"So, to sum things up, Frank, I don't think it's a topic to be treated as untouchable; just one that needs to be handled with care. I've no doubt that you have the temperament for that.
*** I agree. I think it's an important topic for gamblers in general, who seem to be beset that, not only are machines built with a random number generator *not* random, but also that touching the screen may help; hitting the buttons harder may help; etc....(I remember when I would be running bad at poker some of the old-timers would always tell me to "get up and walk around the table a couple of times" to help fix my luck...).
"What immediately comes to mind are the "hot and cold" machine adherents."
*** An aside on this concept: I think every video poker and/or mathematics expert I've read concedes that perhaps especially in a random order you will find streaks, long or short. Even when flipping a coin you can get streaks of hitting heads many times in a row even when each flip is independent of the other. So I've always thought of it as hoping you might step into a "good" streak rather than an actual machine is really hot or cold on a regular basis. I think a problem starts when people begin to believe there is meaning in it, or predictable patterns.
"But I've known people who've been prompted to switch to poorer paytables..."
*** I have to laugh here and admit that the other day I was playing a $5 machine DDB: there were two that were 9/6 and one that was 8/5, which was a progressive (and the progressive had just been hit). I had in the past gotten good hands on the progressive machine. However I began to play one of the other ones due to the better paytable. After losing I did switch to the poorer pay table and voila: dealt four 4's. Ha ha! A superstitious belief can sprout from just this sort of thing! Again, I do like to change machines for the following reasons:
a) I want to have fun, and it isn't fun to continue to lose hand after hand - I'm not there to just grind it out.
b) Changing machines is exciting to me in the hopes that it may start off in a better "streak" of random hands than the one I was playing.
c) And sometimes I don't change machines, when I'm feeling lazy or like something about the machine I'm on (location, no one smoking near me, graphics) -
I do think this is an interesting topic.
Valerie
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