What Are Slot Machines and How Do They Work? Slot machines are the most popular game in casinos. Slots take up the largest amount of floor space,. After a casino has been chosen, it’s time to select candidate slot machines most likely to result in a relatively high-value win. The size of your available bankroll, whatever it is, is an essential factor in this selection process. The bankroll size needs to be matched to the slot machine’s denomination and the number of maximum credits.

The first fully electromechanical slot machine was developed by a company known as Bally Manufacturing in 1963. The machines work on the concept of a generator that randomizes all its numbers and outcomes. This ensures that every spin is independent of the previous spin in all ways. It generally has three spinning reels that give a set of combination after a player has placed his bet. These games come in a wide variety of forms, namely —video, animated or the classic three/five reel fruit machines.

The players can visit Eurogrand Casinoto know more about online casino gaming and casino slot titles. Most casinos lure new players into the game by offering large bonuses while hiding that the player will need to bet a considerable amount before he can withdraw these funds. Since every player wants to gain the most out of slot games, some tips and tricks to be successful here are enlisted below:

AVAILING THE FREE SPINS

Since casinos are very competitive businesses, they always want to attract new players. To do so, they offer free spins on selected games. You can also utilize the free spins to learn the details of the game and how to win it. Playing for free provides you with an opportunity to learn about the pay tables, the features of the game and the multipliers before involving real money in it. You may also end up winning the game without actually spending a large amount of cash on it.

SWITCHING THE ONLINE GAME

If you are unsuccessful in a particular game, then you can always try out a different machine or play an entirely different online game altogether. You cannot depend on the single fact that each spin will give you a different result as it is a unique event. There is no point in investing more coins in a losing machine. Online slot machines in casinos tend to pay out more than the actual slot machine. So, instead of looking out for a random slot machine at a casino, try playing online casino games to gain more money.

OPTING FOR GAMES OFFERING RANDOM JACKPOTS

The jackpots offered by slot machines can be categorized into fixed and progressive jackpots. The machines with fixed jackpots always have a maximum amount that never changes. The ones offering progressive jackpots will increase the jackpot amount according to the number of times the person plays on them.

CHECKING OUT SPECIAL BONUS OFFERS

Casinos tend to offer seasonal bonuses to attract the attention of the players. Special promotions offer free spins, chips or bonuses. To avail such offers, sign up with such premium firms to avail marketing emails.

WISE BETTING TO MAXIMISE THE GAINS

You should always set a loss limit before you start playing. The excitement of casino may take a toll on your brain, but you may end up losing more if you do not know when to stop playing it. If you are continually losing in the game, it is better to stop playing after reaching your loss limitation. The chances are that the longer you play, the more you tend to lose. You should never chase losses in the hopes of winning; always play responsibly.

FOCUSING ON THE UNPREDICTABILITY OF A SLOT MACHINE

As random numbers are generated, your chances of being successful are equal to your chances of losing, irrespective of whether you are betting the maximum or the minimum. However, on specific specialized machines, betting the maximum amount can lead to the exponential growth in the chances of winning. All slot machines possess volatility, which determines the number of wins and the amount of money. Slots with high fluctuations do not pay quickly but pay a tremendous amount of money when they do so. The slots with low liability have a tendency to pay smaller amounts of money more frequently. Therefore, if you are playing high unpredictable games, always bet high. For lower volatility machines, bet lower amounts.

COMPARE THE PAY TABLES

It is always wise to inquire the pay tables while making the selection of a slot machine because it gives you an idea of the volatility of the machine. Each and every slot machine is unique, and it is made available with a set of pay tablets. Always observe them before playing them.

CHOOSE A PREMIUM LOCATION TO PLAY

Loose machines are often strategically placed in high visibility areas of the casino to draw maximum attention to the winning slots.

Besides following all these tips and tricks, it is good to research about the game before staking real money on it. Employing an effective strategy can increase your chances of gaining more from the game. The selection of an appropriate slot machine and wagering the right amount can make all the difference to your game too.

Introduction to Choosing Slot Machines

Once a specific casino has been determined to currently be the best of any available, choosing slot machines becomes the next step towards making a profit at slots.

Remember, statistics supplied to state gaming commissions show that the odds of winning are, on average, somewhere around 90%. By assessing all available casinos, then selecting the best possible, you’ve already improved your odds of winning – perhaps by several percentage points.

Whatever your gambling goals are, we’ll talk about those in the next step Identifying Gambling Goals. For now, we need to consider choosing slot machines that will most likely improve our overall odds even more.

So, we’ve walked into our best casino to choose slot machines with the highest odds of winning we can find. How do we select a good slot machine? Most people don’t – they dive right in without much of a plan. Well, we have a plan.

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Why? Because everybody says it’s all about luck. If you pick wrong, “Well,” they say, “better luck next time.” Remember, casino employees are trained to say things like that. If you’d won a jackpot instead, you can believe they would have said, “You’re lucky! I’ll see you later when you win another jackpot!”

Slot attendants have a job to do, and it most certainly isn’t to get you to leave when you should. And, it’s difficult to not to influenced by such comments. But, try not to be.

In the following sections, I’ll briefly explain the following aspects of choosing slot machines:

• How odds are set within a slot machine
• Choosing denomination and maximum credits based on bankroll
• Basics of reading a slot machine’s paytable
• A simple way to use paytables to pick the best machines, and avoid the worst

Two Separate Odds of Winning

The odds of winning for a slot machine is a limited number of settings from the manufacturer. Besides understanding limited settings are available, it may help to understand that slot machines have two odds of winning to determine:

• If a player will or will not win anything
• How much that win will be, i.e., the jackpot amount

Why is understanding these two types of odds significant when choosing slot machines? Because winning slot machines come in all jackpot sizes. You’re still winning if you’re getting enough small jackpots that your bankroll isn’t shrinking. Even if it is slowly depleting, the bankroll can last quite a bit longer, so that’s also a winning slot machine.

Winning many jackpots this way is bankroll cycling. It may not seem very satisfactory, but whether it does or not depends entirely on what your gambling goals are. One type of gambling goal, earning maximum complimentary gifts, is most often achieved via bankroll cycling.

Another point about setting slot machine odds is, how often they change? Of course, it depends on the age of the casino, as discussed in the previous step Assessing Casinos, or if it’s been renovated lately.

In my experience, older-style casinos change their slot machine odds every 7-10 days. Newer-style casinos can change their slot machine odds whenever the machine has been idle for 15 minutes or more, without a players club card inserted or the machine temporarily locked by a slot attendant.

Matching Bankrolls to Denomination/Credits

Only you can decide how much bankroll you want to risk gambling. I highly recommend bringing only as much money you can safely afford to lose comfortably.

Bankrolls quite literally determine which slot machines you can play. But, there’s more to it than understanding a $100 bankroll lets you play a 1-credit, $100-denomination exactly once, with very, very little chance of winning.

Whatever bankroll you have limits which slot machines can be played and how much it can be played. Slot machines have denominations ($0.01, $0.25, $1, $5, $10, etc.) and the maximum credits that can be placed in a single bet.

Slot machines typically must run for a while before wins become more likely. Yes, wins can occur at the first press of a button. They can also happen within the first few bets, where casinos offer a taste. But, usually, they need to run for a while.

About 100-120 bets is the right amount to be prepared to play to determine if you’re sitting at a winning (or breakeven) slot machine. Yes, be careful initially, perhaps making as few as 20 bets, to determine if it happens to be a “bad” machine. Trust your instincts!

If it is a poorly performing machine, a “tight” slot machine, it won’t pay out anything at all. Quick decisions are necessary here, so limited betting gives a clue to its performance, yet still leaves enough to gamble with on another machine if it isn’t – assuming you stop playing it as soon as you notice it’s not performing well enough.

How To Pick A Slot Machine To Play

So, again, you determine how much bankroll you can afford to spend. Now, take that number and divide it by 120 bets. If your bankroll is $60, then that’s 50 cents per bet. In such a way, the right choice is a 2-credit, quarter-denomination slot machine. Or, a 50-credit, penny-denomination slot machine.

Always remember to play maximum credits for the highest odds of winning. Meaning, your casino may not have a 2-maximum-credit quarter or 50-maximum-credit penny machines. But, perhaps they have a 1-maximum-credit quarter or less-than-50-maximum-credits penny machines. Such slot machines would provide more than 120 bets of play, which is going in the right direction!

Reading a Slot Machine’s Paytable

When choosing a slot machine to play, a crucial aspect of winning is to review its paytable before playing. Frankly, the casino industry gains an advantage over players that don’t read slot machine paytables.

Located somewhere on a slot machine is one or more tables showing the number of credits won if specific combinations of reel symbols appear in the pay line after the player makes a bet. Below is a relatively generic example of a paytable.

The figure shows reel combinations along with their jackpot depending on the number of credits bet. Paytables don’t typically explain how much credits are worth. In general, the top row is the maximum jackpot of the machine.

Not every reel combination and its associated jackpot are usually shown in a paytable. Other reel combinations not shown in the top rows are also presented in the paytable area. Slot machines with WILD symbols can represent it with a myriad of other possible reel symbols.

A final element of paytable example provided is specific information on winning reel combinations, which can include an indication of how the slot machine operates during play. The bottom row of symbol explains that that slot machine has reel symbols which will move after the reels stop momentarily.

Such additional features may not activate until the maximum credits are bet. It can sometimes be difficult, or impossible, to determine this. Most slot machines with bonus rounds will provide at least some information about it within its paytable.

Developing a habit of reviewing and studying a slot machine’s paytable can help improve your ability to judge the financial risks involved with playing that slot machine.

How to Avoid the Worst Slot Machines

The best way to improve the odds of winning via slot machine gambling is to stop making “sucker bets”. In less colorful language, avoid playing slot machines with terrible odds of winning.

First and foremost, understand when choosing slot machines that there are indeed terrible slot machines at a casino. By merely avoiding them whenever possible, on average, your long-term gambling return will improve. Each time we raise our odds like this, we’re pushing closer to achieving our gambling goals. So, let’s make sure we do that, shall we?

Calculate this “Goodness Ratio” as follows:

1. When choosing slot machines, as discussed above, find the paytable with the denomination and maximum credits that best matches your available bankroll.
2. Take a close look at the paytable. What is the maximum possible jackpot when maximum credits are bet?
   • If the top jackpot is displayed in currency, divide it by both the denomination of the machine and the maximum credits
   • If the top jackpot is displayed in credits, divide it by only the maximum credits

This “Goodness Ratio” tells us how worthwhile a specific slot machine is to play relative to others. By using this approach, any slot machine can be compared to any other slot machine.

Example: In the paytable above, the maximum jackpot is 2,400 credits with three maximum credits. Therefore, its Goodness Ratio is 2,400 / 3 = 800.

Repeat this calculation for slot machines of interest. While this Goodness Ratio will be similar for many slot machines, it can be startling to find “sucker bet” slot machines that might not otherwise be avoided.

Summary for Choosing Slot Machines

After a casino has been chosen, it’s time to select candidate slot machines most likely to result in a relatively high-value win. The size of your available bankroll, whatever it is, is an essential factor in this selection process. The bankroll size needs to be matched to the slot machine’s denomination and the number of maximum credits.

Here, we’ve also discussed how slot machines calculated odds twice: once to determine if you’ve won, and again to determine how much you’ve won. Another critical aspect discussed to improve a player’s performance was the basics of reading a slot machine’s paytable.

Finally, we talked about the “goodness” ratio to help select candidate slot machines and, perhaps critically important when improving our odds of winning, knowing precisely which slot machines must be avoided.

Next Steps

The next step on your journey to improving slots performance is Identifying Gambling Goals. Enjoy!

My research indicates I’m the first to share this information and offer personal coaching for slots enthusiasts.

I sincerely hope you find it both enjoyable and useful. For questions, call my voicemail hotline at 702-90-SLOTS, email me at Jon Friedl, or reach out to me through social media:

Further, I suggest that you sign up for my Free Report on the Best 7 Online Resources for Gamblers. Not only will you immediately receive a great list of online resources, but also other tips, tricks, and slots-related articles as I post them.

How Do You Pick A Good Slot Machine

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Finally, to provide further assistance if needed, I’m offering an inexpensive, 1-hour-long, one-to-one Consultation with me, your fellow slots enthusiast and friendly slot machine expert. Let’s talk! With only a few openings available most weeks, this is a strictly limited opportunity!

How To Pick A Slot Machine In Vegas

Have fun, be safe, and make good choices!
By Jon H. Friedl, Jr. Ph.D., President
Jon Friedl LLC