Originally, casinos installed slot machines as a diversion for casual gamers. Unlike traditional table games (such as blackjack or craps), slot machines don't require any gambling knowledge, and anyone can get in the game with a very small bet. This idea proved to be a monstrous success - slot machines eventually moved off the sidelines to become the most popular and the most profitable game.

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2. Do Slot Machines Have Cameras In Them Use
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4. Do Slot Machines Have Cameras In Them Work

Slot machines remain a mystery to many gamblers because you can’t see their inner workings. This differs from casino games like blackjack or roulette, where you can physically see how results are determined.

This has led to may slots myths, such as casinos flipping switches to change payback or machines running hot and cold.

The truth is that slot machines, and their results aren’t difficult to comprehend when you look closer at the matter.

Below you can see 10 important points on slot machines that will clear up many misconceptions. You’ll also see other info on the biggest slots jackpots, skill-based bonus rounds, and slots history.

1. Slot Machine Results Are Determined by Random Number Generators

One of the most important things to know about slot machines is how results are determined.

These games used to work on mechanical reels and levers. But now, almost every game is a video or online slot machine that features a random number generator (RNG).

The RNG cycles through sequences of simulated random numbers. Oftentimes the RNG moves at the rate of thousands of number sequences per second.

When you select the spin button, the most recent number combination determines your result. This means that the biggest determinant in your result is when you choose to spin.

Some players believe that they can produce desired results by “timing up” spins correctly.

This might be true if slot machines had more predictable RNGs. But given the speed at which RNGs move and how they continue working even when not played, timing up spins is impossible.

In summary, slots results are totally random. And you can’t do anything beyond developing an elaborate cheating plot to win guaranteed profits.

2. Slots Payback Determines Your Chances of Winning

Your odds of winning with a slot machine are determined by the payout percentage (a.k.a. payback).

Also called, return to player (RTP), this figure represents how much money you’ll theoretically win back from your bets. A slot machine with 95% payback would return $0.95 on every dollar you wager.

Many land-based casino jurisdictions require a minimum slot RTP. New Jersey requires a minimum payback of 83%, Mississippi requires 80%, and Nevada calls for at least 75%.

Most brick and mortar casinos have higher average RTP than the state required minimum because they want players to feel like they have a chance to win.

ThoughtCo reports that the average payback on Nevada penny slot machines is 90%, which is low in comparison to other types of slots in the state. But it’s also far higher than the state requirement of 75%.

Modern online slots payback between 95% and 97%. Online slots don’t have the same overhead costs as casinos, so they typically offer higher payback.

Obviously, you want a game’s RTP to be as high as possible. But the problem is that most casinos don’t advertise RTP on all of their slots.

This means that you’ll have to do research to find slots payback in many casinos.

This is easy to do with online slots providers because they usually offer a uniform payback across all of the casinos they serve. For example, NetEnt’s Blood Suckers slot has 98.0% payback at every online casino where it’s offered.

Land-based slot machine RTPs are harder to come by because they vary from casino to casino. But you can often find a composite RTP figure by researching individual casinos and games.

3. Casinos Can’t Change Slots Payback Whenever They Want

Slots payback is tricky because it’s programmed to pay out over a long time period. Payout percentages may not actualize until hundreds of thousands of spins.

If you’ve played a specific slot for this long, then you’ll be close to the game’s specified payout percentage.

But most players don’t realize how long it takes to reach a slot machine’s RTP. And they often think that they’re being taken advantage of when they go through a cold streak.

This has led to the myth that casinos use a back office switch to change payback. But this isn’t the case in either land-based or online casinos.

Brick and mortar casinos order slot machines with a specific RTP. The game developer then programs the payout percentage into the software and stores it on a nonvolatile random access memory (NVRAM).

If a land-based casino wants to change payback for a specific slot machine, they must physically swap out the software. State/country gaming jurisdictions also require that casinos go through red tape before they change RTP on any game.

This means that it’s both time-consuming and illegal to randomly switch a slot machine’s payback whenever one feels like it.

Online slots providers control the payback that games have. Internet casinos license their software and feature whatever RTP is available.

This prevents tampering because the online casinos are merely licensing slots games.

Many gaming providers pay for third-party lab testing to ensure that their games are fair and random.

4. Slot Machines Have Fun Bonus Rounds

In 1996, WMS Industries created the first, second-screen bonus round in Reel ‘Em slot. Ever since then, slots creators have been adding more and more second-screen bonuses to games.

This creates excitement because you move off the reels and into a different type of game. What’s also fun is that you’ll find plenty of different bonuses across the slots world.

Bonus rounds usually have something to do with a slot machine’s theme. For example, Random Logic’s Millionaire Genie slot has a bonus round where you’re granted wishes that can turn into prizes.

Most bonus rounds fall into a broad range of categories, which you can see below:

• Choosing objects – This involves selecting items such as pots to reveal prizes.
• Fight – Select a character to battle an opponent.
• First person shooter – Allows you to move a cursor and shoot objects.
• Wheel – You spin a wheel to determine your prize.
• Board game – Move your character around a board to win bonus payouts.

None of these types of bonuses reinvent the wheel in gaming. But it’s still fun to trigger a bonus and do something different beyond spinning the reels when you get a chance.

5. Some Slot Machines Contain Skill

Slots players have been satisfied with spinning reels and winning prizes for decades. But casinos and gaming operators are now incorporating more skill into slot machines in an effort to capture younger players’ attention.

One way this is done is through skill-based bonus rounds. Let’s look at Scientific Games’ Space Invaders as an example:

• You have the option to choose a random or skill based bonus round.
• The skill based bonus takes you to a new screen, where you control a tiny ship at the bottom.
• You move the ship and shoot aliens as they travel down the screen.
• Your score (payout) depends upon how many aliens you hit.

Space Invaders is an old arcade game that’s been around since 1978. And most people would never play this game alone.

But it’s fun in the context of a slot machine because you’re doing something different and playing for real money.

Some companies are even developing gaming machines that are entirely based on skill. This includes GameCo’s Danger Arena, which is a first-person shooter that sees you blast robots for money.

Your score depends upon how many robots you can shoot within the allotted time frame. You earn the top prize if you’re able to destroy 10 bots and get a perfect score.

It remains unclear when skill-based gaming will take off in casinos. But the odds are that it’ll happen at some point within the next decade.

6. Class II Slot Machines Operate Like Bingo

Earlier I covered how slots operate based on random number generators. These are referred to as “Class III” slots in America.

But there are also Class II slot machines, which operate like bingo games.

These slots are popular in tribal casinos that don’t have a Class III gaming compact with their respective state. Many states have worked out Class II compacts with Native American tribes, allowing them to offer bingo style gaming.

A Class II machine looks just like a regular slot. But the results are determined as if you were playing electronic bingo.

What’s interesting is that the available number of prizes is capped to represent a real life bingo game. Once all of the prizes have been paid, the cycle starts over.

Essentially, Class II slots are just like the Class III versions in terms of randomness, payback, and jackpots. But they determine results differently to allow tribal casinos to still have slots like games.

7. The Largest Ever Slots Jackpot is Worth $39.7 Million

One really exciting thing about slot machines is that you can win huge jackpots. And the biggest ever jackpot is a $39.7 million prize that was won at Las Vegas’ Excalibur casino.

A 25-year-old software engineer from LA won this slots jackpot in 2003 while playing Megabucks. He put in $100 and never had to reload because he won the jackpot shortly after that.

Behar Merlaku thought he’d won a record $57 million at Austria’s Casino Bregenz in 2011. But it turned out to be a software glitch because the machine only offered a top payout of $6,500.

Merlaku took the matter to court and said that both he and his wife suffered emotional stress as a result of the malfunction. He also contended that his child was born with a cleft palate due to his wife’s trauma.

The couple was awarded €1 million as part of a settlement.

The largest online slots jackpot in history belongs to Jon Heywood, who won £13,213,838 in 2015.

The British soldier, who did tours in Afghanistan, was playing Microgaming’s Mega Moolah at the time of his win.

Heywood spoke with the Daily Mail about his windfall and said that he was going to help his father get a heart and lung transplant. He also planned to buy a yellow Bentley Continental GT car and decide what to do with the rest later.

8. Slots Jackpots Can Be Awarded In a Variety of Ways

Many slot machines have a specific symbol combination that awards a jackpot. Normally this involves getting the highest paying icon or wild symbol 5 times in a pay line.

But there are other ways that a slots jackpot can be awarded too.

One method involves awarded the jackpot randomly at the conclusion of a spin. It doesn’t matter how much you bet or even if you win because you’re always eligible for the jackpot.

Random progressive jackpots are good for low rollers who can’t afford to make maximum bets to qualify for the top prize.

Some slot machines only pay the jackpot on a certain pay line.

For example, you might have to play all 20 lines because the jackpot can only be awarded on the 20th pay line. Playtech has a few older online slots like this.

Another way that jackpots can be awarded is through bonus rounds.

Oftentimes this involves spinning a wheel to unlock a progressive payout. Microgaming’s Mega Moolah and NetEnt’s Mega Fortune are two examples of slots that award jackpots through the bonus.

Other bonus rounds may see you perform actions to win the jackpot. One example is Microgaming’s Hall of Gods, where you smash mirrors with Thor’s hammer to reveal jackpot symbols.

9. Some Countries Have Different Names for Slot Machines

Americans, Canadians, and some Europeans are used to calling these games slots or slot machines.

But other countries have different names for slots. And these games sometimes include rule differences too.

Australians commonly called slots “poker machines” or “pokies.” Pokie is just an abbreviation for poker machine, which has to do with slots history (discussed later).

Pokies operate just like slot machines in America and many other parts of the world.

The UK has lots of fruit machines (a.k.a. fruities), which refers to the common slots practice of using fruit as symbols. The Scottish commonly refer to a fruit machine as apuggy.

Fruities differ from traditional slot machines because they have hold and/or nudge features.

Hold lets you hold one or more reels in place while the others spin. Nudge lets you nudge one or more reels down a space to complete or improve wins.

Hold and nudge inject some skill into slot machines. But note that these features have already been factored into the overall house edge.

Japan’s version of slot machines is called pachinko. This is a slots pinball hybrid that begins with shooting a ball into the field of play.

If a ball lands in the right pocket, then the slot machine reels in the center will spin. The goal is to line up the right combination and win a prize.

I mentioned earlier that Canadians use the term slots and slot machines.

But their state lotteries play a big role in the gaming scene and offer video lottery terminals (VLTs). Most VLTs work just like slot machines because they have RNGs and spinning reels.

The only exception is that a VLT prints out scratch-off tickets, instead of working like a slot machine.

10. The First Slot Machine Was Invented in 1893

Brooklyn based Sittman and Pitt created the first gaming machine in 1891. This is regarded as the precursor to slot machines, and it featured 5 drums that held a total of 50 card faces.

Players inserted a nickel into this poker machine and pulled the reel to play. The drums would spin and offer players a 5 card poker hand.

Sittman and Pitt’s game was popular at bars because it awarded free beers and cigars. But it was far from what we typically think of regarding slots.

Charles Fey and Gustav Friedrich Wilhelm Schultze, who worked together at San Francisco’s Electric Works, are credited with creating the first slot machines.

Wilhelm Schultze was first, inventing the Horseshoe slot machine and an automatic payout mechanism in 1893. Fey introduced a newer version in 1895 that actually paid coins.

Fey would open a slots workshop the following year. It’s here where he developed the Liberty Bell, which became the most popular slot of its time.

Fey was unable to patent his device because gambling was illegal in California. This brought on lots of competition over the years and helped further the slot machine industry.

Another great development was when video slots were introduced to casino floors in the 1970s. Nowadays, almost every slot machine produced is a video slot.

Microgaming introduced the first online slots in 1994. The industry has since taken off, which thousands of online slots now available through PCs, Macs, and mobile devices.

Conclusion

Slot machines aren’t transparent in how they award prizes. But you’ll have a lot more confidence playing these machines when you understand payback and random number generators.

Furthermore, knowing about payback and the RNG clears up many of the myths surrounding slots.

Of course, the fun in playing slot machines isn’t in understanding how they work. It’s about the bonus rounds, jackpots, and cool game themes.

Luckily, there’s more of these aspects in the gaming world than ever before. I especially enjoy the bonus rounds that are being added into games today.

It’s also exciting to see skill injected into more and more slots. It’ll be interesting to see how much the slots world changes when skill-based gaming takes off.

Slot machines are the most popular gambling game in most United States casinos, but the number of players who really understand how they work is terribly small.

The purpose of this post is to explain what slot machines are and how they work in language anyone can understand.

Frankly, I think most people who understand how slot machines really work avoid playing them. And I think some of the people who play slot machines and think those games are cheating are daft in their reasoning, too.

If you pay attention to what I’ve written in this post, you’ll know the truth about slot machines.

And when you know the truth, you can make a decision about whether to play as an educated person instead of as a rube.

Modern slot machines are powered by computers and electronic devices, but that wasn’t always so. Understanding how those computers and electronics produce results requires some understanding of the history of slot machines and how they worked in the past.

What makes a slot machine a slot machine is the presence of spinning reels with symbols on them. Early version of slot machines used actual physical reels, springs, and gears to create random results.

On the front of these machines was a window with a horizontal line across it. This represented the “payline.” If symbols lined up and matched on the payline, you won a prize amount.

At first this was money, but eventually, slots were outlawed. Many bar and pub owners replaced the monetary prizes with fruit-flavored candy and sticks of candy to get around the new laws.

The traditional, classic symbols on slot machine reels are still based on those older machines. This is why you find so many slot machines with cherries, apples, and bars on them. (The bars represent sticks of gum.)

The early slot machines used the same strategy to make money in the long run that modern slot machines do. They gave you odds of winning that weren’t commensurate with the payout amount.

This is best explained using some mathematical examples.

There are 1000 possible combinations of symbols on a 3-reel slot machine of that description, but only one of them is a possible winner.
If that winning combination pays off 950 for 1, the casino has a clear advantage, right?

Over 1000 spins, you’ll lose $1000, but on that single winning spin, you’ll win $950 of it back. You’ll lose $50.

That is, of course, a theoretical result based on long-term mathematical expectations. In the short run, anything can and often will happen when you’re playing slots.

And real slot machines are more robust than that. They have more winning combinations with lower prize amounts, but all the prize amounts multiplied by all the probabilities of winning always result in a number less than 100%.

That number is called the payback percentage.

Modern slot machines use the same kind of math and game-play, but instead of using a complicated system of gears and stops, they use computer programs to create the same kind of odds. This has perks for the player, but it has drawbacks, too.

On a traditional mechanical slot machine, the probabilities are straightforward. If you have 10 different symbols, the probability of that symbol showing up on a payline in a spot is 1/10.

With a computerized slot machine, the designers can use any kind of weighting that they want to. One symbol might be programmed to show up 1/20 of the time, while another might be programmed to show up 1/5 of the time.

You have no way of knowing or estimating what the probability is, either.

To make things even more interesting, 2 identical slot machines might have different programming “under the hood.”

You might be playing The Price Is Right slot machines at a casino and be facing a 95% payback percentage.

You might switch to the same game at the same stakes at the machine next to it and be facing a payback percentage of 85%. There’s no way to tell the difference.

This change in the way the games work enables casinos to offer larger jackpots than they would be able to offer otherwise.

But you trade transparency for that.

I prefer to play games where I can figure out how much of a mathematical disadvantage I have.

That’s impossible with most modern slot machine games.

Random Number Generator Programs and Why Slot Machines Don’t Cheat

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The computer program that powers these results is called a random number generator. That’s almost always referred to by an acronym of “RNG.”

It’s a simple enough computer program. It’s just a program that continually thinks of numbers—thousands of them per second. When you press the spin or stop button on a slot machine, the computer program stops on one of those numbers.

That number corresponds to a combination on the reels of the machine.

The outcome has been determined by the computer program before the reels stop spinning.

This doesn’t mean that the machine is cheating. You’re not more likely to lose after a winning streak, and you’re not more likely to win after a losing streak. Every spin of the reels is an independent event.

The difference between the odds of winning and the payout odds for each bet is what creates an edge for the house. Cheating isn’t necessary for the casinos or the slot machine designers.

The math takes care of that for them.

I have a paranoid friend who literally believes the world is flat. He also thinks slot machines are rigged.

He’s wrong about both, but he’s less wrong about the slot machines.

They ARE rigged, mathematically, by providing payouts that are lower than the odds of winning.

But they work honestly in terms of providing completely random results and independent trials. In fact, in any jurisdiction where such games are legal, they’re heavily regulated, inspected, and audited.

Casinos make more money from slot machines than they’d probably make with a printing press that printed new money in that same amount of floor space.

The Difference between Short Term Results and Long Term Expectations

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The mathematical examples I’ve used assume you’re interested in predicting results in the long run. That’s the entire point of gambling math as it relates to probability.

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But long term expectations have little to do with what happens in the short run.

The long run can be defined as an infinite number of bets. Every bet you place brings you closer to the long run, but you’ll never get there.

The Law of Large Numbers is a mathematical principle that says the more independent trials you run, the closer you’ll get to the theoretical expectation.

In the short term, though, you’re possibly going to win. I’ve seen surveys that showed that roughly 20% of the gamblers at a casino leave with some winnings in their pocket on any given visit. The casinos don’t mind. In fact, they’re counting on it.

If no one ever won, people wouldn’t play. And without gamblers, casinos make no money and can’t stay in business.

My best advice to someone who’s playing slot machines is to not spend much time in front of them. If you get a reasonable sized win when you sit down, be willing to quit and walk away.

The longer you play, the more likely you are to see results that mirror the long term expectation.

Your goal should be to take advantage of those short term aberrations called luck or deviation. You can’t count on that in any given situation,

The longer you play, the more your results are going to resemble the mathematically expected results.
And with a negative expectation game like a slot machine, you’re going to lose all your money if you play long enough. That’s how a negative expectation gambling game works.

What about the Other Bells and Whistles on Modern Slot Machine Games?

When I use the expression “bells and whistles,” I’m talking about features of slot machine games other than the standard 3 spinning reels. Some of these additions and changes are complicated, but some of them are simplicity itself to understand.

One example of a bell and whistle is the number of reels on a slot machine game. Traditional slot machines just had 3 reels, and one of the reasons for that was the size of the reels and the machine that housed them.

The number of symbols also used to depend on the size of the reels—the smaller the reels, the fewer symbols you can print on them.

Additional paylines are another bell and whistle on most modern slot machines. The traditional machine just has a payline horizontally across the center, but modern slot machines have various patterns similar to the various patterns you might use on bingo cards.

They might run diagonally, or they might run in a zig zag pattern.

To activate multiple paylines, you must make multiple bets. Each payline gets activated by a wager, and the payout is based on the combination that appears on that line and the wager on that line only.

On larger machines with lots of paylines, you can win on multiple paylines but still be a net loser. For example, if you bet a nickel on each of 20 paylines, you’ll have put an entire dollar in action. If one of those paylines wins for 50 cents, you’ve still lost 50 cents on the game.

But the slot machine still lights up and shows you the payout as if you were a net winner.

Wild symbols are another example of a bell and whistle on a modern slot machine. If you’ve played cards, especially poker, you are probably already familiar with the concept of a wild symbol.

It’s a symbol that can be used to complete any winning combination. It acts as a replacement for the symbol that you needed to make that combination.

Scatter symbols are a little more confusing, but they’re similar to wild symbols. A scatter symbol is one that doesn’t have to be on a payline to trigger a payoff. You just need enough of those scatter symbols to show up somewhere on the screen at once.

Many times, on a 5-reel machine, you’ll get a payoff if 3 scatter symbols or more show up from left to right. They don’t need to be along a payline or anything like that. They can literally be “scattered” across the screen.

Sometimes scatter symbols and/or wild symbols trigger bonus games or free spins. Free spins are a simple enough concept to understand—they’re just extra spins on the reels that you don’t have to pay for.

On some machines, they’re always winning spins—the only thing in question is how much you’re going to win on each spin.

Bonus games can be more interesting, but they’re almost always entirely random. Often the bonus games involve choosing from a video display of multiple boxes or treasure chests. Depending on which one you choose, you get a prize amount.

There’s no skill involved in these kinds of bonus games.

Slot machine designers are now experimenting with design elements that borrow from video games like Space Invaders, though. If you get a certain number of symbols, you can trigger a bonus game, and the amount you win from that bonus game might depend on how many aliens you can shoot from the skies overhead.

Slot Machine Strategies and Systems Don’t Work, So Don’t Even Bother

If I could teach you only one thing about slot machine games, it’s this:

They’re entirely random. Each spin is an independent event. This means that what’s happened on previous spins has no effect on what’s going to happen on a subsequent spin. Most strategies and systems assume that the previous spins have some relationship to subsequent spins.

I once read an entire book of slot machine systems that were supposed to help you win at slots. The guy who wrote it was a total cornball. I’m not even going to mention the name of the book or the author here.

I will describe what he suggested, though. His first piece of advice was to track how many “naked pulls” you’ve had in a row.
A naked pull on a slot machine is one that results in no winnings at all.

His advice was to switch machines any time you get 5 or 7 naked pulls in a row. (I don’t remember the exact number, but it was something arbitrary like that.)

The idea behind this advice is that any machine which hasn’t paid out in the last 5 or 7 spins must be running cold, so you should find a machine that’s NOT running cold.

He also offered advice about setting loss limits and win goals. This idea has some merit, but not much.

A loss limit is the amount of your session bankroll that you’re willing to lose before walking away from a game. 20% is a commonly suggested number. So if you put $100 in a slot machine game and lost $20, you’d cash out and walk away for that session.

A win goal is just the opposite. It’s an amount that you will win which will signal that it’s time to quit playing. You might have a 20% win goal, too, which means that once you’re up to $120, you’ll call it a day for that playing session.

This can help you avoid having huge losing sessions. It can also help you have book occasional winning sessions.

What it doesn’t do is change the odds in your favor in any way. In the long run, you should think of playing slot machine games as one long game that lasts for the rest of your life.

Eventually the odds are going to even out to a point where you see the kind of results the math would predict, regardless of what happens during those individual sessions.

I’ll confess that when I play slot machines, I do use a variation of this strategy. My loss limit, though, is always 100% of the amount I put in the machine. I either want to hit my win goal or lose all my money trying.

That’s as effective as any other loss limit, but people never suggest that.

Raising and lowering the sizes of your bets don’t change the odds on the machines, either. Don’t pay attention to any advice which suggests otherwise.

Other Lame Pieces of Slot Machine Strategy Advice You’ve Probably Heard (Or Will Hear)

One of my favorite pieces of advice from slot machine gurus is to try to find loose slot machines on the ends of the rows of slots at the casinos.

The idea is that the casino managers put the loose machines there to attract more customers.

You’ll find superstitious types who believe that playing with you slot machine card inserted is also a mistake. They think having the card inserted makes it impossible to win.

They don’t understand how the computer programs in question work at all. They’re not connected. The random number generator determines the results of each spin. The card reader just tracks how much money you’ve put into action.

The 2 have no relation to each other.

In fact, it makes no sense that a casino would want to discourage you from using the card reader. They have a slots club for a reason—they want to encourage people to play at their casino.

In the long run, the math behind their games ensures them a healthy profit. They count on a percentage of their gamblers going home a winner.

They also want their gamblers to take advantage of the free stuff they’re earning with their slot machine club cards, because that means it’s working. It’s motivating them to play more.

Why Almost Every Other Game in the Casino Is Better than Slot Machines

The traditional way that gambling experts measure one casino game against the other is by comparing the house edge. The higher the house edge, the more the casino expects to win over time on average for each bet you place.

Slot machines generally have the highest house edge in the casino. Some of them might be exceptional, but you have no means of comparing them, because a slot machine is like a black box. You put money in and get money back.

Compare that to a video poker game, where you can calculate the payback percentage based on the probability of getting specific poker hands against the payout for those hands.

Since those games use a 52-card deck to determine your probabilities, it’s a simple enough matter to compare one video poker game to another.

Table games make it even easier to compare house edge figures.

But even if a slot machine had the same house edge as all the other games (or lower), it’s still one of the fastest-playing games in the casino. An average slot machine gambler makes 600 spins per hour.

This means slots players are putting more money into action and losing more money over time as a result.

Finally, slot machines are proven to have an addictive effect on the human brain. Addiction is bad. Alcohol can be fun. Some drugs can be fun, too.

But addiction takes something that would otherwise be fun and turns it into something that’s NOT fun.

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Slot machines are the most popular games in the casinos, but that’s only because most gamblers are stunningly ignorant of how they work. You don’t have that excuse any more.