--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "ma18ks" <89109.nv@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Mickey,
>
> In an earlier thread, you mentioned being able to see the coin meters on the older Vision games. I found one of these machines, and could see three meters: Coin In, Coin Out, and Coin Drop. I assumed that Coin In was equal to the Coin Out (the return) plus the Coin Drop (the vig). But the values I recorded from this particular machine don't add up. The Coin Out value is significantly higher than the Coin In value, implying a return of about 140%.
>
> This machine is not returning 140%, so I must going about this the >wrong way.
>
>
I can't remember how many digits were in those meters, perhaps 7 or 8. The top meter is the coin-in meter, the meter just below it is the coin-out meter. Forget the third meter which is totally irrelevant.
What you are dealing with, on this particular machine, is meters that have been wrapped around. And since you are dealing with a machine that is at least 13 years old, there is no telling how many times those meters have been wrapped around by now.
You, ma18ks, know how many digits are in those meters, I personally don't remember, but let's say there are 7 digits. When the coin-in meter reaches 9,999,999 coins, and then another coin is bet, that meter has no choice but to flip to 0,000,000. It's the same for the coin-out meter, once it reaches 9,999,999 and another coin is bet, it is going to flip to 0,000,000.
The disparity between the coin-in/coin-meters can be anywhere between 3% and 12% on a machine like a Wild Cherry Bonus Pie. So once those meters get wrapped around multiple times one can run into the situation which you describe above.
When those machines first came out in 1997 I didn't have the problem of the wrapped around meters because they all started at zero's and it takes a long time for a 2 or 3 coin machine to get that much coin-in/coin-out. It was at least a few years before I ran into the wrapped around meters. But at that time is wasn't that hard to figure out. I dont' remember the particulars of the first time I ran into the phenomenom, but I eventually did. So let's imagine it went like this:I ran into a coin-in meter that read 0,684,532 and a coin-out meter that read 9,980,986. All I had to do was add a digit to the coin-in meter. So I would divide 9,980,986 by 10,684,532 to get a payback of 93.4%.
But this was on machines which I had been tracking since they came out, so it wasn't that hard to figure out.
On my trip to the midwest in 2002, which only lasted a few months, I ran into wrapped around meters from hell. We're talking about meters that had been wrapped around 3, 4, 5 times, etc. I couldn't peg the machines that way. But I had the experience of already seeing a gillion spins on good paying and bad paying machines before I got to the midwest. So I could guess the payback by watching the ploppies play the machines.
This was a thing I did everywhere, and it's what you have to do with the machine you are dealing with. Record the coin-in/coin-out meters....and track them from that point forward.
