(1) The near miss is very much alive and legal as long as it is based on probabilities and not pre-determined. Psychologists point out it is a powerful incentive to the addict.
(2) The virtual stops mapped to the real stops are explained in detail. As the younger generation is less enamored with three wheel mechanical machines, the virtual stops will probably phase out of existence. The video five reel machines have enough combinations that the mapping is no longer necessary. Initially people were used to mechanical machines, and they distrusted the 5 reel video machines. The mapping was necessary for people to have a familiar visual display.
(3) The original method to encourage multiple coins was to pay 2X, 3X, ... the pay for the equivalent number of coins. The least likely outcomes would increase by a higher percentage (or alternatively a progressive payout) to induce the player to bet more than one coin. Much more effective is the Wheel of Fortune or the Blazing 7's method, where the first coin is dedicated to more numerous payouts of very low multiples, and the 2nd or 3rd coin is dedicated to less frequent larger jackpots. An overwhelming number of people who play these games will play multiple coins.
(4) The low tech slots usually pay a higher percentage. The high tech machines with themes (Sex and the City for example) pay much lower percentage since they are often participatory machines, where the slot manufacturer takes a share of the play. Slot companies make the majority of their income from slots on participatory machines.
(5) Penny machines are hot commodity in the slot industry. The average person play 60 cents per play, and they are excited by the multiple times they get a payout. However, the graphics and sound effects obscures the fact that the payout is usually less then what was gambled.
(6) Any brand of slot comes with a package of up to 6 circuit cards that determine the percentage payback. The slot manager is in charge of determining which circuit card goes in which machine. There is no objective way to determine which circuit card is within which machine, so there is no such things as a 'hot' brand. One 'Blazing 7's' machine may pay much lower than another.
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Steve Bourie, writer of the American Casino Guide has a few interesting things about the near miss phenomen, and slots in general.
Great article! Interesting that NV allows the casinos to alter the chips in the machines, but in NJ, the casinos can't touch anything inside without permission.
This was a little misleading i thought:
Did PrimeTime Live mislead its viewers to think that any kind of “near-miss' was legal on Nevada’s slot machines? I believe they did. At no point in the show did they ever actually define what a 'near-miss' was and they also implied at the beginning of the program that the 'near-misses' were occurring directly on the payline. Additionally, they never mentioned the fact that a “near-miss' on the payline is illegal in Nevada. This was a simple fact they could have easily looked up in the state’s gaming regulations and it’s hard to believe that they didn’t know about it.
Based on today's discussion, 'Near misses' are not ILLEGAL in Nevada, but setting up a machine to display near-misses MORE than when the strip says it should is illegal. Basically, a near-miss isn't illegal when it's actually a 'near miss'. You had to actually hit the symbols on the first two reels, and you did have an actual chance at the big win.
Based on today's discussion, 'Near misses' are not ILLEGAL in Nevada, but setting up a machine to display near-misses MORE than when the strip says it should is illegal. Basically, a near-miss isn't illegal when it's actually a 'near miss'. You had to actually hit the symbols on the first two reels, and you did have an actual chance at the big win.
Correction: setting up a machine to display near-misses MORE than when the virtual
How Does A Mechanical Slot Machine Work Step By Step
strip says it should is illegal.But the slot designer can design the virtual strip how he chooses. He can greatly increase the number of virtual stops that land just above and below the critical number to create the near miss phenomena. So he is using a true random selection for the virtual strip, but he designs the way the virtual strip is mapped to the physical strip. So what the player sees on the display is decidedly not uniformly random.
The Wizard uses an actual IGT machine (an old version of Red White and Blue) to actually show you the programming . There are a large clusters in virtual stops 38 to 48 of his table.
Yes, the corporate spokesman for the article you cited was being very mealy mouthed. Everyone knows that the near miss phenomena is a major feature of slot machines.
Research, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Responsibility in Gambling Trust, found brain activity to near-misses in the striatum and insula cortex of the brain. These areas are thought to be involved in drug addiction, and receive input from the brain chemical dopamine (a neurotransmitter which plays a role in 'reward').
The study, was published in the journal Neuron, where they scanned the brains of 15 people while they gambled on a computerised slot machine.
SIDE ISSUE
Some readers may get the mistaken impression that virtual stops were created to cause the near miss phenomena. They were actually created to allow a larger range of probabilities, allowing the machine to have larger and larger jackpots to make them more competitive with state lotteries who increased the publics appetite for jackpots. The older jackpots on mechanical slot machines usually did not pay much more than 100:1 since the most remote probability was 1:22^3 or 1:10648 . To have a 1000:1 payout used almost a tenth of the design space leaving much less room for smaller payouts. The public resisted 4 and 5 wheel machines, and mechanically they were less reliable. The virtual stops allowed much larger jackpots. The near miss programming was a just a byproduct.
Suppose you throw two virtual six sided dice with even probabilities of getting 1 to 6. There is a mapping to the visual device which may be a computer graphic image of two dice. The mapping is one to one, so there is still a house advantage of 7/495=1.41% .
Now change the virtual device so the for one die we randomly select a number from 1 to 7. The mapping to the computer graphic image of this dice is 2 of the 7 numbers go to a 1 on the image of the dice, and the other five numbers go to their respective number on the dice. The second dice is random number from 1 to 6 and functions normally.
This mapping will slightly decrease the odds of winning on a come out roll, it will also increase the probability of you making your point on a 4,5 or 6. But it will decrease the probability of you making your point on a 8,9, or 10.
Overall it will change your probabilities so the house edge is now 5.98%.
Because the player will not visually know which is the skewed dice, he may never notice the difference, but the house edge has been dramatically changed.
If my virtual dice were 256 sided, I could design a mapping to very subtly change the overall statistics of the pass line bet. A gaming commission would immediately make this game illegal because they generally follow the principal that things that look like dice, roulette wheels, or cards must behave exactly like their physical counterparts. But since spinning wheels are more complex, the gaming commission gives the manufacturers carte blanche to invent their own mapping.
My question is, Does it really matter which bubble or turtle you pick? Or is that just a sideshow thrown in for the player's amusement, and to make them think they are affecting the outcome of the game?
Raleigh,
It is my understanding that if the machine shows other possible values after you make your selection that the outcome was not predetermined. For example if you picked a bubble and the bubble was 5x and then the other bubbles revealed other values such as 3x, 20x, 70x etc then your selection did determine the outcome. If the other values are not displayed then it might be predetermined. It doesn't mean that it was but it could be.
Mark
As I understand it, there is a law that consecutive positions on a reel strip can not differ in weighting by a factor of more than 6. This is so that the 'near miss effect' is not too egregious.
That is my understanding also. I'm sure I've seen it written but I don't remember where.
Mark
I don't know if this helps, but think of a craps game.
Suppose you throw two virtual six sided dice with even probabilities of getting 1 to 6. There is a mapping to the visual device which may be a computer graphic image of two dice. The mapping is one to one, so there is still a house advantage of 7/495=1.41%.
I think you would find this paper interesting. In particular it would be nice if you show us how to determine which setting of Money Storm a machine is set at (like you did in your 2001/2002 slot survey ). Paytable And Reel Strips (PARS) sheets are included for 96.2%, 95.0%, 94.0%, 92.5% , 90.0%, 87.5%, and 85.5%
There is an article by two Canadians PAR Sheets, probabilities, and slot machine play: Implications for problem and non-problem gambling where they obtain through the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, PAR Sheets, for slot machine games that are in use in Ontario, Canada.
They obtain 23 PAR sheets:
• One version of Double Diamond Deluxe
• Eight versions of The Phantom of the Opera
• Seven versions of Lucky Larry’s Lobstermania
• Seven versions of Money Storm
The paper is lengthy (30 pages), but it includes a detailed analysis of the near miss programming as well as the other operant conditioning built into the machine.
I would recommend going through the example of the Red White and Blue slot machine on the Wizard of Odds site first, and making sure you understand that before you do the slots in this paper.
NEAR MISSES ARE LEGAL
I believe that the casinos in Ontario are forced to put on the machine that the appearance of jackpot symbols in the layout close to the payline do not indicate that a jackpot is about to be won. I'll get you the exact wording when I'm in Niagara this weekend.
How casino slot machines work for most players is that when you press the spin button the reels start spinning and you could win or lose. Over the years and through technological advancements slots have changed quite a bit, although the idea remains the same, the reels spin and stops in random positions, should three or more identical symbols form a combination then the player wins.
Years ago, all slots in casinos were mechanical powered by gears and levers, while a braking system stopped the reel and sensors informed the machine what to pay out according to the symbols. The mechanical slot machines have now been replaced with video slots powered by microchips, controlling the process via a motherboard. All slots whether land-based or online award random outcome due to the random number generators and each outcome is independent of the previous result and software are subject to regular test by independent auditors such as eCOGRA and TST.
But when it comes down to how online slots work it all starts with the ways to win, which includes patterns of symbols in a horizontal shape starting from the leftmost reel, patterns formed in a diagonal shape and even in a zig-zag shape. To discover all the winning patterns, it is best to visit the paytable section of the slot.
Free spins bonus rounds are the most popular since it entitles the player to reel spins completely free of charge. Once activated a free spins bonus round can award around 20 free spins, this means that the reels spin automatically for 20 spins and no wagering are required. The total wins are added to the current winning total at the end of the bonus round.