Using Magic Treasures to measure casino RTP

[FutzParticipant]

I was watching a video from youtuber Desolator Gaming and he made a comment about Magic Treasures that it can be used to calculate the casino’s RTP settings based on the number of balls you get on the way up. Anyone know details on this or what the equation might be like? He mentions this at 28m 52s in this video:

“The game is so different on the line pay scaling on higher RTPs. You’ll get 3 or 4 tigers and multiple chained together bonuses and balls like 10x more often at a better RTP casino. It’s actually one of the ways besides video poker that we measure the RTP of a casino to see how good or bad it is if we’ve never been there before. It’s so predictable and obvious you can do 50 spins, write it down and you already know what the RTP is. It’s that transparent.”

[Ben RosenthalKeymaster]

First, I will say I’m surprised he lists Magic Treasures, Rich Little Piggies, Huff N’ Puff We’ve Had Enuff, and Regal Link as games you should “never play.” Sometimes I think he’s a little too all or nothing, black or white, in his analysis. I fully get how unappealing some of the longer-run games can be, but again, “never” is too strong in my opinion.

I’ve seen plenty of Desolator’s videos (not this one), and I’m kind of torn while watching. On one hand, in some of them I agree with his thought process and his numbers—or at least close to his numbers. In others, he sounds so confident that it makes me question whether I’m getting something wrong when I have different thoughts. Not that I’m always right or anything like that, but at times it seems like he’s trying to be intentionally contrarian.

All that to say, I’m not sure about his point about Magic Treasures and being able to calculate a casino’s RTP based on how the game is playing. I am not saying he’s wrong, as I honestly don’t know. I never noticed a pattern and never heard anyone else mention that. But hey, just because I never noticed it doesn’t mean he’s wrong. I play the game all the time, so I’ll look out for it moving forward and see if I pick up on anything.

If anyone else has noticed something like this with Magic Treasures, let us know.

[Ben RosenthalKeymaster]

FWIW, I didn’t hear that RTP point brought up in his Magic Treasures video, where he recommended 12 as a minimum starting point.

[NickelsParticipant]

The problem is it’s such a small sample size to be basing an RTP assumption on. If you measured out your results on that game at the same entry points at that casino vs. results at another casino on just that game at the same entry points, it might tell you something meaningful over a long period of time, or it might not.

A lot of people make assumptions about the RTP of a machine based on how they run on it, but the long run on a slot machine is so unbelievably long that unless you’re meticulously gathering data throughout the lifespan of the machine, including data from plops playing it in -EV spots to fill in the gaps, you probably aren’t going to get a meaningful dataset for that game, let alone the whole casino.

Video Poker isn’t exactly a reliable measure of RTP on slots in a casino either. It probably gives you some idea, sure, but there are plenty of casinos with great returning slots and piss-poor VP offerings, as well as casinos with some solid VP and high limit slots with 88% on the audit screen 🤢

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