Gambling Math For Fun & Profit

[mickeycrimm]

I taught myself gambling math out of John Scarne books. Yeah, I know, he was all wrong on blackjack. But he was damn good on poker and keno. So I'm going to put up a link because its the only way I can figure to get the video on here. It's a video keno game called Quick Cash. The game was installed on about 2000 machines in Montana several years ago.

Every brand new game that hits the casino floor gets a cursory inspection by me. I'm looking for certain things. Progressive meters. Banking features. I remember the first time I seen this Quick Cash game. I tested the meter movement. Super Strong. I took pics of the rules screen so I could do the math at my leisure.

I knew it was going to be strong but I didn't know how strong. I also knew I was the first machine pro in the world to find this game. With me there is no "follow the leader." I blaze my own trail. With one exception, I was the only machine pro in the world to exploit this game. I had absolutely no competition. That is, until I finally taught the game to one other person. The game lasted several years but recently saw it's demise as it was removed from 90% of the machines.

I have to post a link to my Twitter account to get the vid up here. For some reason, PFA won't accept it straight from my computer.

This is what you will be looking at. I'm playing a 2-spot. Then there are 5 machine picks. So essentially I'm playing 1 way of 2 and 1 way of 5. The bet is 75 cents. The top meter is at $690. When I hit 5 out of the 5 machine picks I will get the money in the meter.

Here's the video:

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/i/status/1329250068738699265

[mickeycrimm]

Another thing you might notice in the vid. I'm not punching a button to get the game to play. I'm holding my finger on the DRAW sensor and the game keeps playing. I also have it on max speed. So I'm cranking out about 40 games per minute on my way to hitting a solid five-spot where the frequency is 1551. So we're talking about 40 minutes average seat time on a play that is worth about $450.

[mickeycrimm]

First things first. At the top of the screen you can see that the 2-spot pays $6.25. It's a 75 cent bet so the solid 2 pays 8.33 units. We need to calculate the freq. of hitting a solid 2-spot. There's 80 balls in the tank with 20 balls being drawn.

Total 2-spot combinations are 80X79/2X1 = 3160
Dividing 80X79 by 2X1 culls out duplicates. For instance, if you are playing the numbers 79 and 80 you can catch the 79 first then the 80 or you can catch the 80 first then the 79.

Now we need to know the number of combinations that make a 2-spot.
20X19/2X1 = 190

We divide 3160 by 190 to get the 2-spot frequency.
3160/190 = 16.63158

So now we divide the 8.33 units the solid 2 pays by the frequency to get the payback of the 2-spot.
8.33/16.63158 = 50.0855%

So the 2-spot represents 50% of the payback.

[badguy23]

Pretty sure the book you read was from John Scam


Anyway good luck if all goes wrong take a Under in a Mac game or look this guy up. No reading needed.

[mickeycrimm]

Pretty sure the book you read was from John Scam


Anyway good luck if all goes wrong take a Under in a Mac game or look this guy up. No reading needed.

Stop!! You are embarrassing yourself. Your ignorance and stupidity are shining through, punkguy. When I'm through doing the math on the play you are welcome to show it to any degree'd mathematician on the planet to see if they can refute the math. But trust me, they won't refute it.

So I've got nightmarish saying I won't give up information on current plays but here you are saying I'm selling something. Got a lot of fruits & nuts on this site.

[mickeycrimm]

So 50% of the payback is represented by the 2-spot. Now we move on to the 5-spot. There are two progressive meters on the game, the HIT 4 meter and the HIT 5 meter. We'll start with the HIT 4 meter. It starts at zero.

To start, anytime you hit 4 of the 5 picks it pays 10 units.

Also, anytime you hit 3 of the 5 picks it will put 1 unit into the HIT 4 meter. When you hit 4 of the 5 you get payed the 10 units plus any money accumulated in the HIT 4 meter.

So now we need to do some math of the 5-spot. There are 20 balls drawn from an 80 ball tank.

Total 5-spot combinations are 80X79X78X77X76/5X4X3X2X1 = 24,040,016

Combinations that make 3 out of 5 are 20X19X18/3X2X1 multiplied by 60X59/2X1 = 2,017,800
24,040,016/2,017,800 means the freq. for hitting 3 of 5 is every 11.91 games.

Combinations that make 4 of 5 are 20X19X18X17/4X3X2X1 multiplied by 60 = 290,700
24,040,016/290,700 means you will hit 4 of 5 every 82.7 Games.

Every time you hit 3 of 5 it puts 1 unit in the HIT 4 meter.
1/11.91 = 8.4%

And you are payed 10 units plus the money in the meter when you hit 4 of 5.
10/82.7 = 12.09%.

So now we can add 8.4% plus 12.09% to the 50% payback of the 2-spot.

That totals to 70%.

So we've got a game where you get dropped 30% on your way to hitting the 5 out of 5. Machine pros also refer to this as "the cost."