Progressive Royal

There's are very good (& typical) example of AP and famous name brainwashing about progressives being "playable at 100%+" over on vpFREE right now.

Some probably obscure and confused out-of-town visitor is asking how high a royal has to be in order to be "playable"....or at least 100% theoretically on 7/5 BP. Of course, dummies like this probably buys all the Bob Dancer and Jean Scott junk and believes every word they write, and is obviously totally incapable of thinking for himself. He also very likely could have been led astray by Frank Kneeland and his unrealistic view of how to play progressives for profit.

Why? Because the concept of teams chasing progressives for a profit is flawed enough on its own; then just think of how much a misled ploppy like that poster would be improperly influenced by believing if the royal is at 100% then they have more of an opportunity to come out a winner than if they played it when the royal was lower and the game well under 100%! No one sits down forever at any game, and for over 95% of all players who sit at progressives, they will end up losing their shirts UNLESS they hit that royal. And how often do you think THAT occurs....

How and why people are so dumb that they're so easily misled into believing this nonsense, rests squarely on the shoulders of people who rope these poor players into their web of deceit for the purpose of buying the junk and books they peddle so very shamelessly.

Good post Rob. The problem with the "math junkies" is that their equations always include HITTING the royal. What would they be preaching if their math excluded hitting the royal?

That is correct. Plus equations including NOT hitting the royal are not something these people can talk about because the truth does not sell. And when you challenge them from that common sense standpoint, they'll come back with how they "always & forever play these things only with that theoretical edge" while trying to get their readers to think how the math supposedly "always works out".

Even Frank and his group of homeless team members combined do not play enough for that argument to hold any water.

I'm living proof that royals don't hit like clockwork. It took 170-thousand hands for me to hit one royal. And I can tell you that they aren't coming now like buses -- one after another -- because I've played 4,000 hands since my last royal. In fact, in the last 4,000 hands I haven't even had one "4 to the royal."

And it has nothing to do with theory or math. It has EVERYTHING to do with being at the right place at the right time, and nothing more.

I spoke a few hours too soon. Went back to Rincon Sunday night. Was dealt four to the royal twice, both times ended up with junk. Another time was dealt Ten Queen King of diamonds, drew 9-J diamonds for a straight flush. So back to the old tricks of missing royals, hitting SFs.

My whole playing life I've seen an inordinate number of dealt four-to-the-royals, and it only adds in another layer of confirmation that the games are programmed anything but totally random. The blinded math people have always responded with their safe, confidence-building "what you're experiencing is selective memory" but then when I go test these things out in the casinos recording results and obtained a machine that I tested in my garage for three months for the same purpose and then made known my results, they claim it's all made up. Last year I even offered the Wizard of Odds, Michael Shackleford, the opportunity to review and then debate my findings in a public LV filmed venue after his years of criticizing me on the forums, but as soon as it looked too real for him he closed it all down--much like Frank just did rather than actually get to know about my strategy.

Rob, I can certainly vouch for the concept about being dealt an inordinate number of "four to the royal hands," but even getting an inordinate number of these thrillers and failing to convert them into royals still does not indicate to me that the machines are not totally random. The results I have had could easily be explained as "random." If you are going to convince me that the machines are not random, I would need a software engineer who "rigged" the machines not to be random to admit it.

There are so many video poker machines out there in the world that none of us could possibly know from our own individual play -- or play by the people we talk to -- know what are random results and what aren't.

However, I suspect that except for the devoted math people, most players if asked would reject the idea that the machines are totally random, just as that other player said to me the other night. I think that most players also believe in hot and cold machines, hot and cold cycles, which are other concepts that the math priests reject.

But even if the majority believes the machines are not random, and that they do run hot and cold, there is still no proof. And I would like to see the proof.

Absolute proof is something we'll probably never see or hear about from an actual machine programmer because of the legal proprietary & confidential stuff. That's why I did such a deep investigation including pay big bucks to have a new game king at my house for testing last year. And it all started on an Air New Zealand first class wine-tasting flight home from Australia where I sat with and drank with one of those IGT programmers.

I differ in that for some people (actually, very very few) it is not at all difficult to recognize patterns or "anomalies" with from what would normally be expected on a machine. I am one of those people, which is the only reason why I have always tried to make my beliefs known. And remember, none of this is significant enough to have made me not pursue my professional playing career or even to play recreationally these days.