The Secrets of a Slot Machine: Exactly what the Industry (plus the State) Doesn’t Want You to find out

Even if your machines repay 89%, that still means the home wins. A lot. It keeps 11-cents on every dollar. So let's perform math: in the event you play a dollar machine for an hour, about 800 spins, you'll put $800 in the machine. The belief that casinos refuse to disclose the odds of winning on each slot machine (plus the government doesn't require these phones) needs to be a stern warning. When McDonald's runs a competition, it really is needed by law to disclose the chances of winning each prize. This is also true in the state Lottery and Powerball. However, not casinos, which treat the chances as classified trade secrets. Why? Since if people really knew how bad their odds were, they probably wouldn't be so anxious to relax and play.

An average slot machine might display three spinning reels. Each reel has about 20 symbols - a cherry, a lemon, a blank, etc. One symbol on each reel will be the jackpot symbol. It would be reasonable to imagine that since 20 x 20 x 20 equals 8,000, a person's odds of showing up in the jackpot are one in 8,000. Reasonable but wrong. The fact is, the percentages on today's computerized slot machines are far worse.

That's since a slot machine is programmed for many more stops compared to the 20 symbols visible in the reel, something like 256 stops on each reel. Inside each slot machine is actually a tiny computer chip that generates random numbers continuously, even though the equipment is not being played. As soon as the button is pushed or even the lever is pulled, the pc stops on three numbers, one for each and every reel, and those random numbers (as soon as the internal computer does some calculations) match the symbols around the reel and find out where each reel will stop. For example, the numbers one through 66 might correspond to a blank involving the symbols, and 67 through 77 is usually a lemon or even a bar, and the like. Obviously, more numbers correspond to lower paying symbols than higher paying ones.

Only one or two numbers, 255 and 256, would be the jackpot symbol. Because the losing blank lines above and underneath the jackpot image correspond to a lot of the random numbers than other images, a player is most likely to hit the blank stops right next to the winning symbol. This produces the deceptive impression that they "just missed" the jackpot, which encourages them to keep gambling. In fact, not surprisingly, the proximity of your actual stops is meaningless.

Plus the reels are weighted: that you are more likely to hit the jackpot symbol on the first and second reels than about the third, again to deceive you into thinking you came in close proximity to winning and maintain you playing.

So chances are really 256 x 256 x 256 - about 1 in 17 million, or roughly twice the odds people becoming president. As well as for some machines, the percentages go even higher.

Keeping this a secret and refusing to disclose the odds, the casino industry benefits from our ignorance. Let's admit it - we're all math deficient with this country. So when you start speaking about the laws of probability and random numbers and odds - everything that govern the operation of slot machine games - people's eyes glaze over.

People think, by way of example, that slot machines get cold or hot, that whenever a unit hasn't paid in awhile, then the likelihood is higher that it's gonna hit the jackpot. Wrong. The earth just doesn't work like that. The chances of you winning are similar on every spin, no matter whether the device recently paid out a jackpot or hasn't paid one outside in months. Remember, it's all random.

And the other thing: free slot play has finished the second you push the button. Even though the player sees three reels spinning around lastly stopping on the symbol or perhaps a number, that's simply a time-wasting simulation to help make this game more exciting - and seductive. The fact is, when you took the back off one of many modern video slot machine games, you wouldn't see any spinning reels in any way, jut a TV screen and a few computer chips. Where those virtual reels will stop spinning is determined the moment you push the button and generate three of the random numbers. Everything following that is just an illusion to deceive the user. In the end, it wouldn't be much fun in the event you pushed the button and also the words "You Lose" instantly popped on screen.