
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