> -- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "rob.singer1111@..." <rob.singer1111@> wrote:
> >
> > "Play a lot of hands, record the results, and analyze the data".
> >
> > No one would do that, and if they did no one would believe the results if they didn't match up with popular beliefs. ADVANTAGE: CASINOS.
> >
>
Rob, how else do you prove something like this? If you just take the word of every person in a casino who is losing money, you'll believe a lot of funny statements.
Okay, a player is suspicious of the fairness of a video poker machine based on some approximate recollection of results. Fine. That is enough to start digging deeper but it certainly is not enough to conclude that the machines are unfair. Humans aren't very good at approximating results. My favorite story is painter man ( my nickname, he always showed up to play in painter's pants). While playing the IGT blackjack game, he stated that he had lost his last 2 million double downs. Maybe more.
When you don't state the hypothesis before the data collection, you can very easily skew the results. If you play a million hands of video poker ( about 25 royal cycles) , there will probably be many times you go 80,000 hands without a royal. What does that prove? Nothing.
The only way to tell if machines are giving reasonable results is to play a lot of hands and record a lot of information. Otherwise, the comments made are just uninformed whining.
