When do "must hit" slots really hit?

[slingshot]

I watched one of those machines right before the weekend. Came again middle of next week and was surprised it only went from nearly $450 to $480 (approximately) considering the hopefuls who kept pounding it. I did also notice that on some big hits the meter sped up while on others it hardly moved. Lesson learned.

[The Boz]

I watched one of those machines right before the weekend. Came again middle of next week and was surprised it only went from nearly $450 to $480 (approximately) considering the hopefuls who kept pounding it. I did also notice that on some big hits the meter sped up while on others it hardly moved. Lesson learned.

That’s an older WMS machine that only moves on wins. They are usually $50/$500 Minor /Major

[Bill Yung]

The fact you understand this makes you not a ploppy. Ploppies are needed for machine AP to exist. Embrace but recognize the deception and then exploit the situation for your benefit.

Sorry, but this just sounds so simple-minded. Crazy in a way.

The point of philosophy is to start with something really simple, as to seem not worth stating and to end with something so paradoxical no one believes it. You spend too much time in this world and it blinds you to the many opportunities that surround you.

Yes, all philosophical truths are supposed to be simple truths. Science came along to remove every single one of those simple truths. Every area of study, even religion, another branch of philosophy, involves some type and degree of paradox (ha, where type is degree, of course). Physics has its own set paradoxes, the same as math. Wave-particle duality, and infinity as a number to complete or close the real numbers, which is an end but not an end.

Do you see what I'm getting at? Paradox is more a way to connect every area of study, than something that arises out of any particular area of study, let alone just out of philosophy, whatever that is. A "theory of everything" may be about only how to connect every thing, more than per se a new theory or discovery of its own.

What if the real numbers actually are only three-dimensional instead of there being as many in any dimension you may pick, or may be taken as three-dimensional only for the purposes of such a "new" theory of everything, and, can thus be reunited with the other types of numbers through such a theory or other way of thinking? Four-dimensional numbers (Quaternions) could really be another sort of four-dimensional space-time, ie, complex space-time, only so well mixed with also the reals that we can not differentiate the two by experiment, not even by thought experiment.

Are there not many mathematical interpretations of something like 2/0? Is there a similar method to connect those interpretations, without ruling any as the right interpretation?

Yes, modern philosophy has concerned itself with the paradoxes of math and science. What of the connection between paradox, itself, and math and science? One resolves the other.

[Rob.Singer]

Thanks, Dan. Okay, so now I have some numbers to work with. Instead of "must hits" we refer to the AGS games like River Dragons as "will go to's." The 5K meter never hits before 4990. And the 500 meter almost never hits before 490. In rare cases it will hit in the 480's.

In the future, if you want to know whether it's random or not then check the name of the manufacturer. If it's Konami, WMS or Ainsworth it's random and a number like 4870 would be super strong. But with AGS 4870 is way low. Its why you got the play. AP's that have experience with them know not to play that low.

Okay, so the meter ran you from 4870 to 4999.31. The 5K meter speed on every River Dragon I've ever clocked has always been 0.26666%. I'm sure the one you played was the same. I've encountered two different meter speeds on the 500, 0.375% and 0.4%. But it's irrelevant here. Since you didn't say what the number was when the 500 hit I'm going to use an average number, 495. I need this number to calculate the drop in the main game.

The first thing we're going to do is calculate your total wager. If we divide 1 by 0.26666% we get 375 dollars. Thats the amount of action it takes to drive the meter $1. You drove the meter $129.31 (4999.31 minus 4870).

129.31 X 375 means your total wager was $48,491. Oh, boy. That's huge compared to the 5K payoff.

Since you lost $1800 we can now calculate the actual payback percentage.

1800 + 4991 + 495 = 7286

7286/48491 = 15%

Your actual payoff was 4991 + 495 = 5486.

I have about 50K in action tracked on this game and got dropped for 17% so you ran 2% better than me.

These games always come down to the wager against the drop. Even though my stats say 17% I always figure the drop at 20% to be on the safe side. I don't want to run more than 26K in action so my playable number on these AGS games is 4930. If it runs me to the top:

70 X 375 = 26,250

At a 26K wager the payoff, 5K, is 19% of the total wager. In your case the 5K was just 10.3% of the total wager.

With competition from other AP's it's hard to find a number that high. Some AP's will play a little lower number figuring to generate freeplay offers. And even ploppies get roped into running it to the top when they've started it to low, consequently losing a lot of money.

But depending on where you played it at you may have generated enough action to get a bunch of freeplay offers.

PS: I consider the AGS 5K's to be immoral for faking people into believing they have a chance to hit it below 4990 but I can't really do anything about it. I just exploit the situation when I see it.

mickey, there's one more piece of information Dan didn't provide that may or may not change your figures. I've read on forums several times that when playing free play on some progressives (or maybe all?) the meter doesn't move until the free play is exhausted and real money is used. Sort of similar to how points may or may not be accumulated.

[tableplay]

This is Barney,

I most certainly believe more light is needed to clear heads of those personages who lack the clear thinking in this matter. The original question from the most greatest Mr. Druff was regarding how the winning number was chosen implying it didn't seem to be random regardless of the meter movements and other factors which seemed very unfair to those of less intellegences. As stated by the most greatest Mr. Planck, for these "must hit" slut machine devices, the must hit number is in fact is chosen randomly by the RNG but it is biased because of the weighted distribution of numbers that the RNG has to choose from.

Yes Barney, for those that don't know German it is also good to post it in English. In statistics one might say that X (the value at which the $500 River Dragon progressive is hit) is a non-uniform randomly distributed variable. Most likely a step function similar to:
X< 492 having p(hit)~0
and
X>=492 having p(hit) ~ 1/{(500-x)+1}

[Rob.Singer]

Now that I think about it, I believe what I wrote about free play not moving some meters was in Frank's book.

[AxelWolf]

Thanks, Dan. Okay, so now I have some numbers to work with. Instead of "must hits" we refer to the AGS games like River Dragons as "will go to's." The 5K meter never hits before 4990. And the 500 meter almost never hits before 490. In rare cases it will hit in the 480's.

In the future, if you want to know whether it's random or not then check the name of the manufacturer. If it's Konami, WMS or Ainsworth it's random and a number like 4870 would be super strong. But with AGS 4870 is way low. Its why you got the play. AP's that have experience with them know not to play that low.

Okay, so the meter ran you from 4870 to 4999.31. The 5K meter speed on every River Dragon I've ever clocked has always been 0.26666%. I'm sure the one you played was the same. I've encountered two different meter speeds on the 500, 0.375% and 0.4%. But it's irrelevant here. Since you didn't say what the number was when the 500 hit I'm going to use an average number, 495. I need this number to calculate the drop in the main game.

The first thing we're going to do is calculate your total wager. If we divide 1 by 0.26666% we get 375 dollars. Thats the amount of action it takes to drive the meter $1. You drove the meter $129.31 (4999.31 minus 4870).

129.31 X 375 means your total wager was $48,491. Oh, boy. That's huge compared to the 5K payoff.

Since you lost $1800 we can now calculate the actual payback percentage.

1800 + 4991 + 495 = 7286

7286/48491 = 15%

Your actual payoff was 4991 + 495 = 5486.

I have about 50K in action tracked on this game and got dropped for 17% so you ran 2% better than me.

These games always come down to the wager against the drop. Even though my stats say 17% I always figure the drop at 20% to be on the safe side. I don't want to run more than 26K in action so my playable number on these AGS games is 4930. If it runs me to the top:

70 X 375 = 26,250

At a 26K wager the payoff, 5K, is 19% of the total wager. In your case the 5K was just 10.3% of the total wager.

With competition from other AP's it's hard to find a number that high. Some AP's will play a little lower number figuring to generate freeplay offers. And even ploppies get roped into running it to the top when they've started it to low, consequently losing a lot of money.

But depending on where you played it at you may have generated enough action to get a bunch of freeplay offers.

PS: I consider the AGS 5K's to be immoral for faking people into believing they have a chance to hit it below 4990 but I can't really do anything about it. I just exploit the situation when I see it.

mickey, there's one more piece of information Dan didn't provide that may or may not change your figures. I've read on forums several times that when playing free play on some progressives (or maybe all?) the meter doesn't move until the free play is exhausted and real money is used. Sort of similar to how points may or may not be accumulated.

That's a good point Rob. I dont think it would have that big of an effect since it was only 1k in free play.

[Rob.Singer]

Thanks, Dan. Okay, so now I have some numbers to work with. Instead of "must hits" we refer to the AGS games like River Dragons as "will go to's." The 5K meter never hits before 4990. And the 500 meter almost never hits before 490. In rare cases it will hit in the 480's.

In the future, if you want to know whether it's random or not then check the name of the manufacturer. If it's Konami, WMS or Ainsworth it's random and a number like 4870 would be super strong. But with AGS 4870 is way low. Its why you got the play. AP's that have experience with them know not to play that low.

Okay, so the meter ran you from 4870 to 4999.31. The 5K meter speed on every River Dragon I've ever clocked has always been 0.26666%. I'm sure the one you played was the same. I've encountered two different meter speeds on the 500, 0.375% and 0.4%. But it's irrelevant here. Since you didn't say what the number was when the 500 hit I'm going to use an average number, 495. I need this number to calculate the drop in the main game.

The first thing we're going to do is calculate your total wager. If we divide 1 by 0.26666% we get 375 dollars. Thats the amount of action it takes to drive the meter $1. You drove the meter $129.31 (4999.31 minus 4870).

129.31 X 375 means your total wager was $48,491. Oh, boy. That's huge compared to the 5K payoff.

Since you lost $1800 we can now calculate the actual payback percentage.

1800 + 4991 + 495 = 7286

7286/48491 = 15%

Your actual payoff was 4991 + 495 = 5486.

I have about 50K in action tracked on this game and got dropped for 17% so you ran 2% better than me.

These games always come down to the wager against the drop. Even though my stats say 17% I always figure the drop at 20% to be on the safe side. I don't want to run more than 26K in action so my playable number on these AGS games is 4930. If it runs me to the top:

70 X 375 = 26,250

At a 26K wager the payoff, 5K, is 19% of the total wager. In your case the 5K was just 10.3% of the total wager.

With competition from other AP's it's hard to find a number that high. Some AP's will play a little lower number figuring to generate freeplay offers. And even ploppies get roped into running it to the top when they've started it to low, consequently losing a lot of money.

But depending on where you played it at you may have generated enough action to get a bunch of freeplay offers.

PS: I consider the AGS 5K's to be immoral for faking people into believing they have a chance to hit it below 4990 but I can't really do anything about it. I just exploit the situation when I see it.

mickey, there's one more piece of information Dan didn't provide that may or may not change your figures. I've read on forums several times that when playing free play on some progressives (or maybe all?) the meter doesn't move until the free play is exhausted and real money is used. Sort of similar to how points may or may not be accumulated.

That's a good point Rob. I dont think it would have that big of an effect since it was only 1k in free play.

I associate myself with the business world first and foremost. In such a format and with mathematical analyses, every factor needs to be addressed. It may not make a big difference, but accuracy is important.

[mickeycrimm]

One more thing about the AGS games is I believe AGS is a "class II" (bingo-based) manufacturer.

What that means is that the game does not determine the payout based on an RNG determining where the displayed reels line up. The reels are for decoration only.

The actual payout is determined by a bingo game where a certain bingo pattern must be hit in a certain number of balls, and there is usually a minor payout that goes to the "winner" of the bingo game (at the moment you spin, everyone else in the casino playing a similar machine is simultaneously playing the same bingo game)

Usually these are either displayed on a small separate window that shows the card and balls or there is an option in the onscreen menu to view in "bingo mode".

AGS has moved into the Class III market. River Dragons are Class III. They are the first I've seen that weight the progressives to a very high level. The rest of the Class III manufacturers produce games where it's random when the progressive hits.

[mickeycrimm]

I watched one of those machines right before the weekend. Came again middle of next week and was surprised it only went from nearly $450 to $480 (approximately) considering the hopefuls who kept pounding it. I did also notice that on some big hits the meter sped up while on others it hardly moved. Lesson learned.

You were watching a WMS game. Their meter movement is based on coin out.

Edit: Boz already gave you the correct information.

[mickeycrimm]

Thanks, Dan. Okay, so now I have some numbers to work with. Instead of "must hits" we refer to the AGS games like River Dragons as "will go to's." The 5K meter never hits before 4990. And the 500 meter almost never hits before 490. In rare cases it will hit in the 480's.

In the future, if you want to know whether it's random or not then check the name of the manufacturer. If it's Konami, WMS or Ainsworth it's random and a number like 4870 would be super strong. But with AGS 4870 is way low. Its why you got the play. AP's that have experience with them know not to play that low.

Okay, so the meter ran you from 4870 to 4999.31. The 5K meter speed on every River Dragon I've ever clocked has always been 0.26666%. I'm sure the one you played was the same. I've encountered two different meter speeds on the 500, 0.375% and 0.4%. But it's irrelevant here. Since you didn't say what the number was when the 500 hit I'm going to use an average number, 495. I need this number to calculate the drop in the main game.

The first thing we're going to do is calculate your total wager. If we divide 1 by 0.26666% we get 375 dollars. Thats the amount of action it takes to drive the meter $1. You drove the meter $129.31 (4999.31 minus 4870).

129.31 X 375 means your total wager was $48,491. Oh, boy. That's huge compared to the 5K payoff.

Since you lost $1800 we can now calculate the actual payback percentage.

1800 + 4991 + 495 = 7286

7286/48491 = 15%

Your actual payoff was 4991 + 495 = 5486.

I have about 50K in action tracked on this game and got dropped for 17% so you ran 2% better than me.

These games always come down to the wager against the drop. Even though my stats say 17% I always figure the drop at 20% to be on the safe side. I don't want to run more than 26K in action so my playable number on these AGS games is 4930. If it runs me to the top:

70 X 375 = 26,250

At a 26K wager the payoff, 5K, is 19% of the total wager. In your case the 5K was just 10.3% of the total wager.

With competition from other AP's it's hard to find a number that high. Some AP's will play a little lower number figuring to generate freeplay offers. And even ploppies get roped into running it to the top when they've started it to low, consequently losing a lot of money.

But depending on where you played it at you may have generated enough action to get a bunch of freeplay offers.

PS: I consider the AGS 5K's to be immoral for faking people into believing they have a chance to hit it below 4990 but I can't really do anything about it. I just exploit the situation when I see it.

mickey, there's one more piece of information Dan didn't provide that may or may not change your figures. I've read on forums several times that when playing free play on some progressives (or maybe all?) the meter doesn't move until the free play is exhausted and real money is used. Sort of similar to how points may or may not be accumulated.

Freeplay should move the meter since it's coin in. In most places freeplay won't put points on your card so we could have the two tangled up. It's something I'll have to check next time I get the chance.

I've been trading information with someone who operates in the midwest. He and his buddies have spun off 10 River Dragons or their variants in the last week. He told me today that the lowest he got dropped on a play is 3% and the highest is 19%. I personally think its around a 90% game and the progressives don't represent more than a couple percent of the payback.

[Barney]

This is Barney,

The Mickey is most correct. This is bad slot machine to play since it is coin in and moves like a snail unless personage gets lucky.

[Barney]

This is Barney,

Now two years ago in the Las Vegas, the LID got hold of casino security video on his supper computer which shows how dangerous good slut machine devices can be. I found an IGT "must hit" at $499.22 which I tried to play but old lady ran out from another row of machine and beat the shits out of me so she could win the monies. Thank God for the Obama care.

[SplitFaceDisaster]

This is Barney,

Now two years ago in the Las Vegas, the LID got hold of casino security video on his supper computer which shows how dangerous good slut machine devices can be. I found an IGT "must hit" at $499.22 which I tried to play but old lady ran out from another row of machine and beat the shits out of me so she could win the monies. Thank God for the Obama care.

LOL!

[MisterV]

That's no old lady, it's Singer, in drag.

[Dan Druff]

Thanks, Dan. Okay, so now I have some numbers to work with. Instead of "must hits" we refer to the AGS games like River Dragons as "will go to's." The 5K meter never hits before 4990. And the 500 meter almost never hits before 490. In rare cases it will hit in the 480's.

In the future, if you want to know whether it's random or not then check the name of the manufacturer. If it's Konami, WMS or Ainsworth it's random and a number like 4870 would be super strong. But with AGS 4870 is way low. Its why you got the play. AP's that have experience with them know not to play that low.

Okay, so the meter ran you from 4870 to 4999.31. The 5K meter speed on every River Dragon I've ever clocked has always been 0.26666%. I'm sure the one you played was the same. I've encountered two different meter speeds on the 500, 0.375% and 0.4%. But it's irrelevant here. Since you didn't say what the number was when the 500 hit I'm going to use an average number, 495. I need this number to calculate the drop in the main game.

The first thing we're going to do is calculate your total wager. If we divide 1 by 0.26666% we get 375 dollars. Thats the amount of action it takes to drive the meter $1. You drove the meter $129.31 (4999.31 minus 4870).

129.31 X 375 means your total wager was $48,491. Oh, boy. That's huge compared to the 5K payoff.

Since you lost $1800 we can now calculate the actual payback percentage.

1800 + 4991 + 495 = 7286

7286/48491 = 15%

Your actual payoff was 4991 + 495 = 5486.

I have about 50K in action tracked on this game and got dropped for 17% so you ran 2% better than me.

These games always come down to the wager against the drop. Even though my stats say 17% I always figure the drop at 20% to be on the safe side. I don't want to run more than 26K in action so my playable number on these AGS games is 4930. If it runs me to the top:

70 X 375 = 26,250

At a 26K wager the payoff, 5K, is 19% of the total wager. In your case the 5K was just 10.3% of the total wager.

With competition from other AP's it's hard to find a number that high. Some AP's will play a little lower number figuring to generate freeplay offers. And even ploppies get roped into running it to the top when they've started it to low, consequently losing a lot of money.

But depending on where you played it at you may have generated enough action to get a bunch of freeplay offers.

PS: I consider the AGS 5K's to be immoral for faking people into believing they have a chance to hit it below 4990 but I can't really do anything about it. I just exploit the situation when I see it.

mickey, there's one more piece of information Dan didn't provide that may or may not change your figures. I've read on forums several times that when playing free play on some progressives (or maybe all?) the meter doesn't move until the free play is exhausted and real money is used. Sort of similar to how points may or may not be accumulated.

Freeplay should move the meter since it's coin in. In most places freeplay won't put points on your card so we could have the two tangled up. It's something I'll have to check next time I get the chance.

I've been trading information with someone who operates in the midwest. He and his buddies have spun off 10 River Dragons or their variants in the last week. He told me today that the lowest he got dropped on a play is 3% and the highest is 19%. I personally think its around a 90% game and the progressives don't represent more than a couple percent of the payback.

I saw the meter move during freeplay.

At least I'm pretty sure I did.

[Dan Druff]

But here's another question:

Is it legal for them to completely prevent the machine from hitting below $4990?

Or do they have to allow it to hit in the entire range, but just weight it so heavily in the $4990s that it virtually won't hit any other time?

Personally I feel either way is BS, and is very misleading to the average player. But I'd still like to know the answer.

[Dan Druff]

Good job Mickey. But I don't see anything immoral about these games being set to hit in a narrow band near 5K. As I said before this info is a gift from the casino to the players.

By the way, there are smaller payoffs as well throughout the runup of the meters, right?

How do you feel this is a "gift" to the player?

It's no gift. It's business. The machine has very bad odds when you're not hitting the big jackpot, in order to make up for the lump payment when you do hit the jackpot. As Mickey calculated, it was returning 85% to me when not hitting either jackpot, and Mickey's experience was only an 83% return. So that's pretty horrible when not hitting the jackpot.

So if a certain group of players (i.e. ploppies) are playing it with almost no chance to hit that jackpot, they're actually much worse off on these machines than they are on regular 1c slots (which tend to return 88.5%-91%).

Judging from all the action I saw from people when the machine was at $4600 / $330, I think there are a lot of such ploppies getting royally screwed here.

This is different from a regular jackpot, where you always have the same chance of hitting it as everyone else playing the machine at other times. Yes, progressive jackpots can greatly vary in size, but that's very clear to the players, even the ploppies. This type of machine is very deceptive.

[mickeycrimm]

But here's another question:

Is it legal for them to completely prevent the machine from hitting below $4990?

Or do they have to allow it to hit in the entire range, but just weight it so heavily in the $4990s that it virtually won't hit any other time?

Personally I feel either way is BS, and is very misleading to the average player. But I'd still like to know the answer.

The only thing I have to go on so far is DRich, a member of WoV, and a video game designer, said it's legal to weight the must hit progressives and if he were to design such a game he would weight it to run to the high side.

The must hit progressives are the most prevalent short term advantage slots you will find in casinos across the country. Practically every casino has them and the ploppies give them a lot of action. They play them way to low but still get their share of jackpots because of the randomness of when they hit. The River Dragons and variants are new and when the ploppies get on them at a mid-range number they think they have a chance to hit the progressive but in reality they don't unless they run it all the way to the top. And that would cost a hell of a lot more than the progressive pays.

I watched a situation not long ago at Couer D'Alene Casino in Worley, Idaho. A couple got on a River Dragon one morning at $4812. I had been watching that machine to see if it would develop a playable number. By that afternoon they had run it up to $4900 but were on their phones. A few more people showed up. Looked to me like people with money to invest on the play. I happened to come by about 3 AM as they were waiting on the hand pay, getting congratulated by the floor people, but I didn't see any smiles on their faces. They looked worn out and forlorn. These kind of people don't know anything about writing off losses against wins. They got their butts kicked and one of them had to eat a W2-G.

This is why I consider the game to be immoral. They thought they had a chance to hit it with every spin.

[RS__]

I spoke to Dr. Itch earlier and he said it’s legal for them to heavily weight it to $4,990+, as long as there is SOME chance (it can be miniscule) for it to hit before. I forgot to ask about whether the machine pre-determines the hit point or if it’s random every spin....although I don’t think that’d even matter.