Horace Heffner wrote:
A winning pay-out is *expected*. Keeping records thus won't show a thing, because the expected is always happening.
I do not follow what you mean here. Keeping a record ensures that the machine is paying out the expected amounts daily. (Assuming the record itself has not been hacked -- and there are way to check on this.)
See <http://mtaonline.net/~hheffner/Gambling.pdf>
This document is interesting, but it seems be stating the obvious. I do not think there are any educated people who gamble yet are unaware of these facts. I should think everyone knows casinos are wealthy because they always win in the end.
No, a timer based seed is only selected once at power on, if then.
Well this should be changed.
If there is an external source of random numbers then the additional transformation provided by a pseudo-random number generator provides no additional randomness.
Frankly I do not see a problem with the present system. Hypothetically a person using a slot machine could bring in a computer, record the results, and then search through the sequence of pseudorandom numbers to find out what the next payout will be. In actual fact, if you set up a computer in a Las Vegas casino and start recording performance, the guards will throw you out in no time. For actual human users, slot machines are effectively random devices. No one, including the house owners, can take advantage of the fact that they are not actually random.
I've read that use of this fact was made by some enterprising individuals that bought a video poker machine and reverse assembled the ROM (though I have no reference so it could be an urban legend?) They found out what RNG was used and then figured out how to determine where in the cycle the RNG was by observing play of a normal machine in a casino. From that point on they could predict every hand.
I do not see how they could this without a computer. The entire list of numbers generated by any RNG is too long for anyone to memorize. You have to have the computer look it up. That should not be difficult, but as I said, and the house Goon Squad would intervene. It sounds like an urban myth to me.
This reminds me of the book "The Eudaemonic Pie," about a group of people who learned how to win at roulette by employing a wearable computer, controlled by their feet. This probably would have worked, but the house Goons quickly saw what they were up to and threw them out.
- Jed
