The number of players the news is pooled over
A feed is a rate viewed from the wrong end. It shows every win that cleared the bar to everybody watching, while each player keeps only their own share of the spins. Put the pooled denominator back and the same hour reads very differently.
- Players pooled
- 4,750
- Spins pooled
- 1,900,000
- Wins shown
- 12 an hour
- Per player
- 1 in 10.4 hours
One hour, split two ways
The same hour produces two very different pictures depending on whether it is counted for the display or for a player. Nothing changes except the divisor.
The same hour, for the display and for one playerfor the display players contributing 4,750 qualifying wins in the hour 457 wins per hour the feed can draw on 457 for one player spins in the hour 400 chance of a qualifying win 400 / 4,155 = 9.6% hours between qualifying wins 4,155 / 400 = 10.4 qualifying wins in a year 104h x 400 / 4,155 = 10.0
Twelve rows an hour is a busy display. Ten wins a year is the reader’s own line in the same ledger, and both are true at once because they are computed over different populations.
What the pool does to a rate
Pooling is what makes a rare event look routine. A win that one player meets every ten hours is met by the crowd every ninety seconds, and a display fed from the crowd shows the ninety seconds rather than the ten hours.
The feed’s clock
1,900,000 spins an hour against a 1-in-4,155 rate gives 457 qualifying wins an hour, which is one every 7.9 seconds across the whole casino. A display drawing twelve of them can look continuous without inventing a single win.
The player’s clock
400 spins an hour against the same rate gives one qualifying win every 10.4 hours. This is the interval a reader should hold in mind when a feed suggests wins arrive constantly, and it is a property of the rate rather than of the player.
The ratio between them
The pool is 4,750 players and the reader is one of them, so the crowd’s rate is 4,750 times the reader’s. That factor is the whole of the difference between a scrolling feed and a quiet personal record.
Over a year of ordinary play
Two hours a week is 104 hours, which at 400 spins an hour is 41,600 spins. The same rate puts ten qualifying wins in the year, against 1,248 feed rows drawn from other people’s hours.
One player’s year, beside the feed’s yearplay 2 hours a week x 52 = 104 hours spins 104 x 400 = 41,600 qualifying wins 41,600 / 4,155 = 10.0 rows the feed shows to them 12 x 104 = 1,248 staked at 1.00 a spin 41,600.00 returned at a 96.0% rate 39,936.00 expected result -1,664.00
The year contains ten celebratory events and returns 96.0% of what was staked, and both of those are consistent with a feed that never stopped moving. The game-maths desk covers the return rate itself; this desk is about the display that sits on top of it.