Hot Streak or Cold Streak?

          I've written many columns in the past several years about how our minds can play tricks with us regarding odd results.  We have a tendency to remember what appears to be very rare events and all but forget the routine.  The end result is that we begin to think that all that occurs are those strange occurrences.  This eventually leads many to believe that a game is either broken (if we are winning) or rigged (if we are losing).  The most likely real answer is two-fold.  First, we're not correctly remembering what actually occurred and second, most people really aren't aware as to how rare or common some event actually is.

            How much does it matter if our memories are a little faulty?  In the grand scheme of things, perhaps not much.  But, from a math perspective, it can make a great deal of difference.  Several months ago, a friend of mine relayed to me his experiences while playing Let It Ride.  He claimed that in a five-hand span he was dealt a Four of a Kind, a Full House, a Straight and TWO Three of a Kinds.  He must have been able to read the expression on my face as he kept telling me that it "REALLY" happened.  I was a bit skeptical. 

            When I got to my computer I did some computations and discovered that the odds of being dealt those 5 hands in a row (in any order) was about 27 BILLION to 1.  Okay, I wouldn't call it impossible, but I wouldn't call it very likely.  But, what if his memory was a little flawed?  What if he was dealt those 5 hands in a block of 10 hands?  What if his memory just 'forgot' about the five losing hands?  In this case, the odds would drop to a 'mere' 492 MILLION to 1.  At least we're back down into Lotto territory.  So, did my friend get these 5 power hands in 5 deals?  10 deals?  20 deals?  I have no clue. 

            This past week, I had the opportunity to do my own research.  Family is visiting from out of town, which usually means I'm playing in the casino a bit more often.  On one evening, I sat down at a five-play machine.  In the first 31 hands, I was dealt 5 Three of a Kinds (on the first 5 cards).  I know these numbers to be true not because I sit there and count how many hands I've played, but rather I was able to see the point counter on the machine and specifically took notice of how many hands I had played after being dealt my 5th Trips. 

            This made me wonder about just how rare is it to be dealt 5 Three of a Kinds in 31 hands.  So, when I got home and went to work on the calculation.  Before you read any further, I'd like you think about this and come up with how often you think this happens?  1 in 100? 1 in 1000? 1 in a million?  This is one of the cases where I think many people would guess rather wrong if they don't know how to do the actual math.  Until I did the calculation, I didn't really know what to expect.  I knew it wasn't astronomical, but I figured it was a bit more rare than it turned out to be.  In the end, the number was 562.  The odds of having 5 Trips in 31 hands is in the same ballpark as the odds of being dealt a Flush on the deal.  It didn't seem like such an odd occurrence anymore, but at the time, I figured the machine was on fire.

            Of course, I didn't draw a single Four of a Kind out of any of these hands.  Five times I had five chances to get those Quads and I couldn't hit a single one.  So, maybe the machine was actually cold, not hot.  How cold was the machine that I couldn't hit a single Four of a Kind from my 5 Trips?  In reality, not at all.  I had an 80% chance of not hitting any Four of a Kinds from these trips.  So had I actually hit one (or more), it would've have been the more rare occurrence.

            There are many things to take away from this column.  One is that it is hard to rely on anecdotal stories.  If you didn't witness the event yourself, you don't even know if the story is true.  And, even if you did witness it yourself, we necessary learn a lot because once upon a time something rare happened.  We need to look at all the stories everywhere in order to learn what to expect.  This is best done by computer programs and computer simulations.  From this, we learn that virtually everything that happens when we play in a casino is just part of the normal ups and downs that happen 'randomly'.

What to Do When Your Hand Goes Soft

            I'm going to continue talking about blackjack this week.  No, I'm certainly not giving up on video poker!  Blackjack is very similar to video poker in that they both require learning rather complex strategies in order to achieve a strong payback.  However, blackjack has the advantage, in my opinion, in that it is a bit easier to learn the strategy.  Recognizing hands in video poker can sometimes be tricky for the beginners.  But, with blackjack a 16 is a 16.  Well, sort of.

            You can actually have 3 different types of 16's.  The first is a Pair of 8's.  For this, we use Pair Strategy.  The second is a Hard 16, where there is no Ace counting as an 11 involved in the hand.  For this, we use our Hard hand strategy.  Lastly, there is a Soft 16, where the hand contains an Ace being used as an 11.  This hand cannot bust by hitting one additional card, so the strategy is quite different from a Hard 16.  For these, we use our Soft hand strategies.

            It is these Soft hands that I would like to focus on today.  Hard strategies are pretty well known.  Don't hit anything above a 16.  Don't hit most Hard hands between 12 and 16 unless the Dealer has a 7 through Ace showing.  There are a few exceptions with 12 and 13, but if you just followed what I wrote, you'll do okay.  But, when it comes to Soft hands, people do all sorts of things - many of them quite wrong.  We've all even seen a few people try to stop on a Soft low hand.  Which card could you draw that will make your Soft 16 more likely to lose as compared to staying put?

            The reason why learning Soft Hand strategy is so important is because these hands afford us the most opportunities to Double Down.  We Double Down for two reasons.  The first is that we have a strong hand (i.e. 10's and 11's) that is likely to get stronger with a single card.  The second is that we have a good hand and the likelihood is strong that the Dealer will bust.   

            When we have a Soft Hand, we have usually have at least 5 chances to make the hand better to the point where it matters - that is to say, wind up with a hand between 17 and 21.  If you can only hit one card and you hit a 13 and it becomes a 15, you really haven't done anything for your hand - positive or negative.  Quite frankly if you hit a Soft 16 and it become a Hard 12, you haven't done anything negative to your hand either.  So, when we Double Down on a Soft hand, we have a hand that MIGHT improve and we look to do this when the Dealer is likely to Bust.

            That last part tells us the first critical part of Soft Hand strategy - we NEVER Double Down when the Dealer has a 7 through Ace up with a Soft Hand.  The likelihood of the Dealer busting is not strong enough to make it worth Doubling Down.

            Next, you need to understand that when you Double Down, you are actually REDUCING your chances of winning the hand, while INCREASING how much you will win when you do.  So, imagine if an identical opportunity came up 100 times.  If you don't Double Down, you will win 75% of the time.  If you do Double Down you will win only 65% of the time.  Which would you want to do?  Well, if you don't Double Down, you will wager 100 and win back 150 for a net win of 50.  If you do Double Down, you will wager 200 and win 260 for a net win of 60.  If you want to win more, you Double Down even though you will win less often.

            As is the case with video poker, you don't have to do any amazing calculations on the fly to figure out what the right strategy is.  Someone like myself, with the help of some computer programs has already done all the hard work.  That is, unless you consider memorizing the strategy tables to be the hard work!

            There are some slight variations in strategy depending on whether the Dealer hits or sticks on a Soft 17.  What is presented here is for the cases where the Dealer does NOT hit a Soft 17.

• ·         Double Down with a Soft 13 or Soft 14 against a Dealer 5 or 6 Upcard. 
• ·         Double Down with a Soft 15 or Soft 16 against a Dealer 4, 5, or 6 Upcard. 
• ·         Double Down with a Soft 17 or Soft 18 against a Dealer 3, 4, 5, or 6 Upcard.

            If you have a Soft Hand that is more than 2 cards so that you can no longer Double Down, you Hit ALL Soft 12 - Soft 17 and Hit a Soft 18 against a Dealer 9, 10 or Ace Upcard.

            Yes, there will be times you will turn a Soft 18 into a Hard 16 and begin to wonder if you made the right move.  But, in these cases, don't just look at YOUR hand, look at the Dealer's.  If he turns over a 10/Face to wind up with 19 or 20, staying put on your 18 would still result in losing.

            Next week, I'll explain a bit more why I like to use Blackjack as a sort of training tool as we see how the strategy I've covered today might change if you were playing a Blackjack variant, such as Spanish 21 or Blackjack Switch.

Surrender and Insurance

            As I’ve described many times, the concepts of Expert Strategy apply to more than just video poker.  Essentially, they apply to every game in the casino (except slots of course).  You should always know which games to play, what strategy to play them with and what to expect.  Most games in the casino do not require learning very significant strategies to play them properly.  Two that do – video poker and blackjack (and its variants Blackjack Switch and Spanish 21 – require some serious effort to learn them correctly.  The reward for doing so is a payback that is above 99.5%.

            In order to achieve the theoretical payback, you have to learn ALL of the strategy including the less well-known parts and even the parts we might find ‘offensive.’  For blackjack this would be the concepts of insurance and surrender.  The idea of ‘surrender’ is the one that you may find to be ‘offensive’, but there are times it is the right play.

            First let’s begin with the definition of the Insurance bet.  When the Dealer has an Ace up, he will offer everyone at the table the option to make an Insurance wager (which must be ½ of your base blackjack wager).  In reality, it is nothing more than a proposition bet.  If the Dealer has a blackjack, then you win 2 to 1.  If he doesn’t you lose your Insurance wager.  Assuming you have not been counting cards, then the odds of the Dealer having Blackjack is roughly 4 out of 13 (I’m ignoring his upcard ‘Ace’ and any of the cards you can see).  Paying 2 to 1, gets us back 12 out of every 13 units wagered for a payback of about 92.31%.  Obviously, you can do some light card counting and only make this wager when it is more in your favor, but it will take a lot of non-10s/Faces to turn the deck in your favor.

            Sometimes you will hear a Player who has a Blackjack to ask for ‘even money’ when the Dealer has a Blackjack.  This is really the equivalent of the Player making the Insurance wager.  If he makes it and the Dealer does NOT have Blackjack he will win 3 for 2 on his base wager, but would have lost 1/2 unit on Insurance leaving him having won even money.  If the Dealer DOES have blackjack, he pushes his blackjack wager and wins his Insurance wager, which will pay 2 to 1 of the INSURANCE wager which is equal to his base wager – in other words, even money on the base wager.  To keep things moving along, most casinos will just allow the Player to call “even money” and get paid 1 to 1 on his blackjack wager. 

            In reality, this is no better a decision than making the Insurance wager under any other situation.  However, from an emotional standpoint, many Players hate the idea of a total push when getting a Blackjack.  This would be the outcome if you don’t take the Insurance Wager AND the Dealer has Blackjack.  The proper play is to stay unemotional and never take even money.  This situation should only occur about 1 in 275 hands (approximately) which would mean once every 9 hours of play.  For some strange reason, I seem to get it about 3 times an hour?!

            Next up is the Surrender rule.  Many of you may never have heard of it.  The casinos don’t really advertise it much.  You have the right to Surrender your hand before you take any other action by forfeiting half of your initial wager.  Once you hit, split, double down, etc… you can no longer Surrender your hand.  There are two different variations of Surrenders.  The first called Early Surrender is rarely offered.  It allows you to Surrender BEFORE the Dealer checks for a Blackjack when he has a 10/Face or an Ace up.  Thus, even if the Dealer has a Blackjack, you would have forfeited only half of your wager.  This is a big advantage to the Player which explains its rarity.  The other variation is called Late Surrender.  This version has the Dealer checking for Blackjack and only after it is confirmed that he does NOT have one can the Player opt to Surrender.

            Unlike the Insurance Wager, this is not a proposition wager better left ignored.  If that were the case, the casino would have it on the felt in big bold letters “PLEASE SURRENDER!”  Instead it is an option you need to take on occasion and you almost have to ask the casino permission to do so.  From a mathematical perspective, the decision is easy.  If you are going to win less than 25% of the time with your starting two cards, you Surrender.  At a 25%, you would win back exactly half of your initial wager which is what you’ll have left after Surrendering.  Hence, that is why this is the decision point.  There are slightly different strategies depending on whether the Dealer hits or sticks on  Soft 17. 

            You should always Surrender a Hard 16 to a Dealer 9, 10 or Ace.  You should also always Surrender a Hard 15 to a Dealer 10.  If the Dealer hits a Soft 17, you also Surrender a Hard 15 to a Dealer Ace and a Hard 17 (yes, I said 17) to a Dealer Ace.  If the Dealer has a 6 underneath, he gets to keep going and is that much more likely to wind up beating you.   These rules apply to larger shoes of 4-8 decks. 

            The impact of properly Surrendering is that the payback is increased by 0.07%.  This may not sound like a lot, but looked at differently, it can cut the house edge by about 15%.

Is the Search for Perfection Overrated?

            

            One of the traits I inherited from my father, Lenny Frome, is that I am a perfectionist.  This is not to say that I am perfect (far from it).  The joke in our family was always that one of my sister's brought home a '99' on a test and my father, not missing a beat said "why not a 100?"  Fortunately, for me, by the time I came along, he learned to temper his ways a bit.  I try to focus most of my perfectionism inward.  Nobody takes it harder when I find a mistake in my work more than I do.

            At the same time, I try very hard to be practical about things too, where strategy is concerned.  Us mere mortals do have limitations to our ability to memorize dozens of video poker game strategies.  It is why I strongly recommend that you learn one or two different games and do your very best to 'perfect' the strategies to those games.  But, what are you to do if the games whose strategy you memorized are not available when you go to the casino or if you're just in the mood to try something different?

            In these cases, you just have to use some common sense.  If you try to bring your Jacks or Better strategy over to Joker Poker, you may find yourself in deep trouble.  But, what happens if you use your basic full-pay Jacks or Better strategy on a full-pay Bonus Poker machine?  What will this really cost you in theory?  Calculating this - with the help of some of my video poker analysis programs - is relatively easy.

            We simply run the numbers on a full-pay jacks or better machine using Expert Strategy for jacks or better.  From this program, we extract the frequencies of all of our winning hands.  We then use these frequencies against the Bonus Poker paytable to get a theoretical payback of Bonus Poker using jacks or better strategy.  We then run the numbers on Bonus Poker using Expert Strategy for Bonus Poker and compare the results.

            The theoretical payback for Bonus Poker using Expert Strategy for Bonus Poker is 99.16%.  The theoretical payback for Bonus Poker using Expert Strategy for jacks or better is 99.15%.  If you were to play all 2,598,960 possible 5-card deals using jacks or better strategy you would find that you cost yourself about 200 coins.

            In other words, while it is still preferable to learn the right strategy for Bonus Poker, if you use your jacks or better strategy, your bankroll will not take a big hit.  However, this should not give you free license to play jacks or better strategy on any game you want.  If you were take your jacks or better strategy to a DOUBLE Bonus Poker game, you would find that it will play at about 99.6%.  This might sound good (after all jacks or better itself plays at a bit less than this), but you have to remember that Double Bonus Poker is one of the few positive games out there.  If you play it using the proper strategy, it can afford you a 100.1% payback.

            So, what's the point?  Good question.  Nobody should expect perfection when they head to the casino.  The simple mathematical fact is that every deviation from perfection, however, will cost you.  It might be peanuts as in the case of playing Bonus Poker using jacks or better strategy.  If you play a hundred hours a year as a $1 max-coin Player, you'll cost yourself $30 per year.  We'd all rather have that $30, but we're not talking a significant amount of money.  Do the same on our Double Bonus scenario and we're talking about $1500 per year, which I dare say is QUITE significant.

            So, while we shouldn't shy away from video poker because we might make a few mistakes, we should still be prepared to learn the right strategy for each game and to do our very best to utilize it every time we play.  This is the very essence of Expert Strategy - Know which games to play, know what strategy to use and know what to expect.

            For those of you who want to learn the subtle differences between jacks or better strategy and Bonus Poker strategy, both strategies can be found in Expert Video Poker for Las Vegas and Winning Strategies for VideoPoker.

Get Up to SPEED - Let It Ride and Mississippi Stud

            

            Comparing Let It Ride to Mississippi Stud gives us a great opportunity to understand how a subtle difference in betting structure can greatly alter the strategy of the game and thus radically change a game that is otherwise rather similar.  The subtle difference in this case is that in Let It Ride the '1' and '2' wagers are completely optional (essentially, they can be 'checked') and in Mississippi Stud the choice is to Play or Fold.  No checking allowed.

            To best compare these games we need to realize that the idea that the you can take your wager down in Let It Ride doesn't change the game.  The rules of the game could have simply made the '1' and '2' wagers simple optional wagers.  You can either 'check' or you can make the wager. 

            Mississippi Stud also differs in that your first decision is after seeing only 2 cards instead of the 3 as in Let It Ride.  Mississippi Stud's paytable also goes down to a Pair of 6's, whereas Let It Ride goes to a Pair of 10's.   After 2 cards, the Mississippi Stud Player must decide whether to make at least an additional 1-unit wager or to Fold.  Mathematically, this is vastly different than the decision to check or Play.  When we have the decision to check or Play the question becomes one of whether or not the Player will win more than he loses on THAT specific wager.  Prior and future wagers play no part in the equation.  When the choice is to Play or Fold, the question becomes one of whether we can win back at least the amount we are about to wager when we consider ALL other wagers - both those already made and those we might make during the hand.  This is because if we choose NOT to Play, we are forfeiting all past wagers and the right to make all future wagers.

            The impact to this becomes most evident when we compare the '1' wager in Let It Ride to the 4th street Wager in Misssissippi Stud.  In this case, both hands consists of 3 cards and we are deciding whether to/how much to wager on the 4th card.  In Let It Ride, we find ourselves making the wager very infrequently.  We are willing to leave the wager in place only on sure winners (Pair 10's or Better or Trips), 3-Card Royals and 3-Card Straight Flushes (Open or Inside, NOT Double Inside).   We make this wager only 7% of the time.

            In Mississippi Stud, by the time we get to 3 cards, we have already wagered our Ante and at least 1 unit on the 3rd Street Wager.  If we Fold, we are forfeiting both of these  wagers.  We will also end our hand right then and there.  So, we also forfeit the right to potentially benefit from our next wager (5th Street).  The decision to Play 3x is similar to our Let It Ride decision.  Once you are going to win more than you are going to lose on a specific wager, you wager as much as the house lets you.  So, we find that we wager 3x on all sure winners, 3-Card Royals and a variety of 3-Card Straight Flushes.  We still go ahead and wager 1x on a whole lot of hands that sound like they're going to need some help to become winners.  This includes all Low Pairs, 3-Card Flushes and hands with the right combination of High and Medium cards.

            The net result is that we very rarely fold at this decision point.  The overall fold rate for Mississippi Stud is 44%.   31% (or nearly 75% of the total folds) occur after you see the first 2 cards.  Of the remaining 69% of hands that go to 3 cards, you will fold only 12% of the time.

            In Let It Ride, you will let the '2' wager stay up 16% of the time.  In Mississippi Stud, you will make a wager at 5th Street more than 90% of the hands that go that far.  This happens for two major reasons.  The weakest hands were folded very early on.  A hand that started as two Low Cards was dropped early, which makes weaker hands that much less frequent later on.  In Let It Ride, even the weakest hands have a chance to make it to the end of the hand.  The second reason is that when you have 3 units already wagered and you are compelled to either Fold or make another 1-unit wager, it does NOT take a high win frequency to make it worthwhile to make that additional 1-unit wager.   With just 1 High card and 2 Medium Cards or 2 High Cards in hand, it still pays to make this wager.

            With 2 High Cards, the Player still has 6 chances to draw a High Pair which will return 8 units the Player (each).  With 48 cards remaining in the deck this amounts to an expected value of exactly 1.0, which is the cutoff for determining whether or not to make the wager.  Throw in a Medium card as well and he gets 3 more chances to pick up 4 units and the expected value is now 1.25.  If this were a check or Play decision as in Let It Ride, the decision would clearly be to pull it back with these types of hands.

            There is a reason why I've coined Mississippi Stud to be Let It Ride on SPEED.  The games are very similar in how they play but vastly different in strategy and size of bankroll needed to sit and play.  I can't quite cover all the differences or all the strategy here, but for a limited time, I'm offering up a buy one get one special on my two booklets for these games.  Buy Expert Strategy for Mississippi Stud for $5.95 and get Expert Strategy for Let It Ride for free.  Just send check or money order to Gambatria, P.O. Box 36474, Las Vegas, NV 89133 and I'll get them both out to you ASAP.

Smackdown! Video Poker vs. Slot Machines

            

            This past week, I received an e-mail regarding last week's article about slots.  In that article I talk about how casinos can legally and do make sure that slot machines are created so that they produce a large number of near misses to make the Player feel like he almost won.   A reader wanted to know if the same is true of video poker.  He wrote:

             I'm always interested in the little things casinos do to try and influence how a player thinks.  Your article spells out an excellent example of how a slot machine display can create the illusion of coming close to a big win. I was wondering if the same thing applies to some extent to Video Poker.  If I'm holding 3 to a royal flush and my 2 new cards don't create a winning hand, but one of those 2 cards is one of the cards I need for the Royal, then I might be influenced to think that I was close to hitting a royal, even though the hand is as much of a winner as any losing hand.  Do you think that VP machines are set up this way as well?

            My answer depends on the definition of "set up".  Are video poker machines specifically programmed to have Player get more near misses than one would expect to occur randomly?  Absolutely not (in most jurisdictions).  In places like Nevada the law requires that any game that uses a real life object (like a deck of cards or die) in digital form must play as random as the real-life object.  In other words, if the game uses a deck of cards, every card must have exactly the same probability of being dealt as every other card. 

            Thus, the casino CANNOT program the video poker machine to have one of the two remaining cards for the Royal Flush be drawn just so it looks like the Player came close to winning - EVEN if it doesn't change the overall outcome of the hand.   So, if the Player is dealt a suited 10-J-Q and the two cards that are supposed to be dealt are the 8D and 5C, the machine cannot change the 8D to the suited King just so the Player comes closer, but still loses.

            What makes Video Poker so superior, in my opinion, to slots is that there is no need for the casinos (or the manufacturers) to do this.  One of the beautiful things about almost any game being played with a deck of cards is that the suspense is built into the game by the very fact that a deck of cards is being used.  True, once in a while a hand is so bad, there is no suspense, but this is infrequent.  How many times have you played a hand of video poker where the first 2 cards are a Pair or 2 cards of a Royal Flush?  Your heart skips a beat as you begin to be believe you're about to be dealt Four of a Kind or maybe a Royal.  That suspense turns to much when the final 3 cards are a mess and help your hand not at all. 

            Conversely, how many times have you been dealt very little (a single High Card) and you wind up being dealt a Flush, a Straight or even a Four of a Kind?  Nobody is forcing these hands to come out of the machine.  They occur because of the nature of the random deck of cards which generates are near misses for us.

            When we look at my reader's question about a 3-Card Royal being dealt one of the necessary cards, we find that it is not such an unusual occurrence.  For a simplistic way to approximate the likelihood of this, we simply have to know that we are going to be dealt 2 cards and we are looking for one of 2 cards to appear.  So, this is roughly equivalent to giving us 4 chances to be dealt 1 card from 47 cards in the deck.  This works out to be about 8+% of the time, hardly making it a rare occurrence.

            I think this leads to an interesting question.  Does it really matter if near misses are occurring because of the nature of a random deck of cards or if it is purposefully being programmed in by the manufacturers.  Quite frankly, by itself, I don't think so.  However, I believe what this tells us about video poker machines and slot machines is the critical part. 

            Everything about a video poker machine is the result of using a random deck of 52 cards.  So, while it is random, we also know all of the probabilities with 100% certainty and thus we can calculate a payback, determine a strategy and know what to expect over the long run.  We can look at the paytable and know everything there is to know about the machine.  We KNOW that if we see 2 machines with identical paytables, they have identical paybacks.

            With slot machines, we know NOTHING.  We can look at 2 slot machines standing side by side with identical paytables and still know absolutely nothing about either of them.  We have no idea how often winning hands will occur.  We have no idea which losing hands are programmed into it and how often it will 'tease' us with near misses.  A moment ago I gave a rough estimate of how often we can expect to get a near miss when drawing on a 3-Card Royal.  This can be calculated with absolute precision too (8.3256%).  You can't do this with a slot machine just by looking at it.

            I guess in the end it comes down to the difference between NFL Football and WWE wrestling.  I don't know who will be the next Champion, but I prefer the NFL version where it comes down to the best team and not the WWE where someone decides who should win and then puts on a good show to make it happen!

SCIENCE FICTION: BELIEVING YOU CAN WIN AT SLOTS

            When I tell people that I help develop new games for the casino industry by doing the math behind them, I'm invariably asked if I work mostly on slot machines.  Ironically, I've never worked on the math behind slot machines.  I try to explain that in my opinion slot math is amongst the easiest math in the casino. 

            Developing a casino game is really two parts.  The first is the creative half that determines the specifics of the game. The second part is the math behind the game, which can frequently cause some changes in the first part.  This dependency mostly evaporates with slot machines.  Virtually every slot machine is a clone of another game from a math perspective.

            I'm a big fan of science fiction.  So, if I wanted to invent a slot machines based on Star Trek, I merely need to come up with 20 to 30 symbols that are identified with the shows.  Maybe I use the characters (Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, etc...) or I use the different shows (the original Star Trek and The Next Generation).  It really doesn't matter.  Most importantly, I simply have to decide what determines a winning hand.  I list out all the winning hands on a spreadsheet.  I add the amount each of these winning hands should pay.  I then determine the frequency that each of these hands occur.  I do a few simple computations and play with the numbers to get a payback to my liking and I'm done.

            Now I'd like to create a slot machine based on Star Wars.  I don't need to change any of the numbers.  I just simply need to swap out Mr. Spock for Hans Solo and Captain Kirk for Luke and I'm done.  In theory, every single slot machine could be based on a single spreadsheet of probabilities and payouts. 

            How can this be done?  because essentially, slot machines are rigged.  No, they don't know who's playing, so it's not like someone with a Player Card is going to lose and someone without one is going to win.  Nor can it tell the difference between a local and a tourist.  When I say it is 'rigged', I mean that nothing about a slot machine conforms to the notion of what you see is what you get.  When you spin the wheels, you may see more Captain Kirks than any other single symbol, but that doesn't mean the probability of lining them up is any higher. 

            In that little spreadsheet I mentioned earlier, I need to list out all the losing hands too.  The slot could simply be programmed to randomly pick a losing hand a certain percent of the time, but what fun would that be?  Instead it is programmed to give you Captain Kirk, Captain Kirk, Tribble more times than you can count.  Just for good measure there will be a Captain Kirk above or below that Tribble 50% of the time.  OH, you were SO CLOSE to winning!  In reality, you were just as far away as if the screen showed, Klingon, Romulan and Ferengi!

            To put it in more familiar terms, just because the screen showed you 7-7-orange with a 7 just below the orange doesn't mean you were any closer to winning than if it showed Orange-Plum-Banana.  If you kept drawing the fruit salad, you might get bored and leave.  But by showing you 7-7-orange, you get a false sense that you just missed.

            I would love to hear from those of you who are reading this column who continue to play slot machines.  Why do you do this?  The average slot machine in Las Vegas pays about 92.3% which makes it about the worse play in the casino.  I supposed it is fun to sit down and play a slot machine with your favorite tv show on it, but is it really worth all that you are losing?  Wouldn't it make more sense to learn to play video poker or blackjack and simply buy the complete series of your favorite show on Amazon with the money you're saving?

            Maybe Ballys and IGT should introduce video poker that is themed to tv shows and movies?  They just simply need to make the deck take on the theme of whatever show we are talking about.  Imagine Batman Joker Poker where the Joker is the actual Joker from the show.  Batman can be the King and Robin can be the Jack.  Batwoman can be the Queen!

            These characters won't change the game any, which is what happens in the slot versions too.  Maybe we can get more people to give up slots and become video poker Players if we simply put their favorite characters onto the cards? 

            As we head into 2012, I don't really care what gets you to break the slot habit, I simply implore you to do so.  In the end, I think you'll have a lot more fun and your wallet will definitely thank you!