Luck is a strange thing

First and foremost my "slot team" and I are poker players. But since we're at the casino 8-10 hours a day anyway, might as well scout for these. My main partner is an early bird and I'm a night owl so when he's leaving he texts me what's approaching and I do the same at 5am when I leave. A third guy is afternoon to evening (but not 100% reliable) so we have a solid 20 hours coverage per day, more if machine camping is required.

The Stakeout
In mid April there's a $4000-$5000 (Major) machine getting within our acceptable range. It's kind of off in the back so it doesn't get as much play as it would in a more prominent location - good and bad I guess. A guy has been playing it heavily over a few days and really moving the meter up. It finally reaches our target profit number but the guy is still playing. A friend of mine knows the guy playing and says he has infinite money and won't be giving it up now -apparently he's already stuck $5,000 on it. Based on recent action I've seen, I now 100% believe him, this guy gets on shit ridiculously early and rides them all the way up profit be damned.

Unlucky - Part I
Afternoon guy and I finish up a poker session at 2:30 AM and decide to go play NSUD for our bonus play that started at midnight. He wants to go to the private VIP lounge (I'm highest tier) but I say, "nah, let's go to the 'open to all' high limit section of the main casino." I'll spare the full details but as soon as we each put our cards and money into the VP machines a crazy guy pulls out a gun saying he's going to rob and shoot everyone in the room. We're near the exit and he's got his back to us so we grab our tickets and book it out of there. Right as we're running out of the "room" we hear the first gunshot go off (luckily nobody was hurt). It's about 2:40 AM.

Lucky - Part I
Its 3AM and we're outside along with 100 others that choose the same exit doors as us, unable to get to the parking garage to leave, everything is on lockdown. Watching infinite cop cars show up. By 5 AM they tell us the casino is closing and everyone needs to/can now leave. I get home and adrenaline is still pumping so I'm looking at Facebook and the news to see any additional details. At 7 AM on Facebook I see a post saying the casino is going to open at 7:30 AM. Wow, what are the chances machine guy left the casino, went home and is now aware they're open again and back on the machine? It's worth a 15 minute drive to the casino to find out.

Lucky - Part II
There are literally zero cars in VIP parking which is a very good sign. As I walk in the casino is very sparse. As I approach the machine I don't see the guy!! 😂. However I do see a new different guy on the machine 😭. And he's got $300+ in credits. That doesn't mean much but it could be a long wait. Well I decide to camp it out and play the machine behind it $.25 at a time. After about 10 minutes the guy gets on his phone. This could be good. I hear the ticket cashout sound and my pulse races. Of course lots of slot players cash out and put the same ticket right back in to "change their luck". But not today! This guy grabs his ticket and gets up. I immediately cash out and insert my ticket into the target machine. I've never played the game and have only clocked it from behind. I decide to take this time to play $1 at a time and reliably clock the meters. During clocking the guy I sniped the machine from comes back with another person and throws his hands up in the air. Probably had his friend bring a truckload of money and went to meet him at the front door. Sorry dude, should have just asked a slot attendant to watch the machine.

Unlucky - Part II
Clocking is done and it's a go! I send an image to our private Facebook chat group asking if they're ready to party?

https://imgur.com/1sZEABI

They can't believe I got it.

It's 8:00 AM and we decide to meet at 10 AM with money. Since I'm VIP I can lock a machine up for a few hours. They take down your name and card number, disable the machine and let you know what time you have to be back by. We have until 10:15 AM.

At 9:40 AM everyone is there and ready. We get it unlocked and start at playing at 9:45 AM. It's a 5-line $.25 machine with 1-3 credits per bet. We decide to start at $2.50/spin for time and variance consideration. You can't fast spin this machine to stop the animation early but you can place a full water bottle on the spin button to auto spin. $1000 coin in worth of player points before switching spinners.

Things don't start off very well. We go extremely long time without bonuses. The base games don't seem to be paying well. Keep in mind there's 3 of us, here's how much each of us put in to start

-$200 9:45 AM (-$600)
-$200 10:30 AM (-$600)
-$200 11:45 AM (-$600)
-$200 12:47 PM (-$600)
-$200 2:04 PM (-$600)

What kind of party is this? We've lost $600 an hour for 5 straight hours. Just shy of $6,500 coin in, down $2,400 ($600 in machine) and we've only moved the meter $13, with up to $19,000 coin in to go if it takes us to the top!. Have we made a mistake somewhere? Does this game really only pay back the state minimum of 80%? Could it possibly be set even lower than that? We figured a $.25 game would be around 88%. It's currently paying at 50% and we're set to lose a lot of money if it goes to the top at this payback rate. Is this karma for sniping the machine? What about karma for almost getting shot 12 hours earlier?

At 1:30 pm we had decided to lower our bet to $1.25 to lower variance and get as many bonuses as possible. As a side note, the guy that was on the machine for 3 days straight has walked by about six times so far. A few other known 'machine guys' have come by multiple times as well. After 5 pm it seemed they all realized we weren't giving up and I didn't see any of them after that.

Lucky - Part III
After 5 straight hours of ass pounding things somehow turn around. Bonuses become more frequent, retriggers happen often and multipliers are hitting on pay lines in the bonus games. We go 7 straight hours without inserting any additional money into the machine. In fact we hit multiple really good bonus rounds of $500-$900, one minor at $190 and actually start dispersing money back.

+$200 9:00 PM (+$600)
+$300 9:15 PM (+$900)
+$225 11:00 PM (+$675)

5 minutes later the moment we were all waiting for

https://imgur.com/akBU0oc

+$1690 11:05 PM (+$5070.25 progressive + credits)

Final game payback was 94% excluding Minor and Major! Hourly rate of $106 each, not too bad! Plus $40 in points and enough comps for me to get a 22oz Ribeye and 2 IPAs the next night. Tip included 😉

https://imgur.com/pNEnIts

A short tale of getting unlucky and lucky. Maybe there is no such thing as luck in gambling, just math and short term variance.

Great story! Love that short adrenaline rush when it opens up. Important lesson here: if you want to guarantee lots of bonus rounds just lower your wager ;)

I'm not even sure that is a play- depends on meter- did I miss what you said the meter was?

It was a play even if the meter rate was $4.50 per penny... so it 'probably' was a play.

Really interesting story with a lot of twists and turns! Appreciate you telling it for us and good job on the hit!!

I didn't do they math to the penny- I usually use a quick rule of thumb that is always safe- play them when meter is within 5 percent of the difference in the spread i.e. Spread is 1k play at within 50 of the max-
It' gives up some plays but it's easy to breeze past when there are a ton of machines

Who took the hit with the W2G?

Quote: Ayecarumba

Who took the hit with the W2G?

We split it using IRS form 5754.

Meter is $4.75 Major and $2.50 Mini.
Mini is 2.8% of game payback
Major is 1.9% of game payback
Only 6283 movements to $4999.99 = $29,844.25.
Easy money.

You stated the state has a minimum payback of 80%. If this is the case, and 5% of that is payed back in the progressives, then you're looking at a base game of about 75%...

EV(Base Game Alone) = TotalWagered * HouseEdge = (29,844.25)*(-.25) = -7,372.06

Curious, did you look up the machine online to find out the Mini and Major game payback percentage?

Quote: Romes

You stated the state has a minimum payback of 80%. If this is the case, and 5% of that is payed back in the progressives, then you're looking at a base game of about 75%...

EV(Base Game Alone) = TotalWagered * HouseEdge = (29,844.25)*(-.25) = -7,372.06

Curious, did you look up the machine online to find out the Mini and Major game payback percentage?

I didn't know major/mini payback pwrcentages were available to the public

Nobody would play at the casino if all games were at 80%. I know a director and while he wouldn't give me exact numbers he did say we shouldn't have had a problem achieving over 89% on a $.25 denom game.

Credit to mickeycrimm
You add together the totals and divide by 2 to get the average hit point.
$4000+5000 = $9000 / 2 = $4500
That's 50000 movements at $4.75 per or $237,500 coin in. It pays you back $4500 so..
$4500 / $237,500 = 0.0189473684210.
1.9%

One would think this changes with the scope of the play? ...The progressive starts/ends at 4000/5000 respectively. The "average hit point" is the middle. However, If you happen across the machine at $4500, then the range from your perspective is $4500-$5000, with the average hit point being $4750. This is also known as "The Halfway Theory" to which myself and others believe in when plotting out "on average" when the progressive will hit and helping to determine whether or not to play a machine.

Let me try it for my example:
4500 + 5000 = 9500 / 2 = 4750
That's 250, or 25,000 pennies at 4.75 per penny... so total action of $118,750. It will then pay you back 4750 so..

4750 / 118,750 = .04

4%

So when the meter raises, the % payback from the progressive becomes more valuable to the machine. This is from a play perspective. I'd agree to use your 1.9% BASE for the machine as that's how the machine is when it's reset. I'm just trying to figure if this needs figured in to a play... More/less rambling out loud hoping for some interesting discussion =P.

When we got on at $4937.17...
5000.00 - 4937.17 = 6283 / 2 = 3141 halfway point movements. The dollar amount at halfway is $4968.58.

3141 * $4.75 = $14,919.75 coin in
$4968.58 / $14,919.75 = 33.3% payback from the major.

Add that to base game payback %, subtract a little less than the minor %, and hopefully it's over 100%.

Now the minor is a little different. We're 100% going to realize all of the Major however we may not actualize all 2.8% of the Minor. The reason is that we may hit it once or twice but then we run it up to something like $180 and abandon it. So we should subtract a portion of this progressive % from our calcs.

If we're chasing a minor on this machine, we need to subtract close to the full 2.8% of the major because we're not going to actualize it with our small coin in (unless we get really lucky).

I have never used thie above process and I'm not a math guy but I would never jump on a machine at some of those numbers

I agree with your math. I would stop at the point of looking at EV return. Once you determined 4968.58 was the "halfway" you could determine "worst case scenario" for that amount to see whether or not on average it's a play (understanding it could hit before or after that half way point - but in the long run it will hit at that point).

I came up with an EV of only like -$1800, while the major would provide back about $3300 (after taxes). Sounds like a play to me =).

I think we're speaking the same language, but different dialects. You're more on the % payback, ensuring it's over 100%... Where as I'm more on the EV, ensuring it's over 100% (quite similarly).

With 8 to 10 hours a day you must be spending a lot playing at casino. Yes luck come from a strange way especially when your on the brink of giving up. But their is also and most of the time the unlucky moment were you come to a casino with high spirit of winning big but slowly your being demolish because of unlucky of winning.