Bandit Odds - nerdy maths challenge

[malcymal]

I must be bored, I've just worked out the odds of my Beromat mongrel bandit and calculated it to be quite low in comparison with today's minimum odds of machines having to payout 70% by law. So, a probability maths challenge for you.

Who has got the highest odds, and on which machine? This could be a bandit, Rotodart, whatever....
Who has got the lowest odds and on which machine? Ditto above. Put it down regardless, be interesting to see what the top payers were!

If you don't know how to do it, you will need to right down the sequence of each reel 1, 2, 3.
Now looking at each win on your award card, take the odds of winning this, step by step.
So, if you had 1 Bell on reel 1, 1 Bell on reel 2 and four Bells of reel 3 and your Jackpot was 100 coins then
1/20 * 1/20 * 4/20 = 6/8000 PAYS 100, SO IN 8000 SPINS YOU WOULD WIN, 600 COINS. (in theory, but odds can go for and against you.)
Do this for every winning combination on your award card then tally up the amount of coins paid in 8000 spins.

If you have 10 symbols per reel, then it's in 1000 spins.

So I will start.
Roma Beromat Hybrid whatever you call it, a poor total odds of 59.2%, so in 100 pennies I would get 59 coins back.
Sega Berkeley - 20 symbols per reel - odds 64%....ouch......
Got to do my Jubilee, but have a go.

[malcymal]

So, nobody come up with their odds yet???

[operator bell]

My Novomat came out pretty low, in the 60's, but that didn't take account of the first reel respin. Reworking it with the optimistic assumption that every time I hit a no-pay symbol I could re-spin it to a pay symbol, the odds improved into the 80s. The only problem with that is, my Novomat doesn't have a re-spin button! Someone took it off long ago and it's missing.

I modified the game by cutting another "pays 2" slot in the 3rd reel, since I was remaking the strips anyway. Now it's in the mid-90s, without re-spin. About where it ought to be for a home game, in my opinion.

[malcymal]

Interesting Operator Bell, so you were getting the same odds as me. When you say you cut a slot in the third reel, what symbols were you offering the 2 coin payout on? I must say my machine is brutal at taking your money. When this machine was deployed in some cafe or arcade it must have made its owner a lot of money. The odds of getting a ten coin payout are very low. It always makes me smile when I can line up 3 lemons and I don't get a penny back. Incidentally, underneath my reel strips I can vaguely see other symbols showing. I can see an edge of a fruit (I think it might be a pear) with the red lines going across them. What are the red lines for, are they winning symbols or losing symbols? I don't want to peel away my existing reel strips but was wondering what the ones underneath may be made of, e.g. are they paper or could they be tin strips?? If they were tin, I would be tempted to get an award card to match them and remove current strips to show the original ones.

[operator bell]

...When you say you cut a slot in the third reel, what symbols were you offering the 2 coin payout on? ... I can see an edge of a fruit (I think it might be a pear) with the red lines going across them. What are the red lines for ... was wondering what the ones underneath may be made of, e.g. are they paper or could they be tin strips??

As you know, but for the benefit of those who don’t, the German Novomat/Beromat machines have a disk on each reel with slots cut from the edge down towards the middle. Payout is controlled by fingers that probe these slots – the deeper they are, the more the payout. See pic. The fingers are all on a common shaft, so it’s the shallowest slot that determines how far in they go. If there’s no slot in one reel, there’s no payout. The red lines just indicate symbols that have slots. Any three symbols with red lines is a payout, and any symbol without red lines indicates a losing game.

Originally my 3rd reel just had 2 paying symbols, a '1' with a full depth "pay 10" slot and a '2' with a shallow "pay 2" slot. I added another "pay 10" and another "pay 2" slot to bring the percentage up. I took photos of this procedure, which I can’t find right this minute but will post later. Lining up a ‘1’ doesn’t mean it pays 10, it will pay 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 or nothing depending on the shallowest slot lined up on the other two reels. I was replacing the reel strips anyway so that was no problem, and it didn’t change the award card.

The original reel strips are paper, and firmly glued to the reel castings. There is absolutely no way possible to remove them intact, they have to be laboriously scraped off. My Novomat has numbers, not fruits like the Beromat, and I was able to find numbers artwork on one of the German sites. Perhaps you can find Beromat fruits there.

[treefrog]

I have a challenge, I bought a Aristocrat Sheerline last year, which does not appear to follow any kind of random mathematical calculation, but oddly for a mechanical bandit will actually play around 20 or 30 normal small wins or no wins, but then go through a win streak. Eg. it will perform 6 wins on the trot, high pays wins and then go back to normal play for 30 mins.

Not sure what calculation method to use on this one, but it is true..... Haven't worked out what's going on yet.......

Any views!

[malcymal]

Aritocrat Sheerline sounds like it's possessed by some sort of poltergeist!!! Perhaps the spirit of an old arcade owner from beyond the grave, or a granny who lost all her pension in it through the sixties??? "I'm 92, got my own teeth but lost all my pension in that b***tard bandit". I know some of the Segas had an electronically controlled winstreak (wasn't it 10 spins, land an overlayed symbol to win 10 coins). My Berkeley has evidence of this left over with all the gubbins removed. There are still metal contacts left on the payout cog for reel 1 and the big top end payout fork that must have gone into the electronic box to run this. I am stumped by your mechanically controlled winstreak. There is either some mechanically geared marvel in there or it's just pure chance!