Man Know When Slot Machines Will Pay

I went to a party Saturday night, and whenever I go to parties, someone inevitably learns what I do for a living. (I write about gambling.)

Machines will payout when the random spin generator calculates it is time to pay. Play at your own risk. Malfunctions voids all pays. Plus each casino will post a similar message at each entrance as you walk in and on each of the machines. People cannot “know,” which slot machine is going to pay out. The random number generators in slot machines cause the machine to have the same amount of odds of hitting the jackpot on the first pull of the handle or spin button, as it does on the thousandth pull or for that matter the millionth pull. Every spin has the same chance of winning. The payout levels are based on the machines algorithms and the machines payout percentage is set within a range permitted by the local government gaming regulator.

This always leads to one of two or three outcomes:

I hear a gambling anecdote about my new friend or one of their friends
My new friend asks me how to win money gambling. Sometimes they specifically ask how to choose the winning slot machine
Both #1 and #2 (this is actually the most common outcome)

I enjoy all these outcomes, by the way, but here’s what happened at this specific party.

A friend of mine started telling me the story of his friend who got fired from Walmart. Later the same day, his newly unemployed friend went to the Choctaw Casino in Durant and won $40,000 playing a slot machine.

My friend’s question to me was, “How do I do that?”

How can *I* choose the winning slot machine?

This post has the answer, but it’s almost certainly not what you’d think.

You Can’t Win by Choosing the Slot Machine With the Highest Payback Percentage.

When I search for this phrase in the most popular search engines, I see pages touting this advice repeatedly:

You have to play the slot machines with the highest payback percentage.

What’s a payback percentage?

It’s also called “return to player” or “RTP.”

A slot machine’s return is the amount of money paid out to a slot machine player compared to the amount of money the player wagered. The RTP gets expressed as a percentage.

If you made $100 in wagers on a slot machine and won $125, you’d have a return of 125%. If you won $90, you’d have a return of 90%.

The difference between the return and the amount you wagered, obviously, is the casino’s profit.

The payback percentage, or return to player (RTP), is a statistical prediction of a slot machine’s return over a massive number of spins. The closer you get to infinity, the closer the game’s results should get to the payback percentage that the game is programmed to have.

Players who win at slot machines win in the short run.

In the long run, all slot machines have a payback percentage of less than 100%. This means that, in the long run, you’ll always lose at slot machines.

How to Calculate the Payback Percentage of a Slot Machine

This theoretical payback percentage can get easily calculated if you have the probabilities behind the machine. It’s just the probability of each win multiplied by the amount of that win, divided by the amount you’d have to play every probability.

If, for example, a slot machine game had 10,000 possible combinations, and if you hit every combination, you’d win 9,000 coins, and the payback percentage would be 90%.

A slot machine doesn’t have to pay out less after a win to “catch up” to its payback percentage. Every spin of the reels on a slot machine is 100% random. The casino makes its profit because of the discrepancy between the odds of winning and the odds that each payout offers.

The payback percentage is not available to the consumer at most casinos. You have no way of calculating it because you have no way of knowing what the probability of getting a specific symbol on a stop is. You can’t calculate the probability of a combination of symbols without that information.

You have the payouts for the prizes, but you don’t know what your probability of winning those prizes is.

Where Does the Casino Put the Slot Machines With the Highest Payback Percentages?

You could play two identical slot machine games sitting right next to each other. One of them might have a payback percentage of 91%, while the other might have a payback percentage of 96%.

You have NO way of telling which machine is better than the other, even if one of those games is paying out more than the other. After all, the payback percentage is a long-term phenomenon.

In the short run, anything can happen.

But even if you DID know the payback percentage for the game, you couldn’t choose the winning slot machine just by choosing the one with the higher payback percentage.

The probability of winning the big jackpot on most machines is at least 1000 to 1.

If you play for two hours, you might make 1,200 spins. You might even win the big jackpot.

But you’ll (usually) have wagered more money on the machine than you won.

You’ll find advice about how to find the slot machines with the highest payback percentages, but most of it is useless. At one time, sure, the slot machines closest to the aisles might have had higher payback percentages.

However, I’ve seen multiple interviews with multiple casino managers who insist that isn’t true.

What About Playing Higher-Denomination Slot Machine Games?

You’ll also see people explain that the payback percentage on the higher-denomination machines is better. This is true as a general rule, but it might or might not be true at the casino where you’re playing. The penny and nickel machines might average 91% at your casino, while the dollar machines might average 95%, but that’s an AVERAGE.

This doesn’t mean that you’ll automatically have a higher payback percentage just because you played a higher-denomination machine.

Even if you did, you’re still fighting a negative expectation game.

Should I Play Slot Machine Games With Higher Volatility?

What about volatility?
Is a slot machine with a higher volatility more likely to be a winner?
Or should I look for the games with lower volatility?

A slot machine’s volatility is its variance from the predicted results. The higher the volatility is on a game, the wider the swings between the wins and losses tend to be.

A game with high volatility pays out less often but can sometimes offer bigger payouts to compensate.

A game with low volatility pays out more often, but those payouts are still low enough to guarantee the casino a profit.

The slot machines at your local casino aren’t labeled according to their volatility, by the way. There’s not a special section for low volatility slots.

You can, though, get an idea for the volatility of a slot machine game via your observations of how often they pay out.

To make your own estimate, you need to count how many spins you make. You also need to count how many of those spins are winners (as opposed to losers).

Divide the number of winning spins by the number of spins you’ve made, and you’ll have the hit ratio for that sample set.

The more spins you’ve made, the more likely the hit ratio you’re seeing is close to the expected ratio.

If you make 500 spins on a game in an hour, and 150 of those spins are winners, the hit ratio for that game is 30%.

If 200 of them were winners, the hit ratio would be 40%.

The game with the 40% hit ratio is the less volatile game.

But keep in mind that an hour’s worth of spins is not representative of the long run. Those are still short-term results. The longer you play, the more accurate your results will get.

You COULD also estimate the slot machine’s actual return over those 500 spins.

Multiply the amount you wagered per spin by the number of spins you made. Then divide how much the game paid out by that amount to get a percentage.

If you put $500 into a $1/spin game, and then you make 500 spins, you’ve wagered $500.

Let’s say you have $400 left after all that wagering. This accounts for all your wins and losses, so the payback percentage — the observed return — is 80%.

That doesn’t mean that this is the theoretical return, but it might be close — especially if it’s a low volatility machine.

Does any of this information help you choose the winning slot machine, though?

Nah. It’s still just dumb luck.

You Can’t Use the Zig-Zag System to Pick a Winning Slot Machine

You might have already heard of this system, but if not, here’s how it’s supposed to work.

The zig-zag system tries to identify slot machines that are about to pay out by looking at the pattern of the symbols on an inactive machine. You’re supposed to look through the slot machines on the casino floor and find one where the winning symbols are in a zig-zag pattern on the front of the machine.

It doesn’t really matter much what the pattern looks like. As long as three winning symbols are present somewhere on the front of the machine, that machine is supposedly “ready” to pay off.

Proponents of the system even suggest that games with two winning symbols showing are getting close to paying off, too.

The idea is that the symbols are coming up more often because the game is getting ready to pay off. Therefore, you’re supposed to sit down and play until those symbols actually do line up on one of the pay lines, and you win.

You can picture these zig-zag symbols in your mind as diagonal lines connecting the symbols on the front of the machine. They might make a V or upside-down V, for example. This is also called a diamond, and it’s supposed to be the best pattern you could ask for.

I can only think of one problem with the zig-zag system.

It doesn’t work.

Understanding why involves understanding something about how a slot machine works. Those spinning reels on the inside of the machine aren’t actually physical reels. They’re controlled by a random number generator. This is especially obvious with video slots, where all the action is entirely animated.

The random number generator (RNG) is a computer program that cycles through thousands of numbers per second. When you click the “spin” button or pull the lever, the computer program stops on a number. That number corresponds to a combination of reel symbols.

Before the reels stop spinning, the RNG has determined the outcome, win or lose.

Every spin of the reels is an independent trial. What’s happened on the previous spin has no effect on your subsequent spins.

What About John Patrick’s Slots Strategies?

My favorite strategies for playing slots come from a book by John Patrick. In it, he outlines several money management techniques which are supposed to help you win at slot machines. All of his strategies are more or less worthless.

Below are some of the concepts he suggests.

The first is the concept of a “naked pull.”

A naked pull is a spin of the slot machine reels that results in no winnings at all.
He suggests choosing an arbitrary number between 7 and 14 as your “naked pull limit.”

For example, you might choose 7 as your naked pull limit. If you play a slot machine game and get 7 losing spins in a row, you would quit playing that machine and move on to another machine.

This MIGHT help you avoid a low volatility slot machine game, but it doesn’t do much for your probability of winning in the long run. In fact, it does nothing in aid of that.

Having a naked pull limit, though, can be an interesting way to get in some action at multiple slot machines. In that case, you might have a more interesting and fun time playing, which is a type of winning in itself.

Another concept that he suggests is having a session bankroll.

In other words, you have a bankroll of how much money you’re willing to gamble with.
Let’s say you’re going to Las Vegas for three days and two nights, and you have $600 to gamble with.
You might decide to have two slot machine sessions per day — one in the morning and another in the evening.
You would then have six sessions planned, and you would divide your bankroll into six-session bankrolls of $100 each.

He combines the idea of a session bankroll with the idea of a loss limit and a win goal. These are just percentages of your bankroll that are going to serve as the end of your session.

For example, you might set a win goal of $50 and a loss limit of $20. If your bankroll slips to $80, you quit for the session. If your bankroll grows to $150, you quit for the session.

This, by the way, does nothing to increase your probability of finding a winning machine. It just means you won’t gamble an entire session bankroll.

It also means that sometimes you’ll grind out a winning session.

In the long run, though, you’ll wind up with a loss similar to what you’d expected based on the theoretical payback percentage of the machine. The longer you play, the more likely you are to wind up with those kinds of results.

All his systems combine these concepts to create cleverly named systems, but none of them do anything to get you an advantage at slot machines.

In Fact, No One Can Tell You How to Choose the Winning Slot Machine

You can’t choose a winning slot machine because you can’t predict the future. Slot machines are random. They’re also an example of negative expectation games.

If you play slot machines long enough, you’ll surely lose.

But Here’s the Good News

The expected return on these games is a long-term expectation. This means that not only CAN you win in the short run, but you’re almost guaranteed to have an occasional win in the short run.

In fact, the casino is counting on it.

If you never won, you’d never play.

The trick is to have some idea of what kind of win will satisfy you. When you know what that is, you can play until you hit it and call it a day.

As long as you understand that if you keep playing negative expectation games, you’ll eventually lose all your money, you’ll be okay.

Treat slot machine gambling as entertainment.
Quit if you get ahead by a significant amount.

And NEVER spend money on any kind of lame slot machine system that guarantees you the secret to choosing a slot machine that’s ready to pay out.

Conclusion

Slot machines are fun, and choosing a winning slot machine seems like a worthy goal.

Luckily for us, it’s a skill that everyone has in equal amounts. Everyone has a 0% probability of accurately predicting which slot machine is going to be the winning machine.

It’s not like the World Series of Poker, where the players’ skill levels have a huge effect on the outcome.

Sure, you can win at slots.

People do it every day.

It just takes luck and a willingness to lose some money trying to win.

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Author: Jungle Jim : Contact: Disabled World

Published: 2014-03-11 : (Rev. 2020-06-23)

Synopsis and Key Points:

Are slots really random? Explanation on why slot machines are not quite as random as both land based and online casinos say they are.

Are slot machine payouts really random?

Are all slot machines rigged as to when they payout to the player?

Main Digest

Please note that the article below is my opinion only, from what I have experienced from playing slots, both at land based casinos, and several different popular online casinos - all of which shall remain nameless.

Playing slots, pokies, fruit machines, one arm-bandits, poker machines, whatever you like to call them, depending on where you come from, is a popular pastime for many seniors and retired singles and couples.

Are Slots Really Random?

What Casinos and Slot Machine Technicians Will Tell You:

Online casino slot games are said to use the same kinds of random number generator programs as land-based casinos. They just serve up your results via animation that is sent to your computer via the Internet.

Casinos will often tell you that slot machines use a computer to generate random numbers, and these determine the outcomes of the game. When players press the 'Play' button, the machines computer generates what is known as a RNG, a gaming term that is an abbreviation for 'random number generator'. Random number generators (or pseudorandom number generators) are special algorithms that are used in computing when an outcome needs to be as random as possible.

When the play button is pressed the RNG randomly selects a winning or losing combination from among millions of available combinations.
Slots don't get hot or cold - Slot machines are said to have something in common with goldfish: they have no memory. Every spin is independent of the prior and/or following spins.
Every spin is considered to be a brand new spin, with any possible symbol combination outcome.
Slot players are said to either win or lose; they never 'maybe win' or 'maybe lose', or never 'almost win'.

Slot machines often display a series of spins where players appear to be only one symbol away from a win, therefore leading them to falsely believe that they almost won. Slot games do not work on any kind of cyclical basis - and slot machine jackpots don't become due.

I call BS!

Why I Believe Slot Machine Games are Not Random

Slots are not random and I will never be convinced otherwise, I have been playing slots for many years and seen so many different examples of them being NOT random, making it incredibly difficult to believe that slot machines are totally random, here's why:

If slot machine games are designed to fit into a maths model, which they are said to be, then they cannot be TRULY unpredictable.
I have played certain online slot machines where the 'Payout' or money won amount is displayed BEFORE the bonus game spins end.
How is it possible for a slot machine to be a random device and for a machine to also have to pay back a certain percentage of the money played through it?
Anyone who's played certain slot machines for example, could not fail to notice how you don't see ANY certain symbols on the reels for ages, then suddenly they are everywhere!
It often feels almost as if there is some algorithm at play preventing a certain feature to happen too soon after starting a slot game, and only happening once you've lost enough money to cover the feature's payout.
Have you ever been steadily winning playing a certain amount, e.g $1, so you decide to bet more to win more and increase your bet per spin to $2. What happens? The machine 'instantly' stops paying and becomes deader than a Dodo bird! Strange isn't it, considering slots are supposed to be so called 'random' (sarcasm).

Screenshot of the Mad Mad Monkey online slot game.

On some progressive jackpots linked to a bank of slot machines, the jackpot has to be won before a certain amount of money is reached. Now, if this is the case, how are they REALLY random if they have to hit before the jackpot reaches a certain amount? Totally random means they can hit at ANY time. If they have to hit by a certain amount they have to be programed to do that.

I was once asked in an 'anonymous' online casino survey, 'If I felt like I received enough playing time for the amount of money fed to the slot machine!' Now, why ask something like that if it is beyond their control to 'adjust the settings'? Was it because if a player was losing their money too quickly - resulting in a shorter machine play time - then the machine would 'compensate' by paying out more before the end of the playing time? This time of play adjustment would then allow casino patrons, both on and offline, to 'feel' they had value for money due to the adjusted extension of playing time on the machine.

Losing on One Machine - You'll be Losing on All Machines!

What I don't get, if you have a win on one particular slot game and then move onto several others, they will all be dead. For every win I have had I then lose constantly until the money I won and some has been played back, no matter what slot I play before I even begin to get above my deposit back again - it is the same pattern each time and that does not appear random to me. It's as if all the online slot machines are linked to a central computer - For example: If you are continually losing, when playing online slots, switching to another slot game doesn't matter as all the games you try do not payout as well. The only so called random thing is if your players account has been deemed worthy of a win for a change. It would be extremely easy, and fast being a computer, for a 'central computer' to check the deposits, as well as wins and losses, your account has had over a certain amount of time and money deposited. Your account is then compensated for the losses with smaller, or medium amount, wins that will always see you losing over the long term.

Have You Noticed

Have you ever noticed that you miss out on a good winning combination because just one reel wasn't in the right position? Then lo-and-behold on the very next spin the symbol you needed is right where you needed it to be on the previous spin! Random? Nah! Teaser? Yes!

When in a bonus game and, for example, you have to select 3 symbols from a group of symbols in order to reveal the bonus money, number of free spins, or number of free spins and the winning combination multplier factor, 'beneath' the symbols. Once you have made your choices and the selections are revealed all the other symbols may be revealed as well - often with a better option than the ones you picked. Rest assured that had you picked the 'better options' you would still have made the EXACT SAME choices - So it's no use saying, 'If only I had picked that symbol...' As you don't know what's 'under' any symbol at the start of the bonus pick, the computer can, and does, calculate the amount of free spins etc. it is going to give you, and then reveals whatever it wants to 'under' those symbols you both did and didn't choose. Nothing is actually ever 'under' those symbols to pick from, the machine simply changes the icon picture to whatever its current calculation amount tells it to reward you.

Have you also noticed that after a modest win, or payout, assuming you keep playing the same slot machine, it almost seems as though the game NEEDS to win that payout back before giving you another, abeit smaller payout.

Have you ever been playing the slot machines, at for example $1 a spin, and you get a reasonable size payout win and wish you had bet $5 like you were a few minutes ago? Well rest assured had you been betting $5 a spin the win would not have been 5 times as much as your $1 spin - the machine would not have been 'ready' to payout that amount at that time.

In my experience it seems quite obvious that slot machines have to have some sort of computer coded system at play to ensure you can't win over and over again - Which is why when you do win big it is always followed by a long cold losing streak.

When bonus round occurs it ALWAYS seems the bonus round happens 2 or 3 more times in a short period after the first bonus round, then no bonuses for ages - and lots of cash gone.

Also in my experience, any big wins I've had in the past have come when I've spent a small fortune on that particular slot - almost as if the slot is forced to bring you back in line with the payout figure percentage rules.

Left to right paying slot machines are designed so high paying symbols are frequently on the 1st reel, slightly less frequent on the 2nd reel, less again on the 3rd reel, less yet on the 4th reel, and very rarely on the last reel. It is another trick by slot manufacturer's to gives you the feeling of possibly winning and missing out on the last couple of reels.

The online casino wants to keep you as a player - when playing you may seldom get any wins - then when you are near your last money in the machine you receive a moderate win - just enough to make you come back to that casino for more.

I've played them long enough to believe that they're not random, but as I said, it's my opinion from my personal observations, and you're entitled to yours. Next time you are playing slots stop and wonder why those top slot symbols and/or scatters mysteriously vanish after a while - short-term random, sure - long-term random, not so much...

Feedback on This Article

1 - A Mathematician Agrees

Recently Disabled World received an email from Dave M. stating his opinion. With his permission we have added the content of his email below:

Hi, I have just been reading an article by Jungle Jim on slot machines that was posted on your site, which was very illuminating, and everything he says seems to be quite accurate. Although the article is from a few years ago I found the contents gave quite a representative appraisal on online slot machines and land based slot machines.

My own area of interest however is the online slot machines.

Over the past few months I have been conducting my own research being a mathematician I was interested to find out if these forms of gambling were in actual fact random number generated as the major casino's , bingo halls and other gambling establishments claim them to be.

Firstly I played an online popular slot machine after joining a popular bingo hall and online company. And low and behold after depositing a modest sum had a virtually immediate win followed by subsequent wins giving me a substantial reward on my investment.

Then as if a button had been pressed to say OK this person has won enough and is now 'hooked' when trying other slot games those wins accrued from a previous slot game was starting to be eroded away quite rapidly with a succession of totally win free blank spells apart from very low denomination pay outs.

So before the 'winning pot' had been exhausted I returned back to the original slot game to try again after a day or two. And low and behold it subsequently eroded the rest of the winnings paying absolutely nothing in the way of substantial wins, only small denominations until it was all gone, this in my opinion is a very systematically heavily controlled form of gambling which also in my opinion is not random at all.

I went on for the next several weeks to play and document all the wins and losses from some free game plays to see if there was any difference between them and the paying games and over a period of time playing the free games found that these games always paid substantial wins consistently.

However in between when switching back to the paying money slot games it was always whittling whatever I deposited away, without any substantial wins whatsoever. This I documented and found over a period of time that the wins I initially procured was taken back three fold.

So my research has concluded and justifiably concurred with Jungle Jim's opinions that online slot machines are not random number generators at all and are in my opinion being governed by the operators and companies that are running them.

2 - RNG is NOT RNG

It seems there are many many people out there who agree completely with the article above. Here is one such email, (permission was obtained to include it on this page), from Lewis T. who wrote in under the heading 'RNG is NOT RNG...'

Hi, I'm a fellow slot machine player at a few of my neighboring casinos and way before I came across your post, I noticed those patterns and it wasn't just with slot machines but also with Roulette when I saw the momentum of the ball slow down, rest in one spot, then started vibrating extremely, then rolled around the metal ring and land in another pocket. From that point on I stayed away from roulette and would always watch closely as to how the ball would do the things it would do - yet no one would notice it but me!

As for the slot machines, I would take videos of how the reels would go into hyper-speed all to avoid the bonus symbol it would, and or should, have landed on. All the casino games are suppose to be regulated but who can you really trust them when money runs the world and the gaming commission is getting their pockets loaded by the casinos that are suppose to be operating fair games.

These places have a operations room that allows them to control the winnings and the losings, from the games all the way to the rewards cards they persuade you to sign up for, all for them to regulate you even further.

It has been too many times that I've sat down, inserted my rewards card, inserted my hard earned money and played until I exhausted my $100 in the machine. Then I would sit and watch someone sit right down behind me and play the same game and hit so many bonuses RIGHT AFTER I FINISHED PLAYING! And it wouldn't be just one instance.

The way my mind works I can focus on the whole game verses just focusing on one reel and see the rhythm on wins and loses, and this is just from me!

How are these establishments, the gaming commission, and all the other 'gaming regulators' able to get away with preying on people and get away with it???

3 - Slot Games are Not Random at All

John V. wrote into Disabled World to give his opinion on the unfairness of slot payouts:

The opinions of Jungle Jim to me are what I have been saying all along as well. The games are not random at all, to me the one thing I notice most is 100% of the time you get free spins or a bonus on one game, win some money, then guaranteed after if you keep playing that game you will not get another free spin or bonuses for a long period of time.

What I do is if I get free spins or a bonus I will spin maybe couple times after knowing I will get nothing, then I will change games right away. You have to be very focused when playing and be very patient. When you have low balance bet small as you have to slowly build up your balance, then when you get to around 200 I would say you can start playing the jackpot games, bet more per spin on regular slots etc.

They are definitely not random they try to brainwash you and tell you they are, but when you're an experienced player like myself you play a game for a while give it a chance don't go in thinking I will play till I get free spins or a bonus you could lose a lot of money thinking that. Just play 20 spins or so if theres nothing then move on don't get lazy and stick with the one game, be focused take your time if you feel like your getting very frustrated and angry turn the casino off take break if you don't you will lose it all with in minutes.

It's a game between you and the casino. You can win once in a while, but don't go in expecting to win and wonder why a game paid out so well yesterday and today there is nothing at all. Emotions are key, be relaxed, be alert, and take your time be smart, and you have a good Chance in winning. I have done it 7 times. I have withdrawn money in the last few months that's pretty good so it can be done. Good luck to you all.

Let's Keep the Discussion Going!

So, are slots really random? What do you think? Can you add to the above lists on how you think slot machines may be cheating? If so contact us, as we'd be interested in more opinions.

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