Instinctive paranoia
I can’t say that I’m feeling very calm now. Had a bad run with the cards and lost a few dollars - got my pride wacked outa shape. Thought about playing video poker for a change of scenery, but ended up walking past the slot machines into the bar. And it’s not like he’s anteing up so much cash he gets any rights to bid me what to do. He’s like a piker - stingy bettor with a big mouth. Not worth the time of day, most days.
But, after the third screwdriver, he did get me to thinking. When I lost the third pot in a row to river cards against the odds, I confess to thinking I was caught in a skin game. Just a moment of anger. Ain’t no-one with the cojones to try anything against me for real - not with my connections. But there’s lots of folk get it into their heads that online video poker sites are cheating them. So I suppose I’d better say a few words of reassurance - not that it’ll actually boost your confidence. The truth ain’t designed to do that.
So, sit down in front of a video poker machine playing on a pay table that’s offering 9-6-250 like online at goldencasino.com. For those who’ve not boned up on the jargon, that’s a machine paying 250 per coin on a Royal Flush, 9 on a Full House and 6 on a Flush. That machine’s set up to pay back only a fraction over 98% of what it takes. Even if you play a perfect strategy on this machine, the theoretical return never gets above 100%. It bears saying again. No matter which lucky rabbit’s foot you got in your pants, the very best you can hope to do is to almost break even.
If I stopped there, there’s no sense in any casino cheating on the slot machines. But there’s no denying you’re right ’bout one thing. Greed’s the worm in the gambling apple. Don’t matter which side of the fence you’re on, there’s always some as thinks they’re gonna hit it big. So I’ve seen pit bosses and managers decide the Vig’s not enough and rig the games. I’ve seen a few do it to put the money in their own pockets - most of them got decent burials, too. Yeh, there’s some cheating going on, but most of it’s on your side and it’s not very subtle.
So why do some folk get so all-fired sure they’ve been cheated by slot machines? In a word: frustration. They were hot, certain their luck was in, but had a long bad session. That always makes the loss harder to bear - when your emotion gets in the way of your judgement. Gambling’s got streaks of luck both ways. On one hot August night in 1913, the roulette wheel in Monte Carlo came up black a record-breaking twenty-six times in a row. They were doubling their bets after every loss. But they tapped out of money before the streak ended. Was there anything wrong with the wheel? Nope! The math god smiled and it was true.
Just ’cause you come up empty on one or two sessions don’t mean nothing ‘cept your wins and losses’re averaging out over time. So don’t even try to say that online poker is rigged or something like this. There isn’t anything like this. So how many thousand hands of data you gonna pay to collect to test your hypothesis? It’s put up or shut up. No-one likes a sore loser unless they got the evidence to prove otherwise.
One last thought before the thinking’s done: some of you load up your own software to run alongside video poker machines - kinda like a coach. Me, I don’t have no problem with that, but some online casinos’re uploading Dynamic Link Library subroutines to identify the applications you’re running at the same time as the casino package. They might not like some of the things they find - not within the spirit of the game from their point of view. Remember the old Chinese philosoph saying, “Big fish eat small fish.”
Catch ya ’round.