I played some video poker last night and one of the regulars at Rincon was sitting next to me. We exchanged greetings, and I told him I finally hit a royal after 170,000 hands.

Quickly the discussion turned to "lucky machines" and machines that "aren't completely random."

Then this regular made a couple of points, saying:

The machines can be rigged, by altering just a few hands to keep them "within tolerance" of expected randomness.

Where did we hear this before?

When I questioned him about it, he said he knew people who worked in the casinos and they told him the machines are not completely random.

Sound familiar?

So I asked him why he played if he didn't think the machines were completely random?

He said the idea is to try to be in the right place at the right time to catch the machine when it does deliver a win.

Then I explained to him that unlike slots, the video poker games must choose from a random shuffle of 52 cards... etc, etc.

He said some of the shuffles and some of the deals and draws are not totally random.

That got me to think -- if we were to conduct a survey of a general population of video poker players, how many would believe that the machines are completely random, and how many would think there is some hanky-panky?