Every industry insider who works on slot machine games says no one should play these games. They are designed to take your money. If you’re only interested in being entertained and you enjoy the graphics, sound effects, and the experience of sitting in a casino then by all means play the game. Your odds of winning are better than this, as you can hit five bells, five whistles or five of any other set of symbols, so on this machine your odds of any set of five are actually 5 x 0.032%, or 0.16%. So once in every 625 spins of this hypothetical machine, you’ll hit your set of five identical symbols for the jackpot.
So who pays for those Volcanic eruptions? Pirate Battles? Carnival Parades? and Glittering Showrooms? Slot Machines. 60-65% of casino revenue is generated by those bell-ringing one armed bandits that seem to multiply on casino floors like rabbits. So how does the average player gain an advantage and possibly win? Well... aside from cheating (which we really don't suggest you get involved in) the only way to gain some sort of advantage is to choose your slots with utmost care and discrimination.
Slot machines in Las Vegas are required by law to payout 75% of the money that goes into them, actual payout in Las Vegas is approximately 95%. Will you be the one that takes the money instead of gives it? That is up to luck, but with a little investigation one can easily learn to identify which machines are more favorable to the player than others. Slot machines are all about the payout... Red White and Blue, Double Diamond, Dick Fucking Clark, Cherry whatever. At the end of the day what every slot player needs to do is look at the pay schedule on the machine they want to play. Very often the same machine one row over will pay 5,000 credits on 3rd credit jackpot while you're playing on a 2,000 3rd credit machine. Plain and simple you're cheating yourself.
Slot Spotlights
A few notable slot machines we here at VT have found more playable, or more interesting, than the other nonsense out there like Leprachaun's Gold or Tabasco Slots or whatever.
We like machines that have the best payouts on the lowest winning spins. These will keep you going longer between larger wins and not enact the ATM-In-Reverse principle seen at many of the larger joints (Venetian being the worst we've experienced).
100 or Nothing
Red, White and Blue
Slot Machine Jackpots Photo Gallery
Wheel of Fortune
Wild Cherry
Slot Machine Payback Percentages
Below are the slot payback percentages for Nevada's fiscal year beginning July 1, 2002 and ending June 30, 2003:
5¢ Slot Machines
The Strip - 90.32%
Downtown - 91.50%
Boulder Strip - 93.03%
N. Las Vegas - 92.97%
25¢ Slot Machines
The Strip - 92.59%
Downtown - 94.83%
Boulder Strip - 96.47%
N. Las Vegas - 96.63%
$1 Slot Machines
The Strip - 94.67%
Downtown - 95.35%
Boulder Strip - 96.48%
N. Las Vegas - 97.21%
$1 Megabucks Machines
The Strip - 89.12%
Downtown - 88.55%
Boulder Strip - 87.76%
N. Las Vegas - 89.41%
$5 Slot Machines
The Strip - 95.33%
Downtown - 95.61%
Boulder Strip - 96.53%
N. Las Vegas - 96.50%
All Slot Machines
The Strip - 93.85%
Downtown - 94.32%
Boulder Strip - 95.34%
N. Las Vegas - 95.32%
The Math of Casino Slot Machines
For every dollar you wager in a slot machine, you will lose 100% - Payback% of that dollar. For example, you're at Bellagio playing the $1 Double Diamond slot, wagering Two Credits ($2) per spin. According to the table, for every $2 spin you will lose 5.33% of that bet... just shy of 11¢. Granted these 11 cents don't get extracted instantly... this is computed over time. So if your bank roll limit is $10 it will take you, on average 52 spins before your bankroll is toast (under $1) and you are out of credits.
How was this number derived:
STAKE x (Payback Percentages) = STAKE x (Payback Percentages) = STAKE x (Payback Percentages) = ...
Repeat calculation until the number gets below the minimum bet - if you play long enough, you're gonna go broke. THAT is a FACT. Slot machines are entertaining, relaxing, require little thought beyond pressing a button. IF you want to truly GAMBLE, you might want to look into Video Poker, and eventually Blackjack as other options.
Granted, sometime in there you just might hit that $500 win on the Wheel of Fortune, or The Elvis progressive might shake rattle and roll $1000 your way... but the math inside the machine determines that you will in fact lose a certain percentage of your wager on each spin, and the more you spin... the more you will lose despite short runs of successful jackpots. If you find you are UP... leave. Every spin of a slot machine generates a random number that has NOTHING to do with previous numbers. SLOT MACHINES do NOT run in streaks (even if you might wish to think they do). Don't expect to get any of the money you put into a machine out of it unless you learn to press the CASH OUT button.
Gamblers Library
VT fully recommends the following books to help you decrease the house advantage on casino card games.
Slots Odds By State
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Although every slot machine game guide in the world tells you there is no way to guarantee you’ll win at slot machine games, there is one method that always works. Kind of.
I’ll leave that for my last talking point but I’ll be honest: it won’t make you rich.
Slot machine games have come a long way from the mechanical monstrosities that ate people’s money. My grandfather served in the army and he said he used to sneak into a store in San Francisco that had slot machines in a back room. They were mechanical slots.
He won a $5 jackpot on a 10-cent bet one time but he told me that most of the time everyone lost on those machines. People only played them because they weren’t supposed to be there. Off-duty soldiers always had something going on the side.
Casinos won’t ever stock a game where the player always wins. They’re not in the business of giving money away. So when people claim to have slot machine game secrets they usually follow up with silly suggestions everyone always knows.
After doing some research I found there are several ways people really do win on slot machines. If these are real winning strategies then there must be a catch. Otherwise, everyone would use them and the casinos would get rid of the slot machine games.
So, yes, there’s always a catch. But the great thing about these strategies is you can use them in other types of gambling games.
Decide What It Means to “Win” the Game
This isn’t some vague “make your life better” strategy. This is where winning begins. Set a cash-out, time to walk away from the game goal.
The obvious goal is to set a fixed amount of credits or money you must be ahead when you stop playing the game. If you buy 100 credits, your goal should be to stop playing after you win 100, 200, or 300 credits.
If you don’t set a number than you have no goal. It should be a number you’re well willing to live with. It should also be reasonable.
Some people set the goal of playing until they win a jackpot. That’s cheating on this strategy. You’re not a winner if you win a $5,000 jackpot if you spent $6,000 to get it.
A less obvious goal is to experience something specific in the game. This is usually a bonus round. If you’ve seen someone else play a bonus round that you would like to play, getting to the bonus round is a reasonable goal.
You’re not guaranteeing yourself a profit. You’re paying for an experience. If it’s money you want then set a reasonable goal and quit playing when you get there.
Otherwise, decide why else you want to play that game and what you want to get from it.
Make the Highest Wagers You Can Afford
Best Odds Slot Machine
If you study slot gaming tips, you’ll often find the recommendation to choose higher coin denomination versions of a slot machine game.
The first time I heard this advice my reaction was, “How do they know that?”
Well, as it turns out, it doesn’t matter how anyone knows anything. What matters is the math. That article also lists the average payback percentages for slot machine games by denomination and location in Nevada.
The data was provided by the Nevada Gaming Control Board so consider it reliable. The percentages may change over time but in that article the Boulder Strip was paying the highest percentages back to players on everything above 1-cent slot machines.
The best average percentages were 96.13% for 25-cent and $1 slot machines on the Boulder Strip. You might conclude it would be safer to play the 25-cent machines but look more closely.
If you set a goal of winning $200 before leaving a slot machine, you’re more likely to reach that goal in fewer spins on a higher denomination machine.
Assume a game pays 5X your bet on the average win. If the max bet on a 25-cent machine is $1.25 and the max bet on a $1 machine is $3, your average win on the 25-cent machine works out to $6.25 vs. $15 on the other machine.
No matter how much you pay back to the machine between average wins, the percentage must be the same for both machines. Therefore you’ll have a better chance of reaching your goal with fewer spins on the higher denomination machine.
You could still win a jackpot on the lower denomination machine that pushes you past your goal, but that’s not something you should count on.
Set a Reasonable Minimum Spins Budget
You should be willing to lose your entire bankroll but obviously no one wants to do that. A disciplined approach to gambling balances risk against potential reward.
In theory if you’re playing a machine with a 85% return to player then you should expect to have about 85% of your money after 100 spins. It doesn’t always work out that way. You could lose most of your money or win a lot of money.
A minimum spins budget is based on how much you can afford to lose and how much you’re willing to play the game before reaching your goal. If you have a $500 goal and you’re making $5 bets, decide if you’re willing to make 50 spins, 100 spins, or whatever.
Pick a number and stick to it. Don’t give yourself “one more chance” to win back your money if you hit the last spin and you still haven’t made your goal.
The longer you play a game the more likely the casino keeps all your money. Some gambling tutorials suggest setting a maximum spins budget, but I think the minimum spins budget works better. The deal is that if the casino can’t take all your money in those spins you get to keep whatever you have left over.
Even if you don’t reach your goal, if you have more money than you began with you’ve won the game.
How to Always Win Playing the Slot Machines
Please don’t shoot the messenger: get someone else to pay you to play slot machine games.
There are a few jobs where you can play slot machine games all day long (or for several hours) and you use someone else’s money. Well, there is no money involved except what you’re paid.
You can apply for a “slot machine game tester” job. Casinos and game designers hire people to play the games. They follow scripts and all the winning tickets say “test” so they cannot be cashed in.
What Are Your Odds Of Winning On A Slot Machine
There are other ways people have been paid to play slot games but I don’t know of any legal jobs besides the slot game testers. There is a famous story about an eastern European gang that sent people into casinos around the world to play the slots. They used a supercomputer to decode the random numbers and win a lot of jackpots.
That’s not how I want to win at slots. Several people were arrested when the scheme was detected.
Average Slot Machine Odds
There are also slot game tournaments. If you really want to see how high you can run up a score on a slot machine, enter a tournament. The winners receive prizes but the players get to see amazing results on their assigned games.
Conclusion
Every industry insider who works on slot machine games says no one should play these games. They are designed to take your money.
If you’re only interested in being entertained and you enjoy the graphics, sound effects, and the experience of sitting in a casino then by all means play the game.
How To Pick A Winning Slot Machine
If you’re willing to pay $100 for a nice dinner or a concert ticket and you feel satisfied, then there is no reason why that isn’t sufficient justification for playing the slots. As long as you get what you want you’re a winner.
It’s your money and you can spend it any way you wish. Gambling is fun because of the element of risk. In the right social atmosphere it’s also a great way to share time with other people. Why we play the game is as important as how we determine what winning means for us.