Dear Mark,
On the weekends, do
casinos make adjustments on their video poker machines to make more
money? Sam K.
Do you mean do casinos take a screwdriver
to their slots on the weekends to tighten them up? No way. It is
not cost effective for the casino to continually alter the payouts on
their machines. To alter the percentage return in their favor on a video
game, the casino must, by law, make a hardware change. You do this by
swapping out an internal component, the ROM portion of the
microprocessor chip. ROM, or read only memory, is a chip the slot
manufacturer provides the casino. This is the chip that tells the video
poker machine to pay 9 coins for a full house, 6 coins for a flush.
Additionally, they would have to physically change the glass payout
schedule on their machines.
What you could see is a seasonal
wholesale change to improve their theoretical hold by making all 9/6
machines to 8/5 bandits. By changing to all 8/5 machines, the house
holds an additional 3% edge on each and every machine.
Dear Mark,
Is there a way that the
casino can program a video poker machine so that a royal flush never
appears? Shanon B.
Can, yes. Would? Never!
What you have
described is called secondary decision programming. A good programmer
could write code that allows the computer within to stop a hand that is
about to be dealt in favor of a different hand. This would prevent big
winning hands like royal flushes from appearing their theoretical number
of times.
In a highly regulated industry like
casinos, it is safe to assume honesty in programming.
Dear Mark,
When I am dealt the
first five cards on a video poker machine, are the draw cards already
sitting behind the cards I want to discard, or are they dealt from the
top of the deck? Ed. P.
It depends, Ed, on the company who
produced the slot or how old the machine is. In the past, the majority
of video poker machines operated using parallel dealing. This is where
all 10 cards are dealt simultaneously, meaning, you are dealt both the
display cards and their draw replacements. Discard that dreadful four of
clubs and the seven of diamonds, which you didn't need, was sitting
behind it all along. Today, the new machines employ serial dealing. Here
replacement cards are dealt right from the top of the deck-similar to a
live poker game.
Because the cards are shuffled and
displayed randomly, neither way has any effect on the outcome.
Dear Mark,
What are the chances of
hitting the lottery twice in one lifetime. Has it ever happened? Milton
G.
In a perfect world we all would win the
lottery once, shoot scratch golf and drive a Mercedes. But that wasn't
perfect enough for divorced convenience-store manager Evelyn Marie Adams
of New Jersey when she won her state's lottery twice within a four-month
span in 1985. The odds against Ms. Adams winning the double bonanza were
15 trillion to one. Fifteen trillion, Milton, is three thousand times
the number of people on this planet. Since then, seven others have
joined the elite fraternity of repeat lottery winners.
Dear Mark,
How much edge does the
casino have in blackjack? Bert B.
It strictly depends on the skill level of
each individual player. Against the average Joe the casino has about a
two percent edge. A hunch or superstitious player can easily give back
eight percent.
Depending on the rules of a particular casino, a Deal
Me In reader who uses perfect basic strategy has only a half of a
percent disadvantage. They also get rated and work the casino over for
comps. Because many casinos give back between 20 to 40 percent of the
expected win-not the actual win-in player gratuities, the Deal Me In
player actually shows a positive expectation when playing blackjack.
