kuma

[kuma @fatto_kuma]

@DoctorRazzWSOP Hope he does Twitter Utility Theory next.

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@vegastbone @JeffreyBenson12 @Jqnc9w9

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@HerbertTheFlea @sevencard2003 @eggmann8 @vegastbone

[Quantum @Quantum_Sport]

JAPANESE SLOT ADVANTAGE PLAY - CARD COUNTING IN SLOTS

Imagine a 6/5 blackjack pit where all the tables used CSMs, but one out of 20 tables had 10 extra aces in a six deck CSM shoe giving the player a big advantage, while the others favored the house, and each day they swapped out the shoes.
This is exactly how japanese slots, known as "pachislots" work. There is no skill like in video poker - you just push the button and there are reel stops but it's random - but the police mandate a "setting system" where there are six settings: setting one, which typically returns around 98%, through setting six, which returns up to 110%. Each day before the morning open time the manager comes and sets the setting for each slot.
Obviously, most of the machines are set on setting one or two, which make money for the house. But all pachinko halls, as they call mixed slot/pachinko casinos in Japan, have some slots set to pay above 100%, and the players know this. In Vegas, there always have been rumors of "hot slots in the corner" which we know is now BS, but not here - there ARE hot slots in Japan. There are also "must-hit" quasi-progressive features and a vulture/camp culture around these in Japan just like in the US, and this is probably the more lucrative type of play for the solo player. We won't get into that here.
But figuring out which slots are on the +EV settings and playing those from open to close, is also a possible method of advantage play. If one can sit at a setting six slot and play from open to close, they can make between 50k-100k yen per day at typical max bets and play speeds. But 90+% of the slots are setting one, where they'd lose 20k instead.
The problem is "hot" slots are set in secret each morning. So how do you find out which ones are hot? The most obvious is to bribe the hall manager. Illegal, but has happened. The problem is that margins are so thin in these halls that they'd quickly lose money if the hot machines are given away, so these deals tend to be caught quickly.
So that leaves us with the second way to do this, which is to sit down at the slot and try to figure out if you're sitting at a winner. If you are, you play out the rest of the day, if not, you leave. The problem is the only way to do this is to play the slot. But between losers and winners, a random slot is going to pay back only around 98.5%. So you are taking the worst of it when doing this. And although Japanese slots are lower variance than US slots, variance is still pretty high. The way the math works, simply playing a few hours and quitting on a loss isn't sufficient - you might have just got lucky on a bad slot, or unlucky on a good one. So how can you know?
It turns out that the reel symbol probabilities and payout percentages, by law, must be published by the makers before any new slot comes out and these are well known, and the reels have to be otherwise random. So the pros count reel symbol appearances versus known probabilities, using a type of card counting for slots. If the symbol appearance rate goes above a type of "true count" they know the slot is more likely than not to be a higher setting slot and will continue play.
The problem is the halls and machine makers know they are vulnerable to this. So they choose reel probability settings that don't vary based on the slot settings in a simple way. For example you might have grape a low payout symbol at 1/4.6 for setting 1, 1/4.3 for setting 3, but 1/5 for setting 6, but some other more +EV symbol would be higher for setting 6 to make up for this for example "7" might be 1/150 for setting 1, 1/130 for setting 3, and 1/110 for setting 6. Of course there are systems for every slot to work around this. Just like in card counting you might keep a count of grapes and then a side count of 7 for example.
With optimal play on the most favorable slots in standard conditions you have to play for around 3-4 hours to have a decent Baynesian view of the slot being +EV or not. At that point you have taken an expected loss of 5 to 10k yen, for something like a 5% chance of playing out the rest of the day at a big edge. The math doesn't usually work out - with optimal play you will wind up around break even.
So how do you win? One, some halls are better than others, and most halls have "special days" where there are more +EV set slots than usual. The worst days are weekends and holidays, other than promo days, then weekdays, and finally special days/machine change days are usually the best. And there is an app, called Site Seven, that actually tells you the payout of each hall by day, allowing players to see which days payout better than usual. The app is made by the same company that makes the tracking systems for the slots, Daikoku Denki - they have 1.5 million customers paying for the same information they also provide to the casinos!
By picking out hot days and only playing those days, you can probably get a small player edge with optimal play. But to go beyond this you have to take it to the next level. And the next level is, it turns out the hot slot distribution is not random. Managers have different philosophies about where to put the winning slots. It's generally not random as you'd expect. Some actually put them in the corner. Some put them at machines that lost the day before - they know players look for winning machines, which are mostly machines that the same player played all day because AP or not winners play longer - so they don't want to get struck twice in the same place. Some try to keep them hidden, the idea being that players won't be as likely to sit at those.
The Site Seven app gives machine details on how machines paid out each day, but only for the last seven days. You'll have to build your own database from scraping the app or other means to get more than that, which you'd need to do to get enough data to pick up tells on the hall pattern. And of course halls are always changing their patterns, and you might pick up a fake pattern. But it can be done, and "more likely to be hot" slots can be found.
This is actually being done; people know about these slots, which leads to the obvious question - how do you get the seat? The way it is done in Japan is everyone lines up, and then they give out lottery numbers to everyone in line at a specific time, and people get to choose their seat as their number is called. The implication for team play is obvious. Teams will pay people just to get to the casino early enough to sit in the line to get in the lottery at the target casinos. They then hand off the early numbers to a smaller set of skilled players who will only sit in the likely +EV seats and can do the reel counting system to determine if they are at a winner. If they find they are not, they leave, otherwise they play the entire day from open to close. In major jurisdictions (Tokyo/Osaka) the battle for seats is fierce, but it can work out. Apparently, after paying the people to wait in line, overhead, etc, a skilled team player who has worked up from being a line sitter to being trusted with cash and able to count down a slot can make three to five million yen per year from this method.
And by the way, you have to play from open to close to make any of this viable. Because the casinos also hit you with the exchange rate. By law they cannot pay out cash directly. So they pay you in prizes, that you then take outside to a separate building with a window right next to the casino, that pays you in cash for the prizes. But the exchange rate is usually like 80-95 cents on the dollar. So if you buy 10k worth of tokens and run it up to 70k on the slot, you might only actually get paid 60k. This means you need to win enough on the slot to make up for that as well, which means you have to play for a very long time.
In short, we have a dying form of advantage play (the market is declining a few percent per year), that requires incredibly grindy, boring play, even worse than blackjack, plus extremely long sessions are mandatory, and you have to work your way into it by getting up very early and not even placing a bet, simply waiting in line outdoors to hand a number to someone else. The Japanification of casino advantage play.

[kuma @fatto_kuma]

@DoctorRazzWSOP @AbnormallyDist @PlusEVAnalytics start betting sooner

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@d_feustel @vegastbone There isn’t anything stealthy about this one.

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@PlusEVAnalytics “Due to the nature of your business,…”

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@L_EC_AP It’s a good one.

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@PlusEVAnalytics @mr_peanutbettor @yElff_ of course

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@bronerp4p Back before the internet Stu Feiner said on TV one night I would "eat my man's testicles" that weekend if I called. Should be in some HOF for that line alone.

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@JeffreyBenson12 Isn't his name actually FRED DONE?

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@rxgamble @sevencard2003 @tritonpoker I didn’t see a TBC quote in the calendar. Disappointing.

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@JeffreyBenson12 @vegastbone @SportsBetMT Can you just send him a monthly check?

[diggs @dlGgSyeTaGaiN]

@ESPN_Schick it's as though there are four times zones in this country and the world doesn't revolve around you

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@Gambleballs Are you always on the right side, usually?

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@tru3AP @sevencard2003 good one

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@PlusEVAnalytics sounds fun

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@AbnormallyDist I like CBB because it is easier to blame college kids than blame myself.

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@Livedogluke @PlusEVAnalytics Me trying to convert decimal odds and degrees C.

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@capjack2000 he looks like rufus