We called it "Walking the Reels", and I can confirm that this is exactly how we did it. I believe I only had to do it twice, as I came in during the last days of slots as VP was already overshadowing it.
Trying to Determine the return of chip controlled slots is called, "Doing a Frequency Study", and you only count, what lands on the pay-line.
There are three methods for determining modern slot return, that I know of, not all of them legal. Does anyone wish to speculate on what they are???
1. Frequency Study
2. ?
3. ?
~FK
--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "Mickey" <mickeycrimm@...> wrote:
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> --- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "nickdanger77" <darrellg@> wrote:
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> > In the electromechanical days, the reels had wheels with slots on them. A lever would fit into the slot to stop the reel and the depth of the reel caused the other end of the lever to touch contacts corresponding to the payout of that reel position. There was no weighting of the reel positions, so changing the hold required changing both the reel strips as well as the slotted wheel that went with it. All payouts were controlled with relay logic. Old slots like this are a nightmare to repair.
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> This is some more grapevine stuff I heard from the old guys. The old electromechanicals also came in progressive form. This is the process they used to determine the payback percentage of the game between top line hits. They would make a hundred spins or so recording what symbol or blank landed on the line, what symbol or blank landed above the line, and what symbol or blank landed below the line. They did this for each reel.
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> Then they would take the results and cull out all the duplicates. This told them how many stops were on each reel and how many of each type of symbol was on each reel. As the old timers told me, the typical 3 reel electromechanical had 22 stops on each reel.
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> If there was only one top line symbol on each reel then the frequency was 22X22X22=10,648.
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> For the other symbols, if there were, say two triple bars on each reel then the frequency would be 11X11X11=1,331. If the payout on the triple bars was 200 for 1 then 200/1331=15.02628%.
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> By repeating this process for all the symbols they could determine the payback percentage between top line hits. That told them what the drop was between top line hits.
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> If the drop was 7% and they wanted a 3% advantage to play then they would need a top line hit that paid about 1065 for 1. 1065/10,648=10%.
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