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Slot machines are the most popular form of casino gambling for many reasons. These machines are also the biggest profit center for casinos, which should tell you everything you need to know about playing them.
Casinos offer many game options that are better for you to play than slot machines, but most gamblers don’t understand why. Here are 5 facts based on math about the slot machines that every slots player needs to know.
After you learn these 5 mathematical facts, you might decide that the slot machines aren’t the best option when you’re in the casino.
1 – Random Number Generator Math
A common mistake made by many slots players is assuming that they recognize patterns and/or can time their spins to profit from the random number generator that runs the machine. The casinos actually want you to believe that you can get a edge this way, because it keeps you playing longer and this means that you lose more money.
Modern real money slot machines are complex machines that are more like computers than anything else. They use random number generators to determine the results
for the machine.
What you see on the screen when you take a spin is simply a form of entertainment, and doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not you win. The slot machine runs the random number generator program, a result is determined, and then the result is shown on the screen. The result is usually a sequence of reels spinning.
The reason why it’s impossible to see patterns or time your spins is because modern random number generators can cycle through millions of numbers every minute. This means that it’s cycling through thousands of numbers every second. The human mind and body simply can’t react fast enough to find any value in this situation.
2 – Near Miss Danger
Slot machine builders and the casinos want machines that keep gamblers spinning the reels as much as possible. Many different tricks have been developed over the years to make you play more.
One of the worst tricks for slot machine players is when the reels appear to just miss a winning combination. The result is the same as any other losing spin, but psychologically it tries to trick you into getting a little rush thinking about how close you came to winning.
When you play slots games, train yourself to ignore the reels and focus only on the results. You either win or lose, and the reels don’t have anything to do with the result. You learned in the first section that the results are determined first, and then the reels show the results.
Most slots players think the reels determine if they win or not. This makes them more susceptible to what looks like a near miss on the reels. Now that you know how slot machines really work you won’t be fooled again.
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3 – Losses Disguised As Wins
Not every slot machine uses this trick, but it’s a smart psychological move from the casino’s side. This trick is commonly called losses disguised as wins. Here’s how it works.
You’re playing a slot machine that has a $2 wager amount. You take a spin and hit a small paying combination, and it pays $1.60.
Your mind registers a win and this releases chemicals that make you want to keep playing. But the problem is that you didn’t really win. You lost 40 cents on the spin.
You need to take a close look at the pay table on every slot machine before you start playing. You need to consider many different things when you choose a slot machine to play, but my personal rule is to never play a machine that ha losses disguised as wins.
Slot machine manufacturers and casinos want the machines to be as addictive as possible. Of course, you never see this published anywhere because gambling addiction is a terrible thing. But the truth is that casinos want as many gambling addicts as possible playing.
One of the min ways to keep gamblers playing longer is to give them the chemical rush when they win. The more you get this rush, the more you want to play.
This is why losses disguised as wins are so devious. They’re a tricky way to use math to make you lose more money.
4 – Progressive Slots Jackpot Math
I don’t usually play slot machines, and I don’t usually recommend playing them to beginning gamblers. But I do play some progressive jackpot slot machines. I play them for much the same reason that I buy a lottery ticket from time to time.
A big progressive jackpot slots win can be enough money to change your life. This is the same as the lottery in many ways. You need to get lucky to win a big jackpot, but it’s worth throwing a few dollars at it sometimes.
Slot machines that have progressive jackpots are the only slots games that have a possibility of offering an edge for gamblers. When a jackpot grows to a large enough amount, the edge can flip from being in the casinos favor to being in your favor.
This sounds like a good thing, but there are two problems with it. The first problem is that it’s hard to find the base house edge or return to player percentage for these slot machines. You need this information to determine how large the jackpot needs to be to flip the odds.
The second issue is that just because the odds are in your favor it doesn’t mean that you’re going to win. In fact, unless you get lucky and hit the jackpot, you’re still going to lose money.
I’m all for taking a long shot at a big slots jackpot from time to time, but don’t waste too much money chasing a big pay day. The odds are against you every time.
5 – Total Bet Amount per Spin
Almost every slots player has taken a seat at a penny slot machine hoping to play for a penny or a few cents per spin and found that they had to risk $1 or more on each spin.
It’s important to bet enough to unlock all of the pay lines and any jackpots, but you need to concentrate on the total wager amount on any slot machine you play. Ignore terms like penny slots and nickel slots, because these are just marketing words and don’t have anything to do with how much it costs to play every spin.
The reason why total wager amount per spin is important is because it’ a big part of how much you bet overall. If you’re wagering $2 per spin and take 500 spins in an hour, you’re risking $1,000 every hour.
If you can determine the return to player percentage or house edge percentage for the slot machine you’re playing, you can quickly figure out how much you can expect to lose playing.
Here are 2 examples.
If the slot machine you’re playing has a return to player percentage of 96% and you’re wagering $1,000 an hour, you can expect to lose $40 every hour you play on average. The way to quickly determine this is to subtract the return to player percentage from 100%. This gives you the house edge. Multiply the house edge of 4% times $1,000 and you get your expected loss of $40.
Sometimes you can find the house edge for a slot machine. When you have the house edge you simply multiply it times the amount wagered. If house edge is 5%, you multiply it times the $1,000 you’re risking. This is an expected loss of $50 every hour.
Conclusion
The slot machines in the casino are a danger to your bankroll. These machines crank out a consistent profit for the casinos, which means that they consistently take money from players.
This doesn’t mean that you should never play slot machines, but you need to be careful about how often you play them and how much you lose when you play.
The 5 mathematical facts about slot machines that you just learned can show you how often you should play and how much you should risk when you do play.
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I don’t often recommend playing slot machines to new casino gamblers, but I’m also aware that some people are going to gamble on the one-armed bandits regardless of my suggestions.
And that’s okay.
But if you ARE going to play slot machines, at least understand what you’re getting into.
If you’re a beginner, you should understand the answers to these seven important slot machine questions:
1 – How Do Slot Machines Actually Work?
Slot machines used to be mechanical games powered by levers, springs, and spinning reels.
Modern slot machines retain the lever and the spinning reels, but they’re both just for show, mostly.
Today’s real money slots use computer-generated random results and display the reels on the symbols just for show.
You probably want more details than that, though, right? You’re probably even hoping for some math.
Here you go:
Random Number Generators
Each symbol on the virtual slot machine reels are programmed to come up a specific percentage of the time. This percentage is the weighting for that symbol. If you have 10 symbols, some of them might be programmed to come up 1/5 of the time, while others might be programmed to only come up 1/20 of the time. The rest might be programmed to come up 1/10 of the time.
The computer program generating these results is called a random number generator (RNG). Such a program is constantly cycling through numbers – thousands of numbers per second. Each of those numbers corresponds to the probability of a symbol coming up.
When you pull the lever or hit the spin button on a slot machine, the computer program instantaneously stops on whatever number it was thinking of in that instant.
In fact, the slot machine game knows the outcome before the reels even stop spinning.
This is close enough to random for anyone except the most bizarre theoretical purist.
Also, each spin of the reels is an independent random event. This means that the combinations don’t cycle through on any kind of predictable basis. (Remember, the computer is running through thousands of numbers per second.)
The payouts for the various symbol combinations all have one thing in common:
They pay out at a much lower rate than the odds of getting that combination would warrant.
The total payouts for the machine are always lower than even when compared to what would happen if you hit every possible combination in some theoretically perfect set of slot machine spins.
Examples of Payback Percentages
You might have a combination of three cherries that pays out at 1 for 1 odds – this means you basically have a push situation. You win back what you spent when you made the spin, but you don’t make any profit.
If that combination came up 100% of the time, you’d be playing a game where you’d break even forever. You couldn’t win or lose.
But a more common probability of hitting that combination might be 20%.
And if you’re winning 1 unit 20% of the time, you’re looking at a 20% return for that combination.
If that were the only winning combination in the game, the game would have a total payback percentage of 20%. The house edge would be 80%.
That’s because they have more winning combinations than that, and in varying amounts.
For example, you might have a 2nd combination of symbols –three plums maybe—that pay off at 2 for 1 odds. The probability of getting that combination might be 10%, which would add 20% more to the payback percentage for the game, giving it a 40% payback percentage total.
To get the payback percentage, you multiply the amount you’d win by the probability of winning. Then you add every possible combination to get an overall percentage.
And that’s how modern slot machine math works.
2 – Are Slot Machines Rigged?
Does this mean slot machines are rigged?
Only in a vague sense.
Most people who think slot machines are rigged think that the casino controls when a slot machine pays out so that they can accomplish something nefarious.
For example, they think that a slot machine that just paid out won’t pay out again for a while so that the game can “catch up” to its expected payback percentage.
Sorry, that’s just not how the games work.
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The casinos don’t need to cheat, slots are just a lousy bet.
In some casinos, the payback percentage for a slot machine might be as low as 75% or less. A lot of the slots at the airport in Vegas have such low payback percentages.
If you’re playing in a local bar in a state where slot machines are illegal, you can probably expect the payback percentage to be over lower. I don’t have any official numbers, but the 8-liners that skirt the law in Texas probably have a payback percentage no greater than 60%.
At legit casinos, though, you’re looking at payback percentages between 75% and 95%.
3 – How Do You Trick a Slot Machine?
You probably think I’m going to be like most gambling bloggers and say that it’s impossible to trick a slot machine.
That’s not true, though – you can trick a slot machine.
Just ask Tommy Glenn Carmichael. I’m sure he’ll be happy to explain multiple ways he’s tricked slot machines over the years. He’s one of the most legendary casino cheaters in the world.
He’s far from the average gambler – for the average gambler, trying to trick a slot machine is an exercise in futility and silliness.
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One tool that Tommy used to trick slot machines into paying out was called the Monkey’s Paw. It was a wire device he stuck in the payout chute to press the switch that triggered a payout. Such a device would be obsolete today, but it’s just an example.
Don’t even try to cheat at slot machines, though – you’ll spend time in prison if you get caught.
And you might not get caught your first time, but you won’t be able to stop once you start, so you’ll have to keep avoiding detection.
It’s a lousy bet. You won’t get to keep the money, and you’ll spend time in prison.
That’s not a fair trade at all.
4 – Are There Secrets to Winning on Slot Machines?
No, there are no secrets to winning on slot machines.
I went to a casino in Oklahoma with a lady friend of mine once. She told me her “secret strategy” for winning on slot machines. She said that she always plays the exact same machine.
She thought that would improve her odds eventually of hitting.
It’s like the guy who sells the “winning the lottery” system who claims he’s won the lottery seven times. His big secret?
Buy lots of lottery tickets.
He reveals how much money he’s won, but he never reveals how much he spent on the lottery tickets to win that amount.
I’d be willing to get my pickup truck that he’s operating at a serious loss.
So, no – the only secret to winning at slot machines is to keep spinning the reels.
5 – How Do Progressive Slots Work?
Progressive slots are the slot machine games with the jackpot tickers on top that show an ever-increasing jackpot.
How can such games afford such large jackpots?
If the jackpots get large enough, won’t the games eventually become a profitable proposition for the slot machine player?
First question answered first – such games can afford such large jackpots because they take a tiny percentage from each spin to fuel that jackpot. It might be as low as 0.5% or 1%, but it counts against the payback percentage from the game.
Second question answered – yes, if the jackpot gets big enough, the game becomes a positive expectation bet.
But that’s not a practical reason to play it. If the odds are 1 in 10 million of hitting the progressive jackpot, you’ll have to play for 20,000 hours to hit that jackpot (on average).
That’s the equivalent of working a full-time job for 10 years straight. By that time, someone else will have hit the jackpot, and it will have gone back to its original value – which is NOT a positive expectation bet.
Also, it’s impossible for you to know when the jackpot has gotten high enough because you don’t know what the probability of hitting the various jackpots and other prizes on the game are.
Slot machines are essentially opaque – you don’t know what probabilities the symbol combinations have programmed to them.
6 – How Do You Find Loose Slot Machines?
Ignore all the well-intentioned advice on the internet about how slot machine managers place the loosest machines in specific locations in the casinos to try to lure gamblers to play the slots. This advice is universally lousy.
The best thing you can do is follow some practical guidelines about how to choose slot machines that probably have a better payback percentage than others.
For example, avoiding progressive slots and playing games with a flat top prize is a good idea.
Playing games which have no special bonus features is also a good idea.
The more bells and whistles a slot machine game has, the worse the payback percentage tends to be.
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But forget all about the idea that some slot machines are loose or tight for various conditions and reasons.
That’s just not how it works.
7 – Are Casino Slots Intelligent?
This question stems from the idea that a slot machine somehow knows what its payback percentage is supposed to be, and then, when it pays out a big jackpot, it adjusts by “tightening up” until it catches up to that theoretical percentage.
Every spin of the reels is independent of the spin before it. If the probability of hitting the top jackpot on the machine is 1 in 4000, it’s 1 in 4000 on every spin regardless of what happened on the previous spin.
If you hit a jackpot, then spin the reels again, the probability of hitting the jackpot again is still 1 in 4000.
Conclusion
Slot machines, generally, are a lousy bet. There’s no skill element, and you really have no way of knowing how good or bad one slot machine is compared to the next one.
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In fact, you can have two identical slot machines sitting adjacent to each other, and they might have entirely different payback percentages based on their programming.
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But, if you’re going to play slots, at least you’re now educated on how they work and you have the answers to the most important slot machine questions.