No, that player didn’t steal your jackpot
By Frank Legato
If the popular Discovery Channel series MythBusters (now streaming on Hulu) ever tackled the subject of slot machines, it would have a rich vein from which to draw subject matter.
The slot machine represents one of the most misunderstood pieces of technology to ever exist. The fact that a slot is a random device—unpredictable, unable to be manipulated by any act of its player—is a fact that many players, including savvy ones such as those who subscribe to this magazine, have a hard time comprehending.
For this reason, a collection of stubborn myths have continued to surround the slot machine and video poker games. We’ve dealt with many of them in this magazine (take a look at the VP Insider column on page 20 where we explore the most common video poker myths). A while back, for instance, I explained why a slot machine is never “due”—that each result on a machine is completely independent of every other result, and the simple fact of a streak of losing results, or the absence of a jackpot for a long time, does not necessarily mean that the slot will become “hot” at any time soon.
Simple Slot Machine The slot machines is a game of chance, many different outcomes will appear when the player press the play button. In this program, we draw an array of nine shapes,VB will automatically labeled the shapes as shape1(0), shape1(1), shape1(2), shape1(3), shape1(4), shape1(5), shape1(6), shape1(7) and shape1(8) respectively. Professional Casino Slot Machine This is a slot machine that resembles the real slot machines in the casinos. To create the project, you need to insert three image boxes into the form and program them so that they will display a set of three different pictures randomly when the user presses on the spin button.
The myth of the slot that is “due” joins a host of others—some ridiculous, others believable if one does not know how a slot machine works.
Some of the most ridiculous myths retired along with the age of coins. Some people used to believe that you could affect the results that would be caused by the slot machine’s random number generator by heating coins up—they would actually use a cigarette lighter to heat them up before inserting them into the machine. Others believed cold coins would result in winners, and would keep their quarters in a cooler. (I’m serious. People actually believed this.)
Some of the ones that have survived in the age of cash-out tickets are just as silly. There are so-called “slot strategies” still being hawked that will tell you to watch for “patterns” in the reel results on a traditional three-reel game—patterns such as bars forming an “X” in the play window, for example, are supposed to mean a win is imminent, according to one pamphlet available over the Internet.
Other myths would have actually been valid in the old days, when the symbols you saw on the reels were the only results available to you. The idea was to count the symbols and spaces on each reel, and through a mathematical formula, you would be able to determine the odds of each occurring, for a general idea of what was likely to land next.
The fact of modern slot machine technology that busts both these myths is the same: the physical reel on a modern slot is nothing more than a display device. Since the mid-1980s, slot machines have used what is known in the trade as the “virtual reel” system. In a nutshell, what you see is not what you get.
The virtual reel system was created to expand the possible results beyond what the physical reels display. Programmers assign a number to each physical spot—a symbol or a blank—and then, strategically assign duplicate numbers to each spot. A high-paying symbols like a “7” may have only one or two numbers assigned to it, but a single bar or a blank may have hundreds. This way, the “reel” which the computer sees—the only one that matters—has hundreds of virtual symbols instead of the 22 spots that you can actually see.
Free Easy Slot Machine Games
The RNG cycles through the virtual symbols constantly, and the computer freezes the symbol combination generated at the instant you touch the spin button or pull the handle. Thus, discernable “patterns” or the number of physical symbols mean nothing. The computer is basing its reel results on the virtual symbols. The reels are only there to display the computer’s result.
Another long-enduring myth of the slot machine is the classic that we’ll call “He Stole My Jackpot.” A player is sitting at a slot for hours, losing. He gets up; another player sits down and lands a big win. The first player fumes that this player sat down, played a few credits and “stole” his jackpot.
This myth is busted by the nature of the random number generator. All the numbers in a slot machine’s program are being generated in random sequence by the RNG at hundreds of numbers per second. Hundreds of thousands of possible reel combinations are whizzing by every second.
In the above scenario, the time it took for the first player to get up and the second player to sit down means the sequence of numbers whizzing by the second player are going to be completely different from those of the first player. The two players would have had to hit the spin button at the same precise nanosecond for the same result to occur. It is practically impossible that the first player would have hit that same jack- pot at the same time, had he kept playing.
There are many other myths I could bust here, but space limits us. We’ll continue to revisit the myth subject in upcoming issues.
This is a slot machine that resembles the real slot machines in the casinos. To create the project, you need to insert three image boxes into the form and program them so that they will display a set of three different pictures randomly when the user presses on the spin button. It involves a randomization process. Next, a timer needs to be incorporated into the procedures so that the program can produce animated effects. In addition, you can also insert the Microsoft Multimedia Control so that it can play sounds in synchronization with the spinning of the slot machine as well as when the player hits the jackpot. You can design any interface you like. We have created an interface as shown below:
The Interface
The Video Demo
Easy Street Slot Machine
The Code for Spin Sub Procedure
Slot Machine Drawing Easy
The three random variables a, b and c will be randomly assigned the values 1, 2 and 3 using the RND function. Based on these three random numbers, three different pictures will be loaded into the three image boxes randomly using the LoadPicture method. Animated effects are created by putting the above procedure under the control of Timer1, which will call the spin procedure after every interval until it fulfills a certain condition. Sounds are also added using the Microsoft Multimedia Control to make the game more realistic and interesting. The amount won is controlled by the If...Then...End If statements
It is important that you define the correct path for the LoadPicture method, otherwise the program will not be able to run. For example, our path is C:VB programImagesgrape.gif, you need to create the necessary folders and have the necessary image file if you wish to copy the program directly. If you place the image file in a differently folder, you need to modify the path accordingly. For example, if your image file is in D:VB programImagesgrape.gif, then you need to modify the LoadPicture method to LoadPicture('D:VB programImagesgrape.gif').
If you wish to use our image files, you can download from the links below:
Picture Of Casino Slot Machine
sound and the other for the jackpot sound. Below is the video demo of the slot machine simulator.Copyright©2008 Dr.Liew Voon Kiong. All rights reserved |Contact|Privacy Policy