--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "dealt4oak" <dealt4oak@...> wrote: A good one that I always hear is that the "pay scale on video poker doesn't matter."Ive talked to people that believe that they are programmed just like slots and the higher pay scale is just to attract players. Ive shown them the math and they still insist on their belief. I just explain it like this, if the pay scale is only to attract players why wouldn't every casino have super high pay scales? They pretty much stop after that.
That's one that is so common and so complicated it would take a whole book to explain it.
One interesting thing to consider is that for people playing negative expectancy machines with a set loss limit, the only thing that changes for them is time.
On a worse pay-table they may lose faster, but they end up losing the same amount they would have on a better pay-table. Looked at from the point of view of time wastage the worse machines ARE better.
Of course people that play negative expectancy machines don't look at time they spend in a casino as "wasted", and most are looking to waste more of it. Not always!
At least once during my career I gave a strategy to a non-pro and showed her some better machines at her job, where she liked to play after work. A couple of weeks later I found out she was furious with me, because now it took her 4 times longer to lose her $40 and go home.
If you find someone with this belief that the pay-table makes no difference, it's very hard to convince them otherwise. My best guess is that this is due to cognitive dissonance and sunk-cost bias. It can also be because they don't really want to win and prefer to lose, so for them worse is truly better.
Those sad folks probably don't post on vpFREE, but they are out there.
~FK
