%age

[Istenem]

An engineer was fiddling with an ind:e in a pub i was in today, one thing on the engineer control panel interested me:

cash in 115,xxx
cash out 28,xxx

i don't know what time scale this involves but that is around 24.5% payout.
and nearly £90,000 profit for the machine/pub/owners/distributors/etc.

we players are being told that the industry minimum payout is 30%, if this is true then the machine in question needs to pay out more than 300 £20 JP's to meet its (legal?) requirement.

seems like it's time for the industry to be a bit more honest (hi guys ). we know you've seen it, you know we've seen it.
can we hope for any clarification?

[Demmerz]

I've had a think and 'fair' is my vote. As annoying as the payouts and games seem, I understand that companies want to make money and in this world the punter always loses... harking back to TKA's recent post, the time taken to make profit is vastly greater than that of an AWP so payouts will be smaller.

Perhaps a quicker game on an itBox?? Instead of playing Monopoly for 15minutes and making £3.50 profit there could be a quicker game that would pay more?

How about a hi-low game: 10 points for a correct answer, game lasts, say 30 seconds, £1 win at 50 points and so on? Short games, much money lost, much to be potentially won?

[Istenem]

i agree with the first bit but the machine i encountered was pretty obviously set to 25% which is not acknowledged by the industry. so while payouts may be fair in terms of VFM, i don't think it is fair to set payout to a level 16.666% lower than what is widely regarded as the minimum.

as for your suggestion of shorter games with higher %age pays; i agree, not sure hi/lo would appeal except to hardcore gamblers. but maybe something like a true skill card game with odds stacked in favour of the house (e.g. jacks or better) could work. in my experience people don't trust "true skill" though, it is the nature of the beast that if the machine doesn't want you to win it has the power to make it so.

however, with section 16 our AWP buddies are all grumbling.

[TheMostDangerousManInSWP]

I'd say it is very likely the units are expressed in pennies. SWP cabinets don't take that kind of money in pounds.

If payout percentages could be guaranteed, they wouldn't be skill games at all. They would be AWP.

[Demmerz]

So what's the 30% about then?

If the payouts were above 30% you could safely bet there'd be something done about it...

[Istenem]

I'd say it is very likely the units are expressed in pennies. SWP cabinets don't take that kind of money in pounds.

this makes sense. i thought 115k seemed a lot, (but equally £1150 seems very little considering where this pub is+ bank holiday+ my experience of it). It had that joke snakes and ladders where you can win 20p so maybe 10p increments?

but anyway

If payout percentages could be guaranteed, they wouldn't be skill games at all. They would be AWP.

payout %ages can be guaranteed in the favour of the machine (i.e. 0%). if a game doesn't want to let you win (even £1) it won't.

AWP.

amusement without prizes?


i don't mean to get under anyone's skin, least of all the welder TMD... who at least has the grace and dignity to interact with us hoi polloi rather than the aloof turpitude which seems to define the industry.

[andy1234]

Hi,

On Ind:e's the meter increments are in pennies. There is no way that a SWP would ever take anything like £90K (£100-£150pw would be v.good), evens AWPs would struggle to take that type of money. With regards to the % the machine as a whole would average 30% but bear in mind it does take the machine time to settle down to this %, as it would take a AWP time to settle at its 78% or there abouts.

Andy

[tka]

Interesting, Whenever I play seriously I put in £20 in and get between £0 and £30 back. Dunno how often these machines get collected though, weekly? fortnightly?
Even so, if I can win most times (I normally beak even at least) that must mean that £60 has gone in before my £20. Maybe I'm being thick but the maths don't seem to work.

[TheMostDangerousManInSWP]

Ind:e is a compendium machine, and I suspect each game has to maintain it's own percentage, therefore the machines overall percentage is kind of at the mercy of the games on board. They may have some sort of influence over asking the games nicely if they'd like to pay out a bit more please, but the cabinet can't enforce it at all.

At £1150 the target output could be £345, assuming the thing is set to 30%
This machine said it was at £28x, which means the machine owes the players £65 or so.
Pretending it's a compendium of exactly 9 games, then on average each game owes the players about £7.

Considering each game has to build it's own jackpot pools etc... I'd say the machine was probably behaving perfectly normally for a 30% cabinet with that amount of coin throughput.

(It might not be 30%! Get over it. I hear that one cabinet that is set to 27% but I daren't say which as I am only a welder and don't know for sure - I can already feel the effects of global warming as the lawyers rub their hands together)

If the payouts were above 30% you could safely bet there'd be something done about it...

I think a few people on here will testify how much money can be siphoned away before something gets done about it.

payout %ages can be guaranteed in the favour of the machine (i.e. 0%). if a game doesn't want to let you win (even £1) it won't.

Ahh yes. Real life skill games [often] have opponents, but these skill games don't. And if they did simulate one, it'd make no difference in the rip-off-perception. So basically, the conditions of play are modified to test your skill even further on some plays, and on other plays it's not so tough. It "should be" always possible to win from any 50p stake, but as we all know, the amount of skill you are required to demonstrate is often ah... well... kind of high. But on some of the games I've heard people say they've written, it's been said that sometimes "It's ****ing impossible to give money away, who the **** is playing the ****ing thing? A complete and utter ****wit? Jesus, if I make it any easier my own ****ing mother could win on it, what the hell is wrong with these people?"

And so the "Click here to win" button was born.