And I agree with you. What we did as part of our training was not close to a scientific experiment. Our goal was to turn out good players, not test a theory with control groups and double blind implementation. The possibility of bias in our training method is unquestionable. Obviously we tried to catch any errors, which is why we used two spotters overlapping.
I would still say, only as an educated opinion, that sufficient accuracy is possible for a select few.
Also, keep in mind that perfect accuracy was not required in the days of 2-4% overlays lying about all over the place. In the early 90's you couldn't swing a dead cat in a casino without hitting a high progressive.
~FK
P.S. Actually, they frowned on swinging dead cats in general.
--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "rob.singer1111" <rob.singer1111@...> wrote:
>
> I'll input on this Frank since I agree with Mike. I'll start off by explaining why having others "watch" trainees is inconclusive to the point of being irrelevant.
>
> When science is involved to a .1% accuracy, hard clean data is required--something you'll never get in trials with collections of people who sit at video poker machines. In the human factors engineering projects I've been involved in that required six-sigma accuracy rates, pilots in simulators were given very simple repitious tasks to do that went on for 8 hours at a time--and these of course were highly educated and trained figher pilots. Results were compiled electronically--not merely by having others watch them--and after just 1 hour their error rates went up exponentially by the hour the longer the shift went on.
>
> The irrelevancy of having others "watch for accuracy and errors" is simply adding another imperfect parameter to the equation. As such, multiple assumptions and conclusions are arrived at that really have no basis in science. When the subject being watched makes an error, it may not be picked up by the verifier; when the subject does not make an error, it may be picked up as an error by the verifier. And because watching someone play is far more taxing on concentration levels than actually playing, the longer a session goes on the more imperfect it becomes.
>
> Many of your sessions at the progressives go on for many, many hours, as you yourself explained to me. I believe that to be a very inefficient method of playing. There may be one or two "freaks" out there who can beat logic on any given day, but they would never do it on anything even resembling consistency.
>
>
> --- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "Frank" <frank@> wrote> If you'd like some hard numbers, out of 600 trainees we got 14 players that were capable of playing at an error rate of only one small mistake per hour.
> >
> > That translates to 2% of the population being able to attain this level of accuracy and 98% being not up to the task. The "most people" argument wins here. The "Anybody" argument fails, I'm afraid to say.
> >
> > In order to make our A team we required that trainees played 3 hours being watched by 2 supervisors with no more than 1 mistake per hour. We also followed that up with surprise inspections where a manager would sit next to a player and watch them during a long shift when they were fatigued. They still passed.
> >
> > Only 11% of our 600 trainees made the team at all (2-3 mistakes per hour). And only 1 out of 5 of those made the A team...and this was to learn only one strategy.
> >
> > It's fine to say it's hard. But suggesting it's impossible is like saying no one can type at 150 words a minute. At least one person in the world can. In fact the world is filled with people that can do things we can't. I'm curious as to why your post was so strong that you touted playing VP accurately as delusional?
> >
> > Hard...sure! Impossible, no.
> >
> > ~FK
> >
>
