Is this suspicious

A video poker player playing $1 and $2 single hand 9/6 Double Double Bonus poker has played about 22,000 hands over eight visits and has hit four royals. This player is currently winning 12% on his wagers.

I realize it is a small sample, but how unlikely is this and how suspicious should the casino be?

If that's a thief, he's sophisticated, getting into those machines.

using an estimate of 1 in 40,000 to hit royal.

1 in 400 non cheating players will hit more than 3 royals in 22,000 hands..

assuming reasonable play most players will be within +/- 10% return at 22,000 hands.. however even if you found someone out at maybe 15% to 20%.. it still might be wrong to assume their guilt based on only that evidence. see the prosecutor's fallacy.

Quote: DRich

I realize it is a small sample, but how unlikely is this and how suspicious should the casino be?

this sounds like the number of Royals I have hit, but on worse pay tables.
I thought all casinos are always suspicious. for good and for bad reasons.

how unlikely do you think it is?

Sally

Quote: DRich

A video poker player playing $1 and $2 single hand 9/6 Double Double Bonus poker has played about 22,000 hands over eight visits and has hit four royals. This player is currently winning 12% on his wagers.

I realize it is a small sample, but how unlikely is this and how suspicious should the casino be?

It's outside the 99% confidence interval but not outside the 99.9% CI. 99.9% CI for that game goes between 84.54% and 113.42% RTP over 22,000 hands. He's lucky but not ridiculous. If he were winning 25% over 22,000 hands, that'd be a different story, a billion-to-one longshot. Your player is still better than 1 in 1000.

Edit: let him keep playing. If he does it again over the next 20,000 hands, get suspicious. Then you'd be in the 100k-to-1 range.

Also, consider how many players you have. With more players the extreme values become more extreme.

Quote: MathExtremist

let him keep playing. If he does it again over the next 20,000 hands, get suspicious. Then you'd be in the 100k-to-1 range.

I agree. But make sure you also keep seperate his results starting now.

Thank you all. I appreciate the information and am surprised . I thought the odds of that happening would be higher than that.

Quote: DRich

I thought the odds of that happening would be higher than that.

about the same chance of getting at least 1 royal in 90 hands
that is 1 in about 454
fun when it happens
Sally

I dunno. I've heard rumors of these "royal" things in video poker but I'm starting to have my doubts.

Still 0-for-2-years.

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I think a lot of slot operations managers have played cat and mouse games over the years. They offer up a high denom game with promotions that gives the players a few tenths edge. I think what the SOM is depending on is sucking in pot-shot players who don't have adequate bankroll. He's after busting them before they get into a royal run. A small percentage of the players get "over royaled." They get lucky right off the bat. The SOM then suspects the over royaled players are solid AP's. Since he knows how much they've won he knows they have at least that much to plow back at him. So he gets rid of them.

I'm not saying the SOM's thinking is right in this situation. I'm just saying that I think this is how many of them thought in the past.

Quote: mickeycrimm

I think what the SOM is depending on is sucking in pot-shot players who don't have adequate bankroll.

Note that this does not help the house. The fact that most of the under-bankrolled players bust out is irrelevant to the house (though relevant to the players who bust!)

Of course, there is a difference between offering a game that can be played with an edge, and having most people play it with an edge!

That's nothing compared to R.S. He hits a jackpot of some kind every 37 hands.

Quote: AxiomOfChoice

I dunno. I've heard rumors of these "royal" things in video poker but I'm starting to have my doubts.

Still 0-for-2-years.

I'm 0-for-lifetime, a lot longer than two years. It's so bad that I had to invent a new VP game with a higher royal frequency. At this point I'm thinking maybe I should wait to play for my first royal on my own game...

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Quote: MathExtremist

I'm 0-for-lifetime, a lot longer than two years. It's so bad that I had to invent a new VP game with a higher royal frequency. At this point I'm thinking maybe I should wait to play for my first royal on my own game...

Is it higher than dream card?

Quote: MathExtremist

I'm 0-for-lifetime, a lot longer than two years. It's so bad that I had to invent a new VP game with a higher royal frequency. At this point I'm thinking maybe I should wait to play for my first royal on my own game...

Try deuces wild. It's a lot easier to hit a royal there. Granted it'll have some ugly 2's in it, but it still counts!

Quote: geoff

Try deuces wild. It's a lot easier to hit a royal there. Granted it'll have some ugly 2's in it, but it still counts!

If it's not the top line, it doesn't count.

I prefer the strategy of playing TDB. If it pays like a royal, it counts, as far as I'm concerned.

Quote: AxiomOfChoice

Is it higher than dream card?

No, it's about half the rate of dream card for JoB games. I'm biased, but I think it's better than dream card: in my game, you never have to think about alternate strategies so there's no slowdown. Just play, and the royal happens more often. And you get paid for getting close, which doesn't happen with dream card (or any other VP game).

Quote: MathExtremist

No, it's about half the rate of dream card for JoB games. I'm biased, but I think it's better than dream card: in my game, you never have to think about alternate strategies so there's no slowdown. Just play, and the royal happens more often. And you get paid for getting close, which doesn't happen with dream card (or any other VP game).

I am no dream card expert, but I thought that there were no alternate strategies for dream card either? Either you get the dream card on the deal or you don't. You play normally, and you get more royals. You get paid for getting "close" in the sense that a 4 card royal + a dream card is a dealt royal (with a 50% dream card rate, that means more than 24x as many dealt royals!)

I haven't played your game, though. I will try it when it's in casinos if there is a decent pay table. Even if there isn't, I will throw $100 in and play for quarters, if it makes it to Vegas or my local CA casinos.

Quote: DRich

A video poker player playing $1 and $2 single hand 9/6 Double Double Bonus poker has played about 22,000 hands over eight visits and has hit four royals. This player is currently winning 12% on his wagers.

I realize it is a small sample, but how unlikely is this and how suspicious should the casino be?

The fact that he used his player's card when playing basically means he is not cheating.

If you talk to slot attendants in any large casino, they can tell you the stories of some
guy hit royals back to back ( I did it once), and one guy hit four or even more royals in one morning.

Quote: DRich

A video poker player playing $1 and $2 single hand 9/6 Double Double Bonus poker has played about 22,000 hands over eight visits and has hit four royals. This player is currently winning 12% on his wagers. I realize it is a small sample, but how unlikely is this and how suspicious should the casino be?

I remember an incident years ago where a player at the Fremont/Downtown Las Vegas hit 4 royals in one day. After the fourth royal they did a cursory investigation and found nothing wrong.

I've played multi-millions of hands at video poker. At the Pioneer/Laughlin I once hit 3 royals (royal odds 45,000) in just a few hours of play. The flip side of that is my longest stretch between royals is 250,000 hands.

Playing Draw Till U Win (103.2%) at Stockmen's in Elko I once hit 3 royals in just a few hours of play. The first royal the hired help was all happy for me. The second royal not so happy. The third royal they were giving me the evil eye and payed me all in twenties. It's just a little sawdust joint. I got my hat. One of the problems with DTUW was the royal frequency was only 9800. If you put in the hours you literally averaged a royal a day. Everything was hand pay back then. That's a real attention getter.

I know one player who hit 6 royals in one day playing DTUW. This was along about 2003 or 2004. I was holed up in Minden sweeping out Flush Attacks and House a Rockin's at the time. There was a bank of Bally Gamemaker's by the cage. I walked by one day and seen DTUW. "What the Hell?" I thought. That game wasn't there before. How the hell did it get there? So I grabbed a seat and started banging away. A couple of hours later I came up with a royal. While waiting for the hand pay a floor person said to me:

"You should play that machine beside you too."
"Why?" I asked
"A couple of days ago some guy hit 6 royals playing these two machines."
"No kidding?"

I started racking my brain trying to figure out who the player was. I was wondering if I now had competition at the Carson Valley Inn. I quit for the night after that one royal. The next day I came in and swept out the Flush Attack's and the House A Rockin's then headed over to the Gamemaker bank. The DTUW was gone. Oh, well. Another one bites the dust.

About a year later I ran into D. R. at Stockmen's in Fallon playing DTUW. I told him about someone hitting 6 royals in one day at the Carson Valley Inn.

"That was me" he said.
"Did you draw any heat?"
"Oh, hell yeah! They called Gaming. I had to explain to Gaming how the game worked."
"What was the outcome?"
"Management called Bally's and asked them what the hell was going on. Bally's told them it was just a lucky run and if they leave the game in everything will average out in the long run. They asked Bally's what the payback of the game is. Bally's didn't know. Do you believe that?"
"Wow! Did you get the boot?"
"Well they actually called Gaming and Bally's after my 4th royal. They let me keep playing after I talked to them, but two more royals and they 86'd me. I don't know how much longer the game lasted there."
"It was gone a couple of days later. I hit one royal and they jerked the game."

D.R. was the one who wrote the program to analyze DTUW. For knowledge and skill he's the best machine pro I've ever met personally. He used to be a writer for Video Poker Times.

At one time Stockmen's in Fallon had DTUW at nickel, quarter, 50 cent, and dollar levels. They got smashed and jerked the quarter, 50 cent, and dollars. They left the nickels alone. We didn't care about the nickel play because it didn't have a decent hourly rate. So that nickel game sat in there for a couple of years without getting any action. Apparently the hired help had forgotten what happened. They changed their machines to multi-denom. The Gamemakers with the DTUW was changed to nickel, 10 cent, 20 cent, 25 cent. That's why D. R. and I were back at Stockmen's.

There was a truck stop in Wells that had a little 30 machine casino. Two Gamemaker's had DTUW. I would stop in here and there and hit them for a couple of royals and go. D. R. did the same. So when we were in Fallon I asked D. R.:

"You been to Wells lately?".
"Yeah, you can forget Wells."
"They finally jerked the game?"
"Not exactly. You won't believe what I seen there."
"C'mon. Tell me."
"Well, I get into Wells and stop at the truck stop to see if the game is still there. There's a guy sitting there playing DTUW. I check the other machine and the game is gone. So I figure this guy can't play forever so I go get a hotel room. I came back that night and guess what. He was gone and so was the game. It wasn't on the machine. So I go back to my hotel room for the night and figuring to leave town in the morning. The next morning I stop at the truck stop to east and guess what?"
"What?" I asked
"That dude was back in the casino playing DTUW."
"No kidding?"
"Yeah! Someone was keying the game up for him then keying the game off when he was through."
"Wow! So they were using DTUW to skim that little casino."
"Yeah. And by keying the game on and off they weren't cutting anyone else in on the action. I figure that guy had something working with the slot attendant."