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Thread: An "Orphaned Progressive"

  1. #1
    A few months ago there was "big news" made in Vegas when the last of a bank of progressive slot machines at the MGM Grand was hit for more than two million dollars. It was the "Majestic Lions" slot machine.

    MGM Grand elected to keep the progressive jackpot on a single slot machine until it was hit -- and it took many years for it to be hit.

    At Caesars Palace there is a similar situation. There is one slot machine with a progressive jackpot waiting to be hit. And this machine and this jackpot have sat there for years -- I remember first playing this machine going back something like 8 years ago. The progressive built up from a bank of slots -- and then the bank of machines were removed and the progressive remains on this single machine.

    It's a $1 slot but requires three coins to hit it.

    I rarely see it played even though the jackpot is near a half million dollars. It is located in the slot machine area in the Palace Casino near where the Megabucks machines are.

    According to Nevada gaming regulations, progressive jackpots "belong to the players" and the casinos can't keep them. The casinos have the option of leaving the jackpot till it's hit or moving the jackpot to other games.

    You will recall that Harrah's Rincon recently moved the progressive jackpots from several slot machines to video poker progressive machines because it wanted to eliminate those particular slot games.

    This photo was taken this past Sunday. I call this an "orphaned progressive" because the jackpot sits on just one lone machine until hit, similar to the MGM Majestic Lions which also was an orphaned progressive and sat on one machine for years.
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  2. #2
    It would be great to at least know the exact odds of hitting all the prize levels with that slot machine, but alas..

  3. #3
    Originally Posted by Alan Mendelson View Post
    A few months ago there was "big news" made in Vegas when the last of a bank of progressive slot machines at the MGM Grand was hit for more than two million dollars. It was the "Majestic Lions" slot machine.

    MGM Grand elected to keep the progressive jackpot on a single slot machine until it was hit -- and it took many years for it to be hit.

    At Caesars Palace there is a similar situation. There is one slot machine with a progressive jackpot waiting to be hit. And this machine and this jackpot have sat there for years -- I remember first playing this machine going back something like 8 years ago. The progressive built up from a bank of slots -- and then the bank of machines were removed and the progressive remains on this single machine.

    It's a $1 slot but requires three coins to hit it.

    I rarely see it played even though the jackpot is near a half million dollars. It is located in the slot machine area in the Palace Casino near where the Megabucks machines are.

    According to Nevada gaming regulations, progressive jackpots "belong to the players" and the casinos can't keep them. The casinos have the option of leaving the jackpot till it's hit or moving the jackpot to other games.

    You will recall that Harrah's Rincon recently moved the progressive jackpots from several slot machines to video poker progressive machines because it wanted to eliminate those particular slot games.

    This photo was taken this past Sunday. I call this an "orphaned progressive" because the jackpot sits on just one lone machine until hit, similar to the MGM Majestic Lions which also was an orphaned progressive and sat on one machine for years.
    A couple of questions, Alan. Were these machines linked together and the progressive number the same on all the machines? Or were they individual progressives where the numbers would be different on each machine? In other words, did they take the progressive money from the other individual progessives, lump it together, and put it in the progressive meter on the one machine left?

  4. #4
    Originally Posted by Count Room View Post
    It would be great to at least know the exact odds of hitting all the prize levels with that slot machine, but alas..
    The machine can be empirically statted. One more thing. It looks like an old machine. With IGT machines that were made before the year 2000, you can look by the third reel and see the coin in/coin out meters. It would be an easy job to write those meters down. The top meter is coin in. The second meter down is coin out. Handpays are not recorded in the coin out meter. There are only three handpays on this machine. The one coin red, white and blue hit. The two coin red sevens hit and the two coin red, white and blue hit.

    As I remember the meters are six digits. When the IGT Vision series first came out it was an easy thing to figure beause the meters hadn't been wrapped around yet. This machine appears to be at least 15 years old. There is no telling how many times the meters have beeen wrapped around. So what a person needs to do is write those meters down and give it a month or two to see what the drop looks like. The top line hit can be figured out empirically.

  5. #5
    There used to be a row of these machines -- perhaps ten or twelve -- with the same progressive jackpot showing on all. This machine is the last of that group of machines.

    I am not sure what the meters are supposed to tell you, Mickey. I remember researching those meters years ago and discovered that they were actually meaningless for figuring odds or coin-in and there was no rhyme or reason as to when they were reset.

    I think more worthwhile info would be if the payback on these machines was ever released?

  6. #6
    Originally Posted by Alan Mendelson View Post
    There used to be a row of these machines -- perhaps ten or twelve -- with the same progressive jackpot showing on all. This machine is the last of that group of machines.

    I am not sure what the meters are supposed to tell you, Mickey. I remember researching those meters years ago and discovered that they were actually meaningless for figuring odds or coin-in and there was no rhyme or reason as to when they were reset.

    I think more worthwhile info would be if the payback on these machines was ever released?
    Okay, so we know that no money was lumped into the meter on the last machine left. That's a very important thing to know. It means that if this machine is positive by now it's not positive by much. As far back as you can remember what was the lowest progressive number that you remember seeing on this bank. A very important piece of information would be "Where does the meter reset?" Perhaps you can ask some of your employee friends at Caesars about the history of that bank and what was the number the meter started on.

    There are definitely things that can be figured out, Alan....if we have enough information.

  7. #7
    I don't know where the progressive started but I can tell you that the progressive was stopped a couple of years ago. Now the jackpot is frozen and does not increase with additional play.

  8. #8
    Originally Posted by Alan Mendelson View Post
    I think more worthwhile info would be if the payback on these machines was ever released?
    Sure, but the problem with that is it's proprietary information. Good luck getting someone in Caesars giving you that information. The best machine pros have always been able to work around that.

    Making a thousand spins on this game and counting the number of times the red seven lands on the line on the first reel, the number of times the white seven lands on the line of the second reel, the number of times the blue seven lands on the line of the third reel, is gonna give you a good idea of what the odds of the top line hit is.

    My guess is its in the millions to one, which means this play, even if it is positive, is nothing to write home about. But I thrive on figuring stuff like this out.

    Alan, real machine pro don't wait for someone else to tell them anything.

  9. #9
    Originally Posted by Alan Mendelson View Post
    I am not sure what the meters are supposed to tell you, Mickey. I remember researching those meters years ago and discovered that they were actually meaningless for figuring odds or coin-in and there was no rhyme or reason as to when they were reset.
    This is just not true, Alan. The coinin/coinout meters are never reset. They just flip back over to 000,000 after the 999,999th coin.....and they give up a ton of information. If you see 500,000 coin in and 450,000 coin out then its a 90% game plus the handpays.

    The problem with looking at the meters of a 15 year old machine is you don't know how many times the meters have been wrapped around. So you have to write the meters down then give it about 20,000 coin in to get a picture of the payback percentage.
    Last edited by mickeycrimm; 11-19-2014 at 01:18 PM.

  10. #10
    And I'm not talking about you yourself running the 20,000 coin in. Just write the meters down and let the public run the action.

  11. #11
    You said it yourself: you don't know the handpays. You also don't know if coin in vs coin out even represents the theoretical return of the program. Bottom line: those coin in / coin out meters are meaningless.

  12. #12
    Originally Posted by Alan Mendelson View Post
    You said it yourself: you don't know the handpays. You also don't know if coin in vs coin out even represents the theoretical return of the program. Bottom line: those coin in / coin out meters are meaningless.
    ROTFLMAO! Okay, now that I've had a good laugh. If they are meaningless then why are they there, Alan?

    As for your first sentence, no, I don't know the handpay frequencies at this point. But a thousand spin empirical study will give me those odds. Deconstructing/reverse engineering slot machines whether they are progressive, banking or a combination of progressive/banking has always been my forte. I tracked the IGT Vision Series meters for years to determine at what point I could spin a play off. Its an easy way of determining whether a machine has a high payback or a low payback. Tracking meters for 100,000 coin in and 95,000 coin out might be meaningless to you, Alan, but not to me.

    If you truly believe what you are saying here then I suppose the masses believe the same thing you do. Its probably the reason I don't have much competition at what I do.

  13. #13
    Mickey--assuming you are not full of S**t, how does one track coin in and coin out meters? Where is that information found? And it would seem to me that 1000 spins is insufficient for any study where the combinations may be in the millions.

    Can you explain this in more detail so a layman such as me can understand?

  14. #14
    Originally Posted by regnis View Post
    Mickey--assuming you are not full of S**t, how does one track coin in and coin out meters? Where is that information found? And it would seem to me that 1000 spins is insufficient for any study where the combinations may be in the millions.

    Can you explain this in more detail so a layman such as me can understand?
    I tracked IGT Vision Series meters for years. Games like Wild Cherry Pie, Diamond Mine, Fishing For Cash, etc. On machines made before 2000 you could look in the window just past the third reel and see the meters. When the Visions first came out in 97 the meters all started at 000000 so it was easy before the machines got more than 1,000, 000 in action. The machines that were manufactured after 1999 didn't have the meters where you could see them.

    If the top meter is at 90,000 coin in and the bottom meter is at 78,000 coin out then divide 78,000 by 90,000 and the game is about 87% plus the handpays.

    How the handpay frequencies were figured out is tracking the amount of action you run with your card which will tell you how many spins you made. If you know how much action it takes to get 1 point and how many points it takes to get a dollar (or comp dollar) then it easy to figure out how many spins you made.

    Then I would take a pocket sized notebook and create columns for each reel. Every time the main symbol lands on the line you record it in its respective column. A 1000 spin sample space is kind of small for the game in question but it will give you a ballpark idea of the odds. But you keep adding to the sample space every time you play.

    You divide the number of times the symbol landed on the line by the total number of spins you made to get the tentative frequency. So let's say the main symbol landed on the line of the first reel 28 times, it landed on the line of the second reel 27 times, and it landed on the third reel 29 times. You divide 1000 by all three numbers.

    1000/28 = 35.71
    1000/27 = 37.04
    1000/29 = 34.48

    35.71 X 37.04 X34.08 = 45,607

    That's your tentative estimate of the frequency of the top line hit. Just keep adding to your sample space as you play. This works very well for low jackpot amounts because the frequencies aren't so long. A case in point is the Bally Blazing 7's where in the $1 game the frequency of the top line hit is 16 X 16 X 16 = 4096.

    I've been deconstructing games like this for years and it also works very well with video line games. Michael Shackleford confirmed for me that I was doing it right when he went into MGM and tracked the Lions Share main symbols the same way I did it.

    I'm sure you've all heard that clicking sound in the machine when you hit something. That's the coin out meter racking up the number of credits you hit.
    Last edited by mickeycrimm; 11-19-2014 at 11:13 PM.

  15. #15
    I know that Alan thinks the meters are meaningless. But if you ever find an IGT machine that is old enough to have those meters just past the third reel....then take note of where the coin in meter is at, bet one, two or three credits and watch the coin out meter move up by the number of coins you bet. Take note of where the coin out meter is at and whenever you hit a line pay watch the coin out meter click up by the amount of coins you won. This all has meaning to me.

  16. #16
    Mickey... others have investigated the meter myths. That's all they are -- myths. Your meter theory ranks right with Singer's fifth card flipovers. Sorry. Quote anyone who supports it

  17. #17
    I'm actually on board with everything Mickey is saying except for the handpays part.

    The way he determines handpays sounds like inaccurate pseudoscience to me. That leaves a big hole in determining the return.
    Check out my poker forum, and weekly internet radio show at http://pokerfraudalert.com

  18. #18
    Dan: is mickey suggesting that his presumed actual return of a machine matches the theoretical return? Does he understand that the symbols that he tracks are actually virtual reels and not actual reels? Sorry. This has all been discussed and dismissed before. It is myth. It is useless information. Sorry. The meters will not help you win.

  19. #19
    Originally Posted by mickeycrimm View Post
    I tracked IGT Vision Series meters for years. Games like Wild Cherry Pie, Diamond Mine, Fishing For Cash, etc. On machines made before 2000 you could look in the window just past the third reel and see the meters. When the Visions first came out in 97 the meters all started at 000000 so it was easy before the machines got more than 1,000, 000 in action. The machines that were manufactured after 1999 didn't have the meters where you could see them.

    If the top meter is at 90,000 coin in and the bottom meter is at 78,000 coin out then divide 78,000 by 90,000 and the game is about 87% plus the handpays.

    How the handpay frequencies were figured out is tracking the amount of action you run with your card which will tell you how many spins you made. If you know how much action it takes to get 1 point and how many points it takes to get a dollar (or comp dollar) then it easy to figure out how many spins you made.

    Then I would take a pocket sized notebook and create columns for each reel. Every time the main symbol lands on the line you record it in its respective column. A 1000 spin sample space is kind of small for the game in question but it will give you a ballpark idea of the odds. But you keep adding to the sample space every time you play.

    You divide the number of times the symbol landed on the line by the total number of spins you made to get the tentative frequency. So let's say the main symbol landed on the line of the first reel 28 times, it landed on the line of the second reel 27 times, and it landed on the third reel 29 times. You divide 1000 by all three numbers.

    1000/28 = 35.71
    1000/27 = 37.04
    1000/29 = 34.48

    35.71 X 37.04 X34.08 = 45,607

    That's your tentative estimate of the frequency of the top line hit. Just keep adding to your sample space as you play. This works very well for low jackpot amounts because the frequencies aren't so long. A case in point is the Bally Blazing 7's where in the $1 game the frequency of the top line hit is 16 X 16 X 16 = 4096.

    I've been deconstructing games like this for years and it also works very well with video line games. Michael Shackleford confirmed for me that I was doing it right when he went into MGM and tracked the Lions Share main symbols the same way I did it.

    I'm sure you've all heard that clicking sound in the machine when you hit something. That's the coin out meter racking up the number of credits you hit.
    I don't have sufficient knowledge to know if what you are saying has any validity, but thank you for the detailed explanation.

  20. #20
    Originally Posted by Dan Druff View Post
    I'm actually on board with everything Mickey is saying except for the handpays part.

    The way he determines handpays sounds like inaccurate pseudoscience to me. That leaves a big hole in determining the return.
    Dan, earlier this year a thread was started on WoV about the Lion's Share slot machine in MGM Grand with the $2,000,000 plus jackpot. The thread is simply called Lion's Share. JB, one of the adminstrators went over you tube videos of the game and tracked the number of times the Lion's symbol land on the line of each reel. Michael Shackleford, The Wizard, read the thread and decided to do an emprical on the game.

    He sat down on the machine and tracked every symbol just like I described to you here on how it's done. He has a page on his Wizard of Odds site with the results. Scroll down to Lions Share Reel Survey.

    http://wizardofodds.com/games/slots/lions-share/

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