Hahaha!!! That's so far from reality it defies belief. Though they did float them properly in the past. Do I have to go around videoing the real state of play to prove the point?cool wrote:phoned up Sceptre..
He assured me that the float was £125 , at least thats what it used to be.
Sceptre outed
OPERATION STRIDENT
I would suggest that anybody who has a non-payout situation with a Sceptre machine be pro-active and let the licensee what is going on with Sceptre and how this system may negatively impact on their trade.The thing that I have found really irks landlords is that there is a system to refill fruit machines but not the quizzers as they have to fill them up by actually opening up the machine and the machine companies patently dont trust them.And no Quizmaster I havent been barred from any pubs with my strident approach.
I am presently attempting to get Whitbread to drop them, as if they lose a major contract they might behave more responsibly.
I would suggest that anybody who has a non-payout situation with a Sceptre machine be pro-active and let the licensee what is going on with Sceptre and how this system may negatively impact on their trade.The thing that I have found really irks landlords is that there is a system to refill fruit machines but not the quizzers as they have to fill them up by actually opening up the machine and the machine companies patently dont trust them.And no Quizmaster I havent been barred from any pubs with my strident approach.
I am presently attempting to get Whitbread to drop them, as if they lose a major contract they might behave more responsibly.
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QuizMaster
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cp999
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I know someone who is employing exactly the same approach.cool wrote:OPERATION STRIDENT
I would suggest that anybody who has a non-payout situation with a Sceptre machine be pro-active and let the licensee what is going on with Sceptre and how this system may negatively impact on their trade.
I'm adopting a different approach (pm sent).
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directleisure
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Gameswarehouse
Hi all,if this true of septre its filth.
I run and work on machines all the time and our machines are always fully floated.
I know every machine can be tricked into thinking its fully floated and am baffled why a opperator would do this.
What goes around,comes around.
If they are doing it lets hope they go under.
I run and work on machines all the time and our machines are always fully floated.
I know every machine can be tricked into thinking its fully floated and am baffled why a opperator would do this.
What goes around,comes around.
If they are doing it lets hope they go under.
Can I present a slightly alternative view here? While I wouldn't for one second condone a policy of deliberately restricting the amount of money a quiz machine has available to pay out, you do have to remember that for a lot of smaller pubs the takings they get on a quiz machine may be pretty low and, conversely, the number of customers who are capable of winning more than £20, even with multiple games to play on, will be even lower.
I experienced this very issue last night in a quiet pub in a small market town (Abingdon). I won £24 from a couple of games but when I came to collect I was paid exactly £20 (spookily), with an 'IOU £4' message then appearing. I didn't check whether the supplier was Sceptre but the exact payout of £20 was a little odd in any case.
I visit that pub maybe once every 3 months but it wouldn't surprise me at all if between my visits not a single customer ever wins more than say the odd £3 or £4, and even there the wins are often recycled - think to yourselves, how many times do you witness other players winning more than say £5 on ANY game? (excepting maybe certain city centre locations).
There are three options a pub like the one I was in last night could take if their machine company was causing such under payouts:
- A. Change the machine company
- B. Get rid of the machine completely with it not being worth the hassle
- C. Bar me, either completely or just from playing the machine
As I am clearly a net loser to that pub - not a local/regular, paying for one pint then winning maybe a week or two's entire takings from the quiz machine, option C may be the obvious answer but option B is also something that pubs may look at more and more - I'd say I've visited five sites in the last week where the pub is still open but where they no longer have a quiz machine.
So by all means pursue the machine suppliers if they can be shown to be deliberating doing something like this, but please also bear in mind that no one has a divine right to earn extra beer money or even a full living off quiz machines. There is also no guarantee that they will around for the foreseeable future in a form that allows good players to prosper, especially given the paucity of so much of the recent releases.
Be careful what you wish for...
I experienced this very issue last night in a quiet pub in a small market town (Abingdon). I won £24 from a couple of games but when I came to collect I was paid exactly £20 (spookily), with an 'IOU £4' message then appearing. I didn't check whether the supplier was Sceptre but the exact payout of £20 was a little odd in any case.
I visit that pub maybe once every 3 months but it wouldn't surprise me at all if between my visits not a single customer ever wins more than say the odd £3 or £4, and even there the wins are often recycled - think to yourselves, how many times do you witness other players winning more than say £5 on ANY game? (excepting maybe certain city centre locations).
There are three options a pub like the one I was in last night could take if their machine company was causing such under payouts:
- A. Change the machine company
- B. Get rid of the machine completely with it not being worth the hassle
- C. Bar me, either completely or just from playing the machine
As I am clearly a net loser to that pub - not a local/regular, paying for one pint then winning maybe a week or two's entire takings from the quiz machine, option C may be the obvious answer but option B is also something that pubs may look at more and more - I'd say I've visited five sites in the last week where the pub is still open but where they no longer have a quiz machine.
So by all means pursue the machine suppliers if they can be shown to be deliberating doing something like this, but please also bear in mind that no one has a divine right to earn extra beer money or even a full living off quiz machines. There is also no guarantee that they will around for the foreseeable future in a form that allows good players to prosper, especially given the paucity of so much of the recent releases.
Be careful what you wish for...
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cp999
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They are doing this deliberately and as a matter of policy. A three figure number of such ious in the past few months, all on the same supplier, is not a coincidence.Nil Satis wrote: So by all means pursue the machine suppliers if they can be shown to be deliberating doing something like this ... please also bear in mind that no one has a divine right to earn extra beer money or even a full living off quiz machines.
Fundamentally (but respectfully) disagree with the second part of that. If a player has the requisite skills and he can't make a living playing machines, he is either chronically indisciplined or the games are by definition not SWPs and thus constitute false advertising. I don't see why fulltime pros are a problem for the companies anyway. How many of them are there in the country? (I'd guess at 20ish). Excluding those few who are actually pro on this forum, I only know of one personally and a handful of others by reputation, and I see very little sign of genuinely professional activity on my (rather extensive) travels. Travels which explain what I'm doing at home, having a day off
I agree with a lot of what you've just said, in that the point I was making is many pubs (particularly smaller or provincial ones) encounter virtually no top level playing from month to month. Looking at it from their point of view, one option they clearly have if someone appears at the bar claiming an IOU from a win greater than the total their regulars have amassed in several weeks/months is simply to bar that person, after (one would hope!) paying out the money that person is owed.
I am not saying this is right or fair, by the way, I'm just saying it is an option the pubs have. I have always heard that pubs have a right to bar anyone they feel they have a good reason to (other than I assume on certain grounds such as race, gender or disability), although I've no idea on what legal basis such barrings occur.
Another option, which they clearly have every right to pursue, is to make the commercial decision to remove a quiz machine if it is not proving worthwhile, and as I say I am witnessing this regularly on my travels.
I'd actually put the estimate of the numbers of real pros much lower than yours, by the way, based on (as you note) the minimal evidence I encounter on my travels. There was a game I got very good at a couple of years ago and I was able to find examples of it all over the London area, the North West and the Midlands for at least 6-8 months without ever coming across any evidence that anyone else had attained the same level (and this was something based on good, solid answer learning and hard work as opposed to any "trick" or "emptier").
The best advice I would have for you and cool, and anyone else who wished to pursue this issue, is to go to the top, so to speak, and write to or call their "well structured and vastly experienced management team":
http://www.sceptreleisure.co.uk/aboutus.html
or write directly to their parent company's Chief Executive Officer (Kenneth Bryan Turner):
http://www.sceptreleisureplc.co.uk/abou ... ctors.aspx
and explain the problems you have been having, and that you have heard a rumour to the effect that the problems were being caused by their own employees' deliberate actions. If they do indeed have a well structured and vastly experienced management team, or a CEO worth his salt, they really ought to want to do something about such damaging claims. The parent company is a plc so this isn't some backstreet operation. If you get nowhere with them then maybe The Morning Advertiser's readers would be interested.
(I accept by the way that both of these suggestions may be considered "putting your head above the parapet", i.e. potentially revealing yourself as a professional player when you would prefer not to do that).
I am not saying this is right or fair, by the way, I'm just saying it is an option the pubs have. I have always heard that pubs have a right to bar anyone they feel they have a good reason to (other than I assume on certain grounds such as race, gender or disability), although I've no idea on what legal basis such barrings occur.
Another option, which they clearly have every right to pursue, is to make the commercial decision to remove a quiz machine if it is not proving worthwhile, and as I say I am witnessing this regularly on my travels.
I'd actually put the estimate of the numbers of real pros much lower than yours, by the way, based on (as you note) the minimal evidence I encounter on my travels. There was a game I got very good at a couple of years ago and I was able to find examples of it all over the London area, the North West and the Midlands for at least 6-8 months without ever coming across any evidence that anyone else had attained the same level (and this was something based on good, solid answer learning and hard work as opposed to any "trick" or "emptier").
The best advice I would have for you and cool, and anyone else who wished to pursue this issue, is to go to the top, so to speak, and write to or call their "well structured and vastly experienced management team":
http://www.sceptreleisure.co.uk/aboutus.html
or write directly to their parent company's Chief Executive Officer (Kenneth Bryan Turner):
http://www.sceptreleisureplc.co.uk/abou ... ctors.aspx
and explain the problems you have been having, and that you have heard a rumour to the effect that the problems were being caused by their own employees' deliberate actions. If they do indeed have a well structured and vastly experienced management team, or a CEO worth his salt, they really ought to want to do something about such damaging claims. The parent company is a plc so this isn't some backstreet operation. If you get nowhere with them then maybe The Morning Advertiser's readers would be interested.
(I accept by the way that both of these suggestions may be considered "putting your head above the parapet", i.e. potentially revealing yourself as a professional player when you would prefer not to do that).
... and on the separate (but related) question of why game/machine companies would see pros as a problem, ask yourself what the motivation might be behind two recent trends:
- Sceptre's apparently deliberate underfloating of their machines
- GWHL's shockingly poor 2010/11 question updates and policy of self-removing games after a certain amount has been paid out
Ordinary punters would rarely encounter any problems with the first of these, as they tend only to have small wins and to recycle many of those anyway, and in the second case why release such an ugly set of questions that no punter has a chance of knowing, and why program in the ability to remove games at a level that virtually no punter will ever trigger?
I'd say these were both good pieces of evidence that pros are very much on the minds of those making and managing quiz machines.
- Sceptre's apparently deliberate underfloating of their machines
- GWHL's shockingly poor 2010/11 question updates and policy of self-removing games after a certain amount has been paid out
Ordinary punters would rarely encounter any problems with the first of these, as they tend only to have small wins and to recycle many of those anyway, and in the second case why release such an ugly set of questions that no punter has a chance of knowing, and why program in the ability to remove games at a level that virtually no punter will ever trigger?
I'd say these were both good pieces of evidence that pros are very much on the minds of those making and managing quiz machines.
I'm not quite sure what you mean but I must admit I've been assuming that there are two separate money stores (for coins) within a quiz machine, the hopper which stores money which is available for payout and a second box that holds money that isn't then made available:
Coin hopper is a container where the coins that are immediately available for payouts are held. The hopper is a mechanical device that rotates coins into the coin tray when a player collects credits/coins (by pressing a "Cash Out" button). When a certain preset coin capacity is reached, a coin diverter automatically redirects, or "drops," excess coins into a "drop bucket" or "drop box."
(from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slot_machine#Terminology)
In other words if a machine is artificially limited at £20 in the hopper, it doesn't matter how many losing games are played, £20 is all it is going to pay out. If not then you would need to be the first player on after a hopper refill to be only paid out exactly £20, unless punters had managed to win more than they put in since the last refill.
Coin hopper is a container where the coins that are immediately available for payouts are held. The hopper is a mechanical device that rotates coins into the coin tray when a player collects credits/coins (by pressing a "Cash Out" button). When a certain preset coin capacity is reached, a coin diverter automatically redirects, or "drops," excess coins into a "drop bucket" or "drop box."
(from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slot_machine#Terminology)
In other words if a machine is artificially limited at £20 in the hopper, it doesn't matter how many losing games are played, £20 is all it is going to pay out. If not then you would need to be the first player on after a hopper refill to be only paid out exactly £20, unless punters had managed to win more than they put in since the last refill.
they are doing the same with fruit machines and have been for the last 6 months or so, they are floating machines with anywhere between 50-80 quid,regardless of how much is in them when the collector turns up. I was watching someone late-ish the other night who was obviously not coming off it anytime soon so left and came back the next morning,,note light now off,,machine jp happy,found out the collector had been that morn,worked out it had been left with about 60 quid..despite the note light being on the night before and the lad puttin over a hundred coins through it..im sweet in the pub so no prob with iou but what chance have we got in fire pubs with these kind of top ups???
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cp999
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Re point 1: I have an opinion on this but would prefer not to comment on a public forum.Nil Satis wrote:... and on the separate (but related) question of why game/machine companies would see pros as a problem, ask yourself what the motivation might be behind two recent trends:
- Sceptre's apparently deliberate underfloating of their machines
- GWHL's shockingly poor 2010/11 question updates and policy of self-removing games after a certain amount has been paid out
Ordinary punters would rarely encounter any problems with the first of these, as they tend only to have small wins and to recycle many of those anyway, and in the second case why release such an ugly set of questions that no punter has a chance of knowing, and why program in the ability to remove games at a level that virtually no punter will ever trigger?
I'd say these were both good pieces of evidence that pros are very much on the minds of those making and managing quiz machines.
Re point 2: GWHL's self-removal policy errs on the paranoid, and I agree it is an anti-pro mechanism. However, having incorporated it, the machines are now self-regulating against attacks that involve empties (whether they be based on tricks or extreme skill) and in my opinion that should reduce the net concern regarding pros i.e. the pro can take a certain amount, but only so much, off game x.
