Slot Machine Tips
Just because most of the slot machine strategy advice online is complete bunk doesn't mean there aren't ways to potentially earn more money while playing the slots. Slot machines aren't known for their great odds, but if you play slot machines the smart way, you can increase your chances of turning a profit.
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Nothing in the casino is a guarantee, and you have just as much chance of losing your bankroll using these tips as you do of spinning a jackpot. Still, these common sense pieces of advice are really the only way to level the slot machine playing field.
Don't forget that casinos always make money on slot machines. A huge chunk of their profit comes from the slots, and the machines are designed to give the house a constant advantage. Having said that, here are five slot machine tips to turn the tide (just the tiniest bit) in your favor.
1. Join the slots club.
The only surefire way to make your time at the slot machines more enjoyable (if not more profitable) is to join the slots club at the casino of your choice. Not joining the slots club is just dumb--slots clubs don't hand out huge cashback rewards, but playing with a slot card in a machine means that the casino can track your play and almost always offers you free meals or deals for free or discounted rooms. Without a slot card in the machine, the casino has no way of tracking how much you're winning or losing and therefore can't comp you for your troubles.
Like I said, the cashback rewards aren't great, but free food and lodging can save you a ton of money. Don't listen to the idiots who claim that casinos use the slot cards to limit winnings--this is a paranoid fantasy based on the incorrect premise that casinos need to cheat to make money on slot machine gamblers. They don't.
The house edge on slot play is so huge that the casinos offer the
slots club to entice slot gamblers to keep coming back. Not joining is
essentially the same as putting more of your money in the casino's
coffers.
2. Play the lowest-denomination machines.
Really, this rule should say "play the lowest-denomination machine you're comfortable with." Low stakes slot machines have worse odds, true, but the odds for the highest-denomination machines are still incredibly bad. Besides, as it turns out, you lose less money on lower-denomination machines than you do on the higher-denomination slots with "better" odds. Here's why.
Putting less money in a slot machine almost always means you've got
less to lose. A slot machine with a payback percentage of 90% (somewhat
low for even the stingiest Vegas casinos) that only accepts five nickels
at a time will lose about half as much of your cash per hour as even a
high payback (let's say 98%) $2 slot. Simply put, less money in means
less money squandered.
Playing low-denomination slot machines may not be as exciting as feeding dollar bills into a machine that offers a higher payback--and certainly the slot play on the penny and nickel slots isn't exactly "sexy"--but if the name of the game is to win money on slot machines, stick to low-denomination slots.
3. Play machines with small jackpots.
This is a companion rule to the "low-denomination" rule. The principle here is just as simple. The smaller the jackpot a slot machine offers, the easier that jackpot is to win.
Not many casinos post the odds of winning their biggest jackpots. They aren't required to do this by law. Still, some of the larger casinos (and even a couple of online slot machines) have posted odds, especially on marquee jackpots. Let's take a look at a few of them.
These jackpot estimates come from Wizard of Odds--some of them are collected from PAR sheets and others are just estimates. But the prove the principle.
The popular Double Diamond machine pays out a jackpot of "just" 2,500 coins. The odds of winning this jackpot are 1 in 46,656
At the other extreme is a machine called Lucky Larry's Lobstermania, paying out a jackpot of $10,000 to $50,000. The odds for this big jackpot are much longer than on Double Diamond, at 1 in 8,107,500.
It makes sense that a casino would make big jackpots harder to come by, right? That's why you should always play for smaller jackpots. Smaller jackpot machines increase your chances of walking away from a slot machine carousel a winner, plain and simple.
4. Avoid progressive jackpots.
Progressive jackpot slot machines are some of the easiest to identify--they are the gigantic, flashy, colorful slot machines with big LED displays over them that show off an apparently ever-increasing top jackpot.
Progressive slot machines have jackpots that "progress" until someone wins them. These machines are usually linked and draw people in, and the reason you should avoid them is that the odds are really long against you.
Some progressive slot machines are linked up to other casinos in other cities. These carry the longest odds of all. Why? The potential jackpots for these machines are massive, often in the tens of millions of dollars. Casinos have insurance against paying out these big jackpots in the form of long odds.
A typical progressive slot machine pays back between 1-7% less than a non progressive slot machine. The more slot machines are linked to a progressive jackpot, the longer the odds--as much as 20% less payback compared to a standard slot.
5. Play on machines with good posted payback percentages.
Though it is rare, you can find posted payback percentages on some
slot machines. This is most likely outside of the Las Vegas Strip.
Make sure that a posted payback percentage is legitimate--that means ignoring any sign that reads "up to 98%"--only trust posted payback percentages that read a specific number. Also, remember that this is a theoretical percentage, and not a hard and fast rule.
Playing slot machines is a matter of balancing fact and fiction. There's plenty of fiction to be read online--you should essentially ignore any slot machine strategy you come across online--and keeping just a few facts in your head can keep you from blowing your bankroll on poor slot machine gaming choices.
