Allwin Skill

General vintage slot machine related topics.
Bent Copper
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Allwin Skill

Post by Bent Copper »

I know that some people think that there is an element of skill involved in playing an Allwin, and they try and manipulate the trigger with great precision. Personally I think that this skill element is a complete illusion, and there is no skill involved at all. Of course, the manufacturers wanted to pretend that skill was involved, possibly for legal reasons, and to act as a challenge. But I say that the game is just as random as a one-arm bandit. (Although much more fun of course.)

What do others think?
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Re: Allwin Skill

Post by Yorkshire Pudding »

Isn't this why Bryans invented the variable pressure device that changed the pressure of the hammer spring after a payout? I would imagine they found that a seasoned player could slightly tilt the odds by finding and getting used to an optimum pressure.

Possibly.
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Re: Allwin Skill

Post by pennymachines »

Here's my penny's worth...

Bryan's gadget was designed to throw skilful players off their mark by altering the tension on the striker spring following a win, but in practice I think it makes very little difference. You fire the trigger by feel - not by gauging its exact position, so you automatically compensate for the variation. Mr Bryan clearly thought an allwin was a game of skill - or he wouldn't have added the widget. Even if it was ineffective, it looked good in the sales brochures to showmen who were also worried about skilful players.

Allwins had to walk the skill/luck tightrope and some fall on the wrong side of the line. Every so often you find a machine which is too generous or which becomes too generous when you've mastered it. Usually they haven't seen a lot of use and were retired early when the operator discovered the empty hopper.

The perfect balance is struck when a really skilful player can increase their odds, but not to the extent of consistently beating the machine.

On the other side of the line are allwins where luck clearly predominates, such as the multi-cups. Instead of aiming somewhere near the middle of a winning gallery, you're being asked to target a tiny cup. No chance! Or should I say pure chance if it happens to bounce into one of the other cups on the way down.
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Re: Allwin Skill

Post by Bent Copper »

With regards to the Bryans device, that was invented for the Pilwin Play, which was not a conventional Allwin because it just had a closed spiral. Whether you won or not depended purely upon the distance that the ball was propelled along the spiral, and there were no obstacles in the way. So in this case, a skillful player could win every time, and Bryans had to include a method of varying the hammer pressure to try and combat that. (I think this later became just a sales gimmick.)

But on a conventional Allwin, this is not the case. The speed of the ball really has no bearing(!) on the final outcome, because there are more factors involved than just how far the ball travels along the track.

OK, so you may be able to plonk the ball down somewhere in the rough vicinity of where you want it (and even that's debatable) but to get it to drop into a cup exactly would be impossible, and if it doesn't drop into the cup exactly, then it will bounce off in a completely random way and could end up anywhere.

The Allwins with galleries across the top have deflecting pins between the cups, so they are no easier to play than multi-cup Allwins. Unless the ball lands exactly in the cup, it will hit a pin (or the edge of the cup) and bounce off in a completely random and unpredictable way. Then it will probably hit another pin, and so on. If there are no deflecting pins, winning cups are usually sandwiched in between losing cups, so you would still have to 'aim' the ball directly into a winning cup to win. The most infinitesimal variation will cause it to land in an adjacent cup.

The idea that you can shoot the ball straight into a cup without hitting any obstacles is ridiculous, and once you hit an obstacle, there is no predicting which way the ball will go. After that, it's down to pure chance.

I think Allwins were very cleverly designed to make us think that skillful play could beat the machine, but I still think that this is purely psychological and they are completely random. The fact that even collectors appear to believe this 'skill' fallacy just shows how powerful this psychological trick is. (In my opinion!)
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Re: Allwin Skill

Post by Bent Copper »

Judge Scrutton wrote: Anyone arguing that allwins are purely games of chance presumably holds that all golfers and snooker players are also playing a game of chance....which I think is a load of balls (which they all are) :???:
I've never seen a snooker table or a golf course with spring-loaded pins in the middle to deflect the balls. When balls are thrown or pushed over a horizontal playing field it is quite a simple matter to predict roughly where they are going to end up. It's a function of direction and velocity. But even then it is not possible to predict exactly where the ball will end up because there are many unpredictable variables involved, so a small amount of luck is still involved in these games.

There's a big difference between these games and an Allwin, where the smallest variation in the trajectory of the ball will cause multiple random bounces and result in complete unpredictability.
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Re: Allwin Skill

Post by pennymachines »

Ah yes - the springy pins!

They weren't so springy until Mr Bryan hit upon the idea of extending them into the back of the machine and embedding them in a metal block. This made possible the eleven win gallery. Until this, pins were shorter and just soldered onto a plate and the standard gallery was five wins with one lose at each end. There's much less bounce on these and if you keep dropping the ball near the middle you will certainly increase your odds. A degree of accurate ball control is possible provided the trigger mechanism is smooth. Although Saxony Reserve Ball allwins would alternate Win and Reserve holes, a gallery which alternates Win and Lose holes is quite rare - probably because players would sensibly avoid them.

On the Elevenses you have to contend with more dynamic pins but you also have a much wider target. Again, the nearer you get the ball to the center, the less chance it will be deflected off the end of the gallery. Sometimes you're unlucky and the first pin sends the ball ricocheting straight off, but more often it will jump from pin to pin, losing momentum with each bounce. For this reason, it helps to keep the shot short (one cycle around the runner) so the ball has little momentum when it hits the gallery.

I once owned a Bryans Three-Ball-Seven-Win which uses the same pins as the Elevenses. I found it quite challenging to win at first, but after a few weeks could empty the cash reserves. After checking the pin comb hadn't come loose I decided the skill element was just too great and swapped it for a Forks. This is much more a game of chance (and not as satisfying to play) because it has pins but no gallery.

In his efforts to supply genuine amusement machines, Mr Bryan strove to incorporate as much skill as possible. So much so that he sometimes overstepped the line - the Windmill, Rockets and by some accounts the Bumper quickly went out of production when it was found that players were getting the better of them.

I think allwins like the Bryans Pilwin, Gapwin and U-Win which offer a large target undefended by pins clearly allow a skilful player to improve their chances of losing less than an unskilled player. Of course, the percentage return on any particular machine will also be affected by the operator variable settings and I've noticed that even apparently identical machines with identical settings can play quite differently.

I believe the Payramid does exactly what you claim of the allwin - i.e. creates the illusion of skill. I doubt that a dexterous and practised player will fare any better than a novice, but human psychology ensures that when you catch a ball, you put it down to skill and when you miss, you blame bad luck. Strictly though, there must be a degree of skill because a player can improve the odds by moving the catching fingers away from either side of the pin-field. It's apparent from the rub marks on the fabric behind the pins that the balls favour a trajectory down the middle.

Unfortunately the skill versus luck question can never be settled - even if one player does consistently better than another this can always be put down to luck, although in 1912, in the case of the Pickwick, Judge Scrutton was convinced. Nor would it help to ask the players, but it would be interesting to see what proportion think they can influence the game. Let's run a Skill v Luck Poll
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Re: Allwin Skill

Post by Bent Copper »

I think this depends on the type of Allwin to some degree, obviously there will always be exceptions to every rule, we can only speak generally. Some Allwins are easier to win at than others, but this still doesn't mean that there is any skill involved. It just means that there is a greater probability of the ball landing in a cup due to the design of the playfield. You are right when you say that if a player keeps winning he will put it down to his own skill, and I think that's a very crucial point. It's more than likely that a novice player would win exactly the same amount, but we are not generally aware of other peoples' success rates, so we naturally assume that all our successes are down to our own skill.

I think the poll will probably have a bias towards Skill because that is what people would like to believe, and that is what they are supposed to believe. It probably tells us as much about human psychology as it does about Allwins! It's very interesting to see what people think though.

Another point is this: If I 'aim' at a certain cup and the ball misses the cup, bounces around off 5 pins and then lands in another winning cup at the opposite end, is that down to my skill? No of course it's not, it was just a fluke that it landed in a winning cup. It was just pure chance. Any 'skill' that I used had nothing to do with it, although I might like to think that it did. So I would argue that in any 'skill' test, not all wins can be counted. You should only really count the number of times that the ball goes in the cup that you were 'aiming' for. You shouldn't count the times that you missed, but you just ended up lucky.

Some Allwins present an easier target to aim for than others (Elevenses, U-Win, etc) so is it easier to use skill in those games? In my view, those Allwins may increase the mathematical probability of the ball hitting the target, but it is still a fixed probability that applies to everybody; and no more skill is involved than in any other type of Allwin.

What is certain is that this is a very complex subject, and the Allwin is a game which is brilliantly designed to play on human psychology in far more ways than we realise. How much more philosophical than passively watching 3 reels going round!
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john t peterson
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Re: Allwin Skill

Post by john t peterson »

I would like to start by complimenting the Copper for bringing a level of analysis not normally found in discussions about coin-op. Please allow me to bring my own ignorance to the table. I think that allwin play is a combination of both luck and skill. I agree that precise skill, such as targeting and hitting a specific gallery hole or cup, is not attainable. On the other hand, it is not necessary for a win. I like to think that my skill level is sufficient if I can avoid hitting the right wing on a gallery game and having my ball fall into the right "lose" hole. Bent Copper is correct when he says that these games are playing to our psyche at multiple levels. Their longevity attests to that. Gambling on any machine is proof of the triumph of optimism over experience. Most would agree that allwins have some degree of skill, however small, when compared to the pre-programmed payouts of slot machines. Yet, take a look at the US Ebay category for slots. There are hundreds of offers to sell a secret system on how to "beat" the slots. This tells us nothing about the machines and everything about the humans.
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Allwin skill: more luck than judgement?

Post by JC »

I've been following this thread with interest. I should state at the outset that I've voted SKILL in the poll; not because I believe an allwin to be a game of skill, but rather that it is not, in my view, a game of pure chance. Bent Copper states initially that he believes an allwin to be just as much a game of pure chance as a one-armed bandit. This is not so. Consider the action of the player on a one-armed bandit. He is required to set the reels in motion only, from the point the reels start to spin he has no influence on the outcome of the game. As we all know, the position at which the reels come to rest is entirely random. Now consider a game on an allwin. The player clearly has influence on the game; whether or not he has control over the outcome is another matter; but he does have influence.

It is important to consider how an allwin works fundamentally, and that it is a game of constants and variables. Actually, there is only one variable, but I'll come to that later. So what are the constants? Well, for any individual machine, for each game, they are as follows: the ball is always the same size and density; the track length and radius around which it travels does not alter; the cups are always in the same position; deflecting pins (where applicable) are always in the same position; and the tension of the hammer spring does not alter in relation to the position to which the trigger is depressed (except for Bryans).
So what is the variable? This, of course, is the force with which the ball is propelled around the track. Now, here's the important bit! Sir Isaac Newton determined that 'for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction' (for those of you who have not already fallen asleep, this is Newton's third law of motion). So the velocity with which the ball spins around the track is directly proportional to the force with which it is struck. Once the ball is in motion, it is acted upon by two forces: centrifugal force and gravity. It is centrifugal force that keeps the ball travelling around the track, and it is gravity which eventually brings it to a halt. These two forces are also constant.

So, theoretically, if the ball is struck with the same force for every game, the outcome will always be the same - exactly the same. But as we all know, if we play an allwin, say ten times, always depressing the trigger as far as it will go, right down to the thumb stop before releasing it, the outcome is not always the same; in fact, almost certainly won't be. So why? Clearly, the 'skill' (for want of a better word) is in releasing the trigger, and I believe it is conceivable that some players have sufficient 'feel' to be able to release the trigger with fairly consistent precision to effect a reasonably constant outcome.

So is an allwin a game of skill? Generally no. But I think for some players, practice will improve their chances, and by definition - that is skill!

:play:
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Re: Allwin Skill

Post by Bent Copper »

I didn't fall asleep during your explanation, I was most absorbed! But you forgot another important variable: Friction. Friction between the ball and the track; friction between the ball and the backflash; and friction in the hammer mechanism and spring. This is something which no amount of skill can control. You might think that small changes in the amount of friction would be insignificant, but this is not so. A minute change in the speed of the ball at the start of its travel will make a big difference to where the ball lands and whether it hits the cup or bounces off.

Another important variable is play and end float in the hammer shaft. This will cause the hammer to strike the ball at a slightly different position each time. This can be very significant indeed because unless the mechanism is in absolute perfect alignment (a practical impossibility) the ball will tend to wobble from side-to-side along the track, causing unpredictable frictional effects and also unpredictable amounts of spin on the ball. In fact the ball probably reverses its direction of spin many times as it travels along the track, first hitting one edge of the track then hitting the other. There is no way we can control these effects, and I think they outweigh any skill that we might be using. The fact that you can depress the hammer to the thumbstop every time and the ball will always take a different trajectory rather proves my point. How can there be any skill involved in such a system?

People have said that there's a small amount of skill involved and a large amount of luck. I would agree with that, but I think there comes a point that if the amount of luck far outweighs the amount of skill involved, then it ceases to be a game of skill at all. Exactly where that point lies is open to argument, but if a game was (say) 1% skill and 99% luck, I would not call that a game of skill. I would call it a game of chance, even though strictly speaking you get to influence the outcome of 1 game in 100. In my opinion, the random elements of an Allwin are sufficiently large to totally overwhelm any skill involved.
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Re: Allwin Skill

Post by JC »

Ah! Friction. Yes, I sort of neglected that, probably because I had been down the pub all evening, the effects of which were beginning to show by 2.00 in the morning! I was, however, talking partially theoretically, and in theory, if the hammer strikes the ball in exactly the same way each time, with exactly the same force then friction too will be constant. However, allwins are not precision scientific instruments, and Bent Copper is entirely right to consider such things as float and play in the hammer mechanism. I agree entirely that a minute change in the way the hammer strikes the ball from one game to the next will make a considerable difference to the outcome of the game.

Unfortunately, it's Christmas eve, and my wife has just told me we've got to go down the pub again! Now! She also said something about sad slotties........

So this will have to wait till another time (maybe tomorrow morning when she's not looking - no I'd never get away with it)!

I wish you all a Merry Christmas

Jerry :D
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john t peterson
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Re: Allwin Skill

Post by john t peterson »

I never thought I'd live to see the day that Chaos Theory was used to explain my favorite hobby. I always felt it had more relevance to my marriage.
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Re: Allwin Skill

Post by pennymachines »

Hope you're all enjoying a Chaotic and Frictionless Christmas!
Bent Copper wrote:Some Allwins are easier to win at than others, but this still doesn't mean that there is any skill involved.

True, but in the case of the 3-Ball Seven Win which was hard at first but got easier and remained so, I feel bound to conclude that skill was involved.

OK, an anecdote about one allwin isn't very convincing. How to demonstrate that chaos doesn't rule supreme? Trying to replicate shots by pulling the trigger back to the thumb stop won't do because the most important bit of friction in the whole system, to my mind, is that between trigger and thumb. Putting aside such factors as smoothness of metal, moistness, greasiness, stickiness and texture of skin, this friction is mediated through the angle and pressure with which the thumb is applied. The initial momentum of the ball is controlled as much by this as by how far the hammer is retracted.

What's needed is something like the coin tossing machine suggested earlier. Remarkably, Mr Bryan created just such a device for testing the later version of the Payramid and (if memory serves me right) the 3 Ball allwins. Impressively referred to as the "mechanical robot", it played the games continuously with machine precision. Results would be logged before the robot was incrementally adjusted for a slightly different shot. It was designed to empirically determine a game's percentage return. Thanks to the variable pressure unit, at no setting would the robot keep winning, but the question is whether it would have done so otherwise. I doubt it, on account of the chaotic variables BC described, but if it is a game of skill, all I have to believe is that the robot would have done better on some settings than others. This does seem likely to me.
Bent Copper wrote:You should only really count the number of times that the ball goes in the cup that you were 'aiming' for. You shouldn't count the times that you missed, but you just ended up lucky.

Isn't that a bit like saying that because we rarely hit the exact spot on the dartboard we're aiming for, darts is essentially a game of chance? One could argue that an assessment of skill should not only count winning shots that were close to the cup aimed for but also losing shots that nearly won. I'm not suggesting, of course, that the degree of chance is the same in playing darts and allwins.
JC wrote:Now consider a game on an allwin. The player clearly has influence on the game; whether or not he has control over the outcome is another matter; but he does have influence.

I thought this point of Jerry's was interesting because it represents the line taken by many British slot machine manufacturers including those who grafted skill stop buttons onto one arm bandits. Players could use them to halt the reels, but almost certainly not to control where they landed. Surprisingly, this narrow definition of "skill" as a synonym for "influence" seems to have carried weight with the authorities for many years.
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Re: Allwin Skill

Post by JC »

So, the festivities are over (for the time being) and I've been allowed back into slottie land. Chaos theory eh? Wow! Things are getting serious now. I have some knowledge of the chaos theory, or at least I did many years ago. My interest started to diminish though, when the maths started to get silly! However, as with all mathematical theories and models, it is only theory. Although guest suggests a valid application for the chaos theory, I don't believe it has any great relevance with respect to allwins.

The chaos theory embodies many mathematical models, which can be applied to specific situations. Most of us will have heard of the Butterfly Effect. This, by example, suggests that a butterfly flapping it's wings on one side of the world, could be the cause of a hurricane on the other side of the world. I'll try to explain how this works in general terms. Imagine an event, which is represented by a line ab where a is the point at which the event starts, and b is the point at which it ends. Now, in the extreme, if the number of deviations the event can take is infinite, then point b will be infinitely wide.

Now let's apply this to a game on an allwin (the event). The event starts the instant the ball is struck (point a). The event finishes when the ball lands in one of a number of cups (point b). Although there are an almost infinite number of deviations the ball can take during the course of the game, the outcome is always the same: the ball will land in one of a number of cups. The question is: what influences the ball to land in a specific cup. Which I think is where we started! Can the player influence the outcome? Either way, this is not hurricane stuff!

I still stand by what I said at the outset: I do not believe an allwin is a game of pure chance; and if this is the case, then there must be the potential for skill. Pennymachines makes a very useful analogy with darts: clearly a skilled player will expect better success than a novice. When I chuck a dart, I tend to aim for the board in general, and if I get the dart somewhere close to the board, I've done well. And yet, a skilled player will get his dart to land more or less at the point at which it was aimed.
But are there not just as many variables in a game of darts as there are in a game on an allwin? The manner in which the dart is thrown; the friction between the players fingers and the dart at the point it is thrown; the friction through the air; the distance the dart travels. A skilled darts player learns to minimise the effects of these variables.

Is it not conceivable that this could also be possible with allwin play?

Jerry :-?
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Skill?

Post by bryansjim »

Merry Christmas and happy new year to one and all.
With out offending anybody you seem to have lost the plot who cares if some machines are easy to win on as most machines are now in collectors hands.
I have a Bryans uwin that my kids empty on as regular basis I can not see how this was a viable machine for any commercial operator.I have various one arm bandits which seen to have reasonable payouts the jennings govenor being the best of them.At the end of the day its Christmas and everybody needs to drink a bit more wine and beer and enjoy your family around you instead of talking about skill and payouts and that sort of thing. God bless one and all and if any rare Bryans machines come about (cheap )give me a shout.
All the best Jim :D
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Post by pennymachines »

Hey Jim, I think you lost the plot - we weren't discussing whether some machines were easy to win on. If the skill/chance topic doesn't intrigue you - unlike Chritmas, it ain't compulsory! But don't begrudge those of us who feel compelled to sneak away from the festive cheer and our beloved families for half an hour to debate it.
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Experiment Time

Post by woody »

Is anyone willing to have 1,000 goes at their allwin using what they consider to be skill and work out their total winnings and then do another 1,000 using completely random goes ie not bothering about the amount of pressure applied to the lever etc. (Of course we could then start a whole new thread on what random means :D )

We could then divide one number by the other and come up with the X Factor - of course this would vary perhaps depending on your experience of the machine and "feel" for the machine in the first 1000 goes or would it? - X Factors on the identical machines with different users might give us an indication of whether one person was better than another and possibly whether skill is involved?

Yours Empirically :-o
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chill

Post by bryansjim »

Well i've had my hands well and truly smacked. :shock: I was only voicing my opinion on the subject (England used to be a free country). As for begruging folk time away from their family at Chritmas I don't.
Happy New Year! :mad:
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Re: Allwin Skill

Post by pennymachines »

Sorry Jim - didn't mean to sound severe. Note to self - must use more smileys :D
I'm too young to remember when England was a free country.
Happy New Year to you.

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Re: Allwin Skill

Post by Yorkshire Pudding »

After a morning following Mrs Pudding around the January sales yesterday, I think I now have a slightly deeper understanding of Chaos Theory...

Happy New Year everyone!
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