Instinctive paranoia
I’m feeling a little peaky, when I talk about online casino games. Thought about playing video poker for a change of scenery, but ended up walking past the slot machines into the bar. Even if you play a perfect strategy on this machine, you can’t even return your money. Even in theoretical calculations. No matter which lucky rabbit’s foot you got in your pants, the very best you can hope to do is to almost break even.
If I stopped there, there’s no sense in any casino cheating on the slot machines. But there’s no denying you’re right ’bout one thing. Greed’s the worm in the gambling apple. So I’ve seen pit bosses and managers decide the Vig’s not enough and rig the games. Yeh, there’s some cheating going on, but most of it’s on your side and it’s not very subtle.
Just ’cause you come up empty on one or two sessions don’t mean nothing ‘cept your wins and losses’re averaging out over time. How you gonna that that evidence? Well, you gotta test their slot machines. Pick one of their video poker games. Tracking how many hands you played and how many you won or lost ain’t no proof at all. You need a test that’s statistically significant to prove cheating. It’s put up or shut up. No-one likes a sore loser unless they got the evidence to prove otherwise.
So why do some people get so all-fired sure they’ve been cheated by slot machines? In a word: frustration. They were hot, certain their luck was in, but had a long bad session. That always makes the loss harder to bear - when your emotion gets in the way of your judgement. Gambling’s got streaks of luck both ways. But they tapped out of money before the streak ended. Was there anything wrong with the wheel? Nope! The math god smiled and it was true.
