For Jodini: The first 1000 ball Pachi-Challenge

[p.opus]

In another thread, Jodini mentioned that it would be interesting to have a 1000 ball challenge to see what type of machine would win the most balls given a set balls of play.

I had postulated based on my experience that the win order would be as follows: Hanemono, Vintage, Yupachi Modern (low odds modern) and finally Standard Modern (high odds modern).

Submitted for your approval here are the results for the inaugural P.Opus 1000 ball challenge:

Meet the combatants:

In the North Corner: A 1971 Nishijin Bowling "A" Vintage. This veteran machine has an ALL 15 payout tray and one of the most dynamic play fields of any vintage made. This powerhouse has 4 tulips, multiple pay out options and a center feature that can create up to 5 additional payout opportunities. (A total payout combo of up to 90 balls). Other payout opportunities consist of a 60 ball payout combo, a 45 payout combo, a 30 ball payout combo and a single 15 ball payout. I have never played a vintage that has had more variations in payout combos. This is truly a machine to be reckoned with.

In the East Corner: An Early 80's Nishijin Hit Parade Hanemono. This early modern is based on a Nishijin model "C" frame. It has been modified to be an ALL-11 machine. But don't let the decreased payout per hit fool you. This power house uses the standard "V-Spot" fever mode. The 15 round fever mode on this machine can yield an impressive 1485 balls maximum. Like most "V-Spot" Hanemono style machines, you never really get that close, but a full fever round can still generate plenty of balls. Failure to hit the "V-spot" within a given period of time in a round will exit the fever round also if you shoot more than 9 balls in the center feature during a single round without hitting the "V", you exit fever mode. This machine is a true skill shot machine and the number of fevers you can earn is based solely on ball placement.

In the South Corner: A 2005 Sankyo Star Wars. This high odds modern can generate a staggering 15 round fever round with a minimum payout of 2025 balls. However this machine has a tremendous Achilles Heel. The payout odds for this machine is 1/496.5. That is one bonus for every 500 spins. Needless to say bonuses are few and far between, but if you hit one, this machine will leave all challengers in the dust.

In the West Corner: A 2007 Fuji Yamato yupachi. This version is a "lite" version of the normal Yamato with a much more reasonable 1/99.3 odds. These odds come at a steep price. The bonus round only pays out a minimum of 560 balls. While it does have a fairly decent Kakuhen continuation probability of 65%. However due to the low payout, you will usually need two bonus rounds to make a good run.

Here are the rules. All machines get 1000 balls. You must stop playing after 1000 balls are shot. If you are in a fever mode when you reach 1000 balls, you must stop. Let's see how this affects the moderns...


Here are the Results:

In 4th place, The Yamato yupachi. Out of 1000 balls shot the Yamato returned 360 balls. The Yamato actually fevered during the challenge, but the fever mode started after 990 balls were shot. As a result, the Yamato was not able to take advantage of its fever rounds as there were not sufficient balls to complete the fever.

In 3rd place, the Star Wars. This machine never fevered, it hit a couple of super reaches, and yielded 376 balls. The Star Wars edged out the Yamato because of one additional 10 ball payout and two additional start pocket wins.

In 2nd place, the Bowling Vintage. The machine hit several "center feature strikes" but due to unfortunate pocket timing, it yielded only 60 balls instead of the possible 90. The machine spent a majority of the time slightly ahead of the number of balls shot, but hit a dry spot at the 800 to 950 ball range. Thankfully the machine was able to return to profitability during the last 50 balls. This machine yielded a total of 1005.

and the Winner is:
Nishijin Hit parade. This machine had the advantage of hitting a full 15 round fever round midway through the challenge. As a result, after 1000 balls, this unit returned 1518 balls. The skill shot machine had the advantages of not having factory set odds, and a high payout fever round.

[alphaminor]

Fun results!
Just out of curiosity, were your nails adjusted similarly on all the machines? (were they loose or tight?)

[p.opus]

Fun results!
Just out of curiosity, were your nails adjusted similarly on all the machines? (were they loose or tight?)

All machines were nail adjusted to be loose. I used a copy of the pachinko nail bending guide that was posted in "scanned" format available here and adjusted the hanemono to be loose. I then adjusted the vintage to be loose in the same manner and adjusted both moderns to be loose using the same principles in the guide.. My moderns average an astounding 30 to 50 % return on balls shot. A lot of that depends on how many non-spin hits I get. But even so, the start pockets are designed to be easily hit as are the start pockets for the hanemono.

Since I am not an expert pin bender, I can't for sure tell the effect of the pin bending has on each machine individually.

It would be interesting to redo the experiment with perfect 90 degree placement of the nails, but to get that type of placement would tighten up the machines quite a bit, and would take quite a bit of work. I also have limited tools to measure pin angle and would need to develop a pin "level" that I could use to measure perpendicularity of the individual nails.

However, even with nail bending taken into account, I believe the results would be similar.

If anything, tighter pin placement would favor the vintage since I don't have to rely on specific pockets to activate a fever round. On a hanemono, I have to hit one of the three pockets to open the center feature. All other pockets on the machine result in an 11 ball payout but do nothing to modify the play field. The vintage, with it's 4 tulips have the ability to drastically affect future wins with no time limit on when those hits take place. Therefore tighter machine pin adjustment favors the vintage. If I were to adjust the nails, I would change my win order to 1. Vintage, 2. Hanemono, 3. yupachi modern 4. normal modern.

At a 1000 balls, the newer moderns are seriously handicapped. A full fever round on my yupachi Yamato is a minimum of 56 balls (7 rounds, 8 balls a round). Realistically if I start a fever with 112 balls remaining, I would still need to hit the payout pocket with every second ball. A one in three hit to the payout pocket is more reasonable and means that I would mean I would need to start my fever at slightly less that 850 balls shot.

On my Star Wars, it's worse. Not only do I have to deal with outrageous odds, but a full round fever on that machine lasts a minimum of 135 balls. Considering I get every third ball into the payout pocket, I would need to start my fever round no later than 600 balls into my 1000 ball round.

If we extended the round to 5000 balls then the hanemono, yupachi and high odds moderns now have a decent chance of hitting a fever or two. The more balls I stretch the challenge to, the more the newer moderns excel, especially if I can get several Kakuhen rounds under my belt. I have played my Star Wars with winnings approaching 30000 balls with approximately 10000 balls shot due to favorable Kakuhen conditions. This is an amazing 3 to 1 shot ratio, and no vintage can dream of achieving that, and even my Hanemono would be hard pressed to win at that clip consistently. I can win an astounding 2000 balls in 400 balls shot with my Star Wars, and if I Kakuhen the first round, the next round will occur in approximately 50 spins of the first round.

I recently did a 10000 ball challenge with my Star Wars and yupachi Yamato and after 10000 balls, the Yamato lost by 3%. However, this is primarily due to two factors. One. The low bonus payout of the yapuchi. The yapuchi machine had five times better odds and was winning fevers a nearly a 4 to 1 clip over star wars but still managed to be 300 balls shy of the Star Wars machine. Two, the Star Wars had an abnormally low Kakuhen continuation during the evaluation. The Star Wars was one fever short of blowing the Yamato out of the water. It maintained a 3% edge over the Yamoto with only Two Kakuhen and one Jitan bonus...Three bonus rounds and one 100 spin chance round. Had I merely had one more Kakuhen combination or had I hit any other bonus during those 10000 balls, then the difference in payout in the favor of the Star Wars machine would have mushroomed to over 20%. In comparison, I would have needed an additional 4 fever rounds on my Yamato to to overtake the Star Wars in a similar fashion