David G. Schwartz, editor. Tales from the Slot Floor: Casino Slot Managers in Their Own Words.Las Vegas: UNLV Gaming Press, 2018.
If you will look at the last column in Table 10, showing the Payout Percentages you will notice that almost 85% of the payouts occur on the lower paying combinations which pay out 1, 5 and 10 coins with only one coin played (18.2% + 40.8% + 25.6% = 84.6%). University of Nevada, Las Vegas course catalogs, UNLV catalogs, UNLV course catalogs. Mathematics - Total Credits: 3. GAM 295 - Work Experience in Casino/Gaming. Prepare for the Praxis® Core Math with the only Praxis prep class in Las Vegas sponsored by UNLV Continuing Education. Improve your skills, confidence, and score, all of which increase your chance of admission into the teacher preparation program of your choice. These are carefully-researched introductions to research for clearly-defined topics, such as problem gambling or casino math. Gambling and the Law Here, you'll find a plethora of articles by gambling law expert I. Published Dissertations A list of all gaming-related dissertations and theses published since 1991. Today, the mathematics of slot machines. The University of Houston mathematics department presents this program about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them. M athematicians first got interested in randomness by studying games of chance.
Slot machines are the backbone of most casinos. They earn the most money and determine the physical layout of the casino floor. The management of slot machines, which includes overseeing employees, selecting machines, designing the playing space, resolving customer disputes, and conducting analyses to improve operations, is a challenging field whose complexity has grown as the machines themselves have become more sophisticated.
To better document the current issues in slot management—and the change the field has seen over the past four decades—the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Center for Gaming Research conducted an oral history project. Those interviewed were at all stages of their careers.
Drawn from these interviews, Tales from the Slot Floor features slot managers discussing several of the most important issues in today's casino world, including: the optimal layout of a slot floor; the qualities demonstrated by both good and bad managers; what customers want from their visits to the casino; the vendor/casino relationship; appealing to millennials; and what the future holds. In addition, those with long careers share their views on the changes they have seen, and all subjects offer their advice to those embarking on a career in slot management.
For those interested in becoming slot managers, or those just curious about how casinos work, Tales from the Slot Floor gives you the inside story of slot operations, from those who do it.
Excerpts from Tales from the Slot Floor
When I deal with vendors, like any business relationship, I want to have a great relationship with them and I need to trust them. So, when I first meet a vendor, especially if they're a new vendor, I kind of do a couple things to test their knowledge of what they know. But when they come to me with a new game and say it's going to make this, I always ask for data. You know, 'Where was your test data at? Was it in a California market? Was it in an Indian casino market or in the regional space?' And then, we'll look at the theme. I'll say, 'What type of themes do you have?' And then I'll ask about the math. 'What makes that math so special?'
- Saul Wesley
But normally, you want to get involved from the initial design stages as much as possible. As I said, you want to have some influence with the architect and the designer, and they're not always the same guy. They're oftentimes two different people, and they might have no idea what operations is all about, right? They're just trying to make everything look cool and look interesting. Well, the operations guy, he's concerned about how things fit: traffic patterns, what pieces and parts go where, how you're going to attract the people to the tables or the slots or whatever, how you're going to move people through a casino. I'm more interested in all of that stuff. Where do I put high denomination games, where do I put low denomination games?
-Charlie Lombardo
At Venetian, I set the floor up very different than I set it up at Bellagio, even though there's a lot of
transient. At the Venetian, the philosophy is more so of, we have large convention groups, so—we'll put participation right on the aisle way, where at Bellagio, I would never do that; I would never put a Wheel of Fortune right on the aisle. But at The Venetian, where you get a lot of conventioneers walking by, the theory is you're going to pull, you pull ‘em in and you catch a larger share—catch a little bit of their wallet as opposed to taking up an A location where I'm revenue-sharing like I would at Bellagio. If it's an A location, I don't want to share my revenue on that, but Venetian's—it's just a little different of a mindset. So, it depends, again, like, on location—Treasure Island, I might do things a little bit different than Bellagio. When you get even more into the nitty gritty, it depends on your location in the casino, right, so I play with those a little more even within each of the four walls.
- Justin Beltran
I like leading by example, managing by walking around, and just listening, of course. You have to be a listener, and sometimes you can't always follow the rules. You have to be flexible. People's personal time is the most important thing to them. They go to work to provide for their family, and you would have the different type of managers where the customer policy is, you have to submit your vacation request two weeks in advance, but I know full well that I can totally manage my schedule, and if somebody said, 'Can I have next Friday off?' instead of just saying, 'No, you can't have it, it's not two weeks in advance,' you should say, 'Let me look at the schedule and see if I can help.' That's the difference between somebody that's too black and white and then someone that's willing to work with the employees. But they also have to be able to provide goals that somebody can achieve without it being so much of a, 'You're going to lose your job if you don't do this,' but how can you help them strive to at least want to perform at average or better? Of course, you can't have everybody better than average; the average just goes up.
- Amber Allan
I'd say ticketing was one of the biggest innovations in the casino industry on the slot side in the past 30 years. I mean, that just was the dynamic that changed it for everybody. That sprung a leap into kiosk development, because now you didn't need to change booths on the floor anymore, you didn't need all these cashiering people running around selling coin, it saved the companies on full-time equivalent employees. Now, they've developed to the point, you drop your ticket in from the slot machine and you get your cash back. I would say the next great avenue was in the loyalty program. Tunnel slot escalante. And I've watched it grow so much from just basically putting your card in to now putting your card in and being able to punch up a cocktail service or put your card up and your name flashes on the screen, or 'Happy Birthday,' or, 'Would you like to make reservations somewhere tonight?' And the player development people can sit at their terminals and know where the hot players are, where things are happening on the floor, if an area has changed—I mean, the dynamic has given the slot manager a whole new set of tools.
- Robert Ambrose
Today, the mathematics of slot machines. The University of Houston mathematics department presents this program about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
Mathematicians first got interested in randomness by studying games of chance. Ever since, the histories of mathematics and gambling have been intertwined. Clever gamblers use mathematics to look for the smallest advantages, and casinos use sophisticated mathematical tools to devise new ways of drawing in players.
Indeed, a patent granted to the Norwegian mathematician Inge Telnaes in 1984 transformed the gambling industry. Prior to Telnaes' invention, slot machines were essentially mechanical devices. Besides being difficult to tune and maintain, mechanical slot machines suffered from an essential problem: Let's look at a machine with three reels, each with 12 symbols, with one of those 12 symbols a cherry. The likelihood of getting three cherries, and winning the jackpot, is 1 in 1,728. If the casino wants to make money, the jackpot payout should be, say $1,700 on a $1 bet. That does not seem attractive by today's standards. However, the only way to increase the payout is to decrease the chances of hitting a jackpot.
Adding another reel is a possibility. For instance adding a fourth reel in the previous example would get us to a jackpot of about $20,000. But people do not like machines with more reels — they intuitively, and rightfully, feel that extra reels diminish their chance of winning. Another possibility is to put more symbols on each reel. But the astronomical jackpots you see in casinos today would then require truly enormous machines.
Inge Telnaes proposed a simple solution: Let a random number generator — a computer chip — determine the combination of symbols that appear when the reels stop. In other words, use a chip to control where the reels stop on a spin, but create the illusion that the wheels stopped on their own. The number of possible outcomes on the slot machine does not change. However, by reprogramming the chip, the operator has full control over the likelihood of each of the different outcomes. For instance, the operator could make the three cherries appear only once in a million spins.
This was a brilliant insight: Suppose I pick a number between one and a million. Would you be willing to bet that you can guess that number? The answer is probably not. But let a computer chip pick such a number, put the chip in a machine with blinking lights and spinning reels, and many people will be more than willing to make the bet. It is simply because what people assume is happening in a slot machine is very different from what is actually happening.
The Magician oil painting by Hieronymus Boschfrom between 1475 and 1480
The slot reels take centre stage, as per usual with a Spielo release. The symbols within the slots look great too, as they have their own ‘spin' as it were. You can see all sorts of wildlife safari animals, such as elephants, rhinos, jaguars, giraffes, and zebras. The Top Spielo Slot Alternatives These games are the slots that define Spielo as a developer and while they can't be played fully online, you'll find that we've not only got the lowdown on all of the features and bonuses on offer, but also a comprehensive selection of the best alternatives for fans that want to enjoy similar action online. Slot vlt spielo gratis. Spielo is a renowned casino game developer, and the company is mostly known for its wide range of gaming products including slots, poker and keno. Spielo is one of the biggest casino and lottery game producers in Europe and the world as well. The company is mostly known for its innovative slot games. Spielo don't only specialise is making 5-reel video slot machines, but they also have a decent collection of Video Lottery Terminals for their global markets. Interestingly, the games listed in this section of their repertoire tend to take on a different visual aspect, opting for 2D cartoon aesthetics over realistically rendered artwork.
The history of gambling is also intertwined with that of a less reputable group — tricksters and swindlers. In the long run, the only sure way to make money by gambling is to create the illusion that your opponent can win, while keeping the odds firmly on your side. And that gives those who know math a very solid advantage.
I'm Krešimir Josić, at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work.
NOTE: In the example with three cherries, I assumed that one only wins in the case the spin results in three cherries, and there is no other winning combination. In actuality, there are typically many winning combination, and as a result, the jackpot would have to be even smaller.
The following story in Wired Magazine shows the drawbacks of the new generation of slot machines — they are easier to hack and to counterfit than their mechanical counterpart http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/07/ff_scammingslots/.
Here is a more exhaustive discussion of the history of slot machines, and the random number generators within them http://catlin.casinocitytimes.com/article/non-random-randomness-part-1-1243. You may want to scroll towards the end of the article to read about how flaws in the design of gambling machine resulted in somebody picking 19 out of 20 winning numbers in a game of KENO — and doing so 3 times in a row. That person walked away with $620,000, but only after some controversy.
Both images are from Wikipedia. The slot machine image was taken by Jeff Kubina.
For more mathematics in everyday life, visitkjosic.wordpress.com.
This episode was first aired on September 7th, 2011 Monte casino jackpots won today.
David G. Schwartz, editor. Tales from the Slot Floor: Casino Slot Managers in Their Own Words.Las Vegas: UNLV Gaming Press, 2018.
If you will look at the last column in Table 10, showing the Payout Percentages you will notice that almost 85% of the payouts occur on the lower paying combinations which pay out 1, 5 and 10 coins with only one coin played (18.2% + 40.8% + 25.6% = 84.6%). University of Nevada, Las Vegas course catalogs, UNLV catalogs, UNLV course catalogs. Mathematics - Total Credits: 3. GAM 295 - Work Experience in Casino/Gaming. Prepare for the Praxis® Core Math with the only Praxis prep class in Las Vegas sponsored by UNLV Continuing Education. Improve your skills, confidence, and score, all of which increase your chance of admission into the teacher preparation program of your choice. These are carefully-researched introductions to research for clearly-defined topics, such as problem gambling or casino math. Gambling and the Law Here, you'll find a plethora of articles by gambling law expert I. Published Dissertations A list of all gaming-related dissertations and theses published since 1991. Today, the mathematics of slot machines. The University of Houston mathematics department presents this program about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them. M athematicians first got interested in randomness by studying games of chance.
Slot machines are the backbone of most casinos. They earn the most money and determine the physical layout of the casino floor. The management of slot machines, which includes overseeing employees, selecting machines, designing the playing space, resolving customer disputes, and conducting analyses to improve operations, is a challenging field whose complexity has grown as the machines themselves have become more sophisticated.
To better document the current issues in slot management—and the change the field has seen over the past four decades—the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Center for Gaming Research conducted an oral history project. Those interviewed were at all stages of their careers.
Drawn from these interviews, Tales from the Slot Floor features slot managers discussing several of the most important issues in today's casino world, including: the optimal layout of a slot floor; the qualities demonstrated by both good and bad managers; what customers want from their visits to the casino; the vendor/casino relationship; appealing to millennials; and what the future holds. In addition, those with long careers share their views on the changes they have seen, and all subjects offer their advice to those embarking on a career in slot management.
For those interested in becoming slot managers, or those just curious about how casinos work, Tales from the Slot Floor gives you the inside story of slot operations, from those who do it.
Excerpts from Tales from the Slot Floor
When I deal with vendors, like any business relationship, I want to have a great relationship with them and I need to trust them. So, when I first meet a vendor, especially if they're a new vendor, I kind of do a couple things to test their knowledge of what they know. But when they come to me with a new game and say it's going to make this, I always ask for data. You know, 'Where was your test data at? Was it in a California market? Was it in an Indian casino market or in the regional space?' And then, we'll look at the theme. I'll say, 'What type of themes do you have?' And then I'll ask about the math. 'What makes that math so special?'
- Saul Wesley
But normally, you want to get involved from the initial design stages as much as possible. As I said, you want to have some influence with the architect and the designer, and they're not always the same guy. They're oftentimes two different people, and they might have no idea what operations is all about, right? They're just trying to make everything look cool and look interesting. Well, the operations guy, he's concerned about how things fit: traffic patterns, what pieces and parts go where, how you're going to attract the people to the tables or the slots or whatever, how you're going to move people through a casino. I'm more interested in all of that stuff. Where do I put high denomination games, where do I put low denomination games?
-Charlie Lombardo
At Venetian, I set the floor up very different than I set it up at Bellagio, even though there's a lot of
transient. At the Venetian, the philosophy is more so of, we have large convention groups, so—we'll put participation right on the aisle way, where at Bellagio, I would never do that; I would never put a Wheel of Fortune right on the aisle. But at The Venetian, where you get a lot of conventioneers walking by, the theory is you're going to pull, you pull ‘em in and you catch a larger share—catch a little bit of their wallet as opposed to taking up an A location where I'm revenue-sharing like I would at Bellagio. If it's an A location, I don't want to share my revenue on that, but Venetian's—it's just a little different of a mindset. So, it depends, again, like, on location—Treasure Island, I might do things a little bit different than Bellagio. When you get even more into the nitty gritty, it depends on your location in the casino, right, so I play with those a little more even within each of the four walls.
- Justin Beltran
I like leading by example, managing by walking around, and just listening, of course. You have to be a listener, and sometimes you can't always follow the rules. You have to be flexible. People's personal time is the most important thing to them. They go to work to provide for their family, and you would have the different type of managers where the customer policy is, you have to submit your vacation request two weeks in advance, but I know full well that I can totally manage my schedule, and if somebody said, 'Can I have next Friday off?' instead of just saying, 'No, you can't have it, it's not two weeks in advance,' you should say, 'Let me look at the schedule and see if I can help.' That's the difference between somebody that's too black and white and then someone that's willing to work with the employees. But they also have to be able to provide goals that somebody can achieve without it being so much of a, 'You're going to lose your job if you don't do this,' but how can you help them strive to at least want to perform at average or better? Of course, you can't have everybody better than average; the average just goes up.
- Amber Allan
I'd say ticketing was one of the biggest innovations in the casino industry on the slot side in the past 30 years. I mean, that just was the dynamic that changed it for everybody. That sprung a leap into kiosk development, because now you didn't need to change booths on the floor anymore, you didn't need all these cashiering people running around selling coin, it saved the companies on full-time equivalent employees. Now, they've developed to the point, you drop your ticket in from the slot machine and you get your cash back. I would say the next great avenue was in the loyalty program. Tunnel slot escalante. And I've watched it grow so much from just basically putting your card in to now putting your card in and being able to punch up a cocktail service or put your card up and your name flashes on the screen, or 'Happy Birthday,' or, 'Would you like to make reservations somewhere tonight?' And the player development people can sit at their terminals and know where the hot players are, where things are happening on the floor, if an area has changed—I mean, the dynamic has given the slot manager a whole new set of tools.
- Robert Ambrose
Today, the mathematics of slot machines. The University of Houston mathematics department presents this program about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
Mathematicians first got interested in randomness by studying games of chance. Ever since, the histories of mathematics and gambling have been intertwined. Clever gamblers use mathematics to look for the smallest advantages, and casinos use sophisticated mathematical tools to devise new ways of drawing in players.
Indeed, a patent granted to the Norwegian mathematician Inge Telnaes in 1984 transformed the gambling industry. Prior to Telnaes' invention, slot machines were essentially mechanical devices. Besides being difficult to tune and maintain, mechanical slot machines suffered from an essential problem: Let's look at a machine with three reels, each with 12 symbols, with one of those 12 symbols a cherry. The likelihood of getting three cherries, and winning the jackpot, is 1 in 1,728. If the casino wants to make money, the jackpot payout should be, say $1,700 on a $1 bet. That does not seem attractive by today's standards. However, the only way to increase the payout is to decrease the chances of hitting a jackpot.
Adding another reel is a possibility. For instance adding a fourth reel in the previous example would get us to a jackpot of about $20,000. But people do not like machines with more reels — they intuitively, and rightfully, feel that extra reels diminish their chance of winning. Another possibility is to put more symbols on each reel. But the astronomical jackpots you see in casinos today would then require truly enormous machines.
Inge Telnaes proposed a simple solution: Let a random number generator — a computer chip — determine the combination of symbols that appear when the reels stop. In other words, use a chip to control where the reels stop on a spin, but create the illusion that the wheels stopped on their own. The number of possible outcomes on the slot machine does not change. However, by reprogramming the chip, the operator has full control over the likelihood of each of the different outcomes. For instance, the operator could make the three cherries appear only once in a million spins.
This was a brilliant insight: Suppose I pick a number between one and a million. Would you be willing to bet that you can guess that number? The answer is probably not. But let a computer chip pick such a number, put the chip in a machine with blinking lights and spinning reels, and many people will be more than willing to make the bet. It is simply because what people assume is happening in a slot machine is very different from what is actually happening.
The Magician oil painting by Hieronymus Boschfrom between 1475 and 1480
The slot reels take centre stage, as per usual with a Spielo release. The symbols within the slots look great too, as they have their own ‘spin' as it were. You can see all sorts of wildlife safari animals, such as elephants, rhinos, jaguars, giraffes, and zebras. The Top Spielo Slot Alternatives These games are the slots that define Spielo as a developer and while they can't be played fully online, you'll find that we've not only got the lowdown on all of the features and bonuses on offer, but also a comprehensive selection of the best alternatives for fans that want to enjoy similar action online. Slot vlt spielo gratis. Spielo is a renowned casino game developer, and the company is mostly known for its wide range of gaming products including slots, poker and keno. Spielo is one of the biggest casino and lottery game producers in Europe and the world as well. The company is mostly known for its innovative slot games. Spielo don't only specialise is making 5-reel video slot machines, but they also have a decent collection of Video Lottery Terminals for their global markets. Interestingly, the games listed in this section of their repertoire tend to take on a different visual aspect, opting for 2D cartoon aesthetics over realistically rendered artwork.
The history of gambling is also intertwined with that of a less reputable group — tricksters and swindlers. In the long run, the only sure way to make money by gambling is to create the illusion that your opponent can win, while keeping the odds firmly on your side. And that gives those who know math a very solid advantage.
I'm Krešimir Josić, at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work.
(Theme music)NOTE: In the example with three cherries, I assumed that one only wins in the case the spin results in three cherries, and there is no other winning combination. In actuality, there are typically many winning combination, and as a result, the jackpot would have to be even smaller.
The following story in Wired Magazine shows the drawbacks of the new generation of slot machines — they are easier to hack and to counterfit than their mechanical counterpart http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/07/ff_scammingslots/.
Here is a more exhaustive discussion of the history of slot machines, and the random number generators within them http://catlin.casinocitytimes.com/article/non-random-randomness-part-1-1243. You may want to scroll towards the end of the article to read about how flaws in the design of gambling machine resulted in somebody picking 19 out of 20 winning numbers in a game of KENO — and doing so 3 times in a row. That person walked away with $620,000, but only after some controversy.
Both images are from Wikipedia. The slot machine image was taken by Jeff Kubina.
For more mathematics in everyday life, visitkjosic.wordpress.com.
This episode was first aired on September 7th, 2011 Monte casino jackpots won today.