Slot Machine Strategy
Type "slot machine strategy" into the search engine of your choice. Get over a million results? That's the number one reason why people think there is such a thing as "slot machine strategy." There are tens of thousands of people lined up to sell you a winning technique for playing slot machines. If so many people are willing to give you advice on something, there's got to be something to it, right?
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Wrong. There's no such thing as a legitimate strategy for winning money on slot machines. Forget what you've heard about "tight" slots or "loose" slots, abandon all hope of using crackpot charts and graphs to ensure an empty hopper--there is no such thing as slot machine strategy. Here's why.
It's the Payback Percentage, Stupid
Casinos have been making money hand over fist on slot machines since well before your grandfather was born. Slot machines are designed to return a certain percentage of the money you put in back to the casino. In the slot machine industry, the term "payback percentage" is used to refer to the percentage of a slot machine's money that should be returned to the casino.
Different gambling jurisdictions have different legal requirements for minimum payback percentage, usually about 75%. That number means that a slot machine can only pay the casino back a maximum of 25% of its winnings, though most casinos keep this number around 90% or higher to keep slot players coming back. Even on a slot machine that pays back 99% of the money you put in, the casino still makes money.
This built-in house advantage is the reason why there's simply no way
to "beat" a slot machine. There are a few other mitigating factors, such
as the use of a random number generator, but the fact that slot machines
are programmed to operate within a specific profit range (the payback
percentage) means that no one can devise working slot machine
strategies.
Loose and Tight Slot Machines
The most common bits of strategic advice you'll hear when it comes to slot machine play involve "loose" or "tight" slots. People who spend a lot of time and money at slot machines think they've got these machines figured out--they advise you to keep mental track of how often the machine you're playing on is paying out and to change your play based on what you determine. In other words, slot machine strategy is built around the false assumption that a slot machine can be either more or less likely to pay out.
A basic understanding of the way slot machines work is all it takes
to debunk this theory. Remember that a slot machine is just that--a
machine that completes a series of tasks as it is instructed by a
built-in computer and random number generator. The slot machine has no
idea what it has done in the past or what it will do in the future.
Every spin of the reels is new and unique.
Think of a slot machine as a coin. Flip a coin and record the result, heads or tails. Now, when you flip the coin again, is it any more or less likely to be heads or tails again?
Of course not. The coin has no knowledge of what happened in the past, just like a slot machine is unable to change the way it plays based on outcomes in the past.
Go For the Gold
Another common slot machine tactic you'll find online suggests that you should always play the machine with the highest jackpot, especially among slot machines that cost the same. This is another suggestion that is essentially ignorant of the way slot machines and jackpots work.
Remember that any big jackpot is naturally going to be more difficult to win than a smaller one. That's how casinos work. If two machines are set up next to each other, both are $0.50 machines, but one has a jackpot twice as large, you better believe that the odds on that machine are much longer.
The worst part about this advice is that, for many slot machine players, the opposite is actually true. If your goal is to walk away from a slot machine with money in your pocket, you should actually go after the lowest possible jackpot in the room. That's because machines with smaller jackpots have better odds.
Math Problems
You can debunk bogus slot machine tactics on your own if you remember some basic mathematical principles.
Imagine a slot machine with a decent jackpot--say $25,000. Unbeknownst to the slot machine player, the odds for winning the big jackpot on this machine are 1 in 250,000. If that player spins the reels on that machine 249,999 times, what are the odds that his next spin will result in a jackpot? Mathematically speaking, the odds are still 1 in 250,000.
Remember the flipping a coin analogy earlier? The same principle is
at work here. Every time you flip a coin, that coin has a 50% chance of
coming up heads. Even if that coin comes up heads a hundred times in a
row, the odds of flipping heads are still 50%.
Arm yourself with some basic math and you can ignore the flood of slot machine strategy available online.
There will always be people who fall for bad advice when it comes to gambling. There are even some gamblers who assume that casinos "cheat" by programming their slot machines to rip off players. The sad truth about slot machines and cheating is that casinos don't have to cheat to make money on the one-armed bandits. The theoretical "payback percentage" programmed into machines ensures that, 99 times out of 100, the casino will end up turning a daily profit from slot machine play.
Ignoring bad advice is the first step toward responsible slot machine play. You can win money on slot machines, but not by determining what machines are "hot" or by playing only for big jackpots.
