The Best Plays are Sometimes the Worst

It’s December of 2013 and I’m sitting in front of the same machine that I’d been sitting in front of for the last nine hours wondering whether or not it is snowing outside. My thoughts eventually drift to all of the things I would rather be doing, both outside and inside, than sitting in front of that machine. I’d rather be sledding, skiing or snowboarding, I decide, despite the fact that I don’t actually do any of those things.

I’ve got a hotel room at that particular casino on that particular night, which is actually more like that particular morning. At least, I did have a hotel room, I pull out my cell phone and tap the power button to see the time, “8:42a.m.,” it reads, ‘Well,” I mutter to myself, ‘I still have a hotel room for three hours and eighteen minutes.’

The play really was a simple one, we’re talking about a game with a base pay of roughly 90%, according to the Empirical study I did of quite a few thousand spins, with a Progressive that is about 1 in 2,000 to hit on a bet of $0.40. Interestingly enough, the Progressive base pay is $0.00, but it goes up by one cent for every $0.40 bet, which means the meter is fed by 2.5% of all monies bet. In fact, this is one of those rare but interesting machines in which betting the minimum possible is the best course of action and it is the people who bet more than the minimum that feed the Progressive causing the machine to be positive. If everyone bet $0.40 and only $0.40 per spin, then the machine would only very rarely miss enough cycles to be positive.

The meter was at $170.00 when I started playing the machine which means that if we look at $170 * (1/2000) = $0.085 the Progressive is worth 8.5 cents per spin. Since I am only betting the minimum required forty cents, the Progressive is adding 8.5/40 = 21.25% to the return making the overall return 111.25%! A nice healthy return and a rare state in which to find the machine!

Based on the cycle length of 2,000 plays and the base return of 90%, as of the time I sat down, I was expected to make 2,000 * .4 = $800 in total bets with a total expected return of ($800 * .9) + $190 (Remember, the meter goes up a penny per play) = $910.

In concise terms, the play has an expected profit of $110, and if I’m really slamming it, I can knock out an expected 1,000 spins per hour on this particular game, which means I will have hit the expected cycle (2,000 spins) in just about two hours making my expected profit per hour $110/2 = $55/hour. At least, that is what was expected to happen!

I sat down figuring maybe this bad boy would run two cycles without hitting, it happens, sometimes even three cycles. It could make for a long night, but a profitable play is a profitable play, so we’ll drink the play away. (This was not a Video Poker play and required no concentration or effort on my part besides hitting the button).

One of the late shift slot techs walks by me for the third time in an hour, there’s really not much for him to do given that the floor is barren. We’ve rewinded the clock back to about 5:00a.m., a bygone time that I had been only on the play for a little over five hours. I can’t tell if the guy likes me or not, on the one hand, he seemed annoyed the three times I summoned him to guard my machine so that I could take a leak, but on the other hand, he seemed somewhat happy that I tipped him a dollar every time. It’s almost as though he forgets he’s getting a dollar for relieving me for a leak, though, because every time he walks by he gives me a glare as though he is hoping I won’t call him over again.

Back to 8:42 a.m., the Progressive is now at $260 which means that I have now made some 9,000 spins, at least my spins per hour is going basically as expected! The problem is that I have been sitting there missing this Progressive for four-and-a-half cycles and that does nothing to change the fact that the expected number of spins before hitting is still 1 in 2,000!

In other words, no matter how many cycles you miss, unless it is something like a must-hit (designed that way) you are still no more likely to hit the desired result on the next spin, one hundred spins after that, or one thousand spins after that than you were on the previous one, one-hundred or one-thousand spins before. It’s always expected to hit 1 in every 2,000 spins, no matter how many times you’ve already unsuccessfully spun it.

As changes the amount of time I sat there, so change the value of the play. I am still expected to make $800 in total bets before I hit it, but now my value is ($800 * .9) + $280 = $1,000. Since it should take me two hours to profit $200 (as of that point) the value of the play has sky-rocketed to $100/hour! The value of each individual spin has also changed, the Progressive itself is worth $260 * (1/2000) = $0.13, thirteen cents per spin! Because I am only betting $.40 per spin, the percentage value of the Progressive is now 32.5% which improves the overall return of the machine to an astronomical 122.5%!

Here’s some proof of concept, 22.5% of $.40 is $0.09, that’s nice and simple, and $0.09 * 2000 = $180 which is, yes, the value of the play pursuant to our other calculation.

Of course, none of this is making me feel any better because I hit the spin button before I started drinking. I hit the spin button after I started drinking. I hit the spin button while I was getting drunk. I hit the spin button after my then wife declared it was the last drink she would be bringing down to me and that she was going to bed. She wasn’t mad, she got that I was on a good play. I hit the spin button so many times I was again sober, though quite tired.

I started to curse my luck under my breath. I wasn’t cursing my luck on the machine, I was cursing my luck in that I didn’t really have anything to do that day, which meant that I would basically be staying on the machine until I hit the result, or ran out of money, which was mathematically extremely unlikely. I had wished, more than once, that I had something to do that day because then I would have been compelled to go to bed. I actually wished I had an excuse, other than mere fatigue, to give up on the play, but no such excuse existed.

I wished that I could get them to turn off the machine so I could grab a quick nap, but they’ll only do that for top-tier card holders. I chuckled to myself and muttered, “I probably WILL BE a top-tier card holder by the time I hit this thing!” I wished my then-wife was not only tolerant enough to let me engage in this play, but also helpful enough to sit there and hit the button for an hour or so.

That wasn’t going to happen.

There was absolutely no way I could justify leaving the machine after how strong I had made the Progressive! I had made about $3,600 in total spins, forty cents at a time, over the last nine hours. Betting the minimum of $0.40 compared to my usual bet of $1.25 in Video Poker, I had put more coin-in on that machine alone than I usually would in a normal day to keep my offers going. I was also getting 0.2% of everything I put in in the form of points that could be turned into free play, so the play was actually worth that much more. In terms of actual value, I had technically already made that, to that point, so that was +$7.20 in that regard.

In terms of actual money, by expectation, since I had not yet hit the Progressive (and because of how many cycles I had gone without hitting it) I was expected to be down about $360, (90% base return) but I had actually run quite well on bonus games (and, perhaps, other hits) and was only down $70. That was a positive take away because, if there’s one thing annoying when you’re on a Progressive play, it is being down so much on it that hitting the Progressive immediately will not even break you even.

Granted, it does happen sometimes. In fact, it happens A LOT of the time. The mere fact that it happens doesn’t make it any more palatable, though, especially when you’ve went from sober-drunk-sober without ever having gone to sleep at any point.

The thought of that actually cheered me up a little bit, I reminded myself, “Even down $70 right now, if I can nail this thing in 2,000 spins, that should be another $80 lost to the base game and I am expected to finish ahead $130, not counting the points, on the play overall. Remember, the Progressive was at $260, but 2,000 spins would make it $280 and I would have lost a total of $150 to the base game for a total of +$130."

Although, the play that started out with an expected profit of $55/hour had now been increased to an expected profit (as of that moment) of $100/hour, but my expected ACTUAL profit based on what had already happened would be +$130/11 (hours) for about $11.82/hour.

I had basically gone from an engineer to a Wal-Mart cashier in the space of nine hours. Except, that’s not true, because both my expected overall profit and expected hourly profit were continuously climbing with every spin, not dropping. Again, what’s done is done and expected results are not based on what has already happened, but on what is expected to happen.

That’s the mentality a person has to have if they are going to go after Progressive plays such as the one that I have described. Otherwise, one is left playing a game of, ‘Remember that time,’ as in, “Remember that time I thought this was a good play and ended up sitting there for eleven hours?” The thing is, I didn’t think it was a good play, I knew it was a good play and the actual result of the play does literally nothing to change how good the play was when I sat down, or how good the play was at any given moment during the play.

If I take the mentality of, “Oh my God, what happened sucked!” Compared to the more analytical mentality of, “Okay, I have a strong understanding of the probabilities and corresponding returns of this play, and here is what is expected to happen…” then I am going to get turned off of the idea of going after a $55/hour play. Let me say this: The day that I refuse a $55/hour expected value play that I actually have the bankroll to go after is the day that I need to start donating more money to charity, or something, because I have too much money! The only way you shouldn’t be doing something you’re making $55/hour doing is if there is something that you could be doing that would make you more than that!

Another hour passed, but I’d only gotten in another 850 spins, nodding off for a couple of minutes as I sat there, as well as taking two leaks in one hour, had kind of hurt my cause in terms of spins/hour. “How long can I go?” I asked nobody in particular. I answered myself, “The question isn’t how long can I go, the question is how long can this machine go without hitting!?”

False bravado, of course. Perhaps the machine could go ten more hours without hitting, if that happened, I knew I couldn’t sit there for ten more hours.

Here comes a Maroon 5 song. Oh, listen, it’s that Maroon 5 song. Isn’t this the second time that Maroon 5 song has played since I’ve been sitting here. “This love has taken its toll on me, she said, goodbye, too many times…” damn, this is the third time! I’ve been here for three music cycles? Is there really only three hours and fifteen minutes, or so, of music in the entire course of human history? They should really put more songs in the cycle. If you don’t hear the same song twice, then maybe you’re less likely to get to wondering how long you’ve been there.

Another hour, nobody at the buffet check-in. It had actually been awhile since they were taking anybody else for breakfast and the buffet staff were busily trying to get everything out and ready for lunch, which the buffet would be opening again for in just over twenty minutes.

How did my credit balance get so high? Was there a mistake?

Oh, I hit it, nice. I gave a little fist pump, Tiger Woods style, and hit the, ‘Cash Out,’ button wondering how many spins it had been since I hit the Progressive. I distinctly remembered looking at the Progressive about three minutes before cashing out to see how many total spins I had taken, (when the Progressive amount goes up by a penny every spin, it’s easy to know how many total spins you’ve taken) so I knew it couldn’t have been more than fifty spins since I had hit the Progressive and it was almost certainly fewer.

The strange thing about that machine is that there are no bells and whistles when the player hits the Progressive, but that’s probably because the reset is literally $0.00 and the player could theoretically hit the Progressive and win nothing more than the base pay of whatever any of the regular line pays associated with the Progressive would be. Bizarre game, in that way. Instead of bells and whistles, maybe just a notice on the screen, in bold typeface, “CONGRATULATIONS! YOU MAY NOW GO TO BED!”

I had run like crap over the last hour, or so, and ended up finishing my $55/hour play with an expected time of two hours and expected profit of $110 with an actual profit of $62 over eleven hours for an actual profit of about $5.64/hour. I didn’t really count the points as anything because the points compared to tipping a dollar to the slot attendant for watching the machine each time and tipping a dollar when the cocktail waitress brought me coffee ended up being a complete wash.

At least my then-wife had just gotten up as it was just over an hour before check out time. Also, at least I was off that day so I could go home and get several hours of sleep.

It occurred to me that it had also been eleven hours since I had walked the floor looking for other plays. One of these machines (the type I had been on) might be good, there might be a good must-hit, positive Quick Hit Platinum machine, perhaps a good Video Keno progressive.

“Nah, screw that, someone else can have it.”

I probably would have sat down had I seen another good play that I was bankrolled for, but I kept my eyes on the floor and made an effort not to see any such play. The only thing I really wanted to see was a pillow, expected value be damned, at least for the rest of that day.