FOBT - why its' not like _casino roulette
Without doubt these machines are fixed! Its a fiddle between the betting operators and the government they make far to much money on them to ever get rid of them now. Neways last year, i went throught a phase of playin FOBTs and casino roulette for about 3 months, which i wouod class as a more than adequatre time lenght the compare. I used the same stakes and numbers. My biggest win the casino was £4,500 and biggest win on the FOBT's was £900. Overall i was up around 2k in the casino and down around 4k in the FOBTs. Ladies and Gentleman that without doubt solves this myth - FOBTS are rigged and please dont play them as u will be assed rape with lube!
I don't think i've ever been int his part of the forum 
About 2 years agoish me and a mate had £4 each in one of these. I stuck £4 on black, he covered 4 red numbers. Black came in. We stuck £8 on 22 and came in! No word of a lie £288.
I'm not too keen on these at all. If I do have a go i'll stick £10 on red and double up til I get to £40.
About 2 years agoish me and a mate had £4 each in one of these. I stuck £4 on black, he covered 4 red numbers. Black came in. We stuck £8 on 22 and came in! No word of a lie £288.
I'm not too keen on these at all. If I do have a go i'll stick £10 on red and double up til I get to £40.
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hillwalker2004
- Junior Member
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Wed Jul 04, 2007 10:35 pm
Hi,
Brand new to this forum and have to confess i'm not really much of a gambler, or wasnt until I followed a colleague from work into a bookie.
Up until a couple of months ago I had never been into a bookies and wish I hadnt as it is definately a mugs game. I decided to have a little flutter on the FOBT one day which paid out (in some ways I wish it had fleeced me as I'd have never played it again). One thing led to another and I ended up playing it regularly over a couple of months approx 40 times in total. I do have a general interest in statistics and my job at work as a financial analyst fuelled this interest.
I kept a fairly clear record of my results which are as follows:
Total Profit: £985
Total Wins: 38
Total Losses : 2
I am counting a profit as anything where you have broken even or better. Out of the two times I lost one was £700 and the other £300, so essentially I took out £1,985 and the FOBT took £1,000 out of me. I've now stopped playing as even though I'm up I feel like a fool.
Of course none of this includes re-invested returns which I never really recorded (only recorded total starting amount and exit amount), but i'm guessing its something in the region of £15,000 - £18,000 which means I'm up around 5% rather than the 2.7% down.
I know I'm going to get shot in flames (its an emotive subject, and one where no-one truely knows the answer, hence why its interesting). These are my observations:
- I see nothing to suggest that the table is weighted to anything other than 2.7% in favour of the bookies.
- Numbers generated are not truely random, that is although over time the table is 2.7% in favour of the bookies, at any one moment in time the odds could be stacked against you i.e. it could be in a cycle of paying/not paying out.
- Due to the above you are more likely to return more unusual results that you wouldnt find in a real roulette table. For instance the £300 I lost was based on around 15 bets on red, when the previous 10/11 were black. I didnt get a single win. Yes, statistically it has to happen but you seem to get unusual patterns emerging quite often (due to the cycles above).
- Drawing a number one bed to the left or right of yours means your number was no closer to winning than a number on the other side of the roulette wheel - its just a machine to program a single outcome (it was amazing the number of spectators watching me who thought that because the ball landed one bed next to mine that I was close to winning - the ball may as well have landed in Mars).
- Ive seen the 'flicker' that people have mentioned with the screen. I'm not entirely convinced but that said the jury is out on that one for me. I suspect that when the ball rolls longer I seem to lose more often than win, but again I'm not convinced its anything other than chance (jury is out on that one as well).
- Due to the 2.7% fixed odds the longer you play, the less likely you are going to come away in profit, or with anything for that matter.
- The people who sit watching in the bookies seem to know the outcome within the first half of a second of it appearing (it f***ing annoys me).
- I think the odds of paying out could be far more complex. I dont know what the alogorithem is but I suspect its based upon a combination of how your terminal is playing, how the other 3 terminals are playing (or however many are there), and how the 'master' is playing, and the amount of your bet/potential winning. I'm guessing on this, but its just a gut feeling that I cant substantiate. However, I'm a little more certain on your bet/potential winning being a factor. I reckon it takes a look at what your potential winning will be and will decide which number it wants to pay out, if anything at all. For instance if you have a £10 stake on one number and a £1 stake on another and its in a cycle of only wanting to pay out small sums then the higher staked number is less likely to appear.
I think all the talk about statistics is a red herring - on a proper roulette wheel then yes I agree. But FOBT are machines and dont play evenly. Quite simply I dont believe that if you put £1 on red and it comes out the odds are not truely 1/2 that red hits next time (ignoring zero) - it depends upon what the machine wants to do. All that happens is that the machine is programmed to be 2.7% in favour of the house (with a few alogorithems as above included) - it doesnt play 'true'. This is why people think its a con when unusual patterns emerge.
Like I say everyone it entitled to their opinion which no-one can prove or disprove, but these are just observations based upon my playing experience.
If anyone is interested in my strategy then I might divulge it - its nothing very significant, but every little helps.
Brand new to this forum and have to confess i'm not really much of a gambler, or wasnt until I followed a colleague from work into a bookie.
Up until a couple of months ago I had never been into a bookies and wish I hadnt as it is definately a mugs game. I decided to have a little flutter on the FOBT one day which paid out (in some ways I wish it had fleeced me as I'd have never played it again). One thing led to another and I ended up playing it regularly over a couple of months approx 40 times in total. I do have a general interest in statistics and my job at work as a financial analyst fuelled this interest.
I kept a fairly clear record of my results which are as follows:
Total Profit: £985
Total Wins: 38
Total Losses : 2
I am counting a profit as anything where you have broken even or better. Out of the two times I lost one was £700 and the other £300, so essentially I took out £1,985 and the FOBT took £1,000 out of me. I've now stopped playing as even though I'm up I feel like a fool.
Of course none of this includes re-invested returns which I never really recorded (only recorded total starting amount and exit amount), but i'm guessing its something in the region of £15,000 - £18,000 which means I'm up around 5% rather than the 2.7% down.
I know I'm going to get shot in flames (its an emotive subject, and one where no-one truely knows the answer, hence why its interesting). These are my observations:
- I see nothing to suggest that the table is weighted to anything other than 2.7% in favour of the bookies.
- Numbers generated are not truely random, that is although over time the table is 2.7% in favour of the bookies, at any one moment in time the odds could be stacked against you i.e. it could be in a cycle of paying/not paying out.
- Due to the above you are more likely to return more unusual results that you wouldnt find in a real roulette table. For instance the £300 I lost was based on around 15 bets on red, when the previous 10/11 were black. I didnt get a single win. Yes, statistically it has to happen but you seem to get unusual patterns emerging quite often (due to the cycles above).
- Drawing a number one bed to the left or right of yours means your number was no closer to winning than a number on the other side of the roulette wheel - its just a machine to program a single outcome (it was amazing the number of spectators watching me who thought that because the ball landed one bed next to mine that I was close to winning - the ball may as well have landed in Mars).
- Ive seen the 'flicker' that people have mentioned with the screen. I'm not entirely convinced but that said the jury is out on that one for me. I suspect that when the ball rolls longer I seem to lose more often than win, but again I'm not convinced its anything other than chance (jury is out on that one as well).
- Due to the 2.7% fixed odds the longer you play, the less likely you are going to come away in profit, or with anything for that matter.
- The people who sit watching in the bookies seem to know the outcome within the first half of a second of it appearing (it f***ing annoys me).
- I think the odds of paying out could be far more complex. I dont know what the alogorithem is but I suspect its based upon a combination of how your terminal is playing, how the other 3 terminals are playing (or however many are there), and how the 'master' is playing, and the amount of your bet/potential winning. I'm guessing on this, but its just a gut feeling that I cant substantiate. However, I'm a little more certain on your bet/potential winning being a factor. I reckon it takes a look at what your potential winning will be and will decide which number it wants to pay out, if anything at all. For instance if you have a £10 stake on one number and a £1 stake on another and its in a cycle of only wanting to pay out small sums then the higher staked number is less likely to appear.
I think all the talk about statistics is a red herring - on a proper roulette wheel then yes I agree. But FOBT are machines and dont play evenly. Quite simply I dont believe that if you put £1 on red and it comes out the odds are not truely 1/2 that red hits next time (ignoring zero) - it depends upon what the machine wants to do. All that happens is that the machine is programmed to be 2.7% in favour of the house (with a few alogorithems as above included) - it doesnt play 'true'. This is why people think its a con when unusual patterns emerge.
Like I say everyone it entitled to their opinion which no-one can prove or disprove, but these are just observations based upon my playing experience.
If anyone is interested in my strategy then I might divulge it
- its nothing very significant, but every little helps.-
Cardinal Sin
- Senior Member
- Posts: 4166
- Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2005 3:33 pm
I stumbled accross this thread and read the whole thing. I have myself debated this subject over and over again.
I have been working in a bookie for 3 years and have also played a lot of fobt roulette and also watched others playing many many times. I have no personal reason for wishing to defend the bookies or their FOBT programs, in fact, morally, I HATE bookies. And for what it's worth, I have just quit! (And I just started a sentence with "And"!)
I used to be a heavy (and successful) fruit machine player and have many friends who still are long time players, and are more successful than me (well financially anyway). Anyway, I have found that the fruit machine players find it almost impossible to accept the concept of fixed-odds, and can not think outside the box of fruit machine programming, IE: "cycles", "loops", "percentages", "moods" etc etc. This, I feel, is a natural human attitude after experiencing the predictable programming of fruit machines.
Okay, it is a fact that a truely random RNG cannot exist, but this fact can paradoxically be applied to the same rules of real life (IE: chaos theory) and I don't think that the inherant ability of a computer's simulation of randomness serves any purpose in this debate. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the heart of this debate is: whether or not Fixed-Odds BTs are intentionally on a payout cycle and therefore, not really "fixed-odds".
I say the following statement as someone who has myself been killed by 12 blacks in a row ...
I do not see any proof of FOBTs running on a percentage cycle.
The most obvious reasoning is (as has already been said here) there is absolutely no sane motive... Why on earth would all the large bookmaker chains falsely advertise a machine that does not play "fixed odds" when a true roulette game is proven to give a mathamatically unbiased 2.7% profit over enough time???
They have 1000s of shops in the UK, all raking in a huge FOBT turnover, with a fair program, they are guaranteed a two-point-seven.
The betting shop I worked in is the highest profiting FOBT shop in my area (which includes around 16 local betting shops). The average weekly turnover is between £100k - £180k depending on the time of year. The profit is not usually exactly 2.7027% of that figure. But over 3 years the average is near enough 2.7%
We once had a period of 4 Months where we made a 4% loss on the machines, the shop manager was so concerned he phoned the FOBT office and was told not to worry about it, it will all even out in the end. Now, the sceptical among you would probably expect to see a swing to something like 10% profit for a few Months to compensate (admittidly, so did we), but no. Over the next Months, we saw a 2% profit, a 5% loss, a 1% loss, a 3% profit, a 3% profit, a 0% profit, etc etc... We saw no obvious "claw back". After a long period though we could see it evening out. Bear in mind that these are machines that have a Monthly turnover of around half a £Million, so if there is a play cycle it would have to be a pretty big one wouldn't it???
I have cringed at some of the "one day at the bookies" type examples I have read in the above posts. One person's play for a day is nowhere near a large enough sample to prove or disprove the RNG's "randomness". There are enough eyes in the world to witness all sorts of "unlikely" events. My mate once won £50,000 on a scratch card, what are the odds of that??? 500,000/1 or more? Does that mean that scratch card's payout are biased towards 5'8" fat blokes who's names begin with "M"?
And the "my mate got ripped covering all but 3 numbers" argument earlier on... Christ allmighty!.. There is no better way of removing the element of luck and throwing a nearly consistent 2.7% average away... actually, yes there is: covering all 37 numbers!
Roulette punters are always unwilling to take an unbiased look at the probability of their game. There is too much personal emotion. How many times I have heard someone moaning of being ripped-off because the ball landed next-door to their number!! They don't stop to think, that they are actually twice-as-likely to hit one of the 2 neighbours to their 1 big number!
A theory that I keep hearing, that has been mentioned here, is the one that goes... "3 tends to follow 31" or "8 tends to follow 11" etc etc. Now I have heard many people talk about this stuff - some people even have a pocket full of scraps of paper with these repetitions highlighted. Funny thing is though... Everyone, or every group has different contradicting number chain theories. This is because, in everyones experience, there are certain chains that do appear more frequently than others. And once it is in their head, it tends to stand out in their memory when it happens again. For instance, most people think that 0 likes to double up more than any other number. This is simply because you will remember 2 zeros more easily and they stand out on the play history board more obviously too. Now, why don't ladbrokes and willyhill worry about people coming in with their notebooks... Shouldn't they be concerned about people working out these patterns on a non-random machine? I mean, if a pattern like this existed, no matter how rare, the machine could be rinsed couldn't it? Well ladbrokes and willyhill aren't worried about the nootbook brigade, they are simply delighted (just as the casinos are) that they have customers that dedicated to playing roulette! - an unbeatable game. ...and they are confident that their computer simulation is random enough to not be beaten by a notebook.
Also, I would like to address the "2 machines, same time, same number" point. This does work, and to me, it proves an unbiased number generation. If the machine was purposely picking the outcome based on the number spread, then why would the same-number trick happen at all? ...On two machines with a different spread?
We would all like to believe that the machines are crooked, and I won't rule out a slight possibility (stranger things have happened). But I think illegal FOBTs is about as likely (and pointless) as someone playing 1 chip chase martingale with a 1,049,576 chip bankroll on a no-limit table and NOT eventually hitting 20 blacks!
I have been working in a bookie for 3 years and have also played a lot of fobt roulette and also watched others playing many many times. I have no personal reason for wishing to defend the bookies or their FOBT programs, in fact, morally, I HATE bookies. And for what it's worth, I have just quit! (And I just started a sentence with "And"!)
I used to be a heavy (and successful) fruit machine player and have many friends who still are long time players, and are more successful than me (well financially anyway). Anyway, I have found that the fruit machine players find it almost impossible to accept the concept of fixed-odds, and can not think outside the box of fruit machine programming, IE: "cycles", "loops", "percentages", "moods" etc etc. This, I feel, is a natural human attitude after experiencing the predictable programming of fruit machines.
Okay, it is a fact that a truely random RNG cannot exist, but this fact can paradoxically be applied to the same rules of real life (IE: chaos theory) and I don't think that the inherant ability of a computer's simulation of randomness serves any purpose in this debate. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the heart of this debate is: whether or not Fixed-Odds BTs are intentionally on a payout cycle and therefore, not really "fixed-odds".
I say the following statement as someone who has myself been killed by 12 blacks in a row
...I do not see any proof of FOBTs running on a percentage cycle.
The most obvious reasoning is (as has already been said here) there is absolutely no sane motive... Why on earth would all the large bookmaker chains falsely advertise a machine that does not play "fixed odds" when a true roulette game is proven to give a mathamatically unbiased 2.7% profit over enough time???
They have 1000s of shops in the UK, all raking in a huge FOBT turnover, with a fair program, they are guaranteed a two-point-seven.
The betting shop I worked in is the highest profiting FOBT shop in my area (which includes around 16 local betting shops). The average weekly turnover is between £100k - £180k depending on the time of year. The profit is not usually exactly 2.7027% of that figure. But over 3 years the average is near enough 2.7%
We once had a period of 4 Months where we made a 4% loss on the machines, the shop manager was so concerned he phoned the FOBT office and was told not to worry about it, it will all even out in the end. Now, the sceptical among you would probably expect to see a swing to something like 10% profit for a few Months to compensate (admittidly, so did we), but no. Over the next Months, we saw a 2% profit, a 5% loss, a 1% loss, a 3% profit, a 3% profit, a 0% profit, etc etc... We saw no obvious "claw back". After a long period though we could see it evening out. Bear in mind that these are machines that have a Monthly turnover of around half a £Million, so if there is a play cycle it would have to be a pretty big one wouldn't it???
I have cringed at some of the "one day at the bookies" type examples I have read in the above posts. One person's play for a day is nowhere near a large enough sample to prove or disprove the RNG's "randomness". There are enough eyes in the world to witness all sorts of "unlikely" events. My mate once won £50,000 on a scratch card, what are the odds of that??? 500,000/1 or more? Does that mean that scratch card's payout are biased towards 5'8" fat blokes who's names begin with "M"?
And the "my mate got ripped covering all but 3 numbers" argument earlier on... Christ allmighty!.. There is no better way of removing the element of luck and throwing a nearly consistent 2.7% average away... actually, yes there is: covering all 37 numbers!
Roulette punters are always unwilling to take an unbiased look at the probability of their game. There is too much personal emotion. How many times I have heard someone moaning of being ripped-off because the ball landed next-door to their number!! They don't stop to think, that they are actually twice-as-likely to hit one of the 2 neighbours to their 1 big number!
A theory that I keep hearing, that has been mentioned here, is the one that goes... "3 tends to follow 31" or "8 tends to follow 11" etc etc. Now I have heard many people talk about this stuff - some people even have a pocket full of scraps of paper with these repetitions highlighted. Funny thing is though... Everyone, or every group has different contradicting number chain theories. This is because, in everyones experience, there are certain chains that do appear more frequently than others. And once it is in their head, it tends to stand out in their memory when it happens again. For instance, most people think that 0 likes to double up more than any other number. This is simply because you will remember 2 zeros more easily and they stand out on the play history board more obviously too. Now, why don't ladbrokes and willyhill worry about people coming in with their notebooks... Shouldn't they be concerned about people working out these patterns on a non-random machine? I mean, if a pattern like this existed, no matter how rare, the machine could be rinsed couldn't it? Well ladbrokes and willyhill aren't worried about the nootbook brigade, they are simply delighted (just as the casinos are) that they have customers that dedicated to playing roulette! - an unbeatable game. ...and they are confident that their computer simulation is random enough to not be beaten by a notebook.
Also, I would like to address the "2 machines, same time, same number" point. This does work, and to me, it proves an unbiased number generation. If the machine was purposely picking the outcome based on the number spread, then why would the same-number trick happen at all? ...On two machines with a different spread?
We would all like to believe that the machines are crooked, and I won't rule out a slight possibility (stranger things have happened). But I think illegal FOBTs is about as likely (and pointless) as someone playing 1 chip chase martingale with a 1,049,576 chip bankroll on a no-limit table and NOT eventually hitting 20 blacks!
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Cardinal Sin
- Senior Member
- Posts: 4166
- Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2005 3:33 pm
Someone on here DID try a big stake on two machines at the same and they came up different numbers.pubjoe wrote:Also, I would like to address the "2 machines, same time, same number" point. This does work, and to me, it proves an unbiased number generation. If the machine was purposely picking the outcome based on the number spread, then why would the same-number trick happen at all? ...On two machines with a different spread?
here's an idea, go stick £97.25 on red and machine next door the same on black. put £2.75 on 0 (just so the most youll lose is £5.50) and everyone post their results.
Nah, didnt think you would, but would be good to see.
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Cardinal Sin
- Senior Member
- Posts: 4166
- Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2005 3:33 pm