The Dreaded Variance
If you subscribe to the theory that the more you play you’ll eventually reach a positive expectation playing full pay VP, you may want to consider the variance. You might play perfect strategy, with no mistakes on a full pay machine for years and never hit a Royal Flush. Or, you might play for an hour and hit.
When you factor in you PPM (plays per minute) or PPH, (plays per hour) times the max coin bet on any given machine you may calculate your coin in total over a specific number of plays and time.
The total is staggering to the Amateur VP player.
A Royal comes on average once in 40,250 plays X $1.25 per hand (max play) and that’s a quarter machine. That’s over $50,000.00 in coin in.
True some winnings are replayed but overall your losses can be significant if you are a victim of a negative variance, and you don’t get that Royal.
Some Guru’s advocate and endless play strategy to eventually get even but the average player doesn’t have the bankroll to sustain that scenario.
So the end result may be “Ruination” (IE risk of ruin) as it is expressed in most cases.
If you’re new don’t fall prey to the “Advantage Player” mindset, unless you’re truly in for the long haul, and you had better have the bankroll to weather the storm.
IMHO play for fun with a good money management system. Those jackpots will come eventually but the free drinks and entertainment value will come now.
Ben Jammin
Quote: BenJamminYou might play perfect strategy, with no mistakes on a full pay machine for years and never hit a Royal Flush.
If your playing with any regularity (10k hands/wk) I'd say this is extremely remote.
Quote: odiousgambityou are correct however that you could do some serious damage to a bankroll before hitting
Amen to that!
Quote: BenJamminIf you’re new don’t fall prey to the “Advantage Player” mindset, unless you’re truly in for the long haul, and you had better have the bankroll to weather the storm.
IMHO play for fun with a good money management system. Those jackpots will come eventually but the free drinks and entertainment value will come now.
Ben Jammin
And what exactly would be the "advantage player mindset", that is supposedly so potentially hurtful? The only difference between an AP and a "normal" player is that he 1) only plays with a +EV and 2) learns the games' strategies well enough to ensure that. Any negative outcome that happens to him--as in, bad luck/negative variance--will still be better than for the player who experiences identical luck/variance, but is playing under -EV conditions.
I understand what you're saying, but "you might never hit a royal" is a partial truism that really doesn't apply. The +EV player AND the -EV player will both be behind when they finally hit the royal; the difference is, the +EV player will be behind by less than the amount paid by the royal, and the -EV player more. Variance happens to both, but what the player CAN do is control where the middle of the bell curve lies (by game choice and proper strategy)--and that is all that constitutes the AP mindset. It's a valuable mindset to have when gambling in general--always look for an edge.
The "Advantage Player" mindset assumes a regular long term play schedule, proper bank roll, and factors in the Royal Flush as part of the EV.
Mathematically it's a valid model, but in real life application the "Variance" factor may apply, meaning you might not get that Royal for weeks, months, or even years in some cases.
I've heard tell of folks playing for years and not getting a Royal.
The gurus of course advocate that if you continue to play for the long haul, then everything will come out roses but beware, the shining light at the end of the tunnel may only be the headlight of an oncoming train.
But of course they want you to buy their books and software. Why don't we factor that into our "Positive Expectation"?
Back in the day when VP was relatively new the casinos never figured anyone would figure out how to beat it. They was wrong. Allot of folks made some bucks on that one, and so they can say they are positive for their lifetime average.
But alas them casinos is on to us now and use them full pay machines as bait for suckers, and guess what? Them Gurus figured out how to continue to make money.
So, buy those books and VP software and practice 10 hours a day. You'll get there, I promise!
Quote: BenJamminSo, buy those books and VP software and practice 10 hours a day. You'll get there, I promise!
What you're missing is that the books and practice will be beneficial to you even if you DON'T hit that royal or royals that you need to realize your advantage. More often than not, the proper play increases your EV over the alternative even if you can't get a royal by doing it. For instance, knowing that in 9/6 JOB (which I know, is a -EV game, but bear with me), you should keep the pair from 66789 rather than drawing to the straight will add a certain amount to your overall results.
It's also true that the "AP mindset" may decrease the frequency of royals. Consider the hand AKQJs2 in fullpay deuces wild--a wild royal, paying 25 bets if you hold all five cards. Drawing one card to the royal, discarding the deuce, results in an EV of slightly more than 19 bets. Drawing would be a huge mistake that would cost you almost six bets, even though you WOULD get a royal more often this way. That's because you would be reducing your payout to even money (2 for 1) 13 out of 47 times, for a loss of 23 bets, reducing it to nothing 30 of 47 times, for a loss of 25 bets, and achieving the same payout 3 out of 47 times (no gain or loss). All those losses of 23 and 25 bets add up to more than will be made up for by the eventual royal.
You're correct that the money spent in buying books/software, as well as the opportunity cost of the time spent in learning to play well, should be factored into EV. But 10-15 hours' accurate play on a +EV machine should make up for that cost.
While it seems like *FOREVER* between hitting certain events, nobody counts the number of hands in between, except on a simulator.Quote: LottoballsHas anyone seen say 400,000 hand w/o a royal?
Since I have been doing some 500 million spin simulations for my Poker For Roulette, I can tell you that, on average, numbers can not appear for as many as 700 spins.
Does that answer your question?
Quote: LottoballsIf a Royal comes every 40k~ hands, and the game was 9/6 JOB, what has been the worst run in terms of hands/cycles a certain team or AP has gone through? Has anyone seen say 400,000 hand w/o a royal?
The odds of going 400K hands without a royal is about 1 in 22,000. PaulEwog told me quite a story of a royal drought, but I don't remember the details. Let me ask him...
Quote: WizardThe odds of going 400K hands without a royal is about 1 in 22,000. PaulEwog told me quite a story of a royal drought, but I don't remember the details. Let me ask him...
Droughts occur when you go from $1.25 hands to $5 or more hands. (I swear^%@*&^#(*!)
Quote: FleaStiffOne Vegas blogger-type said he has played VP for a decade and never seen a royal flush. I have no recollection of what specific games he played or how often.
I believe that was Vegas Rex, but I got the impression he didn't play all that much VP. I think he was more like "stick a $20 in" once a week or so.
As the Wizard mentioned, I on the other hand have well earned the title of "biggest loser", and I play VP from early in the morning until late at night. I have hit royals; as I posted earlier today my first one was on line 3 of Multistrike, a .25 royal x 4 for $4,000. My next was a .25 royal and my third and final was a .25 progressive for about $2,650. That was in November of 2007, and it's been a looooooong three and a half years since then.
I play almost exclusively VP as it has the right mix of risk and reward for me. While I would like to say I play at 100% proficiency I can't, but with Winpoker I generally run above 99% and mostly get minor errors that have a very low cost in coin. But I also kind of gave up on practicing since it didn't seem to matter much when all I'd ever get was crap anyway, so I don't know how I'd do today. But I do know I'd probably have trouble winning if the game I was playing was "any single card higher than 9 or better". I think that at some point in time I must have screwed the Pope's sister or something because nobody could have as bad luck as I do without their being some kind of cause behind it.
Now I have hit "royal equivalents" in the past few years, including a KOB JW 5OAK and quad aces on "Royal Aces" so I'm not completely out of the money. And while I used to hit a lot of other decent things, those have been fewer and farther between the last year and a half. On returning from every single trip to Vegas I've taken in the past 3 1/2 years, (which numbers around 10), I've said "This was the worst trip ever, it can't get any worse than this". Yet it does. I'd KILL for some of those "poor" trips of 2 or 3 years ago.
I play anywhere from 30% - 90% DW variants, depending on how it and JOB or JW variants are treating me. BDW is my favorite game in part because it has a nice variety of moderate wins and in part because I'm usually way over the norm for 5 OAK aces. But I'll also play JOB if there is a good progressive attached to it, as well as DDB, BP, BDLX, Shockwave, and occasionally TDB. I rarely play multi-games, and since its been so long since I've hit a royal I've moved up in denomination to playing .50 and $1 games.
As for how many hands its been since my last royal, I can't say for sure but before my trip in November of '09 I figured I was around 600,000 hands. I didn't keep exact track of hands played but through tracking time, (which I figured by taking about how long I was on the floor and subtracting about 20% for wandering around, bathroom breaks, etc, and then taking off an addition 20% just to make sure I didn't overestimate it), hands per hour, (which I also discount 20% from what Winpoker says I play), and coin through and points earned I could get a good idea of how many hands were played. Within the past 6 months I've had a good occasion to double check that, (a 4 hour session where I did very little in variation of game or denomination), which lined right up with what my card points said. Since the 600,000 estimate I've had 3 Vegas trips of about 10 nights total and a dozen or so trips to the local riverboats so I'm figuring I'm somewhere around the 750k level.
Of course, I could be way off, but I'd say there is almost as great a chance I'm underestimating as overestimating. Worst case, I can't imagine I'm below 500k. Since I noticed a boatload of times being dealt 4 to the royal I started keeping track of that in May of 09. I've played a lot less in the past 2 years than I did in the year and a half prior to that, but since I started keeping track I've recorded 34 times being dealt 4 to the royal. And I've never, in free play or real, been dealt a royal.
But as I said, it just keeps getting worse. I mostly stay and play downtown, but I have not hit a single quad deuces downtown in at least a year and a half. On my trip in November I thought I was doing bad when my largest hits consisted of one .25 White Hot Aces for $300, one DW quad deuces, (at the Riviera), for $250, 2 BDW 5 Aces for $200 each with everything else $125 or below. On my last trip in early February, (10 AM Thursday through noon Saturday), I didn't have a single win over $125 and about 75% of my play was .50 or $1. I had 2 quads my first day, and then never hit another. I didn't hit a single 5 OAK playing BDW.
Why post this? Because I find the whole thing mind boggling and I figured others would too. It also serves as a good "it could be a whole hell of a lot worse" reminder for those that find themselves in a slump. And while I'd like to think "It couldn't get any worse", I've seen how it can, repeatedly, so I'm not all that optimistic.
And I'll close with a question for the Wizard: Isn't there something like "the law of diminishing returns" which states that once you get so far out of the "norm" you are unlikely to ever find your way back?
Quote: PaulEWogAnd I'll close with a question for the Wizard: Isn't there something like "the law of diminishing returns" which states that once you get so far out of the "norm" you are unlikely to ever find your way back?
I'm sure you know the machines have a memory-less property, where it doesn't make any difference how long it has been since your last royal, your odds on the next play are the same as they always were. However, the deeper you dig yourself into the hole, the less likely you'll ever climb out of it. Does that help?
Quote: FleaStiffOne Vegas blogger-type said he has played VP for a decade and never seen a royal flush. I have no recollection of what specific games he played or how often.
I've played VP for over a decade (granted, not particularly often) and I've never hit a royal flush. I've *seen* plenty of them...
Quote: LottoballsNo expert here, but on average if you are dealt 4 to a royal 47 times in JOB you "should" get one royal.
Correct.
EV = n*p
This is a simple binomial distribution question.
Success exact
0 36.3931%
1 37.1842%
2 18.5921%
3 6.0626%
4 1.4498%
5 0.2710%
6 0.0412%
7 0.0053%
8 0.0006%
9 0.0001%
One has then a 63.61% probability of getting 1 or more.
That leads to the obvious question.
What is the probability of being dealt 4 to the royal and then drawing that last card for the royal?
The Wizard has a cool page all about that and more HERE
Quote: PaulEWog
Since I noticed a boatload of times being dealt 4 to the royal I started keeping track of that in May of 09. I've played a lot less in the past 2 years than I did in the year and a half prior to that, but since I started keeping track I've recorded 34 times being dealt 4 to the royal. And I've never, in free play or real, been dealt a royal.
After reading this statistic I have to think you have overestimated the hands you've played since a royal. When I was playing vp six hours a day I would avg being dealt 4 to a royal about 3 times/day. You said you've recorded being dealt a royal 34 times since May '09 so that's roughly equal to 11 days of full time play without a royal, which is pretty normal. Then let's multiply that by 3 since you said you played more frequently in the previous year and a half and you get to 102 times being dealt 4 to a royal. That's like playing about 5 weeks full time without a royal, which is unlucky but not crazy bad. In my estimation around 200k hands without a royal. I'm sure it seems much longer than that though!
Quote: PaulEWogI believe that was Vegas Rex, but I got the impression he didn't play all that much VP. I think he was more like "stick a $20 in" once a week or so.
As the Wizard mentioned, I on the other hand have well earned the title of "biggest loser", and I play VP from early in the morning until late at night. I have hit royals; as I posted earlier today my first one was on line 3 of Multistrike, a .25 royal x 4 for $4,000. My next was a .25 royal and my third and final was a .25 progressive for about $2,650. That was in November of 2007, and it's been a looooooong three and a half years since then.
I play almost exclusively VP as it has the right mix of risk and reward for me. While I would like to say I play at 100% proficiency I can't, but with Winpoker I generally run above 99% and mostly get minor errors that have a very low cost in coin. But I also kind of gave up on practicing since it didn't seem to matter much when all I'd ever get was crap anyway, so I don't know how I'd do today. But I do know I'd probably have trouble winning if the game I was playing was "any single card higher than 9 or better". I think that at some point in time I must have screwed the Pope's sister or something because nobody could have as bad luck as I do without their being some kind of cause behind it.
Now I have hit "royal equivalents" in the past few years, including a KOB JW 5OAK and quad aces on "Royal Aces" so I'm not completely out of the money. And while I used to hit a lot of other decent things, those have been fewer and farther between the last year and a half. On returning from every single trip to Vegas I've taken in the past 3 1/2 years, (which numbers around 10), I've said "This was the worst trip ever, it can't get any worse than this". Yet it does. I'd KILL for some of those "poor" trips of 2 or 3 years ago.
I play anywhere from 30% - 90% DW variants, depending on how it and JOB or JW variants are treating me. BDW is my favorite game in part because it has a nice variety of moderate wins and in part because I'm usually way over the norm for 5 OAK aces. But I'll also play JOB if there is a good progressive attached to it, as well as DDB, BP, BDLX, Shockwave, and occasionally TDB. I rarely play multi-games, and since its been so long since I've hit a royal I've moved up in denomination to playing .50 and $1 games.
As for how many hands its been since my last royal, I can't say for sure but before my trip in November of '09 I figured I was around 600,000 hands. I didn't keep exact track of hands played but through tracking time, (which I figured by taking about how long I was on the floor and subtracting about 20% for wandering around, bathroom breaks, etc, and then taking off an addition 20% just to make sure I didn't overestimate it), hands per hour, (which I also discount 20% from what Winpoker says I play), and coin through and points earned I could get a good idea of how many hands were played. Within the past 6 months I've had a good occasion to double check that, (a 4 hour session where I did very little in variation of game or denomination), which lined right up with what my card points said. Since the 600,000 estimate I've had 3 Vegas trips of about 10 nights total and a dozen or so trips to the local riverboats so I'm figuring I'm somewhere around the 750k level.
Of course, I could be way off, but I'd say there is almost as great a chance I'm underestimating as overestimating. Worst case, I can't imagine I'm below 500k. Since I noticed a boatload of times being dealt 4 to the royal I started keeping track of that in May of 09. I've played a lot less in the past 2 years than I did in the year and a half prior to that, but since I started keeping track I've recorded 34 times being dealt 4 to the royal. And I've never, in free play or real, been dealt a royal.
But as I said, it just keeps getting worse. I mostly stay and play downtown, but I have not hit a single quad deuces downtown in at least a year and a half. On my trip in November I thought I was doing bad when my largest hits consisted of one .25 White Hot Aces for $300, one DW quad deuces, (at the Riviera), for $250, 2 BDW 5 Aces for $200 each with everything else $125 or below. On my last trip in early February, (10 AM Thursday through noon Saturday), I didn't have a single win over $125 and about 75% of my play was .50 or $1. I had 2 quads my first day, and then never hit another. I didn't hit a single 5 OAK playing BDW.
Why post this? Because I find the whole thing mind boggling and I figured others would too. It also serves as a good "it could be a whole hell of a lot worse" reminder for those that find themselves in a slump. And while I'd like to think "It couldn't get any worse", I've seen how it can, repeatedly, so I'm not all that optimistic.
And I'll close with a question for the Wizard: Isn't there something like "the law of diminishing returns" which states that once you get so far out of the "norm" you are unlikely to ever find your way back?
No wonder you're such an angry, suspicious, and downtrodden conspiracy theorist.
By the way, I met Jerry at the Aquarius once again a few weeks ago for our final training session, and for the 3rd time in the four sessions I've advised him, he hit another royal--this time at the $2 level.
The real reason I logged in wasn't to chat but to ask Wizard here if he did find out what I asked him in an e-mail about Red Rock, because I haven't received a response to my last few e-mails.
Thanks in advance!
Rob
3 out of 4 sessions with a Royal for Jerry would appear to be a rare event to me, maybe even a once in a lifetime event.Quote: RobSingerBy the way, I met Jerry at the Aquarius once again a few weeks ago for our final training session, and for the 3rd time in the four sessions I've advised him, he hit another royal--this time at the $2 level.
Rob
Most VP players talk about "perfect play" but fail to mention that a 99.99% return, for example, also requires a perfect distribution.
Since your website does not list all your "special plays", do your special plays add to a higher frequency of quads or higher hands?
Or is yours and Jerry's current success just a function of playing at higher denominations when a quad or higher hand does hit?
3 of 4 sessions with royals is completely out of the norm for my or any other play strategy, only he had something a handful of experts deny exist and prefer to spin it as variance: Good Luck. He said that's never happened to him and he's only had 2 royals on one trip once prior. Of course, you know how he always used to just pour the winnings and more, back into the machines back then. I've seen no more than 2 of these type royal frenzies in my playing career, and one got me banned from Bellagio in writing, which I put in the paper about 8 years ago.
The overriding rationale for all of my special plays that deviate from optimal strategy is to increase the # of opportunities that arise in order to increase the hit frequency of special quads (2's, 3's, 4's, J's, Q's, K's & Aces in SDBP; 2's, 3's, 4's & Aces in BP/TBP+/SABP/DDBP) the SF in SDBP & TBP+, and in fewer instances, the Royal.
Yes, AP's who subscribe to 100% perfect play require the RF be hit on or near queue in order to have any chance at eeking out that tiny win %. And of course that presumes flawless play & machines in 100% random operating order, throughout. You notice PaulEWog correctly identifying that he really has no idea how close to perfection he plays in his ungodly amount of time he's wasted away at the machines inside casinos. However, where he can actually get a reading on how well he plays--on his home computer with Dancer's product--he failed to say that it in no way represents what his actual casino results might be since casinos come with multiple distractions, some pressure to have winning hands, and fatigue always setting in which automatically reduces efficiency exponentially per hour of continued play.
Quote: guido1113 out of 4 sessions with a Royal for Jerry would appear to be a rare event to me, maybe even a once in a lifetime event.
Most VP players talk about "perfect play" but fail to mention that a 99.99% return, for example, also requires a perfect distribution.
Since your website does not list all your "special plays", do your special plays add to a higher frequency of quads or higher hands?
Or is yours and Jerry's current success just a function of playing at higher denominations when a quad or higher hand does hit?
-- All the special plays are here... http://www.alanbestbuys.com/id194.html
My initial estimation is that some of the plays made will increase the hit rate of the big quads/Royal Flushes at the cost of hitting lower hands more often (Houses/Flushes/Straights). I didn't got through each of them in turn. Some of the plays don't do this and give up even a good chance at a very good hit for a much smaller chance of a very big hit hit (bonus quads or a royal), and I think these plays are weak even within Rob's framework. We've discussed this and agreed to disagree.
If you look at my post elsewhere, I did an analysis of playing various poker machines over about 100 hours (which seems a reasonable medium term) and how much variance there is for each. I think it's under the systems forums. I do have numbers for playing with set win points rather than time, but it doesn't change much to those curves. I've not tinkered with playing 100 hours with Mr Singer's increasing steps methods (romp-through-town and advanced-romp-through-town) and haven't done any analysis in using his plays within those frameworks. Someone else did post that they had, but I don't think they ever posted any hard results so I can't really comment on their initial conclusion of "very interesting indeed".
My only question... is there the photograph that was promised before the Jerry Logan got himself banned?
On the photo, when Jerry hit his latest royal he did tip an attendant to take our picture together in front of the winning screen. But I don't know how it turned out and I've not seen it, and I believe he said he was nuclear bombed? out of this forum.
Quote: RobSingerthecesspit: The plays which "give up even a good chance at a very good hit for a much smaller chance of a very big hit" as you've said, primarily give up the opportunity of a specific FH hit (i.e., dealt 2277X and holding just the 22). However, included in the risk analysis is the fact that a number of different FH's are still capable of being hit, as well as numerous two pair and trips. In other words, it is not a total give-up for some pot shot.
Indeed, and I didn't intend to imply that it was a complete give up. It that my analysis of some of the plays that the give up of a good hand (AA versus a four to a straight flush if I recall) that drawing to the AA is not a good move to try and hit a big hand, but is much more likely to end up with a trips or pair. The AA is an order of magnitude or more less likely to make quads than the 4 to the straight getting there.
As I said, we don't agree on this, it's my point of view and one anyone looking at the hands should also do their own analysis and see if they agree or not.
Quote: RobSingerWhat happened to the most prolific of posters I called MKL654321ZERO! ?
Jeez, Jerry, give it a rest already.
Quote: EvenBobJeez, Jerry, give it a rest already.
Are you ever right?
Quote: RobSingerthecesspit: The plays which "give up even a good chance at a very good hit for a much smaller chance of a very big hit" as you've said, primarily give up the opportunity of a specific FH hit (i.e., dealt 2277X and holding just the 22). However, included in the risk analysis is the fact that a number of different FH's are still capable of being hit, as well as numerous two pair and trips. In other words, it is not a total give-up for some pot shot.
On the photo, when Jerry hit his latest royal he did tip an attendant to take our picture together in front of the winning screen. But I don't know how it turned out and I've not seen it, and I believe he said he was nuclear bombed? out of this forum.
Jerry standing in front of a machine that has a royal showing doesn't mean he was playing when it was hit.
Quote: dmJerry standing in front of a machine that has a royal showing doesn't mean he was playing when it was hit.
Are you implying that he would run around a casino looking for an as yet unpaid RF, ask the player to step aside, and then ask an attendant to snap a photo of him in front of it? You don't go to casinos much do you.
There is so much money at stake, literally hundreds of millions (billions?) involved in the gaming industry, I wouldn't trust my own mother.
Posters here aren't the first to speculate about things getting progressively worse over time. The general climate in the gaming industry seems to have chilled a little bit, and the Pope's a little bit Catholic.
Gaming control or not, random number generator or not, I can tell you I've played some of the tightest machines I've ever seen within the last couple of years.
Yeah I've won a few, but I keep it modest and quit while I'm ahead, that is, if I can get ahead.
My lifelong average? Don't ask.
There's just too much money here to trust anyone.
Am I paranoid? F*%#in A.
I really don't know anyone other than Jerry who's been beating the machines up lately. I'm not playing pro any longer but in the little I've played this year up to $2 I've lost a few thousand myself. Yes it's BIG business, which is why I also believe anything goes in times like these. But if and to what extent is anyone's guess. Makes for good arguments though.
