taking the skill out of SWP!

[QuizMaster]

You're wrong Grecian.

[Matt Vinyl]

Ah, can you elaborate? I was really getting interested in this thread, as there are some very good points. Why do you believe Grecian to be wrong?

Monopoly (both original and Deluxe) would get my vote for the 'most likely to never win even if playing for a couple of hours'. Had good 5000-6000 scores before many-a-time and not been in sight of the £1 (or the 50p on Deluxe!)

Have seen the cashpot up at around £18 for 4500-ish points, but the questions certainly seemed harder then. It appears that even though the game looks promising when there's a close cashpot to points required ratio, the question difficulty is ramped up to still hold most players back. Has anyone ever taken a big cashpot (or any prize of value for that matter!) from this game?

[grecian]

You're wrong Grecian.

As Matt says, why? Wrong that WWTBAM and TWL were more generous than other machines, or wrong in my explanations as to why?

In response to Matt: no, I've never taken a big pay-out from either version of modern Monopoly. I too have seen a JP down at 4 or 5,000 points and I played for about an hour but didn't manage to get it. I didn't feel the questions were noticeably harder than usual but I think generally Monpoly is apt to throw in spoilers at random intervals through the game.

[grecian]

You're wrong Grecian.

As Matt says, why? Wrong that WWTBAM and TWL were more generous than other machines, or wrong in my explanations as to why?

In response to Matt: no, I've never taken a big pay-out from either version of modern Monopoly. I too have seen a JP down at 4 or 5,000 points and I played for about an hour but didn't manage to get it. I didn't feel the questions were noticeably harder than usual but I think generally Monpoly is apt to throw in spoilers at random intervals through the game.

Ah, I suspect QM menas that I'm wrong that there ever was a 69% pay-out rule, in which case fair play - I thought my memory could be defective. Have SWPs always paid out at 30%? A pathetic return really - even allowing for the skill element one would probably expect to do better playing roulette or basic theory blackjack in a casino (payouts effectively 95% plus less the house rake, although I'm not a gambler).

[Istenem]

[quote="grecian"]
(a) pay-outs were higher then - this is possible as I'm sure that back in 1997 or so when I started playing machines, pay-outs were roughly at 70% (69% rings a bell - someone correct me if I'm wrong) - although I appreciate TWL has only been phased out in the last two years or so, and old WWTBAM is still to be found in many places]

[cool]

The percentage debate is largely irrelevant as the percentage payout varies depending upon the ability of the player and the way that the game is programmed.It may be set at 30 per cent , but if Ive put in 50PENCE and dropped £20 Ive made a return of hundreds of per cent.

[Istenem]

good point. another salient issue is that very few punters ever payout their coins, just recycling the odd £1 which gets thrown at them.


extending Cool's point about %ages; players as above only ever get a return of 0%.

obiously we are overlooking certain issues for the purposes of clarity of argument, we all understand these so there is little point in illustrating them in a forum such as this. "skill" does remain an issue on swp but on many(*) games the adept player can turn the odds in his favour.

i probably get about 70-80% return on money i put through WU and without crowing, i'm in the top 5 at that game. whereas i think everyone who posts on here expects 300% profit from their first 50p in japseye. meanwhile the very best players can aim for 1900% profit on certain games.

*can of worms but there are degrees of skill which can be harnessed by better players.

[grecian]

The percentage payout might be "largely irrelevant" to the amounts we take out (although I think that is true to an extent) but it could have been relevant to the point originally under discussion (why certain machines seemed to appeal to both Joe Public and Joe Professional).

Having said that, I'd dispute the fact that overall payout is of no relevance at all to the 'professional' player. If the overall payout is higher I'd say it makes it more likely that the professional player will win frequent big prizes, and will probably make winning those prizes easier even for a 'pro'. The example I might use is the phenomenon when a new game is out with an artifically high pay-out for a short time to entice players to begin playing it - I'm thinking, say, the early days of Hangman, WWTBAM or TWL. I certainly found JPs / big prizes more likely in that period.

[QuizMaster]

You're wrong for 1 simple reason, Grecian.

In the 'early days' of Millionaires, Weakest Link and Hangman, they were in their own cabinets and there were no other games to choose from for punters, who were forced to play those games if they wanted entertaining.

Think about it.

[cool]

what we (in my opinion) be focussing on is the actual structure of a game rather than the percentage payout which is too simplistic.I tend to shy away from games that are too easy to win small amounts on. If 20 people take out a £1 each from a machine after putting in £10 in total its exactly the same as nineteen people putting in £9.50 in total , getting nothing out , then me putting in fifty pence and dropping £20. I steer away from games that can be nibbled at by normal punters as they prevent the jackpot from ever being attainable.

[ob]

these style of games where £1/2 is easy to get are much more common nowadays cool - getting more and more so as time goes on..

[Nil Satis]

[quote="grecian"]I'm not sure either but in my experience TWL and WWTBAM have both managed it. Could mean one of two things:

(a) pay-outs were higher then - this is possible as I'm sure that back in 1997 or so when I started playing machines, pay-outs were roughly at 70% (69% rings a bell - someone correct me if I'm wrong) - although I appreciate TWL has only been phased out in the last two years or so, and old WWTBAM is still to be found in many places]

I don't know the ins and outs of payout percentages etc; what I do know is that those two games, and many others like them, had a definite pattern of getting easier as more money went in so that Jackpots or similar prizes were truly available ON A REGULAR BASIS, while still being able to offer a realistic chance of smaller prizes to "ordinary players". Clearly the cycle of the large prizes being available varied immensely from game to game and pub to pub but they were definitely there.

The most directly measurable instances of this were two variants of standalone WWTBAM, namely the one with a choice of modes - 50p for 1 player or £1 for 2 players - and a rarer one where the Jackpot always started at £40 then got higher after that. In both cases the Jackpots increased by a standard increment from the base point, namely 3p per 50p game and 6p per £1 game. Now it might sound that this would mean it would take an awful long time for a machine to recover but there was a time when Reading had three or four of these two machines and in each case the Jackpot would always recover enough in a week or two for the games to be worth playing again.

To confirm the maths, to get from £20 back to £40 again, the machine would need to take in 333 50p credits and it would seem that this would take forever but, as I repeat, because it was a decent game and because ordinary punters felt they were getting a fair chance, the average 'turnaround' was only around a week or two in relatively busy pubs. The crucial point was that everybody won in the sense that we (the serious players) got a fair stab at a decent payout every so often, the ordinary punters got a game they enjoyed which offered realistic chances of £1 to £2 every so often, which for 90% of punters (especially the drippy couples ©) is all they ever want, and the pubs/machine owners got a guaranteed intake of money.

Now not all older games were like that but many were and I'm sure I'm not the only one who misses them. What are we left with in return?

(a) sometimes nice looking and often 'fun' games that never give a decent payout (the silence regarding whether anyone has won a big prize on Monopoly Deluxe is deafening) or

(b) decent games that are completely killed the first time anyone wins a reasonable prize - step foward Caveman Capers.

Bah humbug!

[dm]

[quote="up"]good point. another salient issue is that very few punters ever payout their coins, just recycling the odd £1 which gets thrown at them.


extending Cool's point about %ages]

That's true from the punter's point of view, but from the machine's point of view the percentage could still be being maintained.

If I go in with a tenner and lose 20 games in a row then the machine has paid out 0%

But on the other hand if I go in with a tenner, win £5 then put it all back in, I've paid 15 quid and got a fiver back. I'm still a tenner down but the machine's happily paying out 33%, which is more or less what it wants to do

So even when it looks like someone is filling the machine up for you, they're possibly not...