If
you can have one guy sitting beside in Las Vegas as you played video
slot machines, that person should be Michael Shackleford. Shackleford is
an understated, average-looking forty-year–old, but he has
an extraordinary mathematical ability far beyond the realm of the rest
of us on this planet. Shackleford's rare understanding of casino games
is why he is famous online as the Wizard of Odds.Michael Shackleford has been an actuary for 11 years. For those of you who have spent too much of your lives watching cherries and lemons and stars spin before you, an actuary is a person who calculates the risks and premiums for insurance companies. His job is to make sure the insurance banks don’t go broke.
Slot Machine Design
But some years ago, the math whiz took the quantum leap from notable actuary to online slot machine designer. Even Shackleford admits the two don’t have much in common.
“About the only similarity is they both require a solid math background,” says Shackleford.
Solid math? That may be a bit of an understatement. Visit Shackleford’s website and you will find some of his mind-numbing calculations on most of the common casino games, both for land-based premises and those in cyberspace. Shackleford’s grasp of numbers will leave your brain spinning like the computerized reels inside a Vegas slot machine.
Like the cards of a brilliant poker player, The Wizard of Odds keeps a lot of critical information close to his vest. He’s designed 200 slot machines for website use, yet won’t reveal the names of his machines or which sites own them. It's part of the professional courtesy associated with being a game designer.
Shackleford, however, is pleased to discuss the basics of prying a slot machine idea out of his head and putting it on paper.
“I design slot machines the same way they’re designed in real casinos,” he explains, understanding that his listener is about six solar systems behind his comprehension. “The outcome is determined by random numbers and the random numbers get mapped to a position on the reel strip. If the symbols on the reel strip match up to something on the pay table, the player gets paid.”
Kind of makes it sound as if anyone could do it, right?
“All I really do is create the PARS sheet. PARS is an acronym for Paytable and Reel Strips,” he explains humbly. The PARS sheet shows all the rules pertinent to the outcome of the game.
Shackelford charges about $2000 for a machine, which he says he can fully design in one week. That seems incredibly cheap, considering the capacity for endless profits that each machine represents. Still, for Shackleford, a check for a slot machine is a sure thing for a man who, actually, is quite disinclined to gamble.
“I intensely dislike playing slot machines,” he reveals. “I generally only gamble when I have an advantage and it’s just about impossible to have an advantage over a slot machine. But I had a mathematical curiosity to find out how they worked. I went to great pains on my webpage to show their function, so people in the gaming industry asked me to design for them.”
When he makes a machine, one thing above everything else is fundamentally important.
“You just have to look at every single way the reels could stop, the probability of each win, multiply it by what it pays and then make sure it's less than 100% to assure it will be a profitable game.”
The World of Slot Players
Shackleford senses that the world of slot machine gamblers is easily broken down into two distinct camps: the old timers and the younger generation.
“Generally the older players like the traditional one line three-reel games,” he says. “And the younger players like the five reel video slots which are more mathematically complicated.”
According to Shackleford, the most popular slots in landed casinos are Mega Millions, Double Diamond, Quartermania, Reel ‘Em In, Texas Tea, and the Wheel of Fortune.
Casinos are always looking for a new product, but sometimes they have to experience growing pains before they find out what’s a good fit.
“With a land casino, it’s hard to say what qualifies to the player as a fun game,” says Shackleford. “Casinos introduce a lot of products and they see what works. Then they market those games most aggressively.”
The online games that Shackleford designs are very similar in look, sound and function to the ones you would find on the Vegas Strip. So what reassurance does the mathematically-challenged player have that the slots experience on his computer has any degree of fairness?
“One thing you can do is view the information,” he advises. “Some internet casinos post on a monthly basis what their machines paid out. Of course, a real skeptic could say, ‘How do I know they’re being truthful with that?' You really can’t. There’s no way to absolutely prove that the casino is being honest with those statistics. However, the skeptic should note that casino gambling is so profitable that you can be completely fair and honest and still make a good profit. It would be bad business to cheat.”
Shackleford offered an answer to another perennial question of online gamblers. When you’re sitting at your computer playing It’s Good to be Bad, where does that game actually originate? Is it in some guy’s basement in Des Moines?
Not quite.
“Most of the online casinos are operating out of the Caribbean or Central America and they tend to have a lot of servers and sophisticated operations. So it’s a very professional, large sized operation.”
Shackleford is a professor of Casino Math at the University of Las Vegas and is often hired to consult casinos about new games they might introduce. If you want to learn everything possible about the math of any casino game of risk, his site is awesome.
Shackleford's insight on video poker, for example, indicates the best move for most common deals. One surprised me: Keep a high pair (jacks or better) even if four of the cards are of the same suit. And keep the low pair instead of the open-ended straight. He backs this all up with charts and numbers that will turn your brain to oatmeal.
For the Wizard of Odds, even without pulling the handle on a single slot machine, this stuff is all money in the bank.
For Fans of the Wizard
People interested in the Wizard of Odds will also be interested in some of these other web pages:
- The Wizard of Odds - Shackleford's casino game odds site. Everything you could possibly imagine wanting to know about casino games, odds, and strategies can be found here. (We're listed in the Wizard's directory of gambling game websites too, in the slots section.)
- Vegas Reference is a website authored by Shackleford's friend and ad sales guy, Michael Bluejay. It's also full of great information, but written from a distinctly different point of view.
- Michael Shackleford's Wikipedia profile covers all the basic's.
- A site I found a link to from the Wizard's recommendations that I just love is Cocktail Doll. It's a guide to Vegas written from the perspective of a cocktail waitress, and boy, is she a beauty. Good writer too.
You can find all kinds of cool stuff at all of the websites above, including links to even more good stuff on the web for gamblers. Enjoy.
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