do online games with progressive payouts ever become a positive expectation

Hi Friends,
I have shied away from online casinos in the past, but I have been hearing from enough people on here how they are doing well at bonus hustling and other forms of advantage play on online casinos, that I have started looking into it. After all, no one on here would exagerrate their winnings vs online casinos, would they? LOL. Anyways, I have seen some games that are tied to progressive payouts and I am wondering if these ever get into positive expectation territory and if a reasonable strategy would be to seek these games out and play them.
Thanks,
Steve

depending on the game, your chances at hitting it are still very slim. One method is to play for the Jpot with the bonus $ then when you get near your deposit, switch to BJ if you have to put in more action. Sometimes you will hit a 2-4k pay off and not the progo Jpot, and that can be pretty sweet. Then they will often offer you bigger bonuses since you play slots. Then you come back at them with head on BJ play and rip their knickers right off of them. The set up is as important as the knock out blow.

You'll likely find my new site, SlotCharts.com relevant for this.

There are frequently plus-EV opportunities at video poker.
One of my favorites, that gets positive a couple of times a month on average, is PlayTech's MegaJacks:
http://www.slotcharts.com/slotinfo.php?id=456

Obviously, there are other candidates for +EV play: Spice Island Poker is well into positive territory now, currently returning over 120%: http://www.slotcharts.com/slotinfo.php?id=101

Happy Holidays, -Ken-

do these games go +EV? Nice plug BTW, but how can you be on topic if ya ain't answerin da question?? ;>

PlayTech MegaJacks is 9/6 Jacks or Better 25c. The breakeven point for it is around $1220.

Cryptologic's Super Jackpot is 8/5 Jacks or Better:
Breakeven for quarters is around $2200, dollars at around $8800.

Spice Island Poker's sidebet breakeven is $218,047, for the sidebet portion only.

Roulette Royale is a real longshot, with breakeven at $679,000.

One of my goals for the next couple of months is to add the percentage return info to the games at SlotCharts where possible.

I am a game inventor and I think I understand slot and video poker machines, which is they must be random. Here's my question, on your site, it stated: "Would you rather play a progressive slot that just hit, or one that's at an all-time high? No contest, right?"

You don't know when it's going to hit. I grant you other things being equal choose the progressive with the largest jackpot. However, you can't time jackpots because each spin or hand has the same chance of hitting the jackpot, or stated differently, the machines have no memory. Thanks.

You are correct. You're no more likely to hit the progressive that's at an all-time high than the one that just reset.

However, you're rewarded more for hitting the long-shot on the higher jackpot machine. Keep in mind that the general public's perception of how this works is different from that of the average reader here at bj21. I shyed away from using the phrase 'overdue' at my site, even though in many cases the jackpots could indeed be described as 'statistically overdue'. I see that IGT has no qualms about using that phrase in their print advertising, as I've seen print ads talking about MegaBucks being "overdue". I would guess that most of the public, when told that a game is statistically overdue would assume that means +EV (even if they wouldn't recognize that phrase!). That's not true, and that's why I decided against using that phrase.

It'll be nice to have the EV available for the games where it can be calculated. So much to do, so little time!

I also have some preliminary results showing that the Microgaming slots can be "clocked" to estimate their return. The numbers I've accumulated so far make sense. That is, the reel stops do seem to be independently random events, not orchestrated to create the desired payout. Therefore, it doesn't take a huge sample size to estimate the EV with reasonable accuracy. This project is definitely going to take some time though. The non-slot games are easily calculated of course.

Now, we're decidely off-topic for BJ, although we're still in line with the original post. Should we move any further discussion to Internet Green?

I think BJ at Microgaming is rigged. You loose far more hands than you win, but the program is calcualted to let you win "streaks", so my startegy is to always bet the minimum, usually $2, then raise to $4 or $6 after at least 3 losses. The best I could do on Microgaming is win the bonus or maybe a little more. Usually less. I usually flat bet on other softwares.
There is an online game where you can count cards: Multi-player on Intercasino, William Hill, 49er, one on one, etc....the 8 decks are shuffled exactly after 2 decks have been played. I just switch to a new table as soon as the running count is below zero, and if I win I increase very slowly trying to find an empty table, usually at the lesser known casinos. I have done better at all other softwares than Microgaming, it's the worst, but one of the fastest. Intercasino is very slow.
I have closed this year with a loss of $2000 in land casinos (I'm mostly a green chip bettor-counting cards and all), and a win of $5,000 in on-line casinos, playing those only since last August from the comfort of my home, $2 or $1 at a time. My max bet ever (extremely rare)was $25. I would say average bet around $3.

I also have some preliminary results showing that the Microgaming slots can be "clocked" to estimate their return. The numbers I've accumulated so far make sense. That is, the reel stops do seem to be independently random events, not orchestrated to create the desired payout. Therefore, it doesn't take a huge sample size to estimate the EV with reasonable accuracy. This project is definitely going to take some time though. The non-slot games are easily calculated of course.

I was doing some work on exactly that point with help from slotcharts.com. Its a great site, I had no idea you were behind it.

Do you plan to add estimated returns to the charts? I am very surprised to hear you say that, if I understand correctly, the decals mimic those of mechanical machines. If that were the case, we could simply count the reels with slow-motion footage. If this is not the case, of course, we can still use statistical analysis to determine jackpot frequency, just with great variance around our estimate.

Minor problem: all the jackpots seem to be quite large in terms of absolute value. It is therefore questionable how valuable a pos EV slot opportunity is going to be given the fluctuations involved.

The physical number of symbols per reel is meaningless, just as it is in land-based slots. The software maps many 'virtual' stops onto the limited number of physical symbols on each reel. That rules out any visual counting approaches. However, the statistical approach is not as daunting as it seems, once we can establish one key point.

The reel stops must be independent of each other. In other words, if you see a jackpot symbol on reel one 1/20th of the time, and on reel two 1/30th of the time, and on reel three 1/40th of the time, then you should expect to line up the three winning symbols 1/(20*30*40) of the time.

That assumption doesn't have to be true in the world of online gambling. Instead, online casinos could choose to pick a payout amount, then randomly choose a reel display that corresponds to it. That's certainly still fair in the world of slots, but taken to an extreme it could make a machine 'feel' like it should hit more.

Imagine a machine where the jackpot symbols show up roughly half the time on any given reel, but where lining up all three of them only happens once in a million spins on average. Still fair, but definitely misleading.

My current research indicates that MicroGaming slots don't play these kinds of tricks, but instead mimic what we would normally expect at land-based casinos. This means that we can begin to draw useful conclusions from relatively small amounts of data gathered. For example, I recorded exact reel positions for 400 spins at Fruit Fiesta. Using the symbol frequency, I calculated the breakeven point at a whopping $229,000. At the starting jackpot of $800, I estimate the return on this game at 88.5%. Now, 400 spins wasn't enough to be very confident, because I only saw the Fruit Fiesta on reel 3 in the winning position once in my 400 spins, and therefore estimated its frequency as 1/400. But, hopefully you see that we don't need millions of data points to make a decent approximation.

I expect the breakeven points on some games to actually be reached occasionally, unlike the Fruit Fiesta game, which is prohibitively high. However, as you mention, the variance will be huge on these games, even if they become +EV.

Imagine a machine where the jackpot symbols show up roughly half the time on any given reel, but where lining up all three of them only happens once in a million spins on average. Still fair, but definitely misleading.

Ummm. Yes, fruit machines here in Britain are notorious for producing large numbers of "near-miss jackpots", due to the technical freakery you describe. I always think of this as dishonest.

Thanks for explaining your clocking strategy, its very rare people post interesting information like this which can't be determined from other sources.

I expect the breakeven points on some games to actually be reached occasionally, unlike the Fruit Fiesta game, which is prohibitively high. However, as you mention, the variance will be huge on these games, even if they become +EV.

I had high hopes for Roulette Royale, since technically, with enough money, it is possible to use hedging strategies and guarantee a profit when the jackpot gets high enough, with absolutely no variance at all. Unfortunately the jackpot would have to get so high it will almost certainly never happen. Maybe the next batch of progressive games...

Do you know anyone who is REALLY making a good living ONLY playing positive-expectation slots?

Thanks!

No, I have to admit that the only people I've seen making a living exclusively by playing positive expectation slots have generally looked like street people. :-)

While I do know several people who have supplemented their income by as much as 5 figures, in my opinion, the days of easy money wonging the slots is over. The competition is too tough these days. When I look through the casinos for machines these days, it is rare that I don't see other people doing the same thing, checking the same machines, waiting briefly behind the same players, etc.

Pro Video Poker players are more common.