Slots

So slots is simple is it? So you know all you need to know do you? We're not going to argue with you, it's a pretty basic game, and chances are you haven't had much trouble getting your head around it, but that isn't to say there aren't things worth mentioning.

Picture yourself in a dark and charming Las Vegas casino; you're padding away at your favorite slot machine as you notice a new player enter down the row. Walking up to a slot machine they drop two quarters in and yank a mighty yank on the armed side of the bandit... tick, tick, tick, diamonds fall neatly into row and a mighty roar goes out across the floor, but no bells or whistles, no lights or sirens, no casino personnel, no jackpot at all. The man has hit a full jackpot pay line, but only played two of the three-coin maximum, and short changed himself a few thousand in the process. Many machines only make jackpots available to people who play the maximum number of coins.

The dangers of slots lie more in what you aren't told than what you are. Most people simply think, oh the odds of hitting a jackpot are horrible: they see a danger in what they are told. But what about when you hit a pay-line, but didn't play full coins? You get paid nothing, and the danger was in what you weren't told. That said, let's tell you everything you might need to know, and dispel a few myths at the same time.

First off, lets look at how a slot machine works in the modern world. A casino slot machine is actually a modified computer, controlled by a small microprocessor and a random number generator. When you press the spin button or pull the arm, a set of numbers is extracted from the random number generator and pushed through a series of steps so that they map out to exact reel positions. The slot machine knows the pay-line before it ever comes to rest, as it is mathematically determined from the moment you spin.

This knowledge also lets you understand a couple of other important things about slots. If you were to walk away from a machine after playing for a while, and a jackpot was to be won on that machine moments later by another person, its logical to think 'oh no, that jackpot would have been mine'. This is however, untrue. The jackpot came about by a matter of chance in that the winner hit the spin button at exactly the right microsecond to cause that combination. The machine had no prior knowledge of losses to that point, was not in a 'pay cycle' or 'take cycle' (which don't exist), and didn't really care how many spins had taken place since its last jackpot, that's not how slot machines work.

Each machine is set to a specific 'payout percentage', which is a compliment to the house edge. This means if a payout percentage is set to 98.5%, the house holds an edge of 1.5%. From a technical viewpoint, the manufacturer sets the machine's payout percentage when it is built. Casinos are regulated by commissions, and are required to maintain minimum average payout percentages on games. This means that a casino that advertises 99% payback on slots has to house a set of machines across which returns average 99%. This could include a machine at 95% and one at 103%, you never know. You can sometimes find banks of machines that have a payout percentage advertised specifically for them, these should hold consistent percentages.