Revealing the truth behind some of the most common slot player questions
Do not leave credits on the machine unless you have someone you know watching it for you. With ticket pays, a thief can cash out and be away with your credits in seconds. PLAYERS CLUB CARDS LEFT IN MACHINES. If you leave your players club card in the machine’s reader, do not expect others do read that as a signal you’re still playing.
By John Grochowski
Your choices do matter. Bonus round possibilities are set by a random number generator, but the decisions you make after those possibilities are set will determine the size of the bonus you receive.
Way back in the late 1990s, as video slots were first gaining a foothold on casino floors, players used to ask the same question, over and over. It went something like this:
“How can you tell when you’ve won with all these crazy paylines?”
That was back in the days of five-line games, long before anyone thought of marketing games with 100 paylines, or games like Aristocrat’s Tarzan and Jane with a dual playing field, or Xtra Reel Power slots with 7,776 ways to win. But back then, those five-line games were new, different and a tiny bit confusing.
Nowadays, people are used to all the paylines and other configurations, and if they can’t tell what’s going on as it’s happening, at least they’re comfortable with winning combinations being outlined on the screen afterward.
The question of how you can tell when you’ve won isn’t asked all that much anymore, but that doesn’t mean there’s no mystery left in video slots. There are other questions that are still are asked over and over again. So let’s try to answer some of the ones that are most frequently asked.
How can I tell when a machine is ready to pay off?
This is always the million-dollar (or even thousand penny) question with slot machines, isn’t it? The answer is that there is no way to tell when a jackpot is coming, or when there’s about to be a hot streak, or when the bonus round is on its way.
Just as with reel-spinning slots, the results you see on the screen are determined by a program called a random number generator. Nothing humans can design is perfectly random, but the RNG is close enough that we can’t tell what’s coming next.
Do video slots pay out as much as reel slots?
The old formula of slots having higher payback percentages at higher coin denominations holds true on video, just as it long has done on reel-spinning games. Dollar games pay more than quarters, which pay more than nickels, which pay more than pennies. And since most video slots are at lower denominations—penny games are the most popular things casinos have going—they tend to have lower payback percentages than reel-spinners.
One factor to consider: Play is slower on a video slot than on a reel-spinner that doesn’t have animated bonus rounds. Whether you’re getting free spins on Tarzan or racing through Gotham City on the Dark Knight game, you’re getting more playing time without making extra wagers. If you’re betting 75 cents a spin on a video slot, and I’m betting 75 cents a spin on a three-reel game with no bonus events, then I bet more money per hour than you do because I’m not getting that free time.
Is your bonus decided before you play a pick’em bonus round, or do your choices matter?
Your choices do matter. Bonus round possibilities are set by a random number generator, but the decisions you make after those possibilities are set will determine the size of the bonus you receive.
Let’s say you’re playing Jackpot Party and the gift box on the bottom left corner is hiding a 200-credit bonus, while the one next to it is hiding a party pooper that ends the round. When you pick, you have a chance at that 200-credit bonus that will allow you to continue picking. You also have the chance at a pooper that will end it there, and you have a chance at any of the other outcomes hidden by gift boxes on the screen.
Your final bonus is not predetermined. It could be thousands of credits, it could be the minimum for hitting the pooper on the first pick, and it could be anything in between.
The random number generator just sets the possibilities. It does not just give you a set bonus.
What exactly is a mystery bonus?
Mystery bonuses are awarded not on the basis of the symbols you land on the video reels, but on factors of time or amount wagered since the last mystery award.
The mystery rewards can be trips to a bonus event; progressive jackpots; or even bonus events that lead to progressive jackpots.
Some mystery progressives are programmed with start points and stop points. You’ve probably seen signs at some machines that say something like, “Jackpot must be awarded before $1,000.” If there’s a $500 seed amount and a $1,000 maximum, then the random number generator selects a target between those two amounts. The player whose wager pushes the jackpot to that target amount wins.
Or the game or bank of games could be programmed so that the RNG picks a wager total between a start and stop point, and when the total of wagers on the machine or bank reaches that randomly selected amount, a bonus event is launched. It can even be done with a timer, so that the RNG selects an elapsed time since the last bonus event to launch the next one.
When the bonus event launches, you’ve been given no clues by the symbols on the reels that it’s coming. It’s a mystery.
Should you always bet maximum coins, like on the three-reel games?
Not necessarily. The reason you get the best payback percentage by betting the max on most three-reel games is that there’s a disproportionate jump in the top jackpot. Let’s say a three-reel game’s top jackpot pays 1,000 coins for a one-coin bet, and 2,000 coins for two, but 5,000 coins for three. You can break that 5,000 coins down to say you’re getting 1,000 for your first-coin bet, 1,000 for the second, but 3,000 for the third-coin bet. The payback is disproportionately higher for betting the third coin.
Most video slots don’t have such jumps. For each winning combination, the raise in payoffs is proportionate to the size of your wager.
Most players like to at least cover all the paylines, even if it’s for only one coin per line. Then if all payoffs are proportionate, you get the same payback percentage whether you bet one coin per line, 10 per line or 20 per line. You can stay within your bankroll and bet one coin per line if you like, and not feel like you’re missing a higher payback percentage.
There are exceptions. If you’re playing a machine with a progressive jackpot or jackpots, be sure to read the glass and make certain your bet makes you eligible for the progressive. Progressive machines tend to have lower paybacks outside the jackpots, so if you don’t want to bet enough to be eligible, it’s better to find a different game. Also, a few games activate certain jackpot symbols only if your bet is large enough. You don’t want to line up five winning symbols only to find you haven’t wagered enough to collect. Read the glass and the help menu, and make sure.
Do slots pay more jackpots at night, when there are more people in the casino?
More jackpots are paid during crowded times, but only because there is more play and more chances for jackpot combinations to come up. Your chances of hitting a jackpot are no better during crowded times than when there are fewer people around.
Slot Machines Online
Let’s imagine a casino filled with machines that pay their top jackpots once per 25,000 plays. (In reality, some machines pay more often, some far less, but let’s keep the example simple.)
If 100 people play 1,000 spins each, there are 100,000 plays. On average, that will result in four top jackpots. But if 1,000 people play 1,000 spins each, there are 1 million plays, and that will result in an average of 40 top jackpots.
The odds of winning a top jackpot don’t change. They remain at 1 in 25,000. But there are more jackpots awarded during the more crowded time.
There is no advantage to playing with bigger crowds. Personally, I prefer less crowded times when I can pick and choose the games I want to play, instead of just looking for a machine with am empty seat. Others prefer the energy and excitement of a crowded casino. Take your pick, and know that the odds of winning are the same either way.
Do games with free-spins pay more than games with pick’em bonuses?
They don’t pay more. They pay differently.
There’s some variation within each type of game, but usually pick’em second-screen bonuses are even keel games, with the bonuses designed to give you extra time on device. The bonuses aren’t enormous, but they’re fun, and they keep you in your seat. Free-spin bonuses are wilder rides. With these, you can win thousands of credits at a time, or you can win nothing—or very little. They’re a more volatile experience that give penny players the potential for rewards worth winning, while the pick’ems tend to be more popular with nickel players.
There’s plenty of room for games with different looks and different payback methods. That’s all part of the fun in the video age.
The gaming industry is big business in the U.S., contributing an estimated US$240 billion to the economy each year, while generating $38 billion in tax revenues and supporting 17 million jobs.
What people may not realize is that slot machines, video poker machines and other electronic gaming devices make up the bulk of all that economic activity. At casinos in Iowa and South Dakota, for example, such devices have contributed up to 89 percent of annual gaming revenue.
Spinning-reel slots in particular are profit juggernauts for most casinos, outperforming table games like blackjack, video poker machines and other forms of gambling.
What about slot machines makes them such reliable money makers? In part, it has something to do with casinos’ ability to hide their true price from even the savviest of gamblers.
The price of a slot
An important economic theory holds that when the price of something goes up, demand for it tends to fall.
But that depends on price transparency, which exists for most of the day-to-day purchases we make. That is, other than visits to the doctor’s office and possibly the auto mechanic, we know the price of most products and services before we decide to pay for them.
Slots may be even worse than the doctor’s office, in that most of us will never know the true price of our wagers. Which means the law of supply and demand breaks down.
Casino operators usually think of price in terms of what is known as the average or expected house advantage on each bet placed by players. Basically, it’s the long-term edge that is built into the game. For an individual player, his or her limited interaction with the game will result in a “price” that looks a lot different.
For example, consider a game with a 10 percent house advantage – which is fairly typical. This means that over the long run, the game will return 10 percent of all wagers it accepts to the casino that owns it. So if it accepts $1 million in wagers over 2 million spins, it would be expected to pay out $900,000, resulting in a casino gain of $100,000. Thus from the management’s perspective, the “price” it charges is the 10 percent it expects to collect from gamblers over time.
Individual players, however, will likely define price as the cost of the spin. For example, if a player bets $1, spins the reels and receives no payout, that’ll be the price – not 10 cents.
So who is correct? Both, in a way. While the game has certainly collected $1 from the player, management knows that eventually 90 cents of that will be dispensed to other players.
A player could never know this, however, given he will only be playing for an hour or two, during which he may hope a large payout will make up for his many losses and then some. And at this rate of play it could take years of playing a single slot machine for the casino’s long-term advantage to become evident.
Short-term vs. long-term
This difference in price perspective is rooted in the gap between the short-term view of the players and the long-term view of management. This is one of the lessons I’ve learned in my more than three decades in the gambling industry analyzing the performance of casino games and as a researcher studying them.
Let’s consider George, who just got his paycheck and heads to the casino with $80 to spend over an hour on a Tuesday night. There are basically three outcomes: He loses everything, hits a considerable jackpot and wins big, or makes or loses a little but manages to walk away before the odds turn decidedly against him.
Of course, the first outcome is far more common than the other two – it has to be for the casino to maintain its house advantage. The funds to pay big jackpots come from frequent losers (who get wiped out). Without all these losers, there can be no big winners – which is why so many people play in the first place.
Specifically, the sum of all the individual losses is used to fund the big jackpots. Therefore, to provide enticing jackpots, many players must lose all of their Tuesday night bankroll.
What is less obvious to many is that the long-term experience rarely occurs at the player level. That is, players rarely lose their $80 in a uniform manner (that is, a rate of 10 percent per spin). If this were the typical slot experience, it would be predictably disappointing. But it would make it very easy for a player to identify the price he’s paying.
Raising the price
Credits Left On Slot Machine
Ultimately, the casino is selling excitement, which is comprised of hope and variance. Even though a slot may have a modest house advantage from management’s perspective, such as 4 percent, it can and often does win all of George’s Tuesday night bankroll in short order.
This is primarily due to the variance in the slot machine’s pay table – which lists all the winning symbol combinations and the number of credits awarded for each one. While the pay table is visible to the player, the probability of producing each winning symbol combination remains hidden. Of course, these probabilities are a critical determinant of the house advantage – that is, the long-term price of the wager.
This rare ability to hide the price of a good or service offers an opportunity for casino management to raise the price without notifying the players – if they can get away with it.
Casino managers are under tremendous pressure to maximize their all-important slot revenue, but they do not want to kill the golden goose by raising the “price” too much. If players are able to detect these concealed price increases simply by playing the games, then they may choose to play at another casino.
This terrifies casino operators, as it is difficult and expensive to recover from perceptions of a high-priced slot product.
Getting away with it
Consequently, many operators resist increasing the house advantages of their slot machines, believing that players can detect these price shocks.
Our new research, however, has found that increases in the casino advantage have produced significant gains in revenue with no signs of detection even by savvy players. In multiple comparisons of two otherwise identical reel games, the high-priced games produced significantly greater revenue for the casino. These findings were confirmed in a second study.
Further analysis revealed no evidence of play migration from the high-priced games, despite the fact their low-priced counterparts were located a mere 3 feet away.
Importantly, these results occurred in spite of the egregious economic disincentive to play the high-priced games. That is, the visible pay tables were identical on both the high- and low-priced games, within each of the two-game pairings. The only difference was the concealed probabilities of each payout.
Armed with this knowledge, management may be more willing to increase prices. And for price-sensitive gamblers, reel slot machines may become something to avoid.