The Quiz Machine year so far

rogerthymes · Post by **rogerthymes** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 8:21 pm

What does everyone think? I had a ball from around March to somewhere in July then its all gone pear-shaped:

itboxes changed to paragons or opens
lack of decent new games
all the games i could jp pretty much disappeared
gamesnet's turned into 'wintwoquidifyoureluckynets'

Is it just me or is everyone else still doing fine? I think Borgcontact4's comments ring scarily true. The game for me is just about up. Interested to hear others experiences/boasts about how well they're doing! My luck's going down faster than pint in Mike Ashley's gullet.

grecian · Post by **grecian** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 9:34 pm

To be honest Roger, I've been meaning to post something similar to you for a week or so now. Going seems very tough at the moment and in particular I've not been having much joy from Paragons or ItBoxes at the moment. I'm afraid after a fairly generous run all the way through from ItBox 54 to Jiggy Bank, the companies now seem to be tightening things up a lot. I've really scaled back my playing out of lunch hour and have really stopped winning anything at all in my lunch hour - in fact if I keep losses to one or two quid now I consider I'm doing well. I'm sure things will improve again, but it does show how SWP income isn't massively reliable, unless you're a "real boy" (which I'm not).

betchrider · Post by **betchrider** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 9:35 pm

Fruits are goosed as well if thats any consolation

mr lugsy · Post by **mr lugsy** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 9:52 pm

even the edges on the pushers are few and far between

Ernest W. Quality · Post by **Ernest W. Quality** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 1:24 am

Are the machines not still set to 30% then? Or are you saying the machines aren't being played enough. The number of idiots is, if anything, at an all time high.

Matt Vinyl · Post by **Matt Vinyl** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 9:14 am

even the edges on the pushers are few and far between

Heh, I had a good result on a few of these at the beach t'other day. At least 4 lolly pops (circa 1981) a mini deck of playing cards and two keyrings - all from a quid worth of tuppences!

(Sorry!)

grecian · Post by **grecian** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 9:50 am

Ernest W. Quality wrote:Are the machines not still set to 30% then? Or are you saying the machines aren't being played enough. The number of idiots is, if anything, at an all time high.

No, I'm sure the overall pay-out rates haven't changed. I think the different is that for a long while there was a steady stream of games offering big one-off pay-outs, at least during the early stages, whereas the recent additions have been much more tight, or particular cabinets have tightened particular games. Money's still going on, so obviously it must come out, but in much more of a drib-and-drabby form. Also I find it takes me a while to "tighten" my game to adapt from a climate where JPs are readily available to a climate where you have to make your cash by taking e.g. £2s, £3s and £4s from a variety of games.

My specific problem is that virtually all of the nine or ten SWPs within easy walking distance of my office have been well and truly mined out by me over the years!

Northern Monkey · Post by **Northern Monkey** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 9:55 am

grecian wrote:

My specific problem is that virtually all of the nine or ten SWPs within easy walking distance of my office have been well and truly mined out by me over the years!

That's why I changed jobs mate- it was geting too depressing

Nil Satis · Post by **Nil Satis** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 11:54 am

I'd agree that things are pretty bad at the moment, although not quite as bad yet as a couple of years back when the truly awful ItBox game selections (the versions around the late 40s/early 50s) were everywhere and Deal or No Deal was often the only game worth playing in many locations.

Sadly Jiggy Bank may come to be seen as a wonderful one-off rather than merely the first of a wave of similar "man's games" (as I described it to a fellow Fruitchatter at the time) - a £1 a go version available and always capable of offering several poor prize funds in a row but with a big prize genuinely available to a serious, patient player. I'm not surprised Jiggy Bank has all but gone but even to my jaundiced eyes the poor quality of what has replaced it has been pretty depressing - Golden Snatch, Connect 4, The Italian Job, Megabucks Coffee and that ItBox Sports Quiz all being worthy of nothing but scorn.

Paragons replacing ItBoxes in many venues has been a major blow as well - the games on there that were previously worth playing (Millionaire and Caesar's Palace in particular) are much tighter on the Paragons and the rest of the games are the usual old dross. There has been one slight exception in that one of the old dross games does sometimes have a few quid available after years of being unplayable (presumably because of a reissue) but other than that Paragons provide pretty barren ground.

Poor times indeed.

Istenem · Post by **Istenem** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 2:58 pm

i would have to disagree with the general consensus of this thread. my experience of pub SWPs lately is that there are several games which have some money in them; no £50 JP bonanzas but several playable games which have modest rewards. perhaps my relatively low expectations are to blame for this but i'm having a gay ol' time.

civ77 · Post by **civ77** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 3:23 pm

I've only been playing a lot for about a year, but I'd agree that pickings have been comparatively slim the last month or two.

On the whole 'money goes in money comes out' topic, perhaps the increase in choice of games per cabinet is spreading the punter pound thinly across a wider number of games, resulting in individual games having less money fed into them.

rogerthymes · Post by **rogerthymes** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 5:08 pm

civ77 wrote:I've only been playing a lot for about a year, but I'd agree that pickings have been comparatively slim the last month or two.

On the whole 'money goes in money comes out' topic, perhaps the increase in choice of games per cabinet is spreading the punter pound thinly across a wider number of games, resulting in individual games having less money fed into them.

I feel the punters are probably staying away. If they're sticking a quid in and immediately being hit by spoilers or finding that even Bullseye's norm now seems to be 601 points then they'll just leave it and get back to supping.
Even winnable games like Lyric and Caesar's Palace would at first glance seem like a waste of time to Joe Public.
Jiggy Bank coulda been a cross-the-board contender but they blew it imho. Games like The Big 3 (DOND spinoff) would put people off after a while and as for the idea of Open actively making it difficult to see what games are on - that's sheer idiocy. :x

grecian · Post by **grecian** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 5:32 pm

Is Lyrics a goodie then? I thought it was absolutely frightful when I took a look, although lyrics are probably my single biggest quiz black spot...

Nil Satis · Post by **Nil Satis** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 6:01 pm

grecian wrote:Is Lyrics a goodie then? I thought it was absolutely frightful when I took a look

Same for me, and I wouldn't say I was too bad on lyrics - I've always found this one almost comically difficult, like the Holy Grail question about the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow, only trickier...

pokerkingqueen · Post by **pokerkingqueen** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 6:12 pm

edited was pissed yesterday and didt mean to mention the poker game