Originally Posted by Rob.Singer View Post
Originally Posted by mickeycrimm View Post
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.