[olecapt]

Originally Posted by unf0rgiven6262

The odds favor you? I don't care what anyone speculates. You must be on peyote to think a million dollar+ progressive odds of hitting the jackpot are in your favor. Odds are probably better than megabucks, yes.

And I think you fail to understand progressives. Odds favoring the gambler on a progressive can occur...and the article cited claims they are...Not having the odds in hand I can't swear to it but it sure can and does happen.

If you remember there was the case of the Florida lottery where the odds got good enough that an Australian group tried to buy all numbers and won after buying well over half.

[kimba01]

Originally Posted by macgeek

I have a good feeling about this machine, call me crazy (as most of you have)
If you appreciate the tip (hint) A rep Point (hint) would be (hint) appreciated! (hint!)

Jonat(hint)han

LOL...I gotta spread the love....I'll get back to ya! It gave us a reason to go to the Strip and while we didn't hang out long, it was fun! (and $60 is $60!)

[LV2ndHome]

Originally Posted by unf0rgiven6262

The odds favor you? I don't care what anyone speculates. You must be on peyote to think a million dollar+ progressive odds of hitting the jackpot are in your favor. Odds are probably better than megabucks, yes.

Mathematically a progressive jackpot must become positive for the player at some point during continued play without a hit. The odds of hitting the jackpot remain constant at whatever the casino/game manufacturer set. It doesn't matter if the jackpot odds were programmed to be 1 in a thousand or 1 in several zillion, the point is the odds of hitting on any one spin remains constant, or in other words, a flat line on a graph. In contrast, the jackpot is constantly growing with play, or in other words an line angling upwards on a graph. With absolute certainty we can say at some point the non-parallel lines will cross, meaning the jackpot becomes greater than the odds, and thus the player has an edge.

Note that just because players have an edge at some point doesn't mean that the casino is losing money on the machine. Let's say the machine is set to provide 8% house edge over the long run, and the house then contributes maybe something like 0.2% to 0.5% to the progressive. That progressive amount goes into a "savings acct" waiting for the winner. The house makes good money no matter how big the savings acct grows. The game can be positive for both current players and the casino because essentially they are simply chopping all the money lost by previous players which seeded the jackpot.

Originally Posted by AlstraQ

I'd like to know the total amount of money into and out of that machine over the years. What a business...

You can figure it pretty close by playing the machine for a few spins and seeing how much of the coin in is contributed to the progressive (called "clocking the machine"). One unknown would be not knowing what amount the casino seeded the jackpot after it was last hit, or in the beginning if it's never been hit.

For example, let's say you play a few spins and determine 0.4% of coin in goes into the progressive. Let's estimate the casino seeded the jackpot at $100k to start it off. So play has grown the jackpot $2,137,782 at the time of the article. Divide that by 0.4% and we find that over $534 million coin in has been run through the machine over the years. If the machine is set to payback 90%, the casino has gross profit of $53MM+, and this is even after factoring in the jackpot payoff. But keep in mind this was spread over approx 20 years and is before operating costs, and that I made a lot of assumptions in working through this example.

If the casino seeded the progressive with $1MM instead of $100k, contributed 0.5% of coin in to the progressive, and was generous enough to pay back 95% to the player, substituting these numbers into the above calculation results in a total gross profit of only about $12.4MM instead of $53MM+, again this is spread over 20 yrs and before operating/overhead costs.

Originally Posted by olecapt

The point McGeek is making is that the odds favor you on the Lion Share machines...by a lot. They are grossly against you on a Megabuck machine.

There used to be a set of professional video poker players who would go after the progressive if they become large enough to favor the better.

There still are pros attacking video poker, though VP generally is not as lucrative as it used to be. There is a big difference though that makes the Lion's Share less attractive than VP to a pro player. By law, VP must be dealt with the same odds as if it were dealt live. In other words, they can't make it more likely that a 5 of spades is drawn than a 10 of clubs. Thus the casino can't change the payback % of a machine by changing the odds of a specific hand appearing and instead can only do it by changing the posted pay tables (e.g. a full house pays 8 for 1 instead of 9 for 1). So the pro can calculate the exact payback of the machine. In fact, there are several common softwares to do this and also provide the correct play strategy.

On reel slot machines, the casino can change the odds of a "cherry" appearing vs an "orange", so the player can't readily calculate the exact payback or know exactly when the progressive has become large enough for the machine to be positive. In other words, we know the exact odds of drawing a full house in vp, but we don't know the odds of getting 3 cherries on a reel machine. And it would be hard to detect a coding error or malfunction since we don't know the exact odds. Are we seeing a very rare jackpot drought simply due to statistical variance or is there something like a programming error in the random number generator code that is making the jackpot impossible to hit? The Lion's Share is also a very high variance play. The machine has a highly negative expectation outside of hitting the jackpot.

[kimba01]

Wow, interesting. I don't know if I wish I had that mathematical mind or if it would be annoying! At any rate, it is interesting.

All I know, is that in the 15+ spins, we NEVER saw any of the lion's head circles. Not once. And you would think we would have seen a couple at least go by. I should have asked the attendant to show me they exist on the reels.

[SouthernSarah]

Installed in the early 1990's. Jackpot has never been hit. And people wonder why I don't bother gambling.

[unf0rgiven6262]

Mathematically the odds are exactly the same on each spin regardless of how long it has gone without winning. That is a fallacy to think the odds go up because someone hasn't won since the 90s. There are many systems that can and have gone very long. And I assure you the odds are set in the millions. Olecapt, my job involves directly working with progressive jackpots. Do you ever get tired trying to pretend you are an authority on every subject?

[Vegas Joe]

Rarely do I gamble.

[olecapt]

Originally Posted by unf0rgiven6262

Mathematically the odds are exactly the same on each spin regardless of how long it has gone without winning. That is a fallacy to think the odds go up because someone hasn't won since the 90s. There are many systems that can and have gone very long. And I assure you the odds are set in the millions. Olecapt, my job involves directly working with progressive jackpots. Do you ever get tired trying to pretend you are an authority on every subject?

Actualy I suspect my statistical and probalistic skills are as good or better than yours. I learned in a different area than you but it is pretty much the same math.

Why the insult? Feeling inferior this morning?

[unf0rgiven6262]

Originally Posted by olecapt

Actualy I suspect my statistical and probalistic skills are as good or better than yours. I learned in a different area than you but it is pretty much the same math.

My math skills are average at best. Nor am I looking to compare who can solve equations faster. I simply wouldn't come out and tell someone they fail to understand progressives when I had very little to no understanding of the system to begin with. The odds never favor the gambler in relation to hitting the jackpot.. EVER. There is no "due to hit" or any other such rationality.

[olecapt]

Originally Posted by unf0rgiven6262

My math skills are average at best. Nor am I looking to compare who can solve equations faster. I simply wouldn't come out and tell someone they fail to understand progressives when I had very little to no understanding of the system to begin with. The odds never favor the gambler in relation to hitting the jackpot.. EVER. There is no "due to hit" or any other such rationality.

Sorry. I explained the nature of a progressive exactly the same way you did. The odds of hitting the jackpot do not change but the reward increases and will eventually end up positive...that is the reward is greater than the cost of getting it. I declined to quote the present case as I do not know the odds of hitting the jackpot. The only thing I can think of where I might have erred is that I don't know the structure for megabucks and it to may turn positive on occassion.

You seem to think this is a complex matter. It is not. It is quite simple. I am sure there are tons and tons of detail of interest to those who practice it but the underlying is quite simple.