Human nature is a bitch.

[Ojisan]

So, last saturday I was at Winstar casino and casually popped a 20 into a video poker machine. I typically fair well on these things, racking up a hundred or two, and of course losing it all back in. But anyway, I had Jack and Queen of clubs and held them hoping for either of them to pair up or even get a piss lucky flush draw, but instead BAM, Ace, King, Ten all clubs pop up out of nowhere and my heart jumps! One thousand dollars! The woman next to me and especially I were ecstatic, we even grabbed each other's hands and exclaimed joy. I cashed that puppy in and walked away with ten shiny bills in my pocket, more money than I've ever personally had in cash on me. So, what does human nature have to do with this?

Well, the catch is, I was playing 4 credits a hand out of a maximum 5, at a dollar a credit. On many machines in casinos, the max bet on the jackpot win is unproportional to the rest of the paytable. In this case, Royal Flushes pay back 250 times per credit, i.e. 1 dollar hands = 250 dollars, 3 dollar hands = 750 dollars, and of course 4 dollar hands = 1000, and the max bet 5 credit hands? A whopping 800 times per credit for a 4000 dollar prize. I was playing on four because it's about the highest I'm still comfortable with and I'd never expect to hit a Royal anyway. Yet the fact I occasionally play on 5 bugs me. But what's worse, is even on 5 credit bets at 50 cents per credit, or 2.50 a hand, the Royal pays 2000 thousand dollars. So, for less money per hand I could have made double what I did. It bugs me to hell. Hoho, I know this sounds like the most selfish thing in the world, my poor friend worked at Jack in the Box all summer for 2000 dollars, and I made half of that in one day!

I realize I should be very happy, and I am, but with no qualms, and I'm not. As much as I try to let it go, my damn natural greed will not let the fact, "I should have been playing max credit", stop bugging the shit out of me.

I was just speculating how this natural greed is the root of so much corruption, and found it interesting to see in myself on a small scale an attribute that prevents a perfect world.

But yeah, I have a thousand bucks of pure blow money with which I'm investing a portion into a friend to then "flip" into more, a business of sorts. So all is well with me and I am happy, despite that gut nagging, and I feel like this thread is kind of borderline gay/bloggish. But I spent too much time writing it so I'll post it anyway.

[General Suburbia]

:udb:You're just a horrible person. :bnono:

But I'm pretty sure anyone in your situation would think exactly the same thing; I've done so too on a couple of occasions, although it wasn't for a thousand dollars.

And I just realized that this is the most smilies I've used in a single post ever at any forum.

[zarahf]

Then again: Perhaps the next machine would not have lined up for a win and you wouldn't be leaving with any $$ at all. You put your $20 where it was meant to be and left with what you were meant to have. Nothing else matters in the scenerio.

[Ojisan]

Heh, that's another thing I was thinking about, perhaps had I been on max bet, the Royal Flush wouldn't have been dealt. I've often wondered the effects of seemingly non-related factors to randomly generated computer numbers.

If it is truly random, does that mean the next draw is still predetermined or is it relative to time? i.e. If the machine's next flop is a royal flush, would it be a royal flush regardless of when the next deal is made? Or if in two parallell yet identical universes, would a two second delay in one cause a different draw? Another way I've speculated it, was if one were to make a draw, then time travel back, and do everything identically, would the draw come out the same? If so, there is some mysterious predetermined aspect to randomly generated numbers, but if not, then travelling back into time would not yield identical results, even if everything was left unchanged.

I'm not typically so personal or pseudo-psychological, I've just been in one of those wierd, sleep deprived deliriums we get from time to time.

[Roark]

That's something I've wondered with video card game as well: How exactly do these programs determine their random cards? It's rather easy to track with a physical deck: You have an N element set arranged in stack S. That set is randomized, and only certain elements of the set are known/visible. At any given time T, we can say with certainty which elements remain in the stack, based on the known elements. Each element nX occupies position sX in the stack. So, if n1= queen of hearts, she is always in position sX and cannot change that position.

I'm not sure if video systems follow this. I can think of a few ways they could work. They could follow physical intuitions, meaning that each card has a unique identifier in code. Those identifiers are randomized and "ticked off" after each play. Rerandomize each game. The advantage of this is that it mimics our real world systems.

It could be a pure random number generation system, where again each card has a unique ID, but it's not set ahead of time. Instead, each draw is generated via a ranomization process and the ID is compared to currently displayed ID's. If it's already out, pick again, else, display. This doesn't mimic our world at all, it just appears to. (It's a metaphysics difference: one system is set and unchangeable, the other system is constantly shifting. It's our lack of knowledge about the system that makes them appear the same.)

I can also see biased random generation being employed to enforce probablility, hence increasing profits and "fun factor." For example, you may see biased distribution to see, say, straights and flushes started but not followed. This would shake more money out of you and make it "more exciting" to be almost getting good hands. This can also be used to make sure that probability flukes dont' occur, such as 3 royal flushes in a row. This is statistically improbable, but possible. Biased generation would either eliminate this problem or make it less likely.

I also wonder what functions generate their pseudo-random numbers. Certain coding structures will unintentionally bias results, so I'm hoping that these programmers really, really test stuff. It should be trivial to run an algorithm enough times to generate significant data sets then do at least basic statistical analysis on the results to see how closely they approach ideal random distribution.

[PsychoSaiya-jin]

Hindsight is 20-20 vision.
Greed aside, at least you can count your blessings and know you haven't got anything to truely regret.

[f1rst children]

Casino money is play money. Treat whatever amount you win as if you found it on the street.

If you were walking down the street and found $1000, you wouldn't think "Yeah, but if I'd walked down a different street, I might have found $4000."