Introduction to Choosing Slot Machines
Slot machines, roulette balls and decks of cards do not have memories. They don’t keep track of what happened in the past. Every new game is completely, 100% random. Something to keep in mind is that modern slot machines aren’t powered by mechanical pulleys, levers and weights. Today’s slot machines are powered by random number generators. Slot machines, roulette balls and decks of cards do not have memories. They don’t keep track of what happened in the past. Every new game is completely, 100% random. Something to keep in mind is that modern slot machines aren’t powered by mechanical pulleys, levers and weights. Today’s slot machines. There are a few ways to maximize your odds picking winning slot machines. These methods rely on noticing patterns in when and how winning combinations show up. Picking a Good Slot Machine. One way is to find the most commonly played slots. The most visible and popular machines tend to be regularly winning 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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How To Pick Slot Machine Lock
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 for Success, 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.
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
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:
- When choosing slot machines, as discussed above, find the paytable with the denomination and maximum credits that best matches your available bankroll.
- 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.
Slot Machine Strategy To Win
Next Steps
The next step on your journey to improving slots performance is Identifying Gambling Goals. Enjoy!
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Have fun, be safe, and make good choices!
By Jon H. Friedl, Jr. Ph.D., President
Jon Friedl LLC
With gambling shifting into the digital age, it could be said that many of the issues faced in regular casino houses seem to have faded away; with increased accessibility and portability, the boom of online casinos has benefited players in numerous different ways. However, although this big leap into the online world has solved many issues within the gambling community, it has also carried over some of the same old challenges that have been a continuous source of torment, one of which being how to beat the slot machines.
So, how do you win against the slot machines? Here at Slots and Tables, we have created this guide to help you learn some top tips on beating the slots.
How do you Choose a Winning Slot Machine?
Although winning on the slots may seem mainly down to luck, slot machines, whether online or otherwise, are all about odds, so understanding these odds and the way they work can help you to better your chances of winning. One way of significantly increasing these odds is by choosing your slot machine carefully. Although seemingly insignificant in the grand scheme of the game, paying close attention to various different factors of your slot machine can help you to better your chances of winning, and winning big.
Choosing the Highest Payouts
For some of you reading this, it may seem rather obvious, but for many beginners, going online to play slots can leave you feeling confused and not knowing where to start. Therefore, the first rule in this how-to guide for choosing a machine is to pick the ones with the highest payout. This will increase you chances of winnings if playing over a longer period of time.
In order to find the slot machines with the highest payout, players should first become acquainted with the Return To Player (RTP) percentage. The RTP is the percentage of all wagered money that is paid back to the player after a game.
This can typically be found on the site of any given slot machine game, typically under the section for ‘help’ or ‘settings’, or if failing that can be searched for in casino game review sites. The RTP percentage normally varies anywhere from 92% – 97%, therefore choosing slot machines with a percentage of 96 and above is usually the best one to go for. Head over to our list of slots by RTP to see the most popular slots by their RTP score.
Slot Machine Volatility
Another important factor to consider when choosing your winning slot machine is the volatility of it. The volatility (or variance/risk level) of a slot is the measurement of risk involved whilst playing it.
- Low slot volatility = frequent, but smaller, wins.
- High slot volatility = infrequent, but bigger, wins.
Deciding what level of volatility best suits your gambling style will help in your preparation of the game, and subsequently in winning the slot machines.
The volatility of a slot machine is something providers and sites do not often publicise, and therefore finding this information on a given site or a review of that particular slot will be hard to come by. However, there is a way you can test out the slot volatility for yourself; when playing a given slot for a long enough time, patterns will start to emerge, and you will either find that the wins are infrequent but big (meaning high volatility) or the wins are frequent but small (meaning low volatility).
Determining the slot machine volatility can therefore be an incredibly useful asset when choosing the right machine for your gambling style, and in helping to make those wins.
Place High Bets
The higher the wager the higher the winnings – although simple, keeping this in mind can help you to make those big wins against the slot machine. If you’re feeling brave, playing higher denomination slot machines work well with this mind set, as well as progressive jackpots, with the max bet required to stand a chance of winning the jackpot.
Don’t place high bets with just your own funds, be sure to claim the biggest casino bonus for slots you can (provided the terms are favourable). At least you’ll be able to afford the bigger wager and stick to it for longer.
With this knowledge that the size of a bet can drastically determine the outcome of the game, players can tailor their bets in favour of those big wins and beat the slot machine once and for all.
Don’t Trust Obvious Slots
An important fact players should never forget when playing online slots is that the sites ultimately want to make money out of you, and therefore you’ll typically find the more heavily pushed and promoted slot machines on the sites will not be in favour of the players. By doing some digging around, you can often find winning slot machines hidden past the first page of a slot site.
Another great component in helping with the search for a winning slot is therefore to ignore the obvious options, and to not be so trusting of the house!
This logic can also be applied to branded slots, although arguably the slots that players will most likely be initially attracted to, these are quite possibly one of the worst slots to pick from if you are wanting to make wins. The advertising alone that developers pay on branded slots mean it would be illogical to make the machine easily lose money, meaning branded slots are almost always difficult wins.
Do Trust Players
When playing slots, although you should have a healthy dose of mistrust with the casino, this should be balanced by trusting your fellow players. When a slot is not paying well, other players will be the first to call this out, therefore it is good to check reviews on particular slots, eliminating your chances of picking bad slots and increasing your chances of choosing winning ones instead.
Although always helpful to have a good measure of luck on your side, these factors listed above can help you to further your chances of winning by choosing such “winning” slot machines. Preparation like this, although can often be seen as a tedious task will most likely pay off in the long run, and help you to gain a deeper level of respect for the tactics of the game all whilst becoming a slot machine master!
For more information on topics such as this, please visit our slot guides.