I was so lucky not to hit this progressive last month

I chased a mystery progressive for over four weeks. The progressive is not the must-hit variety. I estimate that it takes an average of 50,000 to 60,000 spins at max bet to trigger the progressive. Even though this is a linked online progressive, it was getting very little play. I was actually fortunate not to hit the progressive on Sep 29th. On that day, the progressive meter was around $29,000. However, I had lost a cumulative $43,420 by that date. My progressive chase had started with 18 straight losing days. If I had happened to hit the progressive on 9/29, I would have ended the chase with a net loss of over $14K.

My luck changed dramatically starting on Sep 30th. I had my first winning day and I subsequently had only three more losing days out of the remaining 14 days. After I finally hit the progressive, I was actually ahead by over $11K. In the end, my bankroll was better off by more than $25K because the progressive decided not to hit until after my luck improved.

Here is a graph of my bankroll during the course of the chase (relative to my starting bankroll on the site).



This data does not include a few thousand dollars of free slot play I earned along the way. My host actually decided to add free sot play to my account on three days because I was losing so much!

This is a ridiculous chart. I think we have all had losing streaks that inexplicably turned into heaters. But this abrupt change in luck is just off the charts. By the way, this is an extremely high-variance game (variance of at least 350 bets^2), which is probably one of the reasons that I had little competition. The drain and the variance can just beat you up. It is also a rare slot because there are very important strategy choices in the frequent bonus feature. Therefore, the game does not even have an auto-play mode.

I played 31,463 spins at a max bet of $10 and this accounted for 94% of the meter movement over that period. Clearly, I had little competition.

How long does it take to do those 31,000+ spins?
Can you be doing something else at the same time?
Is this a USA regulated or off shore casino?
When you started that sojourn, what do you estimate your EV was for each $10 bet?

And congratulations.

Quote: SOOPOO

How long does it take to do those 31,000+ spins?
link to original post

Keep pushing dem buttons.

So I just need to make 25 line 2 cent denom bets for 60,000 spins and risk $2.5K for a chance at the grand jackpot?

Quote: SOOPOO

How long does it take to do those 31,000+ spins?
Can you be doing something else at the same time?
Is this a USA regulated or off shore casino?
When you started that sojourn, what do you estimate your EV was for each $10 bet?

And congratulations.
link to original post

There are no strategy decisions in the base game and I can do 50 spins a minute if I continuously click to stop the reels. The bonus round is very much slower. I think I averaged less than two hours a day and probably less on the earlier days when I was losing very quickly.

The game is similar to a double-up game in that you need to risk all of your base game earnings in the bonus round, and and 90% of the time you end up with nothing. You need to change the bet size repeatedly in the bonus round depending on the size of the accumulated win. If you don't do this properly, then your RTP suffers a lot. So I can watch the news and play the base game. But I need to concentrate when I am in a bonus round.

It is a US regulated casino. The game has disappeared from a number of casinos in my jurisdiction. It is an older style game and it doesn't get any play at many sites. I waited 11 months for it to get ripe at this site before I started playing for the progressive.

Assuming that I recapture almost all of the 3% meter rate, I think I was playing at a 4% edge. If I was wrong about this and some team came in and played against me, then they would probably capture most of the 3% that I had previously fed into the meter. I only lost out on one chase over the years. I went away for a three week vacation and the jackpot was near reset when I came back. So I don't have any idea how much play my competition put in to take the jackpot away from me. But that is the only chase where i lost money.

This is a really good play in terms of edge percentage. But I would much rather play bingo Blackjack with a 0.5% edge and get a ton of coin in quickly. It is tough to start a chase knowing that it could take 100 hours and I could end up losing mid 5 figures.

Quote: Mental

I chased a mystery progressive for over four weeks. The progressive is not the must-hit variety. I estimate that it takes an average of 50,000 to 60,000 spins at max bet to trigger the progressive. Even though this is a linked online progressive, it was getting very little play. I was actually fortunate not to hit the progressive on Sep 29th. On that day, the progressive meter was around $29,000. However, I had lost a cumulative $43,420 by that date. My progressive chase had started with 18 straight losing days. If I had happened to hit the progressive on 9/29, I would have ended the chase with a net loss of over $14K.

My luck changed dramatically starting on Sep 30th. I had my first winning day and I subsequently had only three more losing days out of the remaining 14 days. After I finally hit the progressive, I was actually ahead by over $11K. In the end, my bankroll was better off by more than $25K because the progressive decided not to hit until after my luck improved.

Here is a graph of my bankroll during the course of the chase (relative to my starting bankroll on the site).



This data does not include a few thousand dollars of free slot play I earned along the way. My host actually decided to add free sot play to my account on three days because I was losing so much!

This is a ridiculous chart. I think we have all had losing streaks that inexplicably turned into heaters. But this abrupt change in luck is just off the charts. By the way, this is an extremely high-variance game (variance of at least 350 bets^2), which is probably one of the reasons that I had little competition. The drain and the variance can just beat you up. It is also a rare slot because there are very important strategy choices in the frequent bonus feature. Therefore, the game does not even have an auto-play mode.

I played 31,463 spins at a max bet of $10 and this accounted for 94% of the meter movement over that period. Clearly, I had little competition.
link to original post

Am I right in saying you made $11,000 in 6 weeks, but risked over $40,000 to get there?

That doesn't sound like a good business plan. What if somebody else had hit it a day or two before you?


ZCore13

Quote: MDawg

Quote: SOOPOO

How long does it take to do those 31,000+ spins?
link to original post

Keep pushing dem buttons.
link to original post

Probably no need to push many buttons. Oftentimes one can just set somthing like that on auto spins/play and go do other things.

Back when a popular well-known offshore joint had a semi-regular 150% bonuses up to 3k with a 10x rollover, they had a few slots set to 98%. They didn't have auto spins so, I just set up an auto-click mouse program and let it do its thing. That is over 3k in profits for depositing/activating everything and just walking away.

Nowadays most online slot providers have auto spins built-in where you can edit the number of spins, max stop losses, and stop wins among other things like stopping on bonuses rounds.

I have found some online slots where you can tell it to play x number of spins for x amount and it will skip all the animation and it will just give you your end results. I.E. spin 10k times for $2 a spin. A few minutes later it will show you your results.

Quote: Zcore13

Quote: Mental

I chased a mystery progressive for over four weeks. The progressive is not the must-hit variety. I estimate that it takes an average of 50,000 to 60,000 spins at max bet to trigger the progressive. Even though this is a linked online progressive, it was getting very little play. I was actually fortunate not to hit the progressive on Sep 29th. On that day, the progressive meter was around $29,000. However, I had lost a cumulative $43,420 by that date. My progressive chase had started with 18 straight losing days. If I had happened to hit the progressive on 9/29, I would have ended the chase with a net loss of over $14K.

My luck changed dramatically starting on Sep 30th. I had my first winning day and I subsequently had only three more losing days out of the remaining 14 days. After I finally hit the progressive, I was actually ahead by over $11K. In the end, my bankroll was better off by more than $25K because the progressive decided not to hit until after my luck improved.

Here is a graph of my bankroll during the course of the chase (relative to my starting bankroll on the site).



This data does not include a few thousand dollars of free slot play I earned along the way. My host actually decided to add free sot play to my account on three days because I was losing so much!

This is a ridiculous chart. I think we have all had losing streaks that inexplicably turned into heaters. But this abrupt change in luck is just off the charts. By the way, this is an extremely high-variance game (variance of at least 350 bets^2), which is probably one of the reasons that I had little competition. The drain and the variance can just beat you up. It is also a rare slot because there are very important strategy choices in the frequent bonus feature. Therefore, the game does not even have an auto-play mode.

I played 31,463 spins at a max bet of $10 and this accounted for 94% of the meter movement over that period. Clearly, I had little competition.
link to original post

Am I right in saying you made $11,000 in 6 weeks, but risked over $40,000 to get there?

That doesn't sound like a good business plan. What if somebody else had hit it a day or two before you?


ZCore13
link to original post

And what if he hit it the first spin?

If the progressive was hit on Sep 29th, why did you continue to play for a progressive that's now at reset?

Also, the var is +/- $12M?!?

Quote: 100xOdds

If the progressive was hit on Sep 29th, why did you continue to play for a progressive that's now at reset?

Also, the var is +/- $12M?!?
link to original post

My OP is a hypothetical. If the progressive had hit on Sep 29th, I would have been happy. It did not hit until the 13th, which is why I kept on playing. I ended up better of by $25K+ on the W/L statement plus a bunch of free slot play. In this sense, I was very fortunate that it did not hit on the 29th.

If my variance estimate is accurate, variance was 31463 * 350 bet^2 = 31463 * 350 * (10^2) = 1,101,205,000 ($^2).
This means the std. dev. was only $33,184. This is much smaller than my typical bankroll fluctuation in a given month.

But my variance estimate does not include the variance from the progressive. I don't know the actual progressive probability. I only have estimates from observing a modest number of progressive hits at 10 casinos over many years.

Quote: AxelWolf

Probably no need to push many buttons. Oftentimes one can just set somthing like that on auto spins/play and go do other things.

Back when a popular well-known offshore joint had a semi-regular 150% bonuses up to 3k with a 10x rollover, they had a few slots set to 98%. They didn't have auto spins so, I just set up an auto-click mouse program and let it do its thing. That is over 3k in profits for depositing/activating everything and just walking away.

Nowadays most online slot providers have auto spins built-in where you can edit the number of spins, max stop losses, and stop wins among other things like stopping on bonuses rounds.

I have found some online slots where you can tell it to play x number of spins for x amount and it will skip all the animation and it will just give you your end results. I.E. spin 10k times for $2 a spin. A few minutes later it will show you your results.
link to original post

Using a bot to play online is against most of the terms of service that I have read. Casinos have bot detection technology that they use to protect poker games. I prefer not to discuss the subject publicly.

In this specific case, there is no auto-play feature. Any bot would have to be able to read the screen, determine whether the game was in a bonus round or not, and act appropriately to modify the bet. This is a fairly low-level programming task.

In B&M, there have been numerous slot games where the RTP depends on strategy. Top Dollar was discussed on WOV, but much more extreme examples are 'Anything But 6' or '21 Gambler'. If you use the 'Collect' button improperly on '21 Gambler', you can cost yourself thousands of dollars in EV. Are there any other common games that fall into this category?



If you do guess which game this is, please don't mention the name here. If you PM me a guess, I will confirm if you are right.

I reverse-engineered the exact reel map and probabilities for the base game and the bonus round. I can confirm that always collecting base game wins right away results in a RTP around 85% based on my Monte Carlo simulations.

Quote: Zcore13

Am I right in saying you made $11,000 in 6 weeks, but risked over $40,000 to get there?

That doesn't sound like a good business plan. What if somebody else had hit it a day or two before you?

ZCore13
link to original post

Yes, I underperformed my EV for the play. But I made close to $15K (including free slot play) over about 25 hours of play. My EV was about 10K higher than my actual result, but I also expected the chase to take longer. It sounds like an okay business plan.

I risked much more than $40,000 on this play. In a fairly bad scenario, I could have been stuck $100K and someone else could have hit the progressive. This same game was available at two other online sites with a $100 max bet. At the first site, the progressive jackpot never got ripe before the site shut down for good. At the other site, I played for the progressive at $50 or $100 a spin and I got ahead $70K, then dropped $90k, then made a small comeback, and finally hit the progressive near $50K. They removed the game within a week.

Do you not realize that BJ APs risk hundreds of thousands of dollars with an edge that is a tiny fraction of my edge here? And they have travel expenses and get abused by casino security on a regular basis. They often have to split the profits. Any edge is good if you are bankrolled for the risk.

It was not possible that someone hit it a few days before I hit it. I would have stop playing if the meter reset.

Quote: Mental

Quote: AxelWolf

Probably no need to push many buttons. Oftentimes one can just set somthing like that on auto spins/play and go do other things.

Back when a popular well-known offshore joint had a semi-regular 150% bonuses up to 3k with a 10x rollover, they had a few slots set to 98%. They didn't have auto spins so, I just set up an auto-click mouse program and let it do its thing. That is over 3k in profits for depositing/activating everything and just walking away.

Nowadays most online slot providers have auto spins built-in where you can edit the number of spins, max stop losses, and stop wins among other things like stopping on bonuses rounds.

I have found some online slots where you can tell it to play x number of spins for x amount and it will skip all the animation and it will just give you your end results. I.E. spin 10k times for $2 a spin. A few minutes later it will show you your results.
link to original post

Using a bot to play online is against most of the terms of service that I have read. Casinos have bot detection technology that they use to protect poker games. I prefer not to discuss the subject publicly.

In this specific case, there is no auto-play feature. Any bot would have to be able to read the screen, determine whether the game was in a bonus round or not, and act appropriately to modify the bet. This is a fairly low-level programming task.
link to original post

Yes, this is true, however, this is back before they started to add those bot rules(only 10x wagering, hard to find that nowadays). Also, I know guys who can make bots fairly undetectable. Most of the online casinos I play all have auto spin built in, and as I said, you can oftentimes customize it to do many different things.

They are not doing very well protecting poker games. Recently, there was a good article about that subject and some Russian companies employing sophisticated bots. As we both know, Advantage players are usually 3 steps ahead of the casinos.

Quote: AxelWolf

however, this is back before they started to add those bot rules

Could we get some input from you that is not dated? Anything you had to say on table games was at best outdated too. And then you were going on and on about "the rules on checks in casinos" when it seemed clear that you had never received a check for a table win your entire life.

I like to comment only on that with which I have personal experience, and I am still going to casinos, actually doing it, so I know what is going on TODAY.

Quote: Mental

Quote: Zcore13

Am I right in saying you made $11,000 in 6 weeks, but risked over $40,000 to get there?

That doesn't sound like a good business plan. What if somebody else had hit it a day or two before you?

ZCore13
link to original post

Yes, I underperformed my EV for the play. But I made close to $15K (including free slot play) over about 25 hours of play. My EV was about 10K higher than my actual result, but I also expected the chase to take longer. It sounds like an okay business plan.

I risked much more than $40,000 on this play. In a fairly bad scenario, I could have been stuck $100K and someone else could have hit the progressive. This same game was available at two other online sites with a $100 max bet. At the first site, the progressive jackpot never got ripe before the site shut down for good. At the other site, I played for the progressive at $50 or $100 a spin and I got ahead $70K, then dropped $90k, then made a small comeback, and finally hit the progressive near $50K. They removed the game within a week.

Do you not realize that BJ APs risk hundreds of thousands of dollars with an edge that is a tiny fraction of my edge here? And they have travel expenses and get abused by casino security on a regular basis. They often have to split the profits. Any edge is good if you are bankrolled for the risk.

It was not possible that someone hit it a few days before I hit it. I would have stop playing if the meter reset.
link to original post

And, as I said... You could have hit it right away.

If you play in US regulated casinos, you have to permit a Player Location Check program to monitor your network connections and process table continuously. I get flagged for all sorts of innocuous processes running on my PC. I have had to remove multiple software packages in order to be allowed to play. Any program that smells like a VPN or remote login gets flagged. Any process in the proc table called 'PokerBot' probably won't go over well.

It is not paranoia if there are really people watching you from the shadows.

Quote: Mental

Do you not realize that BJ APs risk hundreds of thousands of dollars with an edge that is a tiny fraction of my edge here?

I don't think this is a good analogy
in bj you should win your hand more than 40% of the time - more than that when the count is high - the rest is made up from drawing bj, doubling and splits
in your experience you will win the progressive - what - idk - one out of 35,000 times________?
because of this, with bj you can get into - I won't say the long run - but let's say close to the long run - much, much sooner
these are 2 very different types of risks -

but I did enjoy quite a bit your description of your action - quite bold - and quite impressive

.

Quote: MDawg

Quote: AxelWolf

however, this is back before they started to add those bot rules

Could we get some input from you that is not dated? Anything you had to say on table games was at best outdated too. And then you were going on and on about "the rules on checks in casinos" when it seemed clear that you had never received a check for a table win your entire life.

I like to comment only on that with which I have personal experience, and I am still going to casinos, actually doing it, so I know what is going on TODAY.
link to original post

Well, at least I didn't claim to have won 60 some hands of BlackJack in a row and many other very hard to believe things, and not just hard to believe by me.


I don't take large checks from a casino, I have said that before(I have received oodles of checks from casinos). I want cold hard cash in my hand right now so there can't be any kind of issue. I have hit for over 100k and I just took cash. I don't need credit lines to play. When there was good reason I just put up front money and took out markers.

I'm talking about online casino slot play... THAT'S WHAT THIS THREAD IS ABOUT! I'm currently playing online as I'm writing this. The screenshot shows my current balance(1,800)on just one casino. I only invested about $360 and I'm clear and free to cash out after about 3.5 hours of play, all while watching some sports with my lovely wife.

Loose lips sink ships. I was never one for talking about current plays or even past plays that I felt were still relevant, or things that I felt could come back around. Oftentimes, it's not the play that matters, it's the techniques used to take advantage of those plays and what games are best(I prob should not have mentioned using double-up over in the 20% VP loss rebate thread). Most people around here know I mostly told people to ixnay onyay ethay Advantageyay ayPlay.

Even though I'm mostly retiring, I respect many in the AP community and I don't plan on running around yap trapping.

As far as getting comped fancy rooms, food, gifts, limos, shows... I have been doing that stuff since I was in my early 20's so I'm numb to it, I don't find it all that interesting, I have only mentioned that kind of stuff here a few times.

So you will have to suffer through AP stories and whatever I choose to tell publicly.

Quote: Mental

If you play in US regulated casinos, you have to permit a Player Location Check program to monitor your network connections and process table continuously. I get flagged for all sorts of innocuous processes running on my PC. I have had to remove multiple software packages in order to be allowed to play. Any program that smells like a VPN or remote login gets flagged. Any process in the proc table called 'PokerBot' probably won't go over well.

It is not paranoia if there are really people watching you from the shadows.
link to original post

You talk a lot for someone who keeps mentioning "loose lips," which would still be fine if there were much value to what you're saying.

I don't believe you have ever received a check for a table game win at a casino, which is as much to say as you have no personal experience with what the actual rules are for converting chips to checks. And no personal experience with a lot of other things (Show me the CTR!). Whatever you do discuss also seems to be rooted in years and years ago. And yet you still feel the need to go on and on and - to someone who does know.

Trying to argue with me about these things is like trying to convince the Pope that he's not Catholic.

Quote: MDawg

You talk a lot for someone who keeps mentioning "loose lips," which would still be fine if there were much value to what you're saying.

I don't believe you have ever received a check for a table game win at a casino, which is as much to say as you have no personal experience with what the actual rules are for converting chips to checks. And no personal experience with a lot of other things (Show me the CTR!). Whatever you do discuss also seems to be rooted in years and years ago. And yet you still feel the need to go on and on and - to someone who does know.

Trying to argue with me about these things is like trying to convince the Pope that he's not Catholic.
link to original post

I have said plenty of relevant current things in this thread, you have added nothing other than negative posts that I take as trolling.

The "Keep pushing dem buttons." that you directed at Mental was meant to be an arrogant disparaging remark..

Whatever the case... Feel free to Ignore me, I will be more than happy to return the favor.

Au contraire, I don't pretend to advise anyone on how to Push dem buttons.

But you just did, and failed, at that! with some antiquated advice that Mental said is no longer valid.

And then went on and on about other things with which you seem to have little or no personal experience.

Quote: MDawg

Au contraire, I don't pretend to advise anyone on how to Push dem buttons.

But you just did, and failed, at that! with some antiquated advice that Mental said is no longer valid.

And then went on and on about other things with which you have little or no personal experience.
link to original post

He did not say it was no longer valid/relevant, he said it was not valid to what he was playing currently WITHOUT USING A PROGRAM would be easy for some to make.

I can guarantee you that there are at least 10x more casinos that have auto-play than ones that don't. Most online casinos DON'T use geo-location software like he is talking about.

I can prove(and have) by logic, theory, math, accounting, and by doing it, that I can beat numerous online casinos. I developed my own methods myself going back to the 90's and it's still relevant today.

Quote: AxelWolf

going back to the 90's and it's still relevant today.
link to original post

Fine, fine, you may have the last word.

But...did you have a mullet in the '90s (or at any time)? Would it still be relevant today?

(To answer the same Q, no I have never had one.)

Quote: Mental

If you play in US regulated casinos, you have to permit a Player Location Check program to monitor your network connections and process table continuously. I get flagged for all sorts of innocuous processes running on my PC. I have had to remove multiple software packages in order to be allowed to play. Any program that smells like a VPN or remote login gets flagged. Any process in the proc table called 'PokerBot' probably won't go over well.

It is not paranoia if there are really people watching you from the shadows.
link to original post

Sounds like you need to go old-school "auto play" bot! :)

Quote: MDawg

Quote: AxelWolf

going back to the 90's and it's still relevant today.
link to original post

Fine, fine, you may have the last word.

But...did you have a mullet in the '90s (or at any time)? Would it still be relevant today?

(To answer the same Q, no I have never had one.)
link to original post

Perhaps in 1990 I had one(but not too long in the back) when I first arrived. I came from a hick town in Washington state at the time that is what most teens in that area had. When I first came to the hick town from a big town, I had short hair with the buzzed fade on the side(not sure what that style was called) but my sister was a beautician and she suggested to me I should change it, highly trusted her opinion.

About 6 months or so after being in Vegas a chick I was paling around with talked me into letting her cut and dye my hair super blond. My hair turned a slight orange. I didn't think it was that bad until I got to work and my boss looked at me and shook his head.

I did one of those dumb rattails for a short time, but a casino manager saw it eventually and said, hell no. I kept it mostly normal after that for a long time. I shaved it clean off for a long time, now I grew it back out to a normal length.

Quote: lilredrooster

Quote: Mental

Do you not realize that BJ APs risk hundreds of thousands of dollars with an edge that is a tiny fraction of my edge here?

I don't think this is a good analogy
in bj you should win your hand more than 40% of the time - more than that when the count is high - the rest is made up from drawing bj, doubling and splits
in your experience you will win the progressive - what - idk - one out of 35,000 times________?
because of this, with bj you can get into - I won't say the long run - but let's say close to the long run - much, much sooner
these are 2 very different types of risks -

but I did enjoy quite a bit your description of your action - quite bold - and quite impressive

link to original post

I stated earlier that I estimate that it takes an average of 50,000 to 60,000 spins at max bet ($10) to trigger the mystery progressive. I agree with your point that in the short run, my progressive game has a very skewed distribution of outcomes compared to BJ. BJ tends to a normal distribution rather quickly. In the long run, variance is variance. I don't really care if the variance comes via a skewed distribution or a coin flip.

I don't think you understand how much risk I am undertaking on a daily basis. I do about $30M-$40M per year in action and my daily bankroll fluctuations have a standard deviation of $10 to 15K depending on what types of promos are out there. I lost almost $20K yesterday and today I am ahead by over $28K. I was putting in 95% of the action on this progressive and that means there was only a 5% chance someone else hits it. If they do, so be it. It hardly makes difference at the end of the year. I can't control outcomes, so I just live with the variance.

If the jackpot got over $40K I would have started playing more hours per day. In the end, I almost certainly take home the jackpot, and that would offset most of my likely losses. In this case, I even ended up ahead. I don't really see it as a risky play. I am only writing about it because of the weird swings in luck and because it is a dying play. I don't write about the good stuff.

I would die of boredom playing ordinary Blackjack. I often give DK $150K of action on Bingo BJ on Ironman days. BBJ is quite a bit more interesting than BJ. The variance of BBJ is five times higher than BJ, and I have +/- swings of $20K all the time playing at just $600 per hand.