DrStrange
4 of a Kind
Let me start by saying I understand slot machines are a terrible, negative EV way to gamble. People are suckers if they play. But a "normal" slot machine offers the chance of a lucky hit. Risk a couple of dollars and maybe win thousands. Get ultra really lucky and you might turn $3 into $50,000. But the low variance games I saw this week made me scratch my head.
I took my wheelchair bound mother to a New Mexico "casino" - basically a big room with lots of slot machines. I spent my stay wheeling her around looking for a lucky machine. What I concluded was there couldn't be a lucky penny slot machine. No matter, she had a blast - just thrilled to get out on the town.
"Penny" slot machines are nominally one cent, but all of the machines had many pay-lines and allowed you to bet more than one cent per line. Max bet ranged from $1.5 to $5. The nature of the pay table was very low variance, if you bet 200 pennies most of the time you would win something, maybe 25 or 100 or 175 rather that win nothing. The flip side of that is you rarely won more than 1000 pennies and almost couldn't win more than 5000 pennies.
The payout systems are complex and resist analysis. I was stone cold sober, bored and had plenty of time on my hands, yet some of the payouts just didn't make sense. Not every possible path was a line you could bet, so sometimes it seemed like you should get a good payout but got actually very little. My mother didn't have a clue - she also didn't really grasp that winning 150 pennies in a flashy way wasn't a good thing if you bet 200 pennies.
The house edge seemed like it was in the 15% to 20% range. The best I could figure, even a very lucky player couldn't get lucky enough to win over the span of an hour. The drain looked like 25 dollars per hour with a minimal chance not to lose. This explained why my mom only took $250 to the casino rather than the thousands she might have taken to Las Vegas. These penny machines couldn't break her $250 bankroll in the four hours we were there. Basically she was going to lose $0 - $200 something like 95% of the time.
The casino's product mix was 70% penny slots, 29% traditional slots and 1% video poker. My mother was horrified at the idea of playing a traditional $1 slot - too much! (even though she commonly played dollar slots in Las Vegas when her health was good enough to go there).
The penny slots were filled with cut screens, funny mini games and all sorts of graphics. I watched mom play "press your luck" and get to spend several minutes trying to avoid "whammies" and rack up pennies. She won 2000 pennies and got a long special game to do it. She had so much fun doing that - she spent the next hour trying to get it to happen again.
So I was trying to figure out why people played those types of machines. All I could figure is they were happy with the never realized hope of hitting a winning session if they rarely went bust and got to "play the game". I don't think anyone we went with on the four hour trip won money - they all played the penny games, had stories of how they almost won and had a good time but never had a chance to win money,
My mom just couldn't understand why I wouldn't play --=- DrStrange
I took my wheelchair bound mother to a New Mexico "casino" - basically a big room with lots of slot machines. I spent my stay wheeling her around looking for a lucky machine. What I concluded was there couldn't be a lucky penny slot machine. No matter, she had a blast - just thrilled to get out on the town.
"Penny" slot machines are nominally one cent, but all of the machines had many pay-lines and allowed you to bet more than one cent per line. Max bet ranged from $1.5 to $5. The nature of the pay table was very low variance, if you bet 200 pennies most of the time you would win something, maybe 25 or 100 or 175 rather that win nothing. The flip side of that is you rarely won more than 1000 pennies and almost couldn't win more than 5000 pennies.
The payout systems are complex and resist analysis. I was stone cold sober, bored and had plenty of time on my hands, yet some of the payouts just didn't make sense. Not every possible path was a line you could bet, so sometimes it seemed like you should get a good payout but got actually very little. My mother didn't have a clue - she also didn't really grasp that winning 150 pennies in a flashy way wasn't a good thing if you bet 200 pennies.
The house edge seemed like it was in the 15% to 20% range. The best I could figure, even a very lucky player couldn't get lucky enough to win over the span of an hour. The drain looked like 25 dollars per hour with a minimal chance not to lose. This explained why my mom only took $250 to the casino rather than the thousands she might have taken to Las Vegas. These penny machines couldn't break her $250 bankroll in the four hours we were there. Basically she was going to lose $0 - $200 something like 95% of the time.
The casino's product mix was 70% penny slots, 29% traditional slots and 1% video poker. My mother was horrified at the idea of playing a traditional $1 slot - too much! (even though she commonly played dollar slots in Las Vegas when her health was good enough to go there).
The penny slots were filled with cut screens, funny mini games and all sorts of graphics. I watched mom play "press your luck" and get to spend several minutes trying to avoid "whammies" and rack up pennies. She won 2000 pennies and got a long special game to do it. She had so much fun doing that - she spent the next hour trying to get it to happen again.
So I was trying to figure out why people played those types of machines. All I could figure is they were happy with the never realized hope of hitting a winning session if they rarely went bust and got to "play the game". I don't think anyone we went with on the four hour trip won money - they all played the penny games, had stories of how they almost won and had a good time but never had a chance to win money,
My mom just couldn't understand why I wouldn't play --=- DrStrange