fair@clock.org ("Erik E. Fair" (Time Keeper)) writes:
does anyone know what sorts of random number generators those electronic games use, and how (if at all) they are measured and regulated by the Nevada Gaming Commission? They might have something to teach us.
There was some conversation about this recently on rec.gambling.other-games. Several people who work in the industry said that electronic machines use some sort of PRNG, but with a nice added bit of random input - the player's timing of hitting the buttons. One poster described it as the machine constantly generating numbers, and choosing the payoff based on the last number generated when the user hit a button. I think that'd work pretty well. It's nice that this is in a slot machine: typical computers can't afford to waste lots of time throwing away random numbers. There was also some speculation about whether the machines were immune to electronic tampering.