Dear Mark,
My wife, tired of playing a machine while she still
had about 100 credits left, turned the machine over
to me saying: "Here, you play these credits
out." Moments later I hit a Royal Flush Jackpot.
She claimed the money was hers. I claimed that if
she had been playing, it is likely she would not
have hit the jackpot, since she and I play entirely
differently. Not on that hand in particular, but
in general. By that I mean I don't believe THAT
hand would have come up when it did, if she had
continued to play, rather than I.
Am I correct, or is the sequence of dealt hands
completely pre-determined and irreversible. I would
like to believe that it is completely "random."
Bob G.
As
to the equitable part of your question, Bob, I suggest
you write Dear Abby. She handles matrimonial melees,
I handle gambling. Though if you want, I could set the
odds on your marriage staying intact if you stiffed
your wife on at least part of the jackpot. It was her
100 credits that got you the splitsville royal flush.
As far as the technical part of your dispute, it was
your jackpot exclusively, but not for the reason many
players think. Most players believe
that video poker machines
are programmed to display the royal flush at a certain
time. Your wife's erroneous belief is that if you
had not replaced her at the machine, the royal would
have been hers.
The reason you received a different hand than your
wife would have had is because in the short amount
of time it would have taken her to insert the additional
coins she didn't play, the machine's random number
generator (RNG) would have contrived another outcome.
A video poker machine's RNG continues to crunch
those 1s and 0s, as many as a million hands per
minute, until you hit the deal button. So, unless
she pushed the deal button at the exact millisecond
you did, and both timed and played the previous
hands precisely the same way, the royal flush would
never have appeared for her.
