rainbow riches gamble

[Barry Trotter]

I ought to point out that nowhere does it state that every part of the machines gameplay has to be random. The implementation is up to the designers.

For example, I could design a game that was random, and could randomly award you a 20 quid win on the reels, feature or whatever, but the true random value was 100 pounds. You are welcome to gamble up to the true random value, but it'd cap you at 100.

If you collect, then 80 pounds payout has drifted. Alter your random tables to reflect this and away you go. Landing on any corresponding win is still random, but I've rigged the gamble.

Whilst you may feel cheated by my presentation of randomness on my machine, it is in fact still random. I made no promises to not change the payout tables etc. I'm still going to meet my target % payout randomly.

Don't make assumptions on randomness implementation - it's almost as uninformed as saying "these games are random!!!"

I also ought to point out that the way you would design a machine would mean the the machine would technically be illegal, as it could never hit percentage if you just hit collect after awarding the £20 win. You cannot ASSUME that people will gamble. Machines would never be designed that way, as its no benefit to the player, and no benefit to the designer. Contrary to popular belief, designers don't want £80 to disappear in to the ether because the game would play shite, and never hit percentage, and eventually it would become obvious to the player and they'd stop playing it. Yes, you COULD design a game the way you say, but how can you say the gamble is RANDOM when you're capping it? A random gamble would only be capped by reaching the maximum legal payout amount (i.e £500) - if you have any other predetermined maximum amount, then its not random - it's rigged.

I appreciate that some of you will continue to struggle with the idea of random till hell freezes over, Cat's rule the world, or The Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm-flailing Tube-men become the biggest terrorist organisation in the world, and demand Paris Hilton be killed in return for not blowing up most of South America using custard pie bombs.

So endeth the lesson

[blackmogu]

I'm quite comfortable with the concept of randomness, having studied a BSc CST at Bath University some years ago which involved a whole year of number theory - so my credentials in the area are quite sound.

To counter-argue your point about my machine never hitting percentage, consider the following - a 10 slot paytable with one slotted winner of 100 pounds. You hit a winner and gamble and lose, but I only offered you 50 pounds, so we are shy of 50 in our paytable calculations. Increase the prize amount of the winning slot to reflect this to pay out 150 on hitting the next 1 in ten. And so on.

Dynamic prize tables are the only thing you have to grasp in this scenario. The machine still hits %. The selection of that one winning slot is still random.

You cannot ASSUME that people will gamble.

Why not ? Fruit manufacturers obviously did when they put in blocks. You ought to back up your declarations with some substance to carry weight in a debate.

Machines would never be designed that way, as its no benefit to the player, and no benefit to the designer.

Machines were never designed to benefit players anyway. Many terribly badly designed machines that have been released would question your assertions here. IJ2 chip that was impossible to obtain JP springs to mind.

because the game would play shite, and never hit percentage, and eventually it would become obvious to the player and they'd stop playing it.

take your pick :P

And BTW, I never claimed my gamble was random, just the same as the bookies terminals. I claimed my _game_ was random.

See how important those little bits are that people tend to gloss over ? Semantics means alot in law and legality - and you expect the bookies/manufacturers to not game the system with their lawyers and do what they can to get away with things like I outlined ? I can't claim that they do or don't.

I think I've made my point.

[Barry Trotter]

Dynamic pay tables, as you describe, would be compensated and not random. As soon as you base a later decision on the outcome of a previous decision (be it in the preceeding game, or in some earlier game) then you are compensating the game. A random game has to make EVERY decision in singularity. That means that any decision the game takes can't be based on the amount of cash you've won so far, the amount you've lost, how far up the gamble ladder you are, etc....

And hopefully i'm more than qualified to talk about random games - if not, i'm in the wrong job ....

[blackmogu]

They are not compensated at all. You could still pull out an infinite number of losing/winning spins if the RNG felt like it, and it would still be true to it's target %.

The change is that the prize amount you are going to win if you hit a winning patch from the RNG is altered by previous actions.

so you've now got a random machine that can skew results from the short term and spread them out over the long.

Whether or not it would fly against the commission who approves these machines is another matter - I was hoping to illustrate that it is not necessarily black and white, and trusting companies to 'do the right thing' and blindly spew rhetoric about random seems naive to me.

[ob]

Whilst I've always stuck to believing these things are random and arguing the case on here, I have always had a similar theory to how they "could" work, ie. your dynamic paytables. Whilst every spin is random, and has a chance of jp, the paytable you are drawing random numbers from changes. I.e less random numbers are assigned to £500/£400 etc. on some paytables.

I'm not sure of the legality of this though as whist the machine is still random in the sense its picking a random number for the spin and assigning you the win for that number, if it is using past payout details to alter the paytables either favorably or unfavorably; it is then compensated in a sense.

Also (say) it states a 94% payout, if dynamic paytables were used, each spin would not represent a fair 94% gamble; although the average over the machines lifetime would be 94%. I'm not sure of the legality of stating 94% and having a considerable number of random spins running on a paytable with a much lower percentage.

If you were just to watch the things, it seems like IF they were running this dynamic paytable approach, they don't change the paytable every spin, rather every few hundred spins; ie. they seem to payout lots of features/larger wins in one go then nothing for hundreds of pounds. Whilst saying this I might also add, it is human nature to notice such patterns and they may just be pure co-incidence.

Finally, what they could also do is change the paytables, but not with regard to prior wins; thus negating any compensation. This would ensure the machines went through patches where the player got a good return ie (drawing from an over 100% paytable), and patches where the owner would see a good return from the machine (ie. drawing from an under 80% paytable); although whether this would be desirable is questionable indeed, there doesn't seem much point in it.

[Barry Trotter]

They are not compensated at all. You could still pull out an infinite number of losing/winning spins if the RNG felt like it, and it would still be true to it's target %.

The change is that the prize amount you are going to win if you hit a winning patch from the RNG is altered by previous actions.

so you've now got a random machine that can skew results from the short term and spread them out over the long.

Whether or not it would fly against the commission who approves these machines is another matter - I was hoping to illustrate that it is not necessarily black and white, and trusting companies to 'do the right thing' and blindly spew rhetoric about random seems naive to me.

What you have suggested is not random, it is compensated. You are basing your "random" decision on previous play or outcomes. Whilst what you say could easily work mathematically, its not something that would be done in current games

OB - you're definition of dynamic paytables is something that is currently used on many random games around the world. There is nothing wrong with having many sets of different paytables, as long as the decision on which one to use is taken in singularity in the game in which it is then used. In the next game, you would have to which paytable to use again. The decision on which paytable to take would be perfectly legal (and random) as long as the decision was truly random and not based on ANYTHING ELSE... so you couldn't base it on how much had been won, lost, gambled, etc.. Previous play could make no difference to the decision. - i.e was not affected by any external factor other than "pick a random number between 1 and 4, 1 being paytable A, 2 being paytable B, etc.". Every paytable would have the same chance (not necessarily an even distribution of course) of being used in every game.

I think, ob, that the words "nail" and "head" could be used for your summary