Odd Joker's Wild question

[Gus]

First off, the only thing that I like about the old ATGS as compared to the boards is that you can ask a small, obscure question like this whithout having to start a whole, organized thread like this, and if nobody knows the answer, it just gets buried.

Anyway, my question: Does anyone happen to know the general distribution of slides in the reels on TJW? Meaning, how many of each category/joker slide were in the reels in the main game, and how many of each of the dollar amounts and devils were in each reel in the bonus game?

The reason I ask is because I made a little TJW "reel spinning" program, per se, on my TI-83, and I wanted to tweak it so that it uses the real chances of certain things popping up.

Thanks and more power to ya to anyone who knows.

[dmota104]

This probably doesn't answer your query... but...

http://sbentley.esmartdesign.com/board.html

...should give you some idea as to how the slot machine worked.

Homepage for this TJW site is http://sbentley.esmartdesign.com/tjwhome.html

[That Don Guy]

I'm not entirely sure, but I think there was one of each category and two Jokers on each wheel.  (If it was one Joker, then there would have been five times as many natural triples as triple Jokers, and it seemed to me that three Jokers came up more - which they would, 8 to 5, if each wheel had two Jokers.)

As for the end game (money and devils), this one's tough; I'm fairly certain that only one wheel had a devil, and that wheel had 25-50-75-100-150-200-Devil, but then the other two wheels would have one of the seven amounts appearing twice (and not necessarily the same value on each wheel).

-- Don

[Steve McClellan]

Seems to me that the 25s and 50s came up more often than the other values in the bonus round, though. My semi-educated guess (and take it for that - no more, no less) would be that the wheels had eight sections, containing one of each category and three jokers in the front game (JJJ comes up 5.4 times as often a natural triple, once every 19 spins - sounds like the right ballpark to me), and 25-25-50-50-75-100-150-200 in the bonus round, with one of the values replaced with a devil on one of the wheels (one devil every eight spins sounds about right to me too).

Or, perhaps fifteen sections on the wheels, with jokers outnumbering each category 5 to 2 (JJJ about thrice as often as a natural triple, once every 27 spins), and something like 25-25-25-25-50-50-50-50-75-75-100-100-100-150-200 in the bonus round, with devils replacing two values in one of the wheels (two devils never came up on the same spin, did they?). One devil every 7.5 spins.

Comments?

[chris319]

Lou Schneider's recollection of the Joker board is incorrect. I've seen the mechanism up-close. There were three extensively modified RCA TP-7 slide projectors:

http://www.oldradio.com/archives/hardware/TV/rca-tp7.jpg

One drum was removed from each projector. The remaining drum was modified with a custom detent-and-solenoid mechanism, as well as a motor. Kodak Carousel projectors would not have worked for this purpose because they required that the slides be inserted and ejected into the gate by the projector's slide- changing mechanism.

With the pilot being done by Goodson-Todman, I suspect the mechanism was conceived by the late Ted Cooper.

To answer the original question, I count 20 slides per drum. I'll let you guys figure out the distribution.

[JasonA1]

To answer the original question, I count 20 slides per drum. I'll let you guys figure out the distribution.

In that case, a good distribution might be three of each category, five jokers. For the bonus I couldn't say, but I'd imagine they placed more duplicates of the smaller ones.

-Jason

[Steve McClellan]

Okay, three of each category and five jokers gives us JJJ once every 64 spins, but has natural triples occurring *more* often, which just didn't happen. If they indeed used all twenty, I would guess something like seven jokers (JJJ: 1 in 23) and two or three of each category.

My bonus round guess with all twenty slots in use: 5@25, 5@50, 3@75, 3@100, 2@150, 2@200, with three devils replacing values in one of the window-.

[Jay Temple]

gameshowsteve is probably pretty close.  Here's an arrangement with 20 Jokers and 8 of everything else, distributed as evenly as possible:

Wheel 1:  6 Jokers, 3 A's, 2 B's, 3 C's, 3 D's, 3 E's
Wheel 2:  7 J, 2 A, 3 B, 3 C, 2 D, 3 E
Wheel 3:  7 J, 3 A, 3 B, 2 C, 3 D, 2 E

For each category, the probability of a natural triple is (.15)(.1)(.15) = .00225
Total probability of a natural triple:  five times that, or .01125 (about 1 in 89).

Probability of three jokers:  (.3)(.35)(.35) = .03675, or less than once per show but enough to keep it interesting.

.03675/.01125 is about 3.27.  I admit it's convoluted, but it produces the result!

[GS Warehouse]

[quote name=\'Gus\' date=\'Mar 22 2004, 07:30 PM\'] Anyway, my question: Does anyone happen to know the general distribution of slides in the reels on TJW? Meaning, how many of each category/joker slide were in the reels in the main game, and how many of each of the dollar amounts and devils were in each reel in the bonus game? [/quote]
As much as I hate to contradict one of our executive producers, I have [Gene Rayburn]the definitive answer[/GR]: there were 13 slides per reel.  I have a VCR with a slow-motion function, so I actually did study the wheels on a couple of episodes.  Most of my front game checking came from 1972-73 since in those days, the category slides were all different colors, and the later ones were too...shall we say, busy.  I dug out my notes from one game where there were two green categories, one yellow, one off-white, and one somewhat tannish.  Here is what I came up with:

Reel 1: G T J Y W J G G J T Y J W
Reel 2: J T Y J W G J T Y W J G G
Reel 3: J W Y T J G G W J Y T G G
(G = green; Y = yellow; White = off-white; T = tan; J = Joker)

Summary:
[font=\"Courier\"]R - G Y W T J
1 - 3 2 2 2 4
2 - 3 2 2 2 4
3 - 4 2 2 2 3
T -10 6 6 6 11[/font]

Bearing in mind there were two green categories, the distribution looks mostly even, but another episode whose notes I couldn't find offhand had a game with a much less even distribution.  There was a red slide that appeared only once in reel 1.

As for the bonus game, we've long established that only one wheel has Devils, so that only one Jack Barry caricature can come up at a time.  In the Jokers and Devils game, there were two Devils in that reel, with two Jokers separating them.  In the bonus game we know best, I took down one 1979 episode and came up with this:

Reel 1: 100 25 50 150 Devil 75 100 25 200 50 Devil 25 75
Reel 2: 75 100 50 200 50 75 50 100 25 25 150 100 25
Reel 3: 150 50 150 75 50 200 25 100 75 25 150 100 75

Summary:
[font=\"Courier\"]R - 25  50  75 100 150 200 Devil
1 - 3 2 2 2 1 1 2
2 - 3 3 2 3 1 1 0
3 - 2 2 3 2 3 1 0
T - 8 7 7 7 5 3 2[/font]

IMO, the total lines better represent how the slides are distributed in general.  Some games spread the slides more differently than others.