Hi Brahms and Gattaca, a warm welcome to you both from the Northern hemisphere.
I'll try to briefly (or probably not so briefly) give an answer to the basic queries above.
* What's the size of the bank of questions ?
When the Millionaire quiz machine first appeared in the UK, about six and a half years back, I believe it had 55,000 hard-coded questions on the CD-ROM (this figure came from a correspondent of mine who wrote to JPM's marketing department). Certainly plenty to be getting on with I think you'll agree! In addition to this there were also questions that would be created 'on-the-fly' from a database. Such questions would include 'impossible' stuff on Nobel Prize winners, Eurovision song contest winners (may well not be used in Oz land - see musings below), top box office earning actors/actresses and Patron saints. For example:
Top box office earning actor 17 years after top box office earning actress was Marie Dressler? BOB HOPE
(Clark Gable, Mickey Rooney, Bob Hope, Robert Redford)
Top box office earning actor 20 years after top box office earning actress was Clara Bow? BOB HOPE
(Charles Farrell, Mickey Rooney, Bob Hope, Paul Newman)
... and on they would go, with thousands of permutations.
I could go on about some specific aspects of these particular 'on-the-fly's, but basically, if they appear, forget it! They are there to make sure that it is ***EXTREMELY*** unlikely that anyone will have another big win (if any) soon after winning the jackpot. At least not until the machine has recouped lots of money. These type of questions actually serve as an extra measure of security against it paying too much over its payout percentage setting - you might call them 'double spoilers' - as it is extremely unlikely for anyone to achieve concurrent big wins
even without these super stinkers. Amongst the tens of thousands of hard-coded questions the 'standard spoilers' alone are enough to make sure of this, e.g.
Canadian Grand Prix 1997 - Michael Schumacher's winning time for No.1 pole position? 1MIN 18.095SECS
(1min 18.059secs, 1min 18.095secs, 1min 18.509secs, 1min 18.905secs)
There's one for you to catalogue, but will you be able to remember it?! And that's the real question! I'm aware that the above might seem a bit scary, but I've dived in at the mean end. So moving on:
* If you play enough games and catalogue enough questions, is it possible eventually to reach a point where you can consistently make a profit ?
Yes, it is possible .... how much are you dedicated though? That's what you've got to ask yourself. The greater your general (and trivial) knowledge is, the more of a head start you've got. Also, how good a memory do you have? Use memory techniques to remember intricate trivia.... Take the above spoiler for example. Could you remember which answer to quickly press if that cropped up again on the machine, say to move from £/$5 to £/$10? (Come on, it might just happen!) Can you even remember the question? Noting that the answer is the only option whose end figure is '95', think .... 'Windows 95' maybe? You'd have to couple this memoroid with another aspect of the question though since there are similar looking questions! Another question you might want to ask yourself is do you really want to end up as barmy as me?!
The above may possibly be helpful to you Aussie folk, there were after all quite a batch of 1997 Grand Prix questions on the UK machines. I say 'possibly' since it remains to be seen how much of the 'original' question set has been retained for the Australian version, if indeed any of it has been. Maybe many questions that apply to a worldwide audience have been retained, though I bet you're not going to see many questions on M6 motorway service stations!
Back to the main point here. Obviously there are a lot of questions, and obviously again these questions are generally harder than those on the TV show relative to where they crop up on the win ladder. However, it's not the case that you need to know all of these, or even a majority of them for that matter, in order to make a consistent profit. And note again that the above question example is a spoiler type which would appear only when the machine was desperately attempting (and in most cases succeeding) to prevent you from winning anything more than a £/$1... if indeed you were lucky, or perhaps even skilful, enough to get that far when the machine's throwing up a real spoiler like this before even reaching a win level. (I'm going to mention about indications of when to play in a moment.) Just make sure that you remember such trivia as and when you come across it, or at least do your best to, and don't forget to eat your bananas and carrots, though not necessarily together. A more reasonable difficult question might be:
Who was the runner-up for the World Motor Racing title in 1969 and 1970? JACKY ICKX
(Jacky Ickx, Jack Brabham, Ronnie Peterson, Clay Regazzoni)
This sort of question might appear as early as the 7th or 8th question when the machine is offering £/$1 at 16,000. It all depends on what 'mood' the machine is in, i.e. at what rung level the first win generally appears given two or three credits. So, on to this aspect of game play:
* The level at which a free game is won bounces around. What's the machine's algorithm that determines the 'free game' level ? (I once saw a machine re-booted after it jammed: the free game level re-started on 4000 points.)
Before discussing the payout indexing algorithm (and very generally so I hasten to add), a note about your mentioning of the 'free game'. The standalones over here, along with the JPM Gameboxes with Millionaire, Hangman and a few other games, had 3 price per play settings:
(a) 3 goes for £1 (yeah if only), with the top prize reduced to £15 (I never saw a machine set on this though);
(b) 2 goes for £1 with £20 top prize (standard setting); and
(c) 1 go for £1 with £40 top prize.
I would have thought that the Australian version would be similar on this score, though with dollars instead of pounds. It certainly seems that the machine you've played has the equivalent of the '1 go for £1' setting since that was the only setting for which a 'Free Game' win level appeared. To my mind this was a greed setting with the 'Free Game'
win being an attempt to compensate for a higher price per game. So it might be that you soon find a machine that doesn't have a 'Free Game' win, in which case you should get 2 goes for your dollar, surely better? On the other hand, Aussie Rules Quiz Machine Pricing may just differ.
Regardless of whether the lowest win level is a 'Free Game' or $1 (I presume), the points at which the first win appears is, as I'm sure you realise, determined by how much money the machine has paid out. On its UK debut a £1 win at 4,000 points was often seen (as always, if only I knew then what I know now...), well worth playing. Likewise for an 8K game (8,000 points for £1). I've just re-read what you wrote Brahms - a 2K game .... boy, am I envious! And well done on the JP by the way.
After the initial settling down period the standard offering became the 16K game as players got to know the questions enough to tip the margin. However, the 8K game would still make a regular appearance, and even after some years the 4K game was not totally extinct. The general view, it seems, is that it's worth playing on a 16K (or below) offering. A 32K game, as you mention, and it might well chew up your money for a while. Having said that, I've still managed to make profit or break even on 32K games, and even on the odd 64K game. But bear in mind the following, as well as 'bad mood' 32K games (when it might chew up your money for some time) there are also 'good mood' 32K games! And - at last - this is the bit where I get to the payout algorithm.
The more money goes in, the more the win bar goes down, but, as you note, there's a 'bouncy' element thrown in here. For example, you may play a few 8K games only to find that the next game offers up the first win at 32K (or possibly at 64K!). However, as far as I can remember it only bounced from 8K to 32K for one game and thereafter would drop back down. So, yes, there's a 'bouncing around', but this is part of a 'general downward trend'. In such a case, there may also be some fluttering around the 16K level, depending where exactly on the downward trend it is, before getting back on to the 8K track. (As a side note, other games, including *perhaps* the completely new 2006 edition of Millionaire here in the UK, seem to offer the good game in a slightly more random manner, i.e. more 'bouncing'.) Anyway, the 'good mood' 32Ker is easy to spot: (i) it will only last a credit (or two perhaps); (ii) once you're familiar with the Starters at the beginning of the game, you can spot it straight away by the difficulty of the Starter itself together with the speed of the timer bar. If the timer's seeming speedy then it's a 'chew-up-your-money' phase and the machine will be feeling mean for a while. It might need feeding £10 at this point (depending on percentage payout setting, which incidentally can vary from 30% to 50% - this setting dictates the speed of the downward trend of game offerings) before it settles down into a worthwhile play mode. Depending on one's confidence (or self-delusion) here, it may well be a strategy to 'throw' such a 'good mood' 32Ker.......... discuss.
Regarding the machine reboot whereupon you saw the 'Free Game' win level at 4K. The turning on and off shouldn't make any difference here, it would have been at that rung anyway, unless I'm missing a Foxy trick here
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One more point regarding win rungs. Brahms, I don't think you would have found this on your 2K for £1 Jackpot game, but more often than not you'll have to answer more than 15 questions to get to the top. I'll let you work it out (maybe you already have) but on game offerings that aren't as generous as your winful 2Ker there will be a point where you have to answer 2 questions to move up a rung! A typical 16K game (there might be a slight variation depending on the overall money in/out index of the machine) would see this kick in from the 125K rung onwards to move from $4 to $5, and so on. (To ease your minds a little, the 'double spoilers' I gave examples of would still be unlikely to appear even at the higher two-part stages of a mid-mood 16K game, probably just a few of the 'standard' ones instead!) Once you've answered the first question of this rung stage the UK version, at least, flashes a message at the top of the screen to the effect 'You've increased your points by 62,500. Here's your next question.' I remember being somewhat flummoxed the first time I had this - pressure 'n' all - so I'm mentioning it as a warning.
I once had this '2-parter' occur on the 4K rung (machine mood = evil) after the machine had been over here a year. A one-off though, for me at least, as on all the other occasions I've had this it's been no lower than the 64K level before it starts demanding two answers to step up the ladder. Moral of the story: if the starter asks you about the speed of Lavochkin La11's, Focke-Wulf 190D's, etc and the timer zips down quicker than an Iranian leader's finger on an A-Bomb launch button then watch out!
How often are the questions likely to be changed and when they change them does the entire database change or do only 20% (or whatever) change?
Matt mentions that JPM's website indicates they are standalone machines. Does this mean then that they are housed in that ridiculously weighty Proteus cabinet? 27 stone of luscious curviness. I've actually moved (well, helped move) one of those ****ers up two flights of stairs and lived to tell the tale - surprisingly wasn't caught either
. Anyway, the fact that they are standalones means that they're less likely to be networked, in which case they'd have to have their CD-ROM manually updated to get new questions on them. I'm hypothesising somewhat here, but I think that just because the networked machines can, I assume, have new questions downloaded onto them, it doesn't necessarily mean that a given game on such machines has more questions on it compared to its standalone equivalent. Either way, a new batch of questions still have to be written in the first place. I'm willing to accept that it might make some difference in the long run though since standalones might end up being updated less frequently or not at all after JPM or whoever cease support in terms of producing updated discs. (Such machines end up lurking in the undergrowth of non-chain pubs and become the golden finds of yore.) Similar thing with 'outdated' games on networked cabs though I suppose, the majority of which thankfully disappear for good (Fantastic Four, Spiderman, et al). I forget exactly how many, but I think the UK standalone Millionaire had something like 17 revisions. It certainly wasn't the case that each revision had tens of thousands of new questions. More like many of the initial easy questions were replaced by a different set of easy ones to give it a fresh feel. After all, these are the questions that the vast majority of players will get to see the most. Maybe a thousand (just guessing) other questions added (or maybe replaced) on each revision. Generally keep-uppable with I'd say.
Is Hangman a better bet?
I play this every so often, but the purist has to go for Millionaire. Hangman in a good mood can certainly net a few bucks, though I'd say a devotee of Millionaire would win out over a similar level devotee of Hangman. Note that you might eventually detect an overlap of questions between these two JPM products! Personally speaking, its Millionaire's simplicity (of gameplay at least) that attracts the simpleton in me.
How many players in the UK can beat Millionaire these days? How many used to be able to beat it?
Good question. Haven't counted. You might think from the above that I've jackpotted it dozens of times, but you'd be quite wrong. Number of JPs I've had off Millionaire I can count on one hand. However, similar to my point about not having to know most of the answers to profit, you don't have to get right to the top many times either. £1 in £5 out many times, for instance, all adds up.... I suppose this counts as beating it though doesn't it. Interestingly timed question too. Very recently, Millionaire over here has had a complete makeover. All new questions, bit of a new style to these that I think I'm liking so far. Improved aspect of the order starters I'd say.... and a few other subtle changes here and there. Hate the bloody double-speed timer though, it makes my neurons fire too quickly.... It seems, however, that many on this forum have lamented its overhaul, viewing the changes as a gross bastardisation of a once glorious game. S'all trade off guys. I'm investing in it though ...... for now.
Any information or answers would be greatly appreciated and we'll happily let you keep the ashes in return
Ooh you cheeky monkey, I think we won the Ashes fair and square didn't we? If you haven't fallen asleep yet, I hope that you find something useful in the above. Obviously, I've only been able to comment on the UK incarnation of Millionaire so if you detect any obvious differences between the machines you're playing and my descriptions above let us know. I'm actually surprised that it's taken JPM six years to introduce the machine down under. Am I right in thinking though that the quiz machine is an altogether new thing over there? Just surprising since we've had them here for 20 years now. My brain's telling me that you've had the Millionaire TV show for quite a few years as I remember that a guy (Paddy?) who won £250,000 (I think) on the UK show a few years ago had also won a similar stash on the Aussie show some time before. Finally, regarding the host of the Australian TV version, would we recognise him (or her)? (For UKers: after all, Anne Robinson finally broke through the glass ceiling of the traditional male domain of quiz show host... from the servile eye-candy stereotype quiz show role of Bruce's 'Dolly Dealers' womankind rises up to, of course, the emancipated role of mock dominatrix! Still had to keep the sex part in there somewhere. 'What about Sue Barker though?' Damn, there goes my thesis. Perhaps I should attempt to salvage this under that Quiz Show thread...) Anyway, Aussie WWTBAM host - my British ignorance is conjuring up an image of Rolf Harris asking 'Can you see what the answer is yet?'. And on that note, I think I'd better leave it there.
All the best.
P.S. Just out of interest, could you give me an example of a Millionaire starter question from your machines. Any Lavochkins for instance?
