Be Excellent To Each Other

You really have to get your head around the fact that UK pub fruit machines are not random, that changes EVERYTHING and makes them pretty much unique as a form of gambling in the entire world.

My post was made before I read yours and caveys, I don't doubt that there are tricks and stuff, but even with random ones, you can can get ahead of the curve.

Malc

But like I've said, it's nothing like that with UK pub fruit machines. They are not random at all, but are predetermined/'compensated'.

Yes but in the long run you will ALWAYS lose playing a random game with a house edge, whatever 'strategy' you use. (It's well known that the 'Martingale' roulette system for example, doesn't change the RTP of the game one tiny bit, it just massively changes the variance to give the illusion of working.)

The unique point with UK fruit machines is that players with the knowledge/skills can and do consistently make large profits, in perpetuity.

I'm sure I've said this before but you never hear about anybody getting rich and putting their success down to fruit machines.

See also.. you never see a band get big after winning a local "battle of the bands"

You never see me when I'm looking through your window as you sleep.

The players who make the real money keep very quiet about it, the longer 'doable' machines remain unknown to others, the better for them.

For the guys at the 'top table' it is literally a full time job, many more use fruities to just top-up their income. I'm in regular contact with a few guys from a couple of fruit machine forums, and some of those dudes are making proper cash at it.

Even a part-time amateur like me has basically managed to subsidise my online slots play at casinos for over a year, by consistently winning overall on pub AWPs. (And I'm not deluding myself BTW, I track every pound of profit and loss meticulously on an Excel spreadsheet.)

You had me lost right up until you mentioned the spreadsheet.. Now I completely understand everything.

There was about a year period just around the switch between £8 and £10 jackpot machines where i was making more by playing machines for about 3 or 4 hours a night + 2x8 hour shifts at the weekend than I was making during my normal working week as a tech support person.

That was not using emptiers but simply playing machines I knew how to play which were being regularly filled up by people who didnt know how to play them.

At the time I met and knew plenty of other people who were *just* playing the machines and earned enough to live off them.

Interesting.

I looked at the gambling commission's website and found this:

That will make AE very happy as he (and Stuart) are the ones that made that little bit of text appear

http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.c ... /index.htm

BTW obviously their current guidelines are for machines which are newly created they do not reverse this back for older machines so there are still machines out there which break all the guidelines (just because they were created prior to the last change)

Indeed it does

We took so much fucking stick over Fairplay, and were mocked with the whole 'just a sticker lol' chants, but the fact remains that to this day EVERY SINGLE AWP PRODUCED IN THE UK still has to have that disclaimer on it, by law, and it's now enshrined in the legislation as well.

Not bad for just two guys who saw something wrong and decided to have a go at fixing it.

Indeed mate, indeed.

Personally speaking, a (big) part of me says more power to your elbow, avenging yours - and mine - previous losses by playing these machines at their own game. It really must be quite a thrill knowing that you're going to cake these fucking things every time, walking away with hundreds of pounds of free money. It was ever thus the fruit machine addicts' fantasy, myself included.

However, in my own case, I just instinctively knew that if I didn't walk away from the fuckers I would lose everything - stuff far more important than money. Even if I knew I was on to a winner (I mean, I knew I could likely always grab a few bits of info from yourself were I to ask, old pals that we are ), I still couldn't do it.

You'll recall our old argument about 10 years ago now (groan), where I claimed the death of the compensated AWP at the height of their heyday, and that these would be replaced by random machines with features etc. just like their AWP counterparts? Well, although it hasn't quite transpired the way I foresaw - but it's certainly not far off. The odd BFM DOND aside, the pub fruit machine *is* very much a dying breed, and even where they are present, they sit unplayed for hours - all a very far cry from 10 years ago. By the same token, actual, physical random machines like Rainbow Riches et al lurk in every service station and bookies (and I'm sure would be in every pub as well, were this to be allowed - surely the next move?) More importantly, these random machines are massively widespread in a virtual sense, on people's laptops, phones and TVs. And many of these 'machines' - especially the more recent ones like 'The Last Nine' that you wrote about recently *do* have features aplenty, including bona fide skill-based ones. So much, then, for the "impossible" random hi-tech, just as I always said.

It really comes to something when Barcrest - the biggest player in UK fruit machines for at least the last 30 years - don't even manufacture predetermined, compensated type fruit machines *at all* now - or indeed any physical reels based machine; they are ALL random and most are wholly virtual.

Good fecking riddance as far as I'm concerned; I for one will not lament the death of the UK AWP for one millisecond.

I miss them from a purely nostalgic point of view - I have no real interest in current machines but would quite happily play the older machines if there were places still around to do so (in the same way playing old pinball tables or old arcade machines)

Mr P's arcade!

http://www.mrpsclassicamusements.co.uk/default.html

Interesting; I note the date of that document - June 2012! Horse/stable door springs to mind.

Also,

a. each possible permutation or combination of game elements that produces winning or
losing game outcomes must be available for selection at the initiation of each play;

Is entirely contradicted by

Where a machine operates in such a way that a particular feature (such as Hi/Low or gamble)
may invite a player to make a choice in circumstances in which they have no chance of success

(And which they have no chance of success
(defined by the probability of a win being reduced to less than 20% of that required to achieve the
target percentage payout) is bollocks, mathematically speaking - 5:1 odds (i.e. 20% chance of success) is hardly "no chance of success" anyway)

But whatever though, I'd be interested to know the legal force of these requirements. My understanding is that previously, machine manufacturers only signed up to a self-regulated regime ("BACTA").

I am no expert in the workings of fruit machines but would be surprised if even some of the current crop of machines were compliant? How could they be, if players like AE is able to predict - with absolute certainty as he describes above (via "showing" on the reels) - they they can be "done" according to some play methodology or other than guarantees a jackpot within less than the amount of this win?

I agree mate, although I was "anti" at the time (for the sake of the emulator authors), you'll recall that I did subsequently admit that I was wrong to both Stuart and yourself.

I still maintain that Fairplay missed the *big* underlying issue of 'doable' machines that then had to compensate off the back of 'normal' players in order to achieve their % setting - but of course, there was nothing to stop me starting my own campaign on that, had I so wanted to do, as Stuart himself pointed out to me in no uncertain terms. (Fair enough; he was right)

I used to think like that as well mate, but for me, even the old "classic" machines, although doubtless a damn sight "fairer" than their more modern contempories, were still evil, money-stealing devices that didn't do me any favours back in the day. Even some of these had "emptiers" too, as I'm sure you well know, it's just that in those pre-internet days in the 80s, knowledge was not so easily passed from one player to another. Plus, making a living from a bunch of machines with a £1.50 cash jackpot is not the same thing as for supposed AWPs with £70 cash jackpots (and in reality, fully £210 cash jackpots), even accounting for inflation.

Yes, but as AE says, you're not exactly going to go around advertising this fact/illicit source of income, are you? Not if you've any sense you won't, anyway.

In addition, my own theory is that for most people who have to/choose to play fruit machines 24/7 as a 'living' are going to get addicted, if they're not addicts already (which they likely are). The thing is, having guaranteed wins is NOT actually gambling at all, so the gambler must find some other means of scratching the itch - particularly if they've a fist full of illicitly-gained free money to play with, right? I know one 'pro' player (not AE) - one of the greatest of all time - he spent up on roulette, after having caked the machines to the tune of thousands and thousands. Even in AE's case (and I'm not being nasty to him here in any shape or form), his 'pro' player 'income' is used to feed *actual* gambling on random, online machines which cannot be manipulated.

A typical punter has little chance of winning on a pub machine. In most big towns a pro will empty them, often with tricks that leave the machine code confused and the % it has to make up high.

So it will mostly take money from the 2-5 in brigade until its ready to be done againg by the pro.

I only play the £500 ones these days, even though these eat your money you know some pro hasn't pulled all the money out

I think this is more or less know by a lot of people these days as I never see pub machines getting played.

To take this from the other side of the coin, I don't think that the pro's have an easy life. There are plenty of them doing it in the same pubs and areas. Don't think that tricks last as long as they used to with the internet these days. They also get a lot of abuse from locals and landlords who know what they are up to in many cases.

The whole industry is bent, these tricks have been out for years, we are taking about some reels and a feature board not Windows 7 so why there are so many bugs with each machine I don't know. In many cases the machines are the same aside from a different theme or graphic.

Indeed mate; the credibility of the 'pub fruit machine' has been utterly destroyed in my opinion. Before the advent of fruit machine emulation, I would never have believed in a month of Sundays the stuff that I *know* for a fact now, as do many many thousands of other people thanks to FME and other information sources also no doubt. (I've seen a real, physical machine being 'emptied' many times as well, quite apart from FME. It's a quite a sight to behold).

This would sit uncomfortably with me if I were doing that.

True but is has to be filled by someboday, I guess pissed up people sticking change in, is better that an happless addict filling it in one go.

They are brutal things now, the people with the tricks cream them and the causal players fill them up again.

I'm NOT talking about AE here, but y'know, my heart bleeds etc. The pro's have a much 'easier life' than the hapless addicts and normal players that they're de facto ripping off and parasitically draining their money. That they 'compete' with each other just goes to show how widespread the practice and machine vulnerabilities are. (If they don't like the competition, perhaps they should get a proper job, earning an honest, worthwhile living and pay taxes on it like everyone else). That they suffer abuse from locals and landlords is hardly surprising or regrettable either; these people are nothing more than cheats and parasites - their gains are very often at the direct expense of those 'locals' who have just done their shirt in said machines (NB: unaware that they CANNOT win in many cases precisely because of the pro players) and the landlords who have to pay to site the machines, their being a fair chunk of their livelihood. How many pubs are closing every week? Fuck me.

If I sound bitter about all of this it's because I very much am.



Agreed.

It does seem a bit of a sleazy way to make money but I guess if the end result is that pubs just don't have machines in any more then they'll have done everyone a favour. If a pub shuts down because it needed to feed someone's gambling addiction just to stay open then

I should point out that my views on "pro" fruit machine players are about as nuanced as those of someone who has thought about the subject for perhaps thirty seconds.

To be fair, I have to agree with you mate, you do have a point there.

Latest effort, another reasonable little profit.

Well that's €250 I'll never see again......

Dunno what the hell I was thinking of, playing four progressives at once.

I blame the Dragon Soop.

£25 spend at 25p a spin with zero payout in the time it takes a pizza to cook is not casual by my measuring stick.

Fair point I guess, but it's very, very casual by my measuring stick, historically speaking

Only €250 of real money, but seeing a €1000 bankroll get kicked around like this got pretty tiresome.....

FOBT addiction:

I'm amazed they're legal in bookies, I really am. They belong in casinos and nowhere else.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... er-addicts

I was in the bookies yesterday, they was a guy playing £100 with a bank of £2500, in the 10 minutes it took me to lose £30 on the slots his bank had dipped to £1800 and recovered to £2700.

The most he won for £100 spin was £360, which sounds a lot but the return is the same as £100 on a horse at 5\2.

Another time I watched a bloke lose £2000 in 10 minutes, that’s what he put in as well.

Not that hard to blow £500 on the slots at £2 a spin either.

They will not reduce the play on these, many of the slots in the bookies will pay out £1000 or more (capped to £500) jackpots on £2 a spin, so all the software is ready for higher prizes and stakes.
Wouldn’t surprise me if we get 4K slot jackpots in the bookies and more in the casinos

This is a free money challenge that I've set myself, to hit the jackpot on a slot called STARBURST.

A jackpot is a full screen of BAR symbols, and is worth a fairly modest 500x stake (which is €500 from my €1 spin).

I'm currently up to 200,000 spins (!), and I haven't seen it yet.

Off to hit the fruities in the pubs, it's a gorgeous day here so what better way to spend it than drinking bitter in a gloomy pub playing fruit machines? Although in all fairness I'll be walking around town from pub to pub so will get to enjoy some of the sunshine.

I haven't eaten since my tea last night so I suspect the beer will make itself felt fairly sharpish.....

OKELLS AHOY!

Isn't bitter supposed to cover most of the major food groups by itself, or something?

There's some semi-myth about Guinness doing it, I think. Obviously, someone tried it: http://guinnessdiet.blogspot.co.uk/

Out of interest, how many times have you hit the top win on any five-reel slot? I think I've only seen it once in a hell of a lot of spins and that was on Lucky Shot which is around a 750x stake win, but I hit it during free spins which double up, so it netted me £1500. (That's not intended as a boast, by the way - it has been far, far outweighed by losses before and after)

Random cross correlation, but how many of you fruity gambling types have downloaded Curiosity and been tapping away at blocks?

I'm probably the worst gambler on here and I've not been remotely tempted to download Curiosity. Perhaps partly because there's nothing at stake.

Most likely so. I'm interested to know if the repetitive act of fruit machines is a draw as well as the gambling element, the "just one more go" thing, regardless of the chance of physically winning anything.

Do you play the free play slot machines?

I am sometimes drawn to repetitive, Skinner Box-type stuff - Diablo II for example had me hooked for ages, but I guess with Curiosity, it's just one reward and it's at the end, so it's just a slog.

And no, the free play stuff doesn't appeal, although I've emulated the old fruit machines but of nostalgia more than anything

I've had a few over the years, but yes, they are very rare.

The thing with Starburst is that I've really dug my heels in, I want to see if it takes a million spins or more just to a hit a modest 500x stake win.

The other thing with Starburst is that I basically don't have to do fuck-all with it, since I upped the stop trigger to 250x stake, and because it doesn't have any sort of traditional bonus round - I just have to click on the '1000' spins button once every 40 minutes or so

It's a test of endurance now, basically, I think the computer will give up before I do. Unless I actually die, or something.

Here are the results from yesterday, featuring a guided tour of Ramsey's pubs and special toilet bonus footage. (I was over £100 into a machine, couldn't film in the pub itself, and wanted to vent a bit.)

Latest session.

** NOT MY FOOTAGE **

Even I didn't realise this sort of battering was possible.

This is a modern £70 jackpot AWP, it's privately owned by someone who does rather well out of AWPs out in the wild, and he's been honing his skills on his own machine.

He's just finished battering it into the ground, watch how much it takes to pay out a single win....... This is how it would play if you were the next person along.

Do note he's playing it at £1 per spin so every single spin of the reels cost £1, also note this is a REAL MACHINE playing exactly as it would in a pub or an arcade.

That doesn't seem all that surprising, depending on what was won in the 'battering'. If it was just one jackpot, then yes, it's harsh, but did he win multiples?

Oh yeah you can spank that one silly for multiple jackpots, but the method is incredibly complex.

I've had it explained to me in detail and it still doesn't make sense

I just think it's shocking that a £70AWP can take more than its entire jackpot value to award a single win/board!

Anyone who thinks there's no 'real' skill involved with modern AWPs, check this dude out.

He's playing it for a particular feature in the top zone that is a true skill reel stop on the middle reel, a WILD in view or on the winline advances the cash ladder, miss a WILD and the feature ends.

Note how fast it's going by the end.....