Thanks Mike. That does seem the easiest option and if there are not too many winning combinations it will not be too ungainly to enter them directly into the code. I have been reading about Look Up Tables, but this seems a step too far. When I bought my reel strips I was hoping I could derive the payout table by tabulating the symbols and calculating the odds for different symbol combinations. Traditionally the least common fruit gives a lower payout, and then the bell and the bar figure for more lucrative payouts... However my reel set contains two identical strips, so I am without the data I need. Sad...
Anyway the maths is interesting. To derive the probability distribution for all combinations X, and compare this to the probability distribution for payout combinations Y, such that X-Y = 10% - being the house return.
So working backwards I can work out a third reel to satisfy these conditions.
I would also be interested in a way to store all the data sets generated for the wheel array and using that data to plot the frequency distribution of the payout combinations - why? To see how large a set of spins one needs to derive the expected normal distribution.
