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The Almighty Buck Education Entertainment Games Technology

Psychology, Design and Economics of Slot-Machines 144

Posted by Zonk from the one-armed-bandit dept.
6 writes "Technology isn't just about design and hardware; sometimes it's about psychology, politics, sociology, and economics. The website of Stanford design prof Michael Shanks is hosting a student project by William Choi and Antoine Sindhu, a fascinating online course about slot machines. From the site: 'Much research has been devoted to studying gambling behavior from various points of view, including the psychological, social, economic, and political bases and implications of gambling ... [just the same,] focusing on slot machines reveals and inspires the study of many sociological issues that have come to express themselves specifically and notably on these machines. Here, we examine a number of these issues, attempting to link slot machines to them in an effort to better understand and explain them.'"
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Psychology, Design and Economics of Slot-Machines More

Psychology, Design and Economics of Slot-Machines

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  • Variable Ratio Conditioning (Score:5, Interesting)

    by anagama ( 611277 ) <obamaisaneocon@nothingchanged.org> on Saturday July 21, 2007 @09:16PM (#19942401) Homepage
    If you give a rat a bit of food every time it presses a bar (or on every n presses) -- it'll learn to press the bar the requisite number of times when it is hungry. If you provide a food nugget on a varying number of presses, e.g., 1 press=win, 3 presses=win, 10 presses=win, 4 presses=win -- it'll punch the bar all day.

    At least, that's how I recall a psych prof of mine from college explaining why slot machines were so profitable.

    • Cherry Dribbling (Score:3, Interesting)

      by klenwell ( 960296 )
      I read a New York Times article on this subject a while back -- it was about professional slot machine designers. It referred to an insidious concept with the charming title, "cherry dribbling." Basically, it means figuring out the ratio of payouts to losses that defines the optimal rate to pick a slot-machine player's pocket. Pay out too much and obviously the slot-machine owner will lose. Pay out too little and people begin to feel like suckers and stop playing. Get it just right -- super happy profi
      • Most slot machines run in this fashion utilising simple Fixed Odds Betting [wikipedia.org]. Most (all?) casino table games use the same principle with varying rates of odds. Blackjack with 1 deck is normally the highest payout at about 98% IIRC. Slots hover around 90% and some thing like bingo can go as low as 80% with people still playing happily. There are laws that govern payout percentages (Nevada is something like 75% IIRC). In the UK, slot machines do not always run this way as there are laws in place (recently updat

      • Basically, it means figuring out the ratio of payouts to losses that defines the optimal rate to pick a slot-machine player's pocket. Pay out too much and obviously the slot-machine owner will lose. Pay out too little and people begin to feel like suckers and stop playing. Get it just right -- super happy profit!

        It's even more complex than that, designers need to understand HOW best to make individual payouts to maximize profits. Make the payouts too big and people will become disinterested from losing too

        • Re:Cherry Dribbling (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Mprx ( 82435 ) on Sunday July 22, 2007 @07:00AM (#19944707)
          The house isn't playing against an individual customer, it's playing against all the customers. The only way they can make money with >100% payout is by using it as a loss leader to attract them to worse paying gambling.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sholden ( 12227 )
          Some slot machines (well usually video poker machines, since playing those perfectly isn't so straightforward) have payouts slightly above 100%, so the casino can advertise their existance. But they won't have many and they'll be hidden in a corner somewhere mixed in with less than 100% machines and you need to decode the payout table to determine which is which.

          Streaks are irrelevant from the casino point of view, each game is independant that one player goes broke and hence stops playing due to a bad stre

          • Streaks are irrelevant from the casino point of view, each game is independant that one player goes broke and hence stops playing due to a bad streak doesn't matter because another player will step up to play the machine anyway.
            The payout % is intended to be misleading, as it merely represents the theoretical payout of the machine. Machines have a finite lifespan, so there is deviation from the theoretical payout %.
    • This is discussed in the article. It's an experiment by B.F. Skinner, called an operant conditioning chamber [wikipedia.org].

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Alwin Henseler ( 640539 )

      You really need a psych prof to teach you that? Let's just think about it: A rat is an animal with a fairly limited number of interests, say: survive (eat/drink/not get killed) and reproduce. Maybe there are more, but it's significant less than humans, that also enjoy architecture, reading Harry Potter, play videogames, skydiving, or watch Oprah. Due to a limited number of interests, I'd say each of those is important to a rat. Finding food is important, finding another rat to mate with is important.

      No

      • Re:Variable Ratio Conditioning (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 21, 2007 @10:49PM (#19942841)
        You're missing the point completely. And yes - it was/is a pretty significant finding in behavioral research.

        If you pay out every time - or consistently pay out after a reasonable number of pushes the rat figures that out, pushes the bar until he's eaten enough, then goes on his way until he's hungry again.

        However - if you make the payout random, the rat will push the button all day long. Even after he's had enough to eat. Nothing like the behavior you described.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by chimpo13 ( 471212 )
        A rat is an animal with a fairly limited number of interests, say: survive (eat/drink/not get killed) and reproduce.

        That's not true at all. You are assuming rats only live to survive and reproduce in a way that's different from people. People use architecture and books as a way to survive and reproduce. Architecture can be looked at the same way as peacock feathers -- chicks put out to people who build (or live) neat buildings. By Whatshername the author of Harry Potter, by writing books, she's increase

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by fbjon ( 692006 )
          And I push the space bar to read slashdot. How does this increase my reproductive ability again?

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by johnny cashed ( 590023 )
        You really need a psych prof to teach you that?

        You are so correct. I learned this from my girlfriend. Cherry dribbling indeed!

    • If you provide a food nugget on a varying number of presses, e.g., 1 press=win, 3 presses=win, 10 presses=win, 4 presses=win -- it'll punch the bar all day.

      What you see at work here is the power of an intermittent reward. A reward that's given every time is soon despised but one that has to be worked for always has value. Perverse, isn't it? It explains much of the crazy [bayimg.com] loyalty [bayimg.com] of M$ fans and their dissatisfaction with things that just work. Intermittent positive reward is the most powerful kind of

      • You're calling them crazy? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Afecks ( 899057 ) on Saturday July 21, 2007 @11:46PM (#19943101)
        You're calling other people crazy yet you've found a way to turn this discussion into anti-Microsoft hate propaganda yet again like the countless others. You're not even talking about how great something is, you're talking about how much it sucks, constantly. If you hate it so much why do you focus on it to the point where you can't have a normal conversation about anything BUT this single topic?
        • It's what happens when people build their entire persona around a single idea. The best thing to do with people who exhibit a singular focus is to ignore them, lest you get sucked into their psychological pathology inadvertently.

    • If you give a rat a bit of food every time it presses a bar (or on every n presses) -- it'll learn to press the bar the requisite number of times when it is hungry. If you provide a food nugget on a varying number of presses, e.g., 1 press=win, 3 presses=win, 10 presses=win, 4 presses=win -- it'll punch the bar all day.

      At least, that's how I recall a psych prof of mine from college explaining why slot machines were so profitable.

      Hmm, does that really explain it though? If the rat had to give up a bit of food whenever it pressed the bar maybe it would behave differently, and this is more similar to what slot machines do.

      If it was just a matter of pulling the lever enough times, and it didn't cost anything, then of course people would sit there all day pulling the lever.

  • This article is not based on facts. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 21, 2007 @09:43PM (#19942523)
    [i]
    Just like a real slot machine, we found that the online simulator had a very high frequency of "near misses." Nearly every one in four reel spins had two of the same symbol, and the third matching symbol just slightly off on third reel. This is precisely the technique used in real slot machines to keep people addicted--it creates the illusion that you have "almost" won. In addition, small payouts happened with surprising frequency, replenishing the pool of available money and keeping the game dynamic.
    [/i]

    I work for a company that makes video and mechanical slot machines. This quote is just plain wrong. In fact, intentionally displaying "near misses" is illegal in pretty much every single gaming jurisdiction. It is simply the perception by the player.

    Additionally, a game with many small payouts is normal! Games that pay out many small amounts and rarely a large amount are known in the industry as "bleeders." However, it isn't an intentional scheme that is devised to separate the player from his money. There is a concept of machine "volatility" -- the math for a set of reel strips can be devised to be more or less volatile. Less volatile means frequent small payouts and very very infrequent large payouts. More volatile means there aren't a lot of small payouts, but a large payout is a little bit more likely than on a less volatile game. In either case, the machine hold percentages can be the same (or whatever the casino configures -- as long as it is legal in that particular jurisdiction. In my experience, most places will configure paytables with the lowest legal payout percentage in that particular jurisdiction -- especially if a game is new on the floor.)

    • Re:This article is not based on facts. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Graff ( 532189 ) on Saturday July 21, 2007 @11:18PM (#19942971)

      In fact, intentionally displaying "near misses" is illegal in pretty much every single gaming jurisdiction.
      Actually there is a very easy way of legally doing this. You set up the wheels so that certain wheels have more of some symbols than others.

      Suppose there are 3 wheels and 3 symbols - a, b, and c. The wheels have the symbols in the following amounts:
      wheel 1: a a b c c
      wheel 2: a a b b c
      wheel 3: a b b c c

      In other words, two wheels have two copies of symbol "a" and one wheel has one copy of symbol "a". The same goes for the other symbols.

      You now have a much greater chance of getting 2 of any symbol than you do of getting all 3. This is just a simple example, there are many more ways of setting up the wheels so that you get a large amount of "near misses" and are goaded into playing the machine more. It's not illegal to set up the wheels in this manner, what is illegal is pre-deciding the result of a random spin of the wheels. This kind of setup is just obfuscating the chances of getting a certain layout of symbols.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by MegaFur ( 79453 )
      Mr. AC, I think you have done a very good job of brainwashing yourself. A different child post demonstrates how a slot can be designed to frequently display 2 of 4 or maybe even 3 of four matching symbols legally. Whether this is thought of as a "near miss" or not depends on point of view of course, but if you think the average slot player will think of it as anything *other* than a near miss, then you are at least as deceived in your perception as the player is in theirs.

      And the article didn't say it was

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by stonecypher ( 118140 )

      Just like a real slot machine, we found that the online simulator had a very high frequency of "near misses."

      I work for a company that makes video and mechanical slot machines. This quote is just plain wrong. In fact, intentionally displaying "near misses" is illegal in pretty much every single gaming jurisdiction.

      ... no, what's illegal is rigging the machine to control the distribution of its end results. Carefully arranging the faces on the dials such that nearly every wheel combination walks across an

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by inKubus ( 199753 )
      The article reads like a lit review. Most of the information is hearsay, and the cited articles are sensationalist at best. The business is pretty simple. You set up a machine and it takes 99 of every 100 bucks put into it. Then you leave it on all year and put it into a confortable setting. Add about 20,000 more around it and then surround that with anything you could possibly need while on a gambling binge (food, drink, bathroom, etc.) People come to hopefully luck out and be the "right" person who
  • slot machines are designed to take your money. News at 5!

  • Oh, it's a student project (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday July 21, 2007 @09:54PM (#19942573) Homepage

    It's a student project, and it shows. The article is superficial. The first two sources listed are Wikipedia and HowStuffWorks. There's a page on the Simpsons. You get the general idea.

    Considerable work has been done on gambling psychology, but they didn't find it. There's an online Journal of Gambling Issues [camh.net], with papers like Slot machine structural characteristics: Distorted player views of payback percentages [camh.net]. There's an annual trade show, Global Gaming Expo [globalgamingexpo.com], and even an institute of higher learning devoted to the subject, the International Gaming Institute [unlv.edu], part of (inevitably) the University of Las Vegas.

    Their "experimental work" consisted of playing "freeslots.com". They didn't even notice that the "free slots" programs are set to have an expectation greater than zero when played in free mode. In fact, it's quite difficult to lose at "freeslots".

    Industry analysis of player psychology has gone way beyond the stuff mentioned in this student paper. The big breakthrough was when slot machines started accepting player affinity cards. Today's casinos have the player's entire history, at the per-click level, on file, and considerable effort goes into mining that data. Some studies have compared what players have thought they won versus the casino's history of their track record. Many players don't even know that they're losing, let alone how much.

    If you want to read about this subject, start with Super Casino [amazon.com], an 1999 inside look at some major Las Vegas properties.

    • When you want to know about a predatory industry like Casinos you should always use the material provided by the predators for the prey. You will always find full confessions from those in such an honest trade. Insider guides, even employee manuals, should be taken as gospel truth. Allegations by outsiders who point to public records of deceptive practices [slashdot.org] should be ignored.

      • If you're going to link to your own posts as evidence, can you at least choose one that isn't quite so thoroughly debunked?

    • Re:Oh, it's a student project (Score:5, Informative)

      by Vicissidude ( 878310 ) on Sunday July 22, 2007 @02:42AM (#19943815)
      It's a student project, and it shows.

      I agree. Having actually worked at a casino on the slots, I find the article lacking and in one area outright false. They say nothing about how the individual slot machines and their network actually works. Further, they are wrong in that casinos do not operate under a "laissez-faire" or unregulated free-market economy. The idea that casinos operate under "minimal government regulation" is so ridiculous as to be completely laughable.

      Casino gambling is one of the most highly regulated industries in our nation. Every worker who applies to work at a casino has to fill out a literal inch of paperwork, just for the background check. They have to supply a ten year work history, and you are told not to skip any months. Their fingerprints are taken and supplied to federal databases. Those fingerprints are compared to see if any matches come up, and then they are permanently stored for future reference. If any problems come up in your record, then it's very likely you will not be licensed to work there.

      Once you are actually hired, that only begins the regulations. There are literally regulations for everything that a employee can and can not do, even after work. Those regulations are monitored by surveillance, casino management, state authorities, and the feds. Breaking those regulations could mean a suspension, pulling your license (effectively firing you), or even jail time. Casino gambling used to be controlled by the mob, so the authorities are deadly serious about making sure everything is done legally.

      • The idea that casinos operate under "minimal government regulation" is so ridiculous as to be completely laughable.
        No, it isn't. You should see the regulations other companies have for gambling machines - they specify the entire payout structures, the hit likelihoods, the amount of noise the machines are amount to make, the volume of brightness allowed to be put out in lumens, all sorts of stuff. All the American gaming services do is require regular random testing of the machines, honest posting of stats, no rigged machines, and a cap on expected draw. America has about the most open and liberal market possible while still intending to verify the honesty of a proprietor.

        Just because it's hard to regulate gambling honesty doesn't mean that we're doing a particularly overbearing job of it. In general, it's not appropriate even as a professional to suggest that one country's regulations are or are not strict until you have experience with the regulations of other countries (as usual, Canada doesn't count.)

        Casino gambling is one of the most highly regulated industries in our nation.
        Nonsense. Again you are confusing your lack of personal experience with something more strict with that there is nothing more strict. Neighborhood banks go through regulations that make casinos look positively lax. The local UPS hub has an on-site police force (and no, your 20-dude goon squad in casino floor 3 isn't a police force, I mean an actual went to the real police acadamy people with badges that mean something in court type police force;) that's there for a reason. Your local airport guys are rolling their eyes right now. Any place that sells chemical fertilizer (not dirt) is pretty pissed at you right now. A gas station goes through more verifications per-machine than a casino does, though given how many more machines a casino has than a gas station, the validity of that point is ... curious.

        Then you get down to places with real security - prisons, power plants, dams, stock exchanges, CDC Level 3+ quarantine sites (there's at least one in almost every major city and one at most strong medical schools,) ports of call, military bases, missile silos - you say gambling's securer than those places around the people who keep them secure, you're likely to get a punch in the mouth.

        'Course, if by "regulated" you meant investigated by the government, well, then you obviously have no experience in finance, transportation, the fuel sector, alcohol, tobacco, pornography, television decency, abortion, cosmetic surgery, car sales or cell phone region mapping. Indeed, if you take a good solid look at it, casino regulation is pretty much on par with other industries making that amount of money. You want something better regulated, you move up the dollar chain, you get religious ethics involved or you make a genuine stab at the public health.

        Frankly, prostitution is a better regulated Nevada state industry than gambling is; that's why they can spot disease trends across small brothels but not theft trends across major casinos on the same street. You seem to think that any enforcement in a casino is government enforcement. The vast bulk of it isn't. No government agency says that a casino has to look for cheaters. They're doing that themselves because it's in their financial best interest. Gambling regulation is just a set of rules saying how far they're allowed to set the statistics, how long they're allowed to milk a given customer, and a lot of random sampling to make sure people are telling the truth.

        You want real regulation, you look at the drug war. That's regulation that works better than casino regulation, and everybody being regulated is fighting it as hard as they can, unlike casinos, who cooperate quite openly.
        • You point out many examples of industries that are more highly regulated than the casino industry. I'll take your word for it that your example industries are more highly regulated. I don't think any of this matters however.

          The thing is, the statement wasn't that the casino industry is one of the most highly regulated industries. The statement was that casinos do NOT operate under "minimal government regulation". So to prove this statement correct or incorrect, we'd need to compare the level of regulatio

        • Re:Oh, it's a student project (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Vicissidude ( 878310 ) on Sunday July 22, 2007 @05:55PM (#19948845)
          Me: The idea that casinos operate under "minimal government regulation" is so ridiculous as to be completely laughable.
          You: No, it isn't. You should see the regulations other companies have for gambling machines - they specify the entire payout structures, the hit likelihoods, the amount of noise the machines are amount to make, the volume of brightness allowed to be put out in lumens, all sorts of stuff. All the American gaming services do is require regular random testing of the machines, honest posting of stats, no rigged machines, and a cap on expected draw. America has about the most open and liberal market possible while still intending to verify the honesty of a proprietor.

          I worked as a Gaming Agent in Washington state and actually helped set up a brand new, 2000-slot casino, so excuse me if I know more about this than you do.

          All new video lottery terminals (slot machines), games, and templates are checked and verified by the Washington State Gambling Commission. They have a Testing Lab specifically set up strictly for that purpose. If those machines do not pass the test, then those machines are not allowed anywhere in the state of Washington. If those games do not pass the test, then those games are not allowed anywhere in the state of Washington. If the templates do not pass, then they are not allowed in Washington.
          http://www.wsgc.wa.gov/egl/mission.asp [wa.gov]

          At the Tribal level, machine processors are kept under 24-hour lock and key and surveillance. Each processor for each slot is individually, electronically checked and confirmed against state signatures. The machines come straight from the manufacturer in sealed trucks. The machines are installed under the eyes of Tribal Gaming, Slot Maintenance, Security, Surveillance, and the manufacturer's technicians. They are tested by Slot Maintenance and the manufacturer, observed by Tribal Gaming, Security, and Surveillance. The machines can only be put into play once Tribal Gaming and the State Gambling Commission has checked and verified that the machines are operating properly.

          Washington state has some of the most strict laws around gaming and slot machines in the nation:
          Laws http://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9.46 [wa.gov]
          Rules http://apps.leg.wa.gov/WAC/default.aspx?cite=230 [wa.gov]

          Those laws and rules are underneath the federal laws around gambling and above the individual Tribal Compacts which also regulate gambling. I studied and learned all of those laws and was tasked with the duty of enforcing them. As a member of the Tribal Gaming Agency, we were at the casino 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. By law, the casino was not allowed to remain open if one of our staff were not on the premises. We had complete and full access to every area in the casino at any time we wanted, regardless of the wishes of casino management or workers. At least half of our agency were former police officers. Were we badged members of Tribal Government with the authority to arrest and detain suspects.

          Saying there is "minimal government regulation" of casinos is abjectly false. Saying that this industry is not highly regulated is also abjectly false. Your arguments are disingenuous at best, and outright lies at worst.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by MegaFur ( 79453 )
      I'm inclined to agree. They talk about the psychology of gambling as if they'd never knowed nothin' about it before (because, being college students, they probably didn't), and then they delve deep into the economics and get all polemical, but without the kind of evidence they really need to back it up. Just a few pictures of pretty Vegas casinos.

  • The near misses are not "programmed." (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dada21 ( 163177 ) <adam.dada@gmail.com> on Saturday July 21, 2007 @10:00PM (#19942601) Homepage Journal
    I've spent some time with slot machine code -- I actually love the old reel machines (which are generally the only ones you can own based on most state laws), and I've done some minor consulting with casinos in Las Vegas. The near misses are not encoded into the machine.

    It is easy to believe the machines are built to take your money, but it has nothing to do with preset expectations. They truly are random, but each wheel has a specific number of possible results. Each wheel is independently picked from a random number generator with numbers picked at the instant you hit the spin button or pull the lever.

    All 3 or 4 wheels might have a number of possible positions, numbering as high as 1024 per wheel. The first half of those numbers (say, 0-511) will be "blank" hits, so the wheel will stop on a blank. Then another 256 or so might be a symbol with a low payout, and then you get progressively less hits on the higher paying symbols. As you move further down the wheel, you get even fewer high paying "hit" numbers. The big payout only occurs on one or two numbers per wheel.

    When the right combination of random numbers occurs, you win a payout. The chance is slim, with most machines paying out a percentage avering 85-92% over infinite spins, based purely on the mathematical chance of hitting a specific combination of random numbers in a spin.

    Seeing those "near hits" is only because white "loser" spots on the wheel are always surrounded by symbols. Those near misses are almost always symbols that would pay SOMETHING, but rarely do you get 3 symbols that are near misses of the jackpot.

    This summer, I spent a considerable amount of time in LV -- I was on a consulting project each month and stayed at the Paris casino. Over two days, I decided to "track" the play on a given slot machine, by attempting to jot down the results. The machine is certainly random, and if you watch a machine long enough and write down the actual results (landed on white space between red 7 and blue 7, landed on red 7, landed on cherry), you can eventually come up with the percentage chance of hitting a particular symbol. You need thousands of spins on a particular machine, but you'll get those percentages eventually.

    In a game with less of a mathematical payout chance than 100%, the casino doesn't need to cheat. It's already guaranteed a profit on the lifetime of the machine. Some players do win in Vegas -- those who walk away after their first penny of profit. Everyone else eventually has the math get the best of them.

    SIDENOTE:I don't condone gambling, but I do like the entertainment value of meeting up with a few friends and spending a few hours at the craps tables. $25 bets over a 4 hour period, betting the pass line with full odds, has a very low risk of losing your money (1.4% risk of ruin with a $2000 bankroll). The comps you receive in exchange more than make up for any loss. That's the only game in Vegas I think still has a slight player's edge, with comps and freebies added in.
    • The European style of slot machine (or "fruit machine" in the UK) has a thriving emulation scene [fruit-emu.com] around it with many machines in use ten years ago available to play in Windows. If you wanted to perform some analysis on this type of machine, you could.
      • the UK fruit machines are fixed.
        http://www.fairplay-campaign.co.uk/fruit/index.htm [fairplay-campaign.co.uk]
        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaIesHOIQJs [youtube.com]

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sholden ( 12227 )
          How is that fixed? What's the difference from randomly determining that the player will win the first N-1 plays, and lose the Nth; and randomly determining at each play whether it wins or loses? Assuming the probabilities are done correctly of course.
          • Yes, almost everyone who plays them seriously knows that this is the case, in fact they are classed as 'AWP' - Amusement With Prizes. (Other machines are Skill With Prizes & have lower jackpots). Also they have many tricks like holding the Cancel button slows down some gamble-type game, these Easter Eggs eventually became part of the standard design. But they are all pre-determined to pay out the percentage of money it's set to, as per the video. The gamble is playing the machine at the right time, ie w

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Repton ( 60818 )
      "They truly are random"

      In New Zealand, some years ago, at the Sky City Casino in Auckland a man was playing the slot machines. He won the jackpot: a new car. He had credits left, so he played again. He won the jackpot again: a second new car.

      The casino refused to give him his second car, because the machines were "not supposed to do that".

      (I think he took them to court, and may even have won, but it was a while ago, and my google skills are insufficient)

      • I agree, he should get the 2nd car...

        There are numerous instances in which a person will win a big jackpot and then shortly afterwards win another, even possibly same exact, one ... even on the same machine - and many employees who have worked on the casino floor will attest to observing such happenings.

        Every event is unrelated to the previous ... the odds of hitting the big one remains exactly the same for the next spin regardless of whether one hit it before or not.

        Either there is more to the story or tha

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by GoodbyeBlueSky1 ( 176887 )

      Over two days, I decided to "track" the play on a given slot machine, by attempting to jot down the results.
      How did you do this without attracting attention? I feel like many casinos would threaten to break your knees if they saw you doing that, despite the fact that as you say it wouldn't help you win. It still looks "weird" and surely the billion cameras in the ceiling could see you.
      • Why would they do that? The only motivation for concern they would have is that he might be trying to mess with the machine's electronics or coin mechanisms, but just writing stuff down wouldn't be cause for that.

        There's a reason why they display past results for Roulette tables: they let people form false patterns on random data. If they see him recording the machine, then he is likely trying to come up with a "system", which doesn't work, or is trying to figure out the payout and probability structure of

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dada21 ( 163177 )
        Notepad, pen. Never had a problem with casino security or management. Rules are you can't have electronics when playing (was told to put my cell phone away a few times at the craps tables), but nothing is wrong with having a notepad and a pen. In fact, I have a very close friend and business partner who plays video poker a few times a year at big values, and he writes down everything. He also has all the "Perfect Play" mathematical payout odds written on his notepad on pages 1-10. Again, no security is
        • Would the casino be as blithe about your notepad and pen at a card table? You could count cards and give yourself an advantage. Of course, casinos will eject and lifeban and share this info with other casinos at their whim. I had a friend who was a math whiz who could count cards in his head. He got blacklisted from one casino and found that all other major casinos would intercept him within minutes.

    • Fairness is in the casino's best interests (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Myria ( 562655 ) on Sunday July 22, 2007 @02:00AM (#19943635)
      It is in the best interest of casinos for their games to be fair. They want their machines to follow the rules exactly, and be as random as possible - the math takes care of the rest. If they weren't following the rules, Nevada and the public would get them shut down very quickly.

      I really don't like the way such places try to manipulate people. The near misses aren't manipulated by the machine's operation, but the game's layout is designed such that near misses are a natural result. The methods used by casinos very much the same crap as supermarkets micromanaging item placement to trick you and your children into buying more items and more expensive items. I dislike that more than the idea of going somewhere to lose money.

      By the way, I'm one of those Vegas winners you speak of. I was bored and waiting for a show so I sat and played quarter video poker. I got a royal flush on the 4th hand - $1000. Walked away immediately, and haven't gambled since then. Lost a total of maybe $30 in my life before then on similar cheap games.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by iphayd ( 170761 )
        You're one of the lucky ones then. Talk to a gambling addict, most define their addiction to have started with a win.

        (IANAGA) and (IANAGA counselor, but my wife is)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by KDR_11k ( 778916 )
      Are those blanks actual blanks or just mismatching symbols? I've never seen a slot machine with blanks but then again I haven't been inside a casino, I've only seen those things you see in the corner of a bar.
    • Actually, a craps pass or come line bet with full odds has a house percentage far less than 1.4% (with Las Vegas 3x/4x/5x odds, it's about 0.55%). The 1.4% house edge is only on the pass or come line ("flat") bet, the odds are free (0% house advantage). This is also different from the "risk of ruin" which is calculated as the odds you will lose all of your money after X number of bets. And yes, if you stick to pass or come line bets with full odds (avoiding other more expensive bets), you might well have
  • Can anybody tell the difference? I prefer Keno myself. Drink fast and pay slow.

  • People always want to be a winner (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CrazyJim1 ( 809850 ) on Saturday July 21, 2007 @10:37PM (#19942789) Journal
    I was thinking today: If someone wins at a slot machine, they tell other people and get them interested in the trip to a casino. Now when people lose, they don't go bragging like they do when they win so negative publicity is low. It's always,"Hey I bought a motorcylce with my winnings." or,"I played all day on one dollar."
    • I read somewhere recently (I think it was The Black Swan by NNT) that whether or not you become a gambling addict depends largely on your first experience with it. First-time winners tend to be more likely to become addicts. A form of confirmation bias -- affirmation bias?

      Luckily, my dad had no mercy on me playing poker as a 5 year-old.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Splab ( 574204 )
      Some years back one of my friends and I went to the casino when they had "free" night (first sunday every other month they didn't charge entrance fee). They sat op introduction tables where newcomers could learn how to play the card games and roulette. The reason why we allways came these nights was that the slot machines seemed to be paying out good. We usually just entered with about $10 and headed for the slots, cant remember ever going home from one of those nights with less than $100.
      Granted this is ba

  • Psychology of slot machine users: Depressed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thc69 ( 98798 ) on Saturday July 21, 2007 @10:37PM (#19942791) Homepage Journal
    The last time I was in a casino, I realized that out of the thousands of drones sitting at machines, not a single one was smiling. Aren't they there to have fun? Must be something like grinding and farming in an MMORPG...lots of unpleasant time spent "having fun".

    I repeat: Thousands of people. Zero smiles. Legions of bleary-eyed bleak-souled drones.

    I have no moral problem with gambling, and it doesn't bother me that there are four casinos within two hours drive of my house...but I just can't understand why any of those people are there, doing that. They sure don't look like they're having fun. (And, you may ask, why was I there? Restaurants.)

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Paulrothrock ( 685079 )

      The wife and I went to a casino in Atlantic City. I took out $20 and left my bank cards in the car so that I couldn't take out any more. Five minutes at one slot machine and I was out of dough. I looked at my wife and asked "Okay, so now what?" It wasn't fun at all.

      Now, sitting down at a table with a bunch of friends and playing cards is one thing, but pushing a button on a machine like a rat? I can do that at home for free.

      If you go to Atlantic City, make sure you check out the Ripley's museum. It's the

      • Believe it........ or not (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I went to Atlantic City this one time, and saw this car sitting there with a handful of bank cards lying in the seat. Whipped out my slim jim and popped the sucker open. Got a free car and a few hundred bucks' worth of cards out of the deal. Bet the owner wished he'd stayed home. I was so amazed by my luck that I stopped by the Ripley's museum to see if they wanted to buy my story. The losers said that they weren't interested because apparently this kind of thing happens all the time there. So, I sold
    • Probably the same reason people play the lottery. They think that if they keep playing (aka. throwing away money), it will pay off if they keep playing/they'll recoup their losses. Have you ever seen someone look unhappy and buy a ticket, scratch it off, and discard it, or one of those people buy a bunch of state lotto tickets? I'd bet that a lot have, more or less, the same look and motivating force.
      You know how cigarettes say, 'Warning: May cause lung cancer?' Maybe casinos should have a sign that s

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by CrazyJim1 ( 809850 )
      Asheron's Call 1 had some of the best "Slot machine loot" of any MMORPG I know. I used to make $15 an hour on ebay with the normal stuff I'd find, then when an ultra rare came along, it could net me upwards of $100. Too bad the Chinese came into the fray so soon. It was pretty lucrative to play and sell stuff on ebay. Some people made enough to buy real houses with their income. Now you're lucky if you can dredge out $5 an hour because the games are so unfriendly to tradable loot and Chinese gold farme

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Le Marteau ( 206396 )
      not a single one was smiling. Aren't they there to have fun?

      Why is it required that one grin like an imbecile while 'having fun'? For example, look at a biker on a Harley Davidson. They generally look like someone took a mighty big piss in their corn flakes that morning. But I bet they sure are 'having fun' or however you would insist on phrasing it.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by steronz ( 307926 )
        For real. My usual example of this is sex. Most people's sweaty, contorted faces don't look anything close to a smile.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbcad7 ( 771464 )
      Well, a slot machine is a single player game. Now maybe you can play Solitaire for hours with a grin on your face, but if you do then your destined for a padded room.

      There are some people who are real social animals, and will talk to strangers while playing the slots, and have a great old time.. but if you are spending money to try and win some money, your probably concentrating on the machine, and wishing that this person would find themselves someone else to chat to. Maybe this doesn't seem fun to you, b

    • Maybe it was the music (or lack thereof). I was at the Hilton in Reno one time when a Dixieland band was playing and it really did make people happy. Modern/rock music is kind of depressing to lose money to. This unscientific two data point poll brought to you by Microsoft, and the symbol BAR.
    • out of the thousands of drones sitting at machines, not a single one was smiling.

      I can think of some people who didn't smile much during sex, either...

      rj

    • I've worked in pubs that have video lottery machines and have talked with friends who work as addiction and abuse counselors, and they gave me a lot of insight as to why that may be.

      In many cases it may not be that people are actually trying to win, but they get addicted to the emotional rush of either winning -or- losing. I tended to see it more often with older people who are lonely or with people that I've known to be in emotionally starved relationships. The negative rush of losing that last twenty in t
    • More noteworthy, gaming regulations require that slot machines that are posted as having a certain percentage payout must pay out that amount. In Las Vegas and Atlantic City, there are slots with signs reading "99.8% Payout" (in other words, the vigorish -- the fee charged by the casino for the privilege of gambling there -- is 0.2%). If slot players were rational, they would line up to play these machines; they could play longer and win more often. Instead, in my experience, these machines sit empty. I
    • I doubt that I smile much at the casino, partly because I usually lose my shirt, but mostly because I'm focussed on the machine (usually vidio poker). I still enjoy it, but it's not the sort of activity that gets me jumping up and down (unless I get a Royal Flush).

  • hahahaha (Score:3, Insightful)

    by yoha ( 249396 ) on Saturday July 21, 2007 @10:39PM (#19942799)
    Wikipedia is cited as a source

  • Monaco online casino (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Proto23 ( 931154 )
    I have actually built an online casino for a third party in Monaco and they aked us to rig the slotmachines so they would pay out more than their natural randomness would do, because they want their clients/addicts to have as much fun as possible for as long as possible before they run out of money. We even had a button that they could press in the management pages that would trigger a Jackpot within 50 games or so to keep the customer happy. When someone was gambling they would monitor how much money he ha
  • Interesting read but I definitely have to say that I'm enjoying the SeeMeWin gambling experiment better. The hot chicks don't hurt. Now that's research!
  • How about a study on the effects of reading a white-on-black website has on the mind, including the homicidal tendendices that follow?

    Seriously, that trend started back in like 1997. Can we put it to rest?
  • I've herd that some of the notes a slot machine generates entices people to play.
  • One really wonders why the hell these kids chose to do a student project on slot machines, when by their own admission the closest they've ever been to a slot machine is watching one on an episode of The Simpsons. The article is full of urban myths and unsourced nonsensical claims.

    "Casino planners know that slot players love to see and hear other people winning on nearby machines, because players hold it as evidence that money can be made on the machines. Thus casinos are designed to have the loosest machi

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