Articles on Slot Machines

Price Is Right Progressive Slots 
by Victor Royer

This is a progressive video slot machine, based on the IGT Megajackpots system. There are two versions of this game, one with the Cliff Hanger Bonus and the other with the Plinko Bonus. Both games feature the Showcase Showdown Bonus. The base game is the nine-line video slot machine based on the Price Is Right theme. These two versions of the game that are in the next stage of development feature the addition of these bonuses plus the progressive jackpot, which starts at $10,000.

When you reach the Showcase Showdown Bonus, you will receive up to two spins from the top-box reel. If the spin results in 55 to 100 credits, the game's stage is now set for some big bonus fun in the main Showcase round. Here you get to pick on-screen price tags, each of which reveals a prize amount paid in the total number of credits shown on the tag. Some tags add extra bonus credits to your prize package, and one tag is a multiplier that can multiply your win up to five times. When you reveal the values of all the prize tags in that package you will be awarded the package's total bonus credits. If the total spin amount was not over 100 credits, then you will win the total spin amount multiplied by the line bet amount. Otherwise, you will still receive a consolation spin. If your spin results in exactly 100 credits, then you get an extra spin that could mean even more credits for you.

The Cliff Hanger Bonus and the Plinko Bonus are the two main features that separate the games from each other. In the Cliff Hanger Bonus, the object is to help your yodeling climber climb up the side of the mountain. You do this by picking up to three price tags. Each tag reveals the number of steps the climber will take. The farther the climber goes, the more credits you get. But, if the climber goes over the edge and falls down the cliff, then you have to settle for the consolation credits (which aren't shabby at all). No matter what, even if your climber goes over the edge, you will always win something in this bonus round.

In the Plinko bonus round, you will first receive one Plinko chip. You then try to get as many as three more chips by selecting three products from groups of two on the bonus screen. The more chips you find, the more chances you have to get the biggest Plinko bonus. After you have collected all the chips you can get, you indicate where to drop them, one at a time, by touching your finger over that specific area at the top of the Plinko board. The Plinko chip ambles its way down the board, bouncing around as it hits the spokes, and eventually lands in a pocket that designates the bonus amount you will win. And so on for all the chips that you were able to collect for this bonus round.

If you're not familiar with the traditional Plinko game, this used to be a very popular carnival game. The game was simply a board with nails protruding from it, with pockets below. A rubber ring, or a ball, was dropped from the top, gravity took over, and eventually the ring, or ball, bounced its way to the bottom and came to rest in a pocket that designated your win. This version of The Price Is Right, with the Plinko Bonus, is very similar to that game in the Plinko Bonus round. It's a really fun game, and I happen to like that version of this progressive better than the others. But that's only a personal preference, because all the games in this series from IGT are great fun, and offer terrific wins.

Victor H. Royer is the author of 15 casino gaming books. His new series starts with Powerful Profits from Blackjack (January release). Seven more Powerful Profits titles follow. Order at your local bookstore, Gambler's Book Shop (Las Vegas), or Amazon.

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The Slot Expert's Lucky 13 Tips  by John Robison

A few days ago I reviewed the press release announcing the publication of my new book The Slot Expert's Guide to Playing Slots. My publisher's press agent wrote that I've been playing the slots for more than 20 years. Has it really been that long? I thought about it and realized that, yes, it had. I set foot in a casino for the first time around 1980 in Atlantic City and I first went to Las Vegas in 1983. 

In my opinion there's never been a better time to play the slots. The variety of machines on the slot floors today is nothing short of staggering and, for my money, today's machines are much more fun to play than the machines in casinos even as recently as five years ago, when I first started writing about slots and video poker. 

I wish I could give you the secret for winning every time you play the slots, but I can't because there is no secret. The result of each spin is chosen at random and there's no way to legally shift the long-term odds in your favor. I can, however, give you some tips that I've developed throughout my 20 years of pushing the spin button (I can't remember the last time I pulled a slot machine's handle) to help you have more fun while playing the slots and to help you stretch your bankroll.

1. Play where you feel comfortable.
This tip operates on both a macro and a micro level. On the macro level, play in a casino where you feel safe and where you enjoy playing. Play where the slot personnel are friendly and where hopper fills and handpays are handled quickly. Also, play in a casino that has amenities that appeal to your tastes. There's no reason to play in a casino that has rooms, shows, and food that you don't like.  

Once you've chosen your casino, now choose a comfortable place to play in that casino. Personally, I like playing slant-top machines, but I know others who prefer uprights. I also prefer playing in cozy niches on the slot floor and not in areas that have long rows of slot machines. I want some traffic through the area, but I don't want to be on a major thoroughfare in the casino.

Frank Scoblete, his wife, the beautiful A.P., and I were at Treasure Island (TI) in Las Vegas recently. While Frank tried his luck at the craps tables, I checked out the machines in a new slot area. TI had closed one of its moderately priced restaurants and put slots in its place. The problem with this area is that it's on the route from the parking garage, to the casino, to the strip ‹ the main path through the property. I normally like to play the end machines, but after a few minutes I promised myself that I would never play one of the machines near that pathway again. There was far too much traffic, too many people bumping up against the machine, and too many "Looky Lous" watching me play for me to feel comfortable.

2. Choose machines based on the characteristics you want. 
If you want a chance at a life-changing jackpot, play one of the wide-area-progressives with a jackpot in the millions. If your wants are a bit more down-to-earth and you're willing to sacrifice many small hits for a few more mid-level hits, play a low-hit-frequency machine like Blazing 7s or Five Times Pay. If you're like me and you want to have a good chance at making your bankroll last a long time, play high-hit-frequency machines.

Here are three rules of thumb to use to identify low-hit frequency machines: 

1. Machines with multiplying wild symbols tend to have low hit frequencies and the higher the multiple, the lower the hit frequency.  
2. The higher the lowest payout on the paytable is, the lower the hit frequency. Machines that pay out pushes or two coins per coin bet for the lowest winning combination will tend to have higher hit frequencies than machines on which the lowest winning combination pays five or 10 coins per coin bet. 
3. Some machines, like Blazing 7s, are low-hit-frequency machines even though neither rule number one nor rule number two apply to them. The only way to find these machines is by playing them. I go into more detail about how to identify low-hit-frequency machines in my book.

 Finally, if you're looking to maximize the entertainment value of playing the slots, nothing can beat the Australian-style, multi-line/multi-coin video slots for ingenuity and fun. 

3. Let your bankroll choose your denomination.
 Sure, you can play the $10 slots with $20, but you're probably going to have a very short amount of time in action. I like to have a session stake large enough to fund 100 spins. I find that's usually enough so that I get tired of playing before I run out of money.  

Only once did I come close to running out of money before I ran out of desire to play. It was at The Desert Inn in Las Vegas and I was playing a Lucky 7s machine, a notoriously low-hit-frequency machine. I went over 70 spins on that machine without a hit. Talk about cold. The only reasons I kept playing that machine were because I wanted to see how long the cold streak would last, and because I was playing only one quarter per spin, so I wasn't doing any damage to my bankroll.

4. Remember that no machine is ever due. 
If any machine owed its player a hit, it was that machine at The Desert Inn. But the truth is that the result of each and every spin is chosen at random, and the software running the machine doesn't care whether the machine has been hot, cold, or choppy in the past. The chances of hitting any winning combination are exactly the same on every spin. 

5. Play my recommended number of coins per spin.
Sometimes you'll want to play full coin. Other times you can do better by playing fewer coins per spin. My recommendations are based on my analysis of over 1,000 slot machine payback programs. I cover this subject extensively in my book, so I'll just summarize here. 

Play one coin per spin on straight multipliers and bonus multipliers (Double Diamond, Triple Diamond). Play full coin on buy-a-pays (Blazing 7s). Play full coin on progressives, especially wide-area progressives with huge jackpots. Play either one coin per spin or one coin per line on multi-line/multi-coin video slots. (I usually play one coin per line.)

6. Know where the nearest coin bucket is.  
If you're lucky enough to have machines that use tickets, you won't need this tip, but most of us are still getting our hands dirty scooping coins out of trays and lugging buckets of coins to the coin redemption booths. I was playing a machine at Treasure Island not in that area I mentioned before, but close to it and still close to the main route through the casino when I got tired of playing it and I wanted to cash out. There were no coin buckets at that bank of machines (it was a bank of slant-top machines and TI doesn't put coin buckets on slant-top machines), but I knew there were stacks of coin buckets at the carousel 15 feet behind me. In the five seconds it took me to get up and get a coin bucket, someone tried to sit down at my machine and steal my credits. I was able to shoo him off before he sat down, but if I hadn't ensured that there were coin buckets nearby and he had been able to sit down, it might have been a nasty scene.

I used to carry an empty coin bucket around with me, but I never seemed to need it when I had it. I only needed a bucket when I didn't have one. Now, I know that the machines don't know whether or not I have an empty bucket waiting to cart away the tons of coins I hope to win from them, but it seemed like they did. So now I fake them out by not bringing a bucket with me, but ensuring that there is one nearby.

7. Let the tray fill up before you start scooping out coins.
This tip may sound stupid, but after you try it I'm sure you'll find that it is brilliant, or at least not as dumb as it sounded at first. When I cash out, I usually catch the coins in my hands, first one hand and then the other, dumping the coins into a bucket. But on some machines, particularly slant-top and bar-top machines, I can't get my hand in there to catch the coins. I used to continually scoop out the coins as they came out and fell into the tray, but I stopped when I discovered that I was effectively cleaning the tray with my hands. All of the ashes and grime that were on the tray ended up on my hands, in addition to the dirt on the coins themselves. Now I let the tray fill up from about half to three-quarters full and scoop out enough coins to bring it down to about one-quarter full. Those coins act as a barrier between my hands and the tray. The only time my hands touch the tray is when I scoop out the last few coins. Sure, my hands still get dirty, but now the dirt is mostly coin grime and I get less ash and sticky spilled cocktail muck on my hands.

8. Be aware of your surroundings.
Willie Sutton, a notorious bank robber in the early 1900s, reportedly said that he robbed banks because "that's where the money is." Unfortunately, modern-day robbers prey on casino patrons also because "that's where the money is" and casino patrons don't take as many protective measures as the casino does to safeguard their bankrolls. Casinos are some of the most secure areas, but the fact is that slot floors are so expansive that there probably is not a pair of eyes watching every nook and cranny on the slot floor every minute of the day. The surveillance tape will help with the prosecution of a crime, but it's up to you to prevent the crime in the first place. 

It's easy to "go on vacation" mentally and not be as vigilant as you would be in, say, a shopping mall. But you should keep an eye open to what's going on around you and move to a different area of the casino or tell security if there's something going on that makes you nervous. And if you should be lucky enough to hit a big jackpot, don't be shy about asking a security guard to walk you to your car. Better yet, ask if the casino will write you a check for some or all of your jackpot.

9. Don't carry around buckets of coins.
How many times have you heard of someone leaving a bucket of coins in a restaurant? Furthermore, carrying around heavy buckets of coins is an accident waiting to happen and an invitation to theft. Make your first stop after cashing out the cashier's cage. It's much easier to carry bills than buckets.

10. Use casino credit to play with the casino's money.
Table game players have been using casino credit for decades, but not many slot players know that casino credit is available to them too. Getting a line of credit at a casino involves filling out a credit application, which is usually much less detailed than a bank or credit card application. The casino is really interested in only three things: your checking account number, how much money you have in the account, and your average balance. The casino may check your credit history with one of the major credit-reporting bureaus and it will definitely check with the casinos' credit-reporting service to see if you've stiffed any casino in the past. 

Once your line of credit is established, you typically go to the cage and ask for a slot marker for the amount you want up to the amount remaining in your credit line. The cashier will have you sign a marker for that amount (the marker is just a counter check drawn against the bank account you listed on your application) and give you money with which to play. If you win, you're expected to "buy back" the marker by returning the money you borrowed. If you lose, you typically have anywhere from one week to a month or more to pay back the loan ­ interest free.

11. Having a gimmick doesn't necessarily mean that a machine pays better.
I like machines with wild symbols, particularly when they're wild anywhere, and other gimmicks, such as symbols that nudge to the payline and pays that repeat unexpectedly. I also like video slots that pay right-to-left in addition to left-to right. Randy Adams, game design guru at Anchor Gaming, explained to me the psychology behind these gimmicks. He said that the unexpected win is worth more than the expected win. For example, winning 20 coins for double bars on the payline seems worth 20 coins, but when one of the double bars lands above the payline and nudges down to it, that win seems worth more than 20 coins because it was unexpected. 

The truth behind these gimmicks is that they have all been accounted for in the slot machine's programming and these gimmicks don't cause a machine to pay back more than others without gimmicks. A 95% payback machine is a 95% payback machine, regardless of whether or not it has a gimmick. 

12. Use your players club card.
I'm amazed at the number of people I see playing without players club cards. The casino can't give you the discounts and comps that your play earns unless they know who you are. Contrary to popular myth, using a players card has no effect whatsoever on the payback of a machine. I won't play a nickel through a machine without inserting my players club card first and you should do likewise.

13. Don't bet the rent money.
I think this is the most important tip any gambling writer can offer. Your bankroll must come from your discretionary income, the portion of your income that isn't needed for living expenses, retirement, investment, and other essentials. Your bankroll should be part of your entertainment budget. You must ensure that your basic needs are met before you allocate money to gambling. You can even set up a separate checking account for your bankroll and make regular deposits to it to build up your gambling stake. Have your lines of credit draw against that account and when you have winning trips, deposit your winnings into that account. 

Well, those are my lucky 13 tips for playing the slots. Why 13? Because I was born on August 13. Now, let's go out and hit some jackpots. See you in the slot aisles. 

John Robison is an expert video poker player and Midwest Gaming & Travel's Video Poker Insights columnist. He is the managing editor of the gaming pages at www.rgtgaming.com and author of The Slot Experts Guide to Playing Slots, $6.95, by Huntington Press (800) 244-2224. 

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Elvira - Mistress of the Dark by Victor Royer

In the next few issues I want to introduce you to some of the newest slot machines that you will soon be seeing in your favorite casinos. Some of these games may already be in the casinos you normally visit, or perhaps you may have seen them while they were being introduced at various gaming shows. Whenever possible, I will also include a photo of the machine so that you can see what the game actually looks like. I'll begin with a great new game called Elvira - Mistress of the Dark.

Based on the popular late-night television horror-show actress of the same name, this new video slot machine from IGT features a large variety of "creepy" creatures and pays. This is a very distinctive slot machine and you won't miss it on the casino floor. It is quite tall, and has a statue of Elvira sitting seductively at the top. Below that statue is a spider's web-style wheel, similar to the Wheel of Fortune wheel, where various bonus amounts are shown. Below that is the actual game screen itself, and the entire machine is further adorned with photos of a reclining Elvira beckoning you to step into her web.

The Midnight Matinee Bonus starts when two of the symbols land on the first and fifth reels. Elvira then appears between them and explains the rules of the game. She will ask you to pick one of the five movie titles shown on the TV screen. The top TV displays the feature film Elvira's Haunted Hills, and a pre-multiplied credit value. The remaining TVs show a variety of "B" movie titles. A menu of four pre-multiplied credit values indicate what you might win depending on the choices you make among the bottom four movies. After you make your selection, the TV becomes bigger on the screen and plays a movie clip. There are 15 different movies, so chances are you will not know which one you get even if you have played the game a lot. After the movie clip stops, the Rating Skulls bonus round starts and you will get the chance to double your bonus with no risk.

The Web of Winnings Bonus is another feature of this hugely entertaining game. When you land three Spinning Spider symbols on any active payline, Elvira will ask you to pick a symbol, which will determine whether you will get three, four or five spins on the Web of Winnings wheel bonus game. Once you have selected the icon and found out how many spins you have won, Elvira settles into her chair and asks you to press the "spin" button, which starts the top wheel spinning. The bonus wheel will award you the number of credits displayed on the winning selection. However, when you land on Elvira's Chest, you get the chance to pick one of three bonus chests. Whichever chest you pick, the top opens and a creature pops up to show you the bonus win.

Finally, there's the Deadhead Scatter and Shatter Bonus. When three  deadhead" symbols land anywhere on reels one, three and five, these disembodied heads animate and bob inside their glass jars in time with the song lyric "I ain't got no body." At this point your job is to select one of these deadheads, by touching it with your finger. Once you have picked your deadhead, the head shatters the glass jar and reveals your winning amount of credits. This very ingenious game from IGT offers more varieties of wins than you can imagine, and will keep you entertained for a very long time.

Victor H. Royer is a Las Vegas gaming consultant and the author of "Casino Games Made Easy," "Winning Strategies" and numerous other books and articles on gambling. See his ad in this issue.

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Back To Slot Basics by Victor Royer

DENOMINATIONS 
Most of the casino’s profits from slot play come from the nickel and quarter players — not the dollar slot players. The reasons for this are not obvious, but quite logical. The VIP slot players, $1, $5, $25, $100 and $500 players, enjoy comps. To keep them coming back, the casinos offer these players free rooms, food, drinks, shows and even free airfare. The machines these people play are usually the best odds machines available. The casino’s “take” on these slots is lower overall, and coupled with the comps, the casino’s profit margin per machine and per player is quite low. 

They make up for this on the quarter and nickel players. Generally, quarter and nickel players are the casual crowd and have no idea what kind of slots to play, how to play, or how to choose. These nickel and quarter slot players may gamble $100 to $1,000 per trip, as opposed to maybe millions of dollars for a $500 player. There are more casual players and they fill the machines full of coins. 

The nickel reel machines are the worst odds machines and the quarter slot machines only marginally better. I would advise you to avoid nickel and quarter reel slots, unless there is a quarter progressive. Typically you’ll have no fun at this and will lose your money fast. 

If you want to play nickels or quarters, play video poker. It offers better odds, better pays and longer playing time, than reel slots in the same denominations. If you want to play reel slots, your best bet is to play the $1 or $5 machines. If you have $100 to gamble with, you’re better off playing quarter video poker than quarter or nickel reel slots. If you have $1,000, you are better off playing dollar reel slots than quarter reel slots, and you may want to consider playing half-dollar or dollar video poker. Dollar and $5 reel slots and their higher-number versions are a better gaming dollar “investment” for your slot machine play. 

PAYOUT PERCENTAGES 
So what does “98% return,” “payback of 97.4%,” “most liberal slots in town,” and all such other forms of advertising mean? Generally, playing a carrousel of slot machines advertised as 98% return is better than playing machines advertising 94% return. When applied to slot machines, this does not mean that you will win more on the machines advertised as 98% return as opposed to the 94% return. Advertising is often deceptive. There are two main things to consider when it applies to slot machine pays, regardless of whether this advertising is in newspapers, magazines, or displayed in neon lights. 

First if a casino advertises specific slot machines as 98% return, this never means that for each $1 you put into a slot machine you will get back 98%. A lot of first-time players make this mistake and it causes them anguish and confusion. What this means is that over the fiscal life-cycle of that particular slot machine, it will average payoffs equivalent to 98% of all the money put through it. 

All slot machines have counters. These are tiny numerical displays hidden inside the machine, and they count each coin put in and each coin paid out. When the machine hits an attendant-paid jackpot, a pay order is filled out. It is like a paycheck, and is the document used by the attendant as verification of the jackpot and authorization to go to the casino cashier and get the money to pay the winner. On this pay order are many items that are completed for accounting purposes, such as the number of the slot machine, its code, the day and time the jackpot was hit, number of coins played and how many coins were registered so far on the “coins in” meter inside the machine. 

Some casinos use an automated computerized system to track this. It works on the same principle as the bar codes you see on your purchases in the supermarket. In these casinos the floorperson takes out a wand and scans a series of bar codes. This identifies and records that particular machine and it’s payoff information. In the final tally, this information is added to that machine’s “drop” (coins in). At the end of the fiscal year, that machine’s coins-paid-out will equal 98% of all the coins put in, including all the cash hand-paid jackpots, if that machine was set for the 98% payback. Such payoff percentages are part of the computer program inside that machine which determines the schedule and rate of payoffs per number of spins plus coins-in (drop). 

And second, even if a casino advertises 98% return over a bank of several slot machines, this does not necessarily mean that all the machines on that carrousel are set to pay off at those rates. To comply with advertising fair practice laws and gaming regulations, the casinos are only required to have one machine that is set to payback 98% of the drop. The rest of the machines can be set at 94%, or less. A few years ago one casino advertised 101% payback on its machines, but there were only two of these in the whole casino.

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Near Misses: The Truth   by John Robison

Slot machines tease you when you play them. Three jackpot symbols land on the line just above the payline. Oh, if only the payline were up one notch. Or you get jackpot-jackpot-blank on the payline. So close, and yet so far.

Near misses are part of the fun of playing the slots. They’re the slot player’s equivalent of the fisherman’s tale of “the one that got away.” Near misses provide an incentive to play because it seems like the machine is trying to pay off, but it just hasn’t gotten it quite right yet. Surely, one of the next few spins will be a big winner.

Ron Harris, former computer whiz for the Nevada Gaming Control Lab and admitted felon, gave a series of interviews to investigators in the Nevada attorney general’s office in August 1996. The interviews were leaked to PrimeTime Live, which broadcast excerpts on March 12, 1997. In the interview, Harris claimed that today’s slot machines are deliberately programmed to show near misses. He said that on one machine it was a thousand times more likely for blanks to land on the payline than three sevens, and that the machine was misleading players.

Are today’s slot machines programmed to show near misses? Regulators and slot manufacturers claim that today’s slots are not. But there once was a machine that was programmed to show near misses. To find out the truth about near misses, I talked to Randy Adams, director of marketing, and slot machine design guru, at Anchor Gaming.

The lobby of Anchor Gaming’s headquarters in Las Vegas is a slot player’s paradise. Working models of all of Anchor’s slot machines are on display. Each machine’s coin tray is filled with tokens. You can play all you want for free. The tokens, unfortunately, are worthless. You can’t lose any money, but you also can’t win any money.

Randy Adams agreed to talk to me about slots, in general, and “near miss technology,” in particular.  Randy was a game designer at Universal Distributing, the company that made one of the first computerized slot machines.

Randy describes the way the Universal machines worked: “Let’s say you’re playing a slot machine. The reels stop one by one, left to right. If you get a blank on the first reel, you’re out of the game right off the bat, and waiting for the other two reels to stop is irritating. If you get a symbol on the first reel, you still have a chance at a payoff, although it might be a small one like mixed bars. If you get symbols on the first two reels, you’re in the game for as long as you possibly can be and you have to wait for the third reel to stop and decide your fate.

 “Symbol-symbol-blank and blank-symbol-symbol are both losing spins, but getting two symbols and a blank is a lot more exciting than getting a blank and two symbols. That’s what we took into account in the near miss technology in the Universal machines.

 “To determine the outcome of a spin, the program would first choose from a pool of combinations that contained all the winning combinations and one losing combination. The combinations were weighted so the chances of choosing the jackpot combination were a lot less than those of choosing mixed bars or any of the other lesser-paying combinations. And the losing combination had the greatest chance of all of being picked.

“Now, what if the program chose the losing combination? It would go to the pool of losing combinations to choose the symbols it was actually going to display on the reels. Every possible losing combination was in the pool, but the combinations with two symbols and a blank were weighted so they would display more often than combinations that began with a blank.

“Players loved these machines. They were a lot more fun to play than other slots because you stayed in the game longer. You didn’t get knocked out by a blank on the first reel as often as you did on the other machines.”

These machines were very popular with players and, for a time, Universal had more machines on slot floors than Bally and IGT. IGT complained to the Gaming Control Board claiming that Universal’s machines were not really random.

“Although the Gaming Control Board ruled that we had done nothing wrong and there was no intent to deceive, they still required us to change the programming of our machines to be more like how an electro-mechanical slot operated. You have to remember that having microprocessors in slots was still relatively new in the late 80s and the Board was uncomfortable with all the new ways we could make slots work. Some people claimed that our results weren’t chosen at random. That’s not true. Our results were chosen at random, just not with the probabilities one would expect from inspecting the reels. Nevertheless, the Board ruled that we could not use a secondary decision to determine the outcome of a spin and they made us reprogram our machines so they acted like a mechanical slot because that’s what the Board understood. Ironically, using the programming model the Board required, and virtual reels, today’s slot designers can do exactly what we did and they’re doing it to a greater degree than we did and the regulators approve of these machines.”

Let’s look at how near misses occur on today’s slot machines. Near misses occur with every combination of symbols, but a Mixed Bars near miss does not have the same psychological impact as a Jackpot near miss. Thus, I’ll only refer to near misses with the Jackpot symbols in the rest of this article, though the concepts apply to all of the other symbols, as well.

There are two types of near misses. One type is relatively harmless; the other type can be very misleading and can be the result of a deceptively programmed machine.

I call the first type of near miss the “on-the-payline” near miss. This type occurs when one or two of the Jackpot symbols land on the payline 

along with blanks or other symbols that do not make a winning combination. This result is actually a good type of near miss. The more frequently the Jackpot symbols land on the payline, the more ways there are to get the jackpot combination, and the more likely you are to hit the jackpot. The only problem with this type of near miss occurs when you think that the machine is getting close to hitting the jackpot because Jackpot symbols are landing on the payline. The chances for hitting the jackpot are the same for each spin, regardless of whether the prior spin was a near miss or a complete bust.

The second type of near miss is the “near-the-payline” near miss. This type occurs when the Jackpot symbols land one stop above or below the payline. Slot machine manufacturers can program their machines to make this sort of near miss very frequent. They can make the physical stops immediately above and below the Jackpot symbol much more likely to land on the payline than  any other stop. The Jackpot symbol would then frequently land above or below the payline.

The computer in a slot machine pretends that the reels are much larger than they really are. The number of times a symbol appears on these “virtual reels” determines how likely it is to land on the payline.

Here’s the number of times each symbol appears on each reel on a typical Spunky 7s machine.

The number of blanks on the virtual reels increases from reel 1 to reel 2 to reel 3. That means that you’re more likely to get a symbol on the first and second reels than you are on the third. This weighting causes the symbol-symbol-blank near misses on the payline.

Now look at the line for the number of red 7s on each reel. There are four red 7s on the first reel, but only two each on the second and third reels. On the average, one out of 16 spins will start with a red 7 on the first reel. But only one out of 32 spins will have a red 7 on either the second or third reel, and only one out of 16,384 spins will have a red 7 on each reel.

These are both “on the payline” near misses. These are relatively benign near misses because the only way to get a symbol to land on the payline more frequently is to have it appear more times on the virtual reel.  The more likely a symbol is to land on the payline, the more likely it will be used in a winning combination. The “on the payline” near miss makes you think you were close to hitting the jackpot and atleast you were part of the way there.

The Board objected to the near miss technology in the Universal machines because symbols had two different probabilities for landing on the payline. Because there were separate tables for losing combinations and for winning combinations, symbols landed on the payline with one probability when they were part of a winning combination and with a different probability when they were part of a losing combination. Landing a symbol when it was part of a losing combination didn’t tell you anything about how likely it was to land on the payline as part of a winning combination. Universal’s near miss programming was able to create on-the-payline near misses without increasing the probabilities of hitting winning combinations.

The other type of near miss, the “near the payline” near miss, does nothing but make you think you were close to hitting the jackpot when, in reality, a miss is as good as a mile.

Here’s how the third virtual reel is laid out on our Spunky 7s machine. The following table lists the physical stop on the reel, the symbol at that stop, and the number of times it appears on the virtual reel.

Every other stop on the physical reel is a blank, so it appears as if you should get a blank on the third reel on half of your spins. But 41 out of 64 stops on the virtual reel are blanks, so you really get a blank on the third reel on about two-thirds of your spins.

The blanks on this virtual reel are fairly evenly distributed. Most blanks appear four times, but the blanks near one of the green 7s appear only three times each. That’s no problem; the fewer blanks, the better. But the blank above the red 7 appears five times on the virtual reel. You would expect that blank to land on the payline one out of every 22 spins because there are 22 physical stops on the reel, but it actually lands on the payline about one out of every 13 spins.

Let me say that again from a different perspective using a different symbol. You would expect the red 7 to land one stop below the payline once every 22 spins, but it really lands there once every 13 spins.

Now let’s look at a reel on which the blanks are not as evenly distributed. Here’s the third reel from a Triple Winner machine.

You’ll get a blank on the third reel over half the time because there are 42 blanks on the 72-stop virtual reel. Look at how the blanks are distributed on the virtual reel. If the blanks were equally likely to land on the payline, you’d expect to get a 7 or Triple Winner above or below the payline every six spins out of 22. There are six blanks above or below a 7 or Triple Winner on the 22-stop physical reel, so the probability of landing a 7 or Triple Winner near the payline is 0.27. In other words, 27% of your spins will have a 7 or Triple Winner near the payline on the third reel.

On the virtual reel, however, there are 30 blanks above or below a 7 or Triple Winner. The true probability of landing a 7 or Triple Winner near the payline is 0.42, so 42% of your spins will end with a 7 or Triple Winner near the payline on the third reel.

Remember that there is an important difference between on-the-payline near misses and near-the-payline near misses. Because the Gaming Control Board does not allow a secondary decision like the one in the Universal machine to decide the outcome of a spin, the only way to make on-the-payline near misses occur more frequently is by making the desired symbols land on the payline more frequently. The only way to make near-the-payline near misses occur more frequently is by making the stops above or below the desired symbol land on the payline more frequently. Near-the-payline near misses don’t tell you anything about how likely you are to hit it big on a machine.

 Because of this difference, near-the-payline near misses can be considered to be more deceptive than on-the-payline near misses. Slot regulators are considering new guidelines to control how frequently near-the-payline near misses can occur. One of the proposed guidelines would limit the number of times a blank near a high-paying symbol can appear on the virtual reel as compared with the number of times the high-paying symbol appears on the reel. A blank above or below the jackpot symbol, for example, would not be able to appear on the virtual reel more than six times the number of times the jackpot symbol appears on the virtual reel.

Are slots programmed to show near misses? It’s a matter of semantics. Slots are programmed to choose a virtual stop at random on each reel. If the virtual reel is laid out such that there is a preponderance of blanks on the third reel or that most of the blanks on the virtual reel occur near valuable symbols, then the machine will show a lot of near misses. But it’s not really the programming that’s at fault. It’s the layout of the virtual reels.

The most important thing to remember about all near misses is that they are not signs of things to come on a machine. A cold machine that starts showing a lot of near misses is not trying to tell you that it is about to turn hot. And a hot machine that starts showing a lot of near misses is not signaling you to stop playing because it is about to turn as cold as an Antarctic winter. The computer program running the slot machine doesn’t know anything about near misses. As far as it is concerned, spins are either winners or losers and there is nothing in between.

Near misses are like cholesterol. Both come in two varieties, one good and one bad. You need both kinds to survive, but too much of either kind is harmful.

John Robison is an expert video poker player and Midwest Gaming & Travel Video Poker Insights columnist. He is also the managing editor of Frank Scoblete’s Gaming Pages at RGT Online: www.rgtgaming.com

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Just The Facts  by John Grochowski 

Slot machines are the biggest attractions in modern casinos, and the biggest mysteries. More than 70% of casino revenue comes from electronic gaming devices. Those are mostly slots, along with video poker, video keno, video blackjack and specialty games. In some jurisdictions, that revenue figure surpasses 80%. Everyone, it seems, is trying to solve the Case of the Giant Jackpot. But before you spend your money chasing down any prime suspect, let’s gather a few clues about slot machines and how they work. 

A casino’s overall payback percentage does not tell you how you will do on any one machine in one session. Even a machine’s individual payback percentage can’t tell you how you will do during any one session, and we don’t have that information anyway. The casinos aren’t telling us which specific machines are the big payers and which are tight-fisted. Regardless of whether a machine pays 80%, 99% or somewhere in between, players will sometimes have winning sessions and more often will lose money. Yes, players will win more often on the higher-paying game, but there’s no way to tell when the winners are coming. What monthly statistics from state gaming boards tell us is how much a casino’s slots paid in the previous month. A published chart may tell you that in a given month nickel slots at your local casino paid 90%, quarter slots paid out 92% and dollars paid out 95%. That does not mean that if you play a dollar machine, you can expect a 95% return on that session. Those statistics are casino-wide averages that do not necessarily apply to every machine. The same casino may have dollar games that return 80%, 85%, 99% and anything in between. You might be plunking your dollars into a 95%-er, but you might have hit on an 80% bandit. Additionally, those statistics are at least a month old by the time you see them, and often they’re two or three months old. That’s plenty of time for a casino to have made big changes, for better or for worse. 

It’s impossible to tell a high-paying slot machine from a coin-gobbler just by looking at it. Put two Double Diamonds machines side by side, or two Reel ‘Em Ins, or two Blazing 7s. They may have identical looks, identical graphics, identical paytables. Do they give players an identical chance to win? Not necessarily. Manufacturers make slot programs with a wide range of payback percentages. One machine may have a computer chip inside with a program that in the long run will result in 88% of all money wagered being returned to players. The identical-looking machine next to it may have a chip programmed for a 99% return. Or they may both be programmed for something in between. Your chances of winning are a lot better on the 99% machine than on the 88%-er, but there’s no way to tell from the outside which is which. 

Slot machine results are as random as humans can program a computer to be. What you see on the reels or on the video screen is a representation of what’s happening in a computer program in the game’s inner workings. Every modern slot machine, be it a traditional reel-spinner or a video game, includes a program called a “random number generator,’’ or “RNG.’’ The RNG is programmed with numbers corresponding to potential reel stops, and it continuously generates numbers, even when the game is not being played.  When you push the button or pull the handle to play the machine, the number the RNG is generating at that instant determines what you will see on the reels. There is no way to tell what numbers the RNG is spitting out, or what combinations you are about to see. You can’t see it happening, nor can any slot executive. The only way to find out is to play the game and see what happens. 

If another player hits a jackpot on a machine you’ve just left, the jackpot probably would not have been yours if you’d stayed put. Remember, the RNG runs continuously even when the game is not in use. In the time it takes you to leave the machine and someone else to sit down, the RNG spits out hundreds of random numbers, all corresponding to reel combinations you’ll never see because no one was hitting the button or pulling the handle at that instant. For you to have the same results as the player who followed you, your timing would have to be the same down to the microsecond. The random number generator runs through dozens of numbers a second. It is extremely unlikely that your timing would so exactly match that of another player that you’d hit the same random number. Just pausing to say hello to the player next to you, or to order a drink, or to scratch your ear is enough to pass by a few random numbers and change your results. 

The odds of hitting a jackpot are the same on every pull. It is possible, although rare, to hit the top jackpot on a slot machine two pulls in a row. It also is possible to go tens of thousands of pulls without hitting the top jackpot at all. Both possibilities fall within the range of normal probability. Let’s say you have a slot machine whose RNG has been programmed with 10,000 possible reel combinations, only one of which is the top jackpot. That means that on the average, in the long run, we will see one jackpot per 10,000 pulls. (Some machines are programmed so the jackpot turns up more often; others, including the big progressive games such as Megabucks, pay out jackpots much less often). On our machine, we have one chance in 10,000 of hitting the jackpot on each pull. What if you’ve just hit the jackpot? What are your chances of hitting the jackpot again on the next pull? Answer: They are still 1 in 10,000. What if you’ve gone 9,999 pulls without the jackpot? Then what are your chances of hitting it on the next pull? Answer: They still remain 1 in 10,000. In that respect, slot machines work just like most table games. In roulette, the chances of any given number turning up are one in 38. If the last number was 17, the chances of 17 turning up again on the next spin remain one in 38. If there have been 37 spins in a row without 17 showing up, the odds are still one in 38. It’s the same with the slots. Whether we win or lose on any one pull or series of pulls, our odds of winning on the next spin of the reels remains the same. 

After a jackpot, machines do not have to turn cold to make up the payout. Any slot machine has more cold streaks than hot streaks, but a machine doesn’t necessarily turn cold after a big hit. Jackpots are a normal, expected event in a slot machine’s life. The normal mathematics of the games will absorb the jackpot over hundreds of thousands or millions of spins. Let’s say we’re betting three coins at a time at a machine with a top jackpot of 10,000 coins, and that the machine is programmed to pay 95% in the long run. We hit the jackpot on our first pull. How low must the payback be over the next 999,999 spins to bring the overall percentage back to 95% for one million reel spins? Would you believe a drop to 94.7% would do it? After a big jackpot, results remain random. There are cold streaks after jackpots, and there are hot streaks too, just as at any other time. Of course, players believe machines turn cold after jackpots. That’s why slot supervisors ask you to play another spin after a hand-paid jackpot. They don’t want the game to sit vacant because others are afraid to try with a previous jackpot still on the reels. But the casinos are in this for the long haul, and they know the machines continue to pay at a normal rate after a big hit. Jackpots just blend into the background of millions of spins of the reels. 

An individual player is no more likely to hit a jackpot in a crowded casino than in a near-empty one. More jackpots are hit in crowded casinos because there are more machines being played. But for an individual player, the chances of hitting the jackpot remain the same as if the rest of the casino was empty. The crowds around other machines do not change the odds on the game that you’re playing. 

Players win just as often when they use their slot club cards as when they don’t. Just as the RNG doesn’t know how many coins you’ve wagered, it doesn’t know whether you’re using a slot club card. The RNG and the club card reader are separate programs on different chips. Using the card makes no difference in your results. Some players seem to think that since they are accumulating comps on their club cards, the casino will make them pay for it with a lower return on the machines. Such differential paybacks are illegal. Anyway, the casino goes to a lot of time and trouble to enroll you in the slot club and put you in the data base so they can offer you incentives to keep you coming back. Are they likely to risk putting off slot club regulars, their most loyal, valuable customers, by skimping on returns at the slot? Not a chance. 

Players win just as often when they bet the maximum coins as when they bet only one coin. The random number generator doesn’t know how many coins you’ve wagered. It’s on a separate computer chip from the coin-counting program. The percentage of winning combinations will be the same, regardless of how many coins you wager. There’s a little selective memory at work here. Many players have experienced cold streaks betting maximum coins, then switched to one coin and hit a winner or two. “Aha,’’ they say, “I win more when I bet one coin.’’ But players who start by betting one coin usually don’t start betting more in a losing streak. That leaves fewer opportunities for someone to say, “Aha, I win more when I bet the max.’’ In the long run, everything, winning combinations, losers, cold streaks, hot streaks, shows up in the same proportions, regardless of how many coins you bet. 

Payback percentages are highest on most machines when players bet maximum coins. On most slot games, there is a big jump in the top jackpot as a reward for playing maximum coins. It might be as simple as making the jackpot $1,000 if one coin is wagered, $2,000 if the bet is two coins, but jumping to $5,000 for a three-coin bet. A player will hit the top jackpot just as often no matter how many coins are wagered, but the rewards will be disproportionately greater if maximum coins are wagered. That effect is heightened on games with progressive jackpots. There, you might see a game in which three jackpot symbols pay $1,000 if you bet one coin, $2,000 for two coins, but a big progressive jackpot of $10,000 or more for three coins. On progressive machines, payouts are usually lower or less frequent on other winning combinations because more of the coins taken in are used to fund the top jackpot. Players should never play a progressive machine without betting maximum coins. If your bankroll is such that you must play for less than the maximum bet, play a non-progressive machine. Most of the new breed of multi-line, multi-coin video slots do not incorporate a big jump in the top jackpot for playing maximum coins. On those games, you’ll get the same payback percentage even if you play only one coin per payline instead of making maximum bets. 

On video slots and other bonusing games, the bonus rounds are part of the normal overall payback percentage. If you’re playing Monopoly, sometimes you’re going to get a trip around the board. If you’re playing Wheel of Fortune, sometimes you’re going to get to spin the wheel. If you’re playing Let’s Make a Deal, sometimes you’re going to get to barter with Monty. That’s all part of the game, and is accounted for in the mathematics that go into devising a slot machine. If a particular Reel ‘Em In machine is programmed to pay 92%, then that 92% includes any winnings the player accumulates when choosing a fisherman on the pond. One consequence of that is that payback percentages on non-bonus spins of the video reels are lower than those on regular reel-spinning games. The bonus rounds then bring the video games up to par. 

When a slot attendant opens a machine after a jackpot, he’s not flipping a switch to lower the payback percentage. An attendant may open the machine to check the electronic record of what the random number generator says should have been on the reels. If the electronic record doesn’t match what’s actually on the reels, the spin can be declared a malfunction and the casino can deny you the jackpot. In fact, in some jurisdictions the casino is required by law to deny the jackpot if the record doesn’t match what’s on the reels. That doesn’t happen often, but it happens, and it must be checked. In most jurisdictions, a slot attendant can’t lower the payback percentage with a simple flip of a switch. In the most tightly regulated states, changes must be made by replacing the chip that contains the random number generator. A gaming board official must observe while evidence tape is broken, the old chip removed, a new chip installed and sealed with new evidence tape. It’s not impossible to change a machine’s payback percentage, but it’s not done routinely just because someone hits a jackpot. For the casino, jackpots are a normal part of business, part of the cost of attracting customers. 

There is no “jackpot button’’ casino operators can hit to reward loyal players. Slot department managers will do a lot of things for a loyal customer. They can give you free meals, rooms, valet parking. They can comp boarding passes in jurisdictions where riverboats still charge admission. They’ll give you cash back or merchandise on your players club card. But they will not give you a jackpot. There is no such thing as an operator-controlled jackpot button. Such a device would be illegal. Operators leave it to the random number generator to determine jackpot winners. When will the jackpot number come up? That is truly a mystery to everyone; manufacturers, operators and players alike. 

— John Grochowski is Midwest Gaming & Travel’s Casino Q&A columnist, syndicated gaming columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and the author of the Casino Answer Book, the Slot Machine Answer Book and the Video Poker Answer Book.

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Interview With A Slot Cheat   by John Robison

Slot cheating expert Mr. Slug (not his real name) reveals the numerous and varied methods that have been devised over the years to cheat slot machines. Warning: Don't try any of these in the casino.

Story:
"I'll tell you everything you want to know, but you can't reveal my name. If you ever tell anyone that I'm the one who told you how to cheat the slots, I won't give you any more information."    So began my relationship with slot cheating expert Mr. Slug (not his real name). We were sitting at a table in the darkest, most remote corner of a seedy bar in Las Vegas. I thought we'd never see a waitress back here, but then I realized that we'd get great service. The tips have to be good at this table. This is where people who don't want to be seen do business, and an extra sawbuck or two in the tip jar buys a lot of discretion, not to mention, maybe even some selective amnesia.    The waitress came to take our order. I ordered a rum and Coke. I used to drink White Russians, but I had to give them up. There's too much fat and cholesterol in the cream and I think I've become lactose intolerant. 

Mr. Slug ordered a glass of '92 Montrachet. Good luck getting that here, I thought. But the waitress didn't even bat one of her fake eyelashes. She said that she'd be back in a "sec" with our drinks and disappeared.    

I silently cursed Mr. Slug for refusing to meet me at a casino bar ‹where I could get comped. Maybe he didn't want to be seen near the slot machines. Maybe every casino in town escorts him to the door, gently or with persuasion, seconds after he walks into the place. Whatever his reasons, it looked like this was not going to be a cheap night for me. That fruity little number he ordered goes for twenty bucks a glass.    "Cheating the old mechanical and electro-mechanical machines was easy," he said. "The reels in those machines are driven by a complicated set of gears and pulleys. The machines have levers or circuits that detect where the reels stop, and the machine pays off based on the symbols displayed on the reels. If you can control where the reels stop, you can cheat the machine. 

"We called one group of cheaters Œhandle mechanics.' A handle mechanic weakened the mechanism that drives the reels by jerking down on the handle with the force of King Kong. After he gaffed the machine ..."    "Gaffed?" I asked.    "Yeah, gaffed," he said. "You know, prepared the machine so he could cheat it. After he gaffed the machine, he played it normally until he got winning symbols on the first reel or two. Then he pulled down on the handle until it was just about to set the reels in motion. Then he pushed down on the handle very quickly. That action kept one or more of the reels from spinning. Because the handle mechanic started each spin part of the way to a winning combination, he won on a lot more of his spins than a straight player. A really good mechanic could keep two reels from spinning, and a virtuoso could keep all three from spinning." 

The waitress arrived with our drinks. She asked who got the rum and Coke. I said I did. She gave it to Mr. Slug. I should've expected it. The girls who work these tables weren't hired for their memory skills. After she put the wine glass down in front of me, she pointed to a card in a Plexiglas stand on our table and asked, "Can I get you gentlemen anything off our snack menu?"    "You could get the stains off it," I said. Neither Mr. Slug nor the waitress appreciated my joke.    "Don't mind him," Mr. Slug said. "I'll have something. I'm starving." He picked up the menu to get a closer look at it. "Bring me the fried mozzarella sticks, extra marinara sauce. You want anything?" he asked holding out the menu to me.

"

"

 "What did that do?" I asked.

 "The two joints created an alternate electrical path to energize the coin payout circuitry. There's no current flowing through the normal circuit because the machine is not paying out a win. But there is current flowing through the cheater's circuit. The payout circuit has power, so it pays out coins. When it was time to move to another machine or when the cheater felt some heat, all he had to do was pull the wire and the top joint out of the machine and there was no evidence left behind." 

"

"

One guy flattened out a wire coat hanger and fished it up a $100 machine with a mechanical coin counter. The machine couldn't count the coins it paid out correctly with that coat hanger interfering with its coin counter. He got over $200,000 before he was caught.    "More sophisticated cheats used a device called a monkey's paw to cheat machines with mechanical coin counters. A monkey's paw is a piece of thin, flexible steel about a foot long with one end bent to look like a claw. The cheat inserted the monkey's paw up the payout chute until he hit the coin counter. Like the coat hanger, the monkey's paw interfered with the coin counter causing the machine to over-pay.

"

"The device to cheat the optical coin counter is called a Œmini-light.' It has a battery at one end and a light emitter at the other. Shove it up a machine near the light sensor and switch it on. Now the machine can't count the coins it pays out. It's literally blinded by the light. You can turn a 20-coin credit meter into a 200-coin cash-out. You just have to be careful that you switch it off every once in a while so the machine can register a coin. Otherwise, the machine will think the hopper is empty."

Mr. Slug took a big swig of his wine. His glass was now half-empty. "Every machine has a device called a coin comparator. It checks the tokens the player inserts against a reference token. If they match, the comparator sends the token down the coin-in chute, which contains a switch that registers a coin played. If they don't match, the comparator sends the token down the reject chute, which directs the token to the coin tray. If you can defeat the comparator, you can play for free or at least for less than the posted denomination.

"You can use slugs and counterfeit tokens to fool the comparator. A counterfeiting ring got caught in New Jersey a couple of years ago. They made millions of dollars worth of counterfeit tokens. Someone at the company that makes the slot tokens was in on the scam.    "On some comparators, a slot attendant can put a cocktail straw in the mechanism and it will pass every coin. How'd you like to play a $5 machine for a nickel a pop? One casino found straws in 200 of their machines.

"

The waitress came back with the mozzarella sticks and put them down in front of Mr. Slug. She asked if we were ready for another round. We were. She made herself scarce again.    Mr. Slug picked up a mozzarella stick, drenched it in the marinara sauce, and shoved the whole thing in his mouth. "Casino security chiefs are merely concerned by customers who cheat," he said while chewing his mozzarella stick. Bits of half-chewed cheese flew from his mouth as he spoke. "Employees who cheat terrify them. Once someone has the keys to the machine, they have the keys to the kingdom.

"

"I saw one slot attendant take handful after handful of tokens out of one machine's hopper. She had so many tokens in her pockets she had to steady herself on the machines as she walked to keep from falling down. Surveillance saw her waddling through the casino like a pregnant penguin.

She got greedy. She got caught."

Mr. Slug finished his glass of wine. I finished my rum and Pepsi.  "There are two people who know more about a machine than anyone else: the person who programmed it and the person who tested it. One Midwestern casino knew this guy was ripping them off on a multi-game machine, but they couldn't figure out how he was doing it. He got five five-of-a-kinds in 25 minutes. Every time someone walked by him, he would switch to another game in the machine. They sent a surveillance tape to a testing lab that also consults on possible fraud cases. One of the guys in the lab said, ŒI know that guy. He was here a couple weeks ago. He programmed that machine.' " 

The waitress returned with our second round of drinks. This time we each got the correct drink. Mine was Pepsi again. Mr. Slug took a sip of his wine, and continued. "I saved the best for last, the most famous slot cheat, far from the most successful, but probably the most famous. Maybe you saw him on PrimeTime Live a few years ago claiming that slot machines are deliberately programmed to be deceptive. He claimed that slot machines are programmed to show near misses to keep people playing. Well, here's the true story of Ron Harris. 

"

"

Harris got nervous and high-tailed it to the Philadelphia airport to fly back to Las Vegas. He was arrested when he landed at McCarran. After his arrest, the Gaming Control Board launched an investigation into his activities. They found the cheating programs on his work computer." 

Mr. Slug drank the rest of his wine. "One last thing. Don't get any ideas about trying to get rich by cheating the slots. The casinos don't take too kindly to folks cutting into their profits. And lower profits mean lower tax revenues, so the state also won't show you any sympathy when you get caught. And the casinos have a nearly 100% conviction rate."

"

"

"

She pulled out six checks from her apron pocket, shuffled through them until she found ours, and put it down in the middle of the table. "Pay the cashier on the way out. Hope to see you back here again."    I reached for the check, but Mr. Slug got it first. He looked at it and then he pulled a roll of money out of his pocket. He peeled off a double sawbuck and one of those new $50 bills that look like play money and dropped it on the table. The tips "are" good at this table.

"

John Robison is an expert video poker player and Midwest Gaming & Travel Video Poker Insights columnist. He is also the managing editor of Frank Scoblete's Gaming Pages at RGT Online: www.rgtgaming.com.

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Get A Clue: Just the facts about how slot machines really work. by John Grochowski

Slot machines are the biggest attractions in modern casinos, and the biggest mysteries. More than 70% of casino revenue comes from electronic gaming devices. Those are mostly slots, along with video poker, video keno, video blackjack and specialty games. In some jurisdictions, that revenue figure surpasses 80%. Everyone, it seems, is trying to solve the Case of the Giant Jackpot. But before you spend your money chasing down any prime suspect, let's gather a few clues about slot machines and how they work.

** A casino's overall payback percentage does not tell you how you will do on any one machine in one session.    Even a machine's individual payback percentage can't tell you how you will do during any one session, and we don't have that information anyway. The casinos aren't telling us which specific machines are the big payers and which are tight-fisted. Regardless of whether a machine pays 80%, 99% or somewhere in between, players will sometimes have winning sessions and more often will lose money. Yes, players will win more often on the higher-paying game, but there's no way to tell when the winners are coming.    What monthly statistics from state gaming boards tell us is how much a casino's slots paid in the previous month. A published chart may tell you that in a given month nickel slots at your local casino paid 90%, quarter slots paid out 92% and dollars paid out 95%. That does not mean that if you play a dollar machine, you can expect a 95% return on that session. Those statistics are casino-wide averages that do not necessarily apply to every machine. The same casino may have dollar games that return 80%, 85%, 99% and
anything in between. You might be plunking your dollars into a 95%-er, but you might have hit on an 80% bandit. Additionally, those statistics are at least a month old by the time you see them, and often they're two or three months old. That's plenty of time for a casino to have made big changes, for better or for worse.

** It's impossible to tell a high-paying slot machine from a coin-gobbler just by looking at it.    Put two Double Diamonds machines side by side, or two Reel ŒEm Ins, or two Blazing 7s. They may have identical looks, identical graphics, identical paytables. Do they give players an identical chance to win? Not necessarily. Manufacturers make slot programs with a wide range of payback percentages. One machine may have a computer chip inside with a program that in the long run will result in 88% of all money wagered being returned to players. The identical-looking machine next to it may have a chip programmed for a 99% return. Or they may both be programmed for something in between. Your chances of winning are a lot better on the 99% machine than on the 88%-er, but there's no way to tell from the outside which is which.

** Slot machine results are as random as humans can program a computer to be. What you see on the reels or on the video screen is a representation of what's happening in a computer program in the game's inner workings. Every modern slot machine, be it a traditional reel-spinner or a video game, includes a program called a "random number generator,'' or "RNG.''    The RNG is programmed with numbers corresponding to potential reel stops, and it continuously generates numbers, even when the game is not being played.  When you push the button or pull the handle to play the machine, the number the RNG is generating at that instant determines what you will see on the reels. There is no way to tell what numbers the RNG is spitting out, or what combinations you are about to see. You can't see it happening, nor can any slot executive. The only way to find out is to play the game and see what happens.

** If another player hits a jackpot on a machine you've just left, the jackpot probably would not have been yours if you'd stayed put.    Remember, the RNG runs continuously even when the game is not in use. In the time it takes you to leave the machine and someone else to sit down, the RNG spits out hundreds of random numbers, all corresponding to reel combinations you'll never see because no one was hitting the button or pulling the handle at that instant. For you to have the same results as the player who followed you, your timing would have to be the same down to the microsecond. The random number generator runs through dozens of numbers a second. It is extremely unlikely that your timing would so exactly match that of another player that you'd hit the same random number. Just pausing to say hello to the player next to you, or to order a drink, or to scratch your ear is enough to pass by a few random numbers and change your results.

** The odds of hitting a jackpot are the same on every pull.    It is possible, although rare, to hit the top jackpot on a slot machine two pulls in a row. It also is possible to go tens of thousands of pulls without hitting the top jackpot at all. Both possibilities fall within the range of normal probability.    Let's say you have a slot machine whose RNG has been programmed with 10,000 possible reel combinations, only one of which is the top jackpot. That means that on the average, in the long run, we will see one jackpot per 10,000 pulls. (Some machines are programmed so the jackpot turns up more often; others, including the big progressive games such as Megabucks, pay out jackpots much less often). On our machine, we have one chance in 10,000 of hitting the jackpot on each pull. What if you've just hit the jackpot? What are your chances of hitting the jackpot again on the next pull? Answer: They are still 1 in 10,000. What if you've gone 9,999 pulls without the jackpot? Then what are your chances of hitting it on the next pull? Answer: They still remain 1 in 10,000.    In that respect, slot machines work just like most table games. In roulette, the chances of any given number turning up are one in 38. If the last number was 17, the chances of 17 turning up again on the next spin remain one in 38. If there have been 37 spins in a row without 17 showing up, the odds are still one in 38. It's the same with the slots. Whether we win or lose on any one pull or series of pulls, our odds of winning on the next spin of the reels remains the same.

** After a jackpot, machines do not have to turn cold to make up the payout.    Any slot machine has more cold streaks than hot streaks, but a machine doesn't necessarily turn cold after a big hit. Jackpots are a normal, expected event in a slot machine's life. The normal mathematics of the games will absorb the jackpot over hundreds of thousands or millions of spins.    Let's say we're betting three coins at a time at a machine with a top jackpot of 10,000 coins, and that the machine is programmed to pay 95% in the long run. We hit the jackpot on our first pull. How low must the payback be over the next 999,999 spins to bring the overall percentage back to 95% for one million reel spins? Would you believe a drop to 94.7% would do it? After a big jackpot, results remain random. There are cold streaks after jackpots, and there are hot streaks too, just as at any other time.    Of course, players believe machines turn cold after jackpots. That's why slot supervisors ask you to play another spin after a hand-paid jackpot. They don't want the game to sit vacant because others are afraid to try with a previous jackpot still on the reels. But the casinos are in this for the long haul, and they know the machines continue to pay at a normal rate after a big hit. Jackpots just blend into the background of millions of spins of the reels.

** An individual player is no more likely to hit a jackpot in a crowded casino than in a near-empty one.    More jackpots are hit in crowded casinos because there are more machines being played. But for an individual player, the chances of hitting the jackpot remain the same as if the rest of the casino was empty. The crowds around other machines do not change the odds on the game that you're playing.

** Players win just as often when they use their slot club cards as when they don't.    Just as the RNG doesn't know how many coins you've wagered, it doesn't know whether you're using a slot club card. The RNG and the club card reader are separate programs on different chips. Using the card makes no difference in your results.    Some players seem to think that since they are accumulating comps on their club cards, the casino will make them pay for it with a lower return on the machines. Such differential paybacks are illegal. Anyway, the casino goes to a lot of time and trouble to enroll you in the slot club and put you in the data base so they can offer you incentives to keep you coming back. Are they likely to risk putting off slot club regulars, their most loyal, valuable customers, by skimping on returns at the slot? Not a chance.

** Players win just as often when they bet the maximum coins as when they bet only one coin.    The random number generator doesn't know how many coins you've wagered. It's on a separate computer chip from the coin-counting program. The percentage of winning combinations will be the same, regardless of how many coins you wager. There's a little selective memory at work here. Many players have experienced cold streaks betting maximum coins, then switched to one coin and hit a winner or two. "Aha,'' they say, "I win more when I bet one coin.'' But players who start by betting one coin usually don't start betting more in a losing streak. That leaves fewer opportunities for someone to say, "Aha, I win more when I bet the max.'' In the long run, everything, winning combinations, losers, cold streaks, hot streaks, shows up in the same proportions, regardless of how many coins you bet.

** Payback percentages are highest on most machines when players bet maximum coins.    On most slot games, there is a big jump in the top jackpot as a reward for playing maximum coins. It might be as simple as making the jackpot $1,000 if one coin is wagered, $2,000 if the bet is two coins, but jumping to $5,000 for a three-coin bet. A player will hit the top jackpot just as often no matter how many coins are wagered, but the rewards will be disproportionately greater if maximum coins are wagered. That effect is heightened on games with progressive jackpots. There, you might see a game in which three jackpot symbols pay $1,000 if you bet one coin, $2,000 for two coins, but a big progressive jackpot of $10,000 or more for three coins. On progressive machines, payouts are usually lower or less frequent on other winning combinations because more of the coins taken in are used to fund the top jackpot. Players should never play a progressive machine without betting maximum coins. If your bankroll is such that you must play for less than the maximum bet, play a non-progressive machine.    Most of the new breed of multi-line, multi-coin video slots do not incorporate a big jump in the top jackpot for playing maximum coins. On those games, you'll get the same payback percentage even if you play only one coin per payline instead of making maximum bets.

** On video slots and other bonusing games, the bonus rounds are part of the normal overall payback percentage.    If you're playing Monopoly, sometimes you're going to get a trip around the board. If you're playing Wheel of Fortune, sometimes you're going to get to spin the wheel. If you're playing Let's Make a Deal, sometimes you're going to get to barter with Monty. That's all part of the game, and is accounted for in the mathematics that go into devising a slot machine. If a particular Reel ŒEm In machine is programmed to pay 92%, then that 92% includes any winnings the player accumulates when choosing a fisherman on the pond. One consequence of that is that payback percentages on non-bonus spins of the video reels are lower than those on regular reel-spinning games. The bonus rounds then bring the video games up to par.

** When a slot attendant opens a machine after a jackpot, he's not flipping a switch to lower the payback percentage.    An attendant may open the machine to check the electronic record of what the random number generator says should have been on the reels. If the electronic record doesn't match what's actually on the reels, the spin can be declared a malfunction and the casino can deny you the jackpot. In fact, in some jurisdictions the casino is required by law to deny the jackpot if the record doesn't match what's on the reels.    That doesn't happen often, but it happens, and it must be checked. In most jurisdictions, a slot attendant can't lower the payback percentage with a simple flip of a switch. In the most tightly regulated states, changes must be made by replacing the chip that contains the random number generator. A gaming board official must observe while evidence tape is broken, the old chip removed, a new chip installed and sealed with new evidence tape. It's not impossible to change a machine's payback percentage, but it's not done routinely just because someone hits a jackpot. For the casino, jackpots are a normal part of business, part of the cost of attracting customers.

** There is no "jackpot button'' casino operators can hit to reward loyal players.    Slot department managers will do a lot of things for a loyal customer. They can give you free meals, rooms, valet parking. They can comp boarding passes in jurisdictions where riverboats still charge admission. They'll give you cash back or merchandise on your players club card. But they will not give you a jackpot. There is no such thing as an operator-controlled jackpot button. Such a device would be illegal. Operators leave it to the random number generator to determine jackpot winners.    When will the jackpot number come up? That is truly a mystery to everyone; manufacturers, operators and players alike.

John Grochowski is Midwest Gaming & Travel's Casino Q&A columnist, syndicated gaming columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and the author of the Casino Answer Book, the Slot Machine Answer Book and the Video Poker Answer Book.

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Price Is Right Progressive Slots by Victor Royer

This is a progressive video slot machine, based on the IGT Megajackpots system. There are two versions of this game, one with the Cliff Hanger Bonus and the other with the Plinko Bonus. Both games feature the Showcase Showdown Bonus. The base game is the nine-line video slot machine based on the Price Is Right theme. These two versions of the game that are in the next stage of development feature the addition of these bonuses plus the progressive jackpot, which starts at $10,000.

When you reach the Showcase Showdown Bonus, you will receive up to two spins from the top-box reel. If the spin results in 55 to 100 credits, the game's stage is now set for some big bonus fun in the main Showcase round. Here you get to pick on-screen price tags, each of which reveals a prize amount paid in the total number of credits shown on the tag. Some tags add extra bonus credits to your prize package, and one tag is a multiplier that can multiply your win up to five times. When you reveal the values of all the prize tags in that package you will be awarded the package's total bonus credits. If the total spin amount was not over 100 credits, then you will win the total spin amount multiplied by the line bet amount. Otherwise, you will still receive a consolation spin. If your spin results in exactly 100 credits, then you get an extra spin that could mean even more credits for you.

The Cliff Hanger Bonus and the Plinko Bonus are the two main features that separate the games from each other. In the Cliff Hanger Bonus, the object is to help your yodeling climber climb up the side of the mountain. You do this by picking up to three price tags. Each tag reveals the number of steps the climber will take. The farther the climber goes, the more credits you get. But, if the climber goes over the edge and falls down the cliff, then you have to settle for the consolation credits (which aren't shabby at all). No matter what, even if your climber goes over the edge, you will always win something in this bonus round.

In the Plinko bonus round, you will first receive one Plinko chip. You then try to get as many as three more chips by selecting three products from groups of two on the bonus screen. The more chips you find, the more chances you have to get the biggest Plinko bonus. After you have collected all the chips you can get, you indicate where to drop them, one at a time, by touching your finger over that specific area at the top of the Plinko board. The Plinko chip ambles its way down the board, bouncing around as it hits the spokes, and eventually lands in a pocket that designates the bonus amount you will win. And so on for all the chips that you were able to collect for this bonus round.

If you're not familiar with the traditional Plinko game, this used to be a very popular carnival game. The game was simply a board with nails protruding from it, with pockets below. A rubber ring, or a ball, was dropped from the top, gravity took over, and eventually the ring, or ball, bounced its way to the bottom and came to rest in a pocket that designated your win. This version of The Price Is Right, with the Plinko Bonus, is very similar to that game in the Plinko Bonus round. It's a really fun game, and I happen to like that version of this progressive better than the others. But that's only a personal preference, because all the games in this series from IGT are great fun, and offer terrific wins.

Victor H. Royer is the author of 15 casino gaming books. His new series starts with Powerful Profits from Blackjack (January release). Seven more Powerful Profits titles follow. Order at your local bookstore, Gambler's Book Shop (Las Vegas), or Amazon.

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The Slot Expert's Lucky 13 Tips  by John Robison

A few days ago I reviewed the press release announcing the publication of my new book The Slot Expert's Guide to Playing Slots. My publisher's press agent wrote that I've been playing the slots for more than 20 years. Has it really been that long? I thought about it and realized that, yes, it had. I set foot in a casino for the first time around 1980 in Atlantic City and I first went to Las Vegas in 1983. 

In my opinion there's never been a better time to play the slots. The variety of machines on the slot floors today is nothing short of staggering and, for my money, today's machines are much more fun to play than the machines in casinos even as recently as five years ago, when I first started writing about slots and video poker. 

I wish I could give you the secret for winning every time you play the slots, but I can't because there is no secret. The result of each spin is chosen at random and there's no way to legally shift the long-term odds in your favor. I can, however, give you some tips that I've developed throughout my 20 years of pushing the spin button (I can't remember the last time I pulled a slot machine's handle) to help you have more fun while playing the slots and to help you stretch your bankroll.

1. Play where you feel comfortable.
This tip operates on both a macro and a micro level. On the macro level, play in a casino where you feel safe and where you enjoy playing. Play where the slot personnel are friendly and where hopper fills and handpays are handled quickly. Also, play in a casino that has amenities that appeal to your tastes. There's no reason to play in a casino that has rooms, shows, and food that you don't like.  

Once you've chosen your casino, now choose a comfortable place to play in that casino. Personally, I like playing slant-top machines, but I know others who prefer uprights. I also prefer playing in cozy niches on the slot floor and not in areas that have long rows of slot machines. I want some traffic through the area, but I don't want to be on a major thoroughfare in the casino.

Frank Scoblete, his wife, the beautiful A.P., and I were at Treasure Island (TI) in Las Vegas recently. While Frank tried his luck at the craps tables, I checked out the machines in a new slot area. TI had closed one of its moderately priced restaurants and put slots in its place. The problem with this area is that it's on the route from the parking garage, to the casino, to the strip ‹ the main path through the property. I normally like to play the end machines, but after a few minutes I promised myself that I would never play one of the machines near that pathway again. There was far too much traffic, too many people bumping up against the machine, and too many "Looky Lous" watching me play for me to feel comfortable.

2. Choose machines based on the characteristics you want. 
If you want a chance at a life-changing jackpot, play one of the wide-area-progressives with a jackpot in the millions. If your wants are a bit more down-to-earth and you're willing to sacrifice many small hits for a few more mid-level hits, play a low-hit-frequency machine like Blazing 7s or Five Times Pay. If you're like me and you want to have a good chance at making your bankroll last a long time, play high-hit-frequency machines.

Here are three rules of thumb to use to identify low-hit frequency machines: 

1. Machines with multiplying wild symbols tend to have low hit frequencies and the higher the multiple, the lower the hit frequency.  
2. The higher the lowest payout on the paytable is, the lower the hit frequency. Machines that pay out pushes or two coins per coin bet for the lowest winning combination will tend to have higher hit frequencies than machines on which the lowest winning combination pays five or 10 coins per coin bet. 
3. Some machines, like Blazing 7s, are low-hit-frequency machines even though neither rule number one nor rule number two apply to them. The only way to find these machines is by playing them. I go into more detail about how to identify low-hit-frequency machines in my book.

 Finally, if you're looking to maximize the entertainment value of playing the slots, nothing can beat the Australian-style, multi-line/multi-coin video slots for ingenuity and fun. 

3. Let your bankroll choose your denomination.
 Sure, you can play the $10 slots with $20, but you're probably going to have a very short amount of time in action. I like to have a session stake large enough to fund 100 spins. I find that's usually enough so that I get tired of playing before I run out of money.  

Only once did I come close to running out of money before I ran out of desire to play. It was at The Desert Inn in Las Vegas and I was playing a Lucky 7s machine, a notoriously low-hit-frequency machine. I went over 70 spins on that machine without a hit. Talk about cold. The only reasons I kept playing that machine were because I wanted to see how long the cold streak would last, and because I was playing only one quarter per spin, so I wasn't doing any damage to my bankroll.

4. Remember that no machine is ever due. 
If any machine owed its player a hit, it was that machine at The Desert Inn. But the truth is that the result of each and every spin is chosen at random, and the software running the machine doesn't care whether the machine has been hot, cold, or choppy in the past. The chances of hitting any winning combination are exactly the same on every spin. 

5. Play my recommended number of coins per spin.
Sometimes you'll want to play full coin. Other times you can do better by playing fewer coins per spin. My recommendations are based on my analysis of over 1,000 slot machine payback programs. I cover this subject extensively in my book, so I'll just summarize here. 

Play one coin per spin on straight multipliers and bonus multipliers (Double Diamond, Triple Diamond). Play full coin on buy-a-pays (Blazing 7s). Play full coin on progressives, especially wide-area progressives with huge jackpots. Play either one coin per spin or one coin per line on multi-line/multi-coin video slots. (I usually play one coin per line.)

6. Know where the nearest coin bucket is.  
If you're lucky enough to have machines that use tickets, you won't need this tip, but most of us are still getting our hands dirty scooping coins out of trays and lugging buckets of coins to the coin redemption booths. I was playing a machine at Treasure Island not in that area I mentioned before, but close to it and still close to the main route through the casino when I got tired of playing it and I wanted to cash out. There were no coin buckets at that bank of machines (it was a bank of slant-top machines and TI doesn't put coin buckets on slant-top machines), but I knew there were stacks of coin buckets at the carousel 15 feet behind me. In the five seconds it took me to get up and get a coin bucket, someone tried to sit down at my machine and steal my credits. I was able to shoo him off before he sat down, but if I hadn't ensured that there were coin buckets nearby and he had been able to sit down, it might have been a nasty scene.

I used to carry an empty coin bucket around with me, but I never seemed to need it when I had it. I only needed a bucket when I didn't have one. Now, I know that the machines don't know whether or not I have an empty bucket waiting to cart away the tons of coins I hope to win from them, but it seemed like they did. So now I fake them out by not bringing a bucket with me, but ensuring that there is one nearby.

7. Let the tray fill up before you start scooping out coins.
This tip may sound stupid, but after you try it I'm sure you'll find that it is brilliant, or at least not as dumb as it sounded at first. When I cash out, I usually catch the coins in my hands, first one hand and then the other, dumping the coins into a bucket. But on some machines, particularly slant-top and bar-top machines, I can't get my hand in there to catch the coins. I used to continually scoop out the coins as they came out and fell into the tray, but I stopped when I discovered that I was effectively cleaning the tray with my hands. All of the ashes and grime that were on the tray ended up on my hands, in addition to the dirt on the coins themselves. Now I let the tray fill up from about half to three-quarters full and scoop out enough coins to bring it down to about one-quarter full. Those coins act as a barrier between my hands and the tray. The only time my hands touch the tray is when I scoop out the last few coins. Sure, my hands still get dirty, but now the dirt is mostly coin grime and I get less ash and sticky spilled cocktail muck on my hands.

8. Be aware of your surroundings.
Willie Sutton, a notorious bank robber in the early 1900s, reportedly said that he robbed banks because "that's where the money is." Unfortunately, modern-day robbers prey on casino patrons also because "that's where the money is" and casino patrons don't take as many protective measures as the casino does to safeguard their bankrolls. Casinos are some of the most secure areas, but the fact is that slot floors are so expansive that there probably is not a pair of eyes watching every nook and cranny on the slot floor every minute of the day. The surveillance tape will help with the prosecution of a crime, but it's up to you to prevent the crime in the first place. 

It's easy to "go on vacation" mentally and not be as vigilant as you would be in, say, a shopping mall. But you should keep an eye open to what's going on around you and move to a different area of the casino or tell security if there's something going on that makes you nervous. And if you should be lucky enough to hit a big jackpot, don't be shy about asking a security guard to walk you to your car. Better yet, ask if the casino will write you a check for some or all of your jackpot.

9. Don't carry around buckets of coins.
How many times have you heard of someone leaving a bucket of coins in a restaurant? Furthermore, carrying around heavy buckets of coins is an accident waiting to happen and an invitation to theft. Make your first stop after cashing out the cashier's cage. It's much easier to carry bills than buckets.

10. Use casino credit to play with the casino's money.
Table game players have been using casino credit for decades, but not many slot players know that casino credit is available to them too. Getting a line of credit at a casino involves filling out a credit application, which is usually much less detailed than a bank or credit card application. The casino is really interested in only three things: your checking account number, how much money you have in the account, and your average balance. The casino may check your credit history with one of the major credit-reporting bureaus and it will definitely check with the casinos' credit-reporting service to see if you've stiffed any casino in the past. 

Once your line of credit is established, you typically go to the cage and ask for a slot marker for the amount you want up to the amount remaining in your credit line. The cashier will have you sign a marker for that amount (the marker is just a counter check drawn against the bank account you listed on your application) and give you money with which to play. If you win, you're expected to "buy back" the marker by returning the money you borrowed. If you lose, you typically have anywhere from one week to a month or more to pay back the loan ­ interest free.

11. Having a gimmick doesn't necessarily mean that a machine pays better.
I like machines with wild symbols, particularly when they're wild anywhere, and other gimmicks, such as symbols that nudge to the payline and pays that repeat unexpectedly. I also like video slots that pay right-to-left in addition to left-to right. Randy Adams, game design guru at Anchor Gaming, explained to me the psychology behind these gimmicks. He said that the unexpected win is worth more than the expected win. For example, winning 20 coins for double bars on the payline seems worth 20 coins, but when one of the double bars lands above the payline and nudges down to it, that win seems worth more than 20 coins because it was unexpected. 

The truth behind these gimmicks is that they have all been accounted for in the slot machine's programming and these gimmicks don't cause a machine to pay back more than others without gimmicks. A 95% payback machine is a 95% payback machine, regardless of whether or not it has a gimmick. 

12. Use your players club card.
I'm amazed at the number of people I see playing without players club cards. The casino can't give you the discounts and comps that your play earns unless they know who you are. Contrary to popular myth, using a players card has no effect whatsoever on the payback of a machine. I won't play a nickel through a machine without inserting my players club card first and you should do likewise.

13. Don't bet the rent money.
I think this is the most important tip any gambling writer can offer. Your bankroll must come from your discretionary income, the portion of your income that isn't needed for living expenses, retirement, investment, and other essentials. Your bankroll should be part of your entertainment budget. You must ensure that your basic needs are met before you allocate money to gambling. You can even set up a separate checking account for your bankroll and make regular deposits to it to build up your gambling stake. Have your lines of credit draw against that account and when you have winning trips, deposit your winnings into that account. 

Well, those are my lucky 13 tips for playing the slots. Why 13? Because I was born on August 13. Now, let's go out and hit some jackpots. See you in the slot aisles. 

John Robison is an expert video poker player and Midwest Gaming & Travel's Video Poker Insights columnist. He is the managing editor of the gaming pages at www.rgtgaming.com and author of The Slot Experts Guide to Playing Slots, $6.95, by Huntington Press (800) 244-2224. 

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Elvira - Mistress of the Dark by Victor Royer

In the next few issues I want to introduce you to some of the newest slot machines that you will soon be seeing in your favorite casinos. Some of these games may already be in the casinos you normally visit, or perhaps you may have seen them while they were being introduced at various gaming shows. Whenever possible, I will also include a photo of the machine so that you can see what the game actually looks like. I'll begin with a great new game called Elvira - Mistress of the Dark.

Based on the popular late-night television horror-show actress of the same name, this new video slot machine from IGT features a large variety of "creepy" creatures and pays. This is a very distinctive slot machine and you won't miss it on the casino floor. It is quite tall, and has a statue of Elvira sitting seductively at the top. Below that statue is a spider's web-style wheel, similar to the Wheel of Fortune wheel, where various bonus amounts are shown. Below that is the actual game screen itself, and the entire machine is further adorned with photos of a reclining Elvira beckoning you to step into her web.

The Midnight Matinee Bonus starts when two of the symbols land on the first and fifth reels. Elvira then appears between them and explains the rules of the game. She will ask you to pick one of the five movie titles shown on the TV screen. The top TV displays the feature film Elvira's Haunted Hills, and a pre-multiplied credit value. The remaining TVs show a variety of "B" movie titles. A menu of four pre-multiplied credit values indicate what you might win depending on the choices you make among the bottom four movies. After you make your selection, the TV becomes bigger on the screen and plays a movie clip. There are 15 different movies, so chances are you will not know which one you get even if you have played the game a lot. After the movie clip stops, the Rating Skulls bonus round starts and you will get the chance to double your bonus with no risk.

The Web of Winnings Bonus is another feature of this hugely entertaining game. When you land three Spinning Spider symbols on any active payline, Elvira will ask you to pick a symbol, which will determine whether you will get three, four or five spins on the Web of Winnings wheel bonus game. Once you have selected the icon and found out how many spins you have won, Elvira settles into her chair and asks you to press the "spin" button, which starts the top wheel spinning. The bonus wheel will award you the number of credits displayed on the winning selection. However, when you land on Elvira's Chest, you get the chance to pick one of three bonus chests. Whichever chest you pick, the top opens and a creature pops up to show you the bonus win.

Finally, there's the Deadhead Scatter and Shatter Bonus. When three  deadhead" symbols land anywhere on reels one, three and five, these disembodied heads animate and bob inside their glass jars in time with the song lyric "I ain't got no body." At this point your job is to select one of these deadheads, by touching it with your finger. Once you have picked your deadhead, the head shatters the glass jar and reveals your winning amount of credits. This very ingenious game from IGT offers more varieties of wins than you can imagine, and will keep you entertained for a very long time.

Victor H. Royer is a Las Vegas gaming consultant and the author of "Casino Games Made Easy," "Winning Strategies" and numerous other books and articles on gambling. See his ad in this issue.

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Back To Slot Basics by Victor Royer

DENOMINATIONS 
Most of the casino’s profits from slot play come from the nickel and quarter players — not the dollar slot players. The reasons for this are not obvious, but quite logical. The VIP slot players, $1, $5, $25, $100 and $500 players, enjoy comps. To keep them coming back, the casinos offer these players free rooms, food, drinks, shows and even free airfare. The machines these people play are usually the best odds machines available. The casino’s “take” on these slots is lower overall, and coupled with the comps, the casino’s profit margin per machine and per player is quite low. 

They make up for this on the quarter and nickel players. Generally, quarter and nickel players are the casual crowd and have no idea what kind of slots to play, how to play, or how to choose. These nickel and quarter slot players may gamble $100 to $1,000 per trip, as opposed to maybe millions of dollars for a $500 player. There are more casual players and they fill the machines full of coins. 

The nickel reel machines are the worst odds machines and the quarter slot machines only marginally better. I would advise you to avoid nickel and quarter reel slots, unless there is a quarter progressive. Typically you’ll have no fun at this and will lose your money fast. 

If you want to play nickels or quarters, play video poker. It offers better odds, better pays and longer playing time, than reel slots in the same denominations. If you want to play reel slots, your best bet is to play the $1 or $5 machines. If you have $100 to gamble with, you’re better off playing quarter video poker than quarter or nickel reel slots. If you have $1,000, you are better off playing dollar reel slots than quarter reel slots, and you may want to consider playing half-dollar or dollar video poker. Dollar and $5 reel slots and their higher-number versions are a better gaming dollar “investment” for your slot machine play. 

PAYOUT PERCENTAGES 
So what does “98% return,” “payback of 97.4%,” “most liberal slots in town,” and all such other forms of advertising mean? Generally, playing a carrousel of slot machines advertised as 98% return is better than playing machines advertising 94% return. When applied to slot machines, this does not mean that you will win more on the machines advertised as 98% return as opposed to the 94% return. Advertising is often deceptive. There are two main things to consider when it applies to slot machine pays, regardless of whether this advertising is in newspapers, magazines, or displayed in neon lights. 

First if a casino advertises specific slot machines as 98% return, this never means that for each $1 you put into a slot machine you will get back 98%. A lot of first-time players make this mistake and it causes them anguish and confusion. What this means is that over the fiscal life-cycle of that particular slot machine, it will average payoffs equivalent to 98% of all the money put through it. 

All slot machines have counters. These are tiny numerical displays hidden inside the machine, and they count each coin put in and each coin paid out. When the machine hits an attendant-paid jackpot, a pay order is filled out. It is like a paycheck, and is the document used by the attendant as verification of the jackpot and authorization to go to the casino cashier and get the money to pay the winner. On this pay order are many items that are completed for accounting purposes, such as the number of the slot machine, its code, the day and time the jackpot was hit, number of coins played and how many coins were registered so far on the “coins in” meter inside the machine. 

Some casinos use an automated computerized system to track this. It works on the same principle as the bar codes you see on your purchases in the supermarket. In these casinos the floorperson takes out a wand and scans a series of bar codes. This identifies and records that particular machine and it’s payoff information. In the final tally, this information is added to that machine’s “drop” (coins in). At the end of the fiscal year, that machine’s coins-paid-out will equal 98% of all the coins put in, including all the cash hand-paid jackpots, if that machine was set for the 98% payback. Such payoff percentages are part of the computer program inside that machine which determines the schedule and rate of payoffs per number of spins plus coins-in (drop). 

And second, even if a casino advertises 98% return over a bank of several slot machines, this does not necessarily mean that all the machines on that carrousel are set to pay off at those rates. To comply with advertising fair practice laws and gaming regulations, the casinos are only required to have one machine that is set to payback 98% of the drop. The rest of the machines can be set at 94%, or less. A few years ago one casino advertised 101% payback on its machines, but there were only two of these in the whole casino.

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Near Misses: The Truth  by John Robison

Slot machines tease you when you play them. Three jackpot symbols land on the line just above the payline. Oh, if only the payline were up one notch. Or you get jackpot-jackpot-blank on the payline. So close, and yet so far.

Near misses are part of the fun of playing the slots. They’re the slot player’s equivalent of the fisherman’s tale of “the one that got away.” Near misses provide an incentive to play because it seems like the machine is trying to pay off, but it just hasn’t gotten it quite right yet. Surely, one of the next few spins will be a big winner.

Ron Harris, former computer whiz for the Nevada Gaming Control Lab and admitted felon, gave a series of interviews to investigators in the Nevada attorney general’s office in August 1996. The interviews were leaked to PrimeTime Live, which broadcast excerpts on March 12, 1997. In the interview, Harris claimed that today’s slot machines are deliberately programmed to show near misses. He said that on one machine it was a thousand times more likely for blanks to land on the payline than three sevens, and that the machine was misleading players.

Are today’s slot machines programmed to show near misses? Regulators and slot manufacturers claim that today’s slots are not. But there once was a machine that was programmed to show near misses. To find out the truth about near misses, I talked to Randy Adams, director of marketing, and slot machine design guru, at Anchor Gaming.

The lobby of Anchor Gaming’s headquarters in Las Vegas is a slot player’s paradise. Working models of all of Anchor’s slot machines are on display. Each machine’s coin tray is filled with tokens. You can play all you want for free. The tokens, unfortunately, are worthless. You can’t lose any money, but you also can’t win any money.

Randy Adams agreed to talk to me about slots, in general, and “near miss technology,” in particular.  Randy was a game designer at Universal Distributing, the company that made one of the first computerized slot machines.

Randy describes the way the Universal machines worked: “Let’s say you’re playing a slot machine. The reels stop one by one, left to right. If you get a blank on the first reel, you’re out of the game right off the bat, and waiting for the other two reels to stop is irritating. If you get a symbol on the first reel, you still have a chance at a payoff, although it might be a small one like mixed bars. If you get symbols on the first two reels, you’re in the game for as long as you possibly can be and you have to wait for the third reel to stop and decide your fate.

 “Symbol-symbol-blank and blank-symbol-symbol are both losing spins, but getting two symbols and a blank is a lot more exciting than getting a blank and two symbols. That’s what we took into account in the near miss technology in the Universal machines.

 “To determine the outcome of a spin, the program would first choose from a pool of combinations that contained all the winning combinations and one losing combination. The combinations were weighted so the chances of choosing the jackpot combination were a lot less than those of choosing mixed bars or any of the other lesser-paying combinations. And the losing combination had the greatest chance of all of being picked.

“Now, what if the program chose the losing combination? It would go to the pool of losing combinations to choose the symbols it was actually going to display on the reels. Every possible losing combination was in the pool, but the combinations with two symbols and a blank were weighted so they would display more often than combinations that began with a blank.

“Players loved these machines. They were a lot more fun to play than other slots because you stayed in the game longer. You didn’t get knocked out by a blank on the first reel as often as you did on the other machines.”

These machines were very popular with players and, for a time, Universal had more machines on slot floors than Bally and IGT. IGT complained to the Gaming Control Board claiming that Universal’s machines were not really random.

“Although the Gaming Control Board ruled that we had done nothing wrong and there was no intent to deceive, they still required us to change the programming of our machines to be more like how an electro-mechanical slot operated. You have to remember that having microprocessors in slots was still relatively new in the late 80s and the Board was uncomfortable with all the new ways we could make slots work. Some people claimed that our results weren’t chosen at random. That’s not true. Our results were chosen at random, just not with the probabilities one would expect from inspecting the reels. Nevertheless, the Board ruled that we could not use a secondary decision to determine the outcome of a spin and they made us reprogram our machines so they acted like a mechanical slot because that’s what the Board understood. Ironically, using the programming model the Board required, and virtual reels, today’s slot designers can do exactly what we did and they’re doing it to a greater degree than we did and the regulators approve of these machines.”

Let’s look at how near misses occur on today’s slot machines. Near misses occur with every combination of symbols, but a Mixed Bars near miss does not have the same psychological impact as a Jackpot near miss. Thus, I’ll only refer to near misses with the Jackpot symbols in the rest of this article, though the concepts apply to all of the other symbols, as well.

There are two types of near misses. One type is relatively harmless; the other type can be very misleading and can be the result of a deceptively programmed machine.

I call the first type of near miss the “on-the-payline” near miss. This type occurs when one or two of the Jackpot symbols land on the payline 

along with blanks or other symbols that do not make a winning combination. This result is actually a good type of near miss. The more frequently the Jackpot symbols land on the payline, the more ways there are to get the jackpot combination, and the more likely you are to hit the jackpot. The only problem with this type of near miss occurs when you think that the machine is getting close to hitting the jackpot because Jackpot symbols are landing on the payline. The chances for hitting the jackpot are the same for each spin, regardless of whether the prior spin was a near miss or a complete bust.

The second type of near miss is the “near-the-payline” near miss. This type occurs when the Jackpot symbols land one stop above or below the payline. Slot machine manufacturers can program their machines to make this sort of near miss very frequent. They can make the physical stops immediately above and below the Jackpot symbol much more likely to land on the payline than  any other stop. The Jackpot symbol would then frequently land above or below the payline.

The computer in a slot machine pretends that the reels are much larger than they really are. The number of times a symbol appears on these “virtual reels” determines how likely it is to land on the payline.

Here’s the number of times each symbol appears on each reel on a typical Spunky 7s machine.

The number of blanks on the virtual reels increases from reel 1 to reel 2 to reel 3. That means that you’re more likely to get a symbol on the first and second reels than you are on the third. This weighting causes the symbol-symbol-blank near misses on the payline.

Now look at the line for the number of red 7s on each reel. There are four red 7s on the first reel, but only two each on the second and third reels. On the average, one out of 16 spins will start with a red 7 on the first reel. But only one out of 32 spins will have a red 7 on either the second or third reel, and only one out of 16,384 spins will have a red 7 on each reel.

These are both “on the payline” near misses. These are relatively benign near misses because the only way to get a symbol to land on the payline more frequently is to have it appear more times on the virtual reel.  The more likely a symbol is to land on the payline, the more likely it will be used in a winning combination. The “on the payline” near miss makes you think you were close to hitting the jackpot and atleast you were part of the way there.

The Board objected to the near miss technology in the Universal machines because symbols had two different probabilities for landing on the payline. Because there were separate tables for losing combinations and for winning combinations, symbols landed on the payline with one probability when they were part of a winning combination and with a different probability when they were part of a losing combination. Landing a symbol when it was part of a losing combination didn’t tell you anything about how likely it was to land on the payline as part of a winning combination. Universal’s near miss programming was able to create on-the-payline near misses without increasing the probabilities of hitting winning combinations.

The other type of near miss, the “near the payline” near miss, does nothing but make you think you were close to hitting the jackpot when, in reality, a miss is as good as a mile.

Here’s how the third virtual reel is laid out on our Spunky 7s machine. The following table lists the physical stop on the reel, the symbol at that stop, and the number of times it appears on the virtual reel.

Every other stop on the physical reel is a blank, so it appears as if you should get a blank on the third reel on half of your spins. But 41 out of 64 stops on the virtual reel are blanks, so you really get a blank on the third reel on about two-thirds of your spins.

The blanks on this virtual reel are fairly evenly distributed. Most blanks appear four times, but the blanks near one of the green 7s appear only three times each. That’s no problem; the fewer blanks, the better. But the blank above the red 7 appears five times on the virtual reel. You would expect that blank to land on the payline one out of every 22 spins because there are 22 physical stops on the reel, but it actually lands on the payline about one out of every 13 spins.

Let me say that again from a different perspective using a different symbol. You would expect the red 7 to land one stop below the payline once every 22 spins, but it really lands there once every 13 spins.

Now let’s look at a reel on which the blanks are not as evenly distributed. Here’s the third reel from a Triple Winner machine.

You’ll get a blank on the third reel over half the time because there are 42 blanks on the 72-stop virtual reel. Look at how the blanks are distributed on the virtual reel. If the blanks were equally likely to land on the payline, you’d expect to get a 7 or Triple Winner above or below the payline every six spins out of 22. There are six blanks above or below a 7 or Triple Winner on the 22-stop physical reel, so the probability of landing a 7 or Triple Winner near the payline is 0.27. In other words, 27% of your spins will have a 7 or Triple Winner near the payline on the third reel.

On the virtual reel, however, there are 30 blanks above or below a 7 or Triple Winner. The true probability of landing a 7 or Triple Winner near the payline is 0.42, so 42% of your spins will end with a 7 or Triple Winner near the payline on the third reel.

Remember that there is an important difference between on-the-payline near misses and near-the-payline near misses. Because the Gaming Control Board does not allow a secondary decision like the one in the Universal machine to decide the outcome of a spin, the only way to make on-the-payline near misses occur more frequently is by making the desired symbols land on the payline more frequently. The only way to make near-the-payline near misses occur more frequently is by making the stops above or below the desired symbol land on the payline more frequently. Near-the-payline near misses don’t tell you anything about how likely you are to hit it big on a machine.

 Because of this difference, near-the-payline near misses can be considered to be more deceptive than on-the-payline near misses. Slot regulators are considering new guidelines to control how frequently near-the-payline near misses can occur. One of the proposed guidelines would limit the number of times a blank near a high-paying symbol can appear on the virtual reel as compared with the number of times the high-paying symbol appears on the reel. A blank above or below the jackpot symbol, for example, would not be able to appear on the virtual reel more than six times the number of times the jackpot symbol appears on the virtual reel.

Are slots programmed to show near misses? It’s a matter of semantics. Slots are programmed to choose a virtual stop at random on each reel. If the virtual reel is laid out such that there is a preponderance of blanks on the third reel or that most of the blanks on the virtual reel occur near valuable symbols, then the machine will show a lot of near misses. But it’s not really the programming that’s at fault. It’s the layout of the virtual reels.

The most important thing to remember about all near misses is that they are not signs of things to come on a machine. A cold machine that starts showing a lot of near misses is not trying to tell you that it is about to turn hot. And a hot machine that starts showing a lot of near misses is not signaling you to stop playing because it is about to turn as cold as an Antarctic winter. The computer program running the slot machine doesn’t know anything about near misses. As far as it is concerned, spins are either winners or losers and there is nothing in between.

Near misses are like cholesterol. Both come in two varieties, one good and one bad. You need both kinds to survive, but too much of either kind is harmful.

John Robison is an expert video poker player and Midwest Gaming & Travel Video Poker Insights columnist. He is also the managing editor of Frank Scoblete’s Gaming Pages at RGT Online: www.rgtgaming.com

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Just The Facts  by John Grochowski 

Slot machines are the biggest attractions in modern casinos, and the biggest mysteries. More than 70% of casino revenue comes from electronic gaming devices. Those are mostly slots, along with video poker, video keno, video blackjack and specialty games. In some jurisdictions, that revenue figure surpasses 80%. Everyone, it seems, is trying to solve the Case of the Giant Jackpot. But before you spend your money chasing down any prime suspect, let’s gather a few clues about slot machines and how they work. 

A casino’s overall payback percentage does not tell you how you will do on any one machine in one session. Even a machine’s individual payback percentage can’t tell you how you will do during any one session, and we don’t have that information anyway. The casinos aren’t telling us which specific machines are the big payers and which are tight-fisted. Regardless of whether a machine pays 80%, 99% or somewhere in between, players will sometimes have winning sessions and more often will lose money. Yes, players will win more often on the higher-paying game, but there’s no way to tell when the winners are coming. What monthly statistics from state gaming boards tell us is how much a casino’s slots paid in the previous month. A published chart may tell you that in a given month nickel slots at your local casino paid 90%, quarter slots paid out 92% and dollars paid out 95%. That does not mean that if you play a dollar machine, you can expect a 95% return on that session. Those statistics are casino-wide averages that do not necessarily apply to every machine. The same casino may have dollar games that return 80%, 85%, 99% and anything in between. You might be plunking your dollars into a 95%-er, but you might have hit on an 80% bandit. Additionally, those statistics are at least a month old by the time you see them, and often they’re two or three months old. That’s plenty of time for a casino to have made big changes, for better or for worse. 

It’s impossible to tell a high-paying slot machine from a coin-gobbler just by looking at it. Put two Double Diamonds machines side by side, or two Reel ‘Em Ins, or two Blazing 7s. They may have identical looks, identical graphics, identical paytables. Do they give players an identical chance to win? Not necessarily. Manufacturers make slot programs with a wide range of payback percentages. One machine may have a computer chip inside with a program that in the long run will result in 88% of all money wagered being returned to players. The identical-looking machine next to it may have a chip programmed for a 99% return. Or they may both be programmed for something in between. Your chances of winning are a lot better on the 99% machine than on the 88%-er, but there’s no way to tell from the outside which is which. 

Slot machine results are as random as humans can program a computer to be. What you see on the reels or on the video screen is a representation of what’s happening in a computer program in the game’s inner workings. Every modern slot machine, be it a traditional reel-spinner or a video game, includes a program called a “random number generator,’’ or “RNG.’’ The RNG is programmed with numbers corresponding to potential reel stops, and it continuously generates numbers, even when the game is not being played.  When you push the button or pull the handle to play the machine, the number the RNG is generating at that instant determines what you will see on the reels. There is no way to tell what numbers the RNG is spitting out, or what combinations you are about to see. You can’t see it happening, nor can any slot executive. The only way to find out is to play the game and see what happens. 

If another player hits a jackpot on a machine you’ve just left, the jackpot probably would not have been yours if you’d stayed put. Remember, the RNG runs continuously even when the game is not in use. In the time it takes you to leave the machine and someone else to sit down, the RNG spits out hundreds of random numbers, all corresponding to reel combinations you’ll never see because no one was hitting the button or pulling the handle at that instant. For you to have the same results as the player who followed you, your timing would have to be the same down to the microsecond. The random number generator runs through dozens of numbers a second. It is extremely unlikely that your timing would so exactly match that of another player that you’d hit the same random number. Just pausing to say hello to the player next to you, or to order a drink, or to scratch your ear is enough to pass by a few random numbers and change your results. 

The odds of hitting a jackpot are the same on every pull. It is possible, although rare, to hit the top jackpot on a slot machine two pulls in a row. It also is possible to go tens of thousands of pulls without hitting the top jackpot at all. Both possibilities fall within the range of normal probability. Let’s say you have a slot machine whose RNG has been programmed with 10,000 possible reel combinations, only one of which is the top jackpot. That means that on the average, in the long run, we will see one jackpot per 10,000 pulls. (Some machines are programmed so the jackpot turns up more often; others, including the big progressive games such as Megabucks, pay out jackpots much less often). On our machine, we have one chance in 10,000 of hitting the jackpot on each pull. What if you’ve just hit the jackpot? What are your chances of hitting the jackpot again on the next pull? Answer: They are still 1 in 10,000. What if you’ve gone 9,999 pulls without the jackpot? Then what are your chances of hitting it on the next pull? Answer: They still remain 1 in 10,000. In that respect, slot machines work just like most table games. In roulette, the chances of any given number turning up are one in 38. If the last number was 17, the chances of 17 turning up again on the next spin remain one in 38. If there have been 37 spins in a row without 17 showing up, the odds are still one in 38. It’s the same with the slots. Whether we win or lose on any one pull or series of pulls, our odds of winning on the next spin of the reels remains the same. 

After a jackpot, machines do not have to turn cold to make up the payout. Any slot machine has more cold streaks than hot streaks, but a machine doesn’t necessarily turn cold after a big hit. Jackpots are a normal, expected event in a slot machine’s life. The normal mathematics of the games will absorb the jackpot over hundreds of thousands or millions of spins. Let’s say we’re betting three coins at a time at a machine with a top jackpot of 10,000 coins, and that the machine is programmed to pay 95% in the long run. We hit the jackpot on our first pull. How low must the payback be over the next 999,999 spins to bring the overall percentage back to 95% for one million reel spins? Would you believe a drop to 94.7% would do it? After a big jackpot, results remain random. There are cold streaks after jackpots, and there are hot streaks too, just as at any other time. Of course, players believe machines turn cold after jackpots. That’s why slot supervisors ask you to play another spin after a hand-paid jackpot. They don’t want the game to sit vacant because others are afraid to try with a previous jackpot still on the reels. But the casinos are in this for the long haul, and they know the machines continue to pay at a normal rate after a big hit. Jackpots just blend into the background of millions of spins of the reels. 

An individual player is no more likely to hit a jackpot in a crowded casino than in a near-empty one. More jackpots are hit in crowded casinos because there are more machines being played. But for an individual player, the chances of hitting the jackpot remain the same as if the rest of the casino was empty. The crowds around other machines do not change the odds on the game that you’re playing. 

Players win just as often when they use their slot club cards as when they don’t. Just as the RNG doesn’t know how many coins you’ve wagered, it doesn’t know whether you’re using a slot club card. The RNG and the club card reader are separate programs on different chips. Using the card makes no difference in your results. Some players seem to think that since they are accumulating comps on their club cards, the casino will make them pay for it with a lower return on the machines. Such differential paybacks are illegal. Anyway, the casino goes to a lot of time and trouble to enroll you in the slot club and put you in the data base so they can offer you incentives to keep you coming back. Are they likely to risk putting off slot club regulars, their most loyal, valuable customers, by skimping on returns at the slot? Not a chance. 

Players win just as often when they bet the maximum coins as when they bet only one coin. The random number generator doesn’t know how many coins you’ve wagered. It’s on a separate computer chip from the coin-counting program. The percentage of winning combinations will be the same, regardless of how many coins you wager. There’s a little selective memory at work here. Many players have experienced cold streaks betting maximum coins, then switched to one coin and hit a winner or two. “Aha,’’ they say, “I win more when I bet one coin.’’ But players who start by betting one coin usually don’t start betting more in a losing streak. That leaves fewer opportunities for someone to say, “Aha, I win more when I bet the max.’’ In the long run, everything, winning combinations, losers, cold streaks, hot streaks, shows up in the same proportions, regardless of how many coins you bet. 

Payback percentages are highest on most machines when players bet maximum coins. On most slot games, there is a big jump in the top jackpot as a reward for playing maximum coins. It might be as simple as making the jackpot $1,000 if one coin is wagered, $2,000 if the bet is two coins, but jumping to $5,000 for a three-coin bet. A player will hit the top jackpot just as often no matter how many coins are wagered, but the rewards will be disproportionately greater if maximum coins are wagered. That effect is heightened on games with progressive jackpots. There, you might see a game in which three jackpot symbols pay $1,000 if you bet one coin, $2,000 for two coins, but a big progressive jackpot of $10,000 or more for three coins. On progressive machines, payouts are usually lower or less frequent on other winning combinations because more of the coins taken in are used to fund the top jackpot. Players should never play a progressive machine without betting maximum coins. If your bankroll is such that you must play for less than the maximum bet, play a non-progressive machine. Most of the new breed of multi-line, multi-coin video slots do not incorporate a big jump in the top jackpot for playing maximum coins. On those games, you’ll get the same payback percentage even if you play only one coin per payline instead of making maximum bets. 

On video slots and other bonusing games, the bonus rounds are part of the normal overall payback percentage. If you’re playing Monopoly, sometimes you’re going to get a trip around the board. If you’re playing Wheel of Fortune, sometimes you’re going to get to spin the wheel. If you’re playing Let’s Make a Deal, sometimes you’re going to get to barter with Monty. That’s all part of the game, and is accounted for in the mathematics that go into devising a slot machine. If a particular Reel ‘Em In machine is programmed to pay 92%, then that 92% includes any winnings the player accumulates when choosing a fisherman on the pond. One consequence of that is that payback percentages on non-bonus spins of the video reels are lower than those on regular reel-spinning games. The bonus rounds then bring the video games up to par. 

When a slot attendant opens a machine after a jackpot, he’s not flipping a switch to lower the payback percentage. An attendant may open the machine to check the electronic record of what the random number generator says should have been on the reels. If the electronic record doesn’t match what’s actually on the reels, the spin can be declared a malfunction and the casino can deny you the jackpot. In fact, in some jurisdictions the casino is required by law to deny the jackpot if the record doesn’t match what’s on the reels. That doesn’t happen often, but it happens, and it must be checked. In most jurisdictions, a slot attendant can’t lower the payback percentage with a simple flip of a switch. In the most tightly regulated states, changes must be made by replacing the chip that contains the random number generator. A gaming board official must observe while evidence tape is broken, the old chip removed, a new chip installed and sealed with new evidence tape. It’s not impossible to change a machine’s payback percentage, but it’s not done routinely just because someone hits a jackpot. For the casino, jackpots are a normal part of business, part of the cost of attracting customers. 

There is no “jackpot button’’ casino operators can hit to reward loyal players. Slot department managers will do a lot of things for a loyal customer. They can give you free meals, rooms, valet parking. They can comp boarding passes in jurisdictions where riverboats still charge admission. They’ll give you cash back or merchandise on your players club card. But they will not give you a jackpot. There is no such thing as an operator-controlled jackpot button. Such a device would be illegal. Operators leave it to the random number generator to determine jackpot winners. When will the jackpot number come up? That is truly a mystery to everyone; manufacturers, operators and players alike. 

— John Grochowski is Midwest Gaming & Travel’s Casino Q&A columnist, syndicated gaming columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and the author of the Casino Answer Book, the Slot Machine Answer Book and the Video Poker Answer Book.

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Interview With A Slot Cheat   by John Robison

Slot cheating expert Mr. Slug (not his real name) reveals the numerous and varied methods that have been devised over the years to cheat slot machines. Warning: Don't try any of these in the casino.

Story:
"I'll tell you everything you want to know, but you can't reveal my name. If you ever tell anyone that I'm the one who told you how to cheat the slots, I won't give you any more information."    So began my relationship with slot cheating expert Mr. Slug (not his real name). We were sitting at a table in the darkest, most remote corner of a seedy bar in Las Vegas. I thought we'd never see a waitress back here, but then I realized that we'd get great service. The tips have to be good at this table. This is where people who don't want to be seen do business, and an extra sawbuck or two in the tip jar buys a lot of discretion, not to mention, maybe even some selective amnesia.    The waitress came to take our order. I ordered a rum and Coke. I used to drink White Russians, but I had to give them up. There's too much fat and cholesterol in the cream and I think I've become lactose intolerant. 

Mr. Slug ordered a glass of '92 Montrachet. Good luck getting that here, I thought. But the waitress didn't even bat one of her fake eyelashes. She said that she'd be back in a "sec" with our drinks and disappeared.    

I silently cursed Mr. Slug for refusing to meet me at a casino bar ‹where I could get comped. Maybe he didn't want to be seen near the slot machines. Maybe every casino in town escorts him to the door, gently or with persuasion, seconds after he walks into the place. Whatever his reasons, it looked like this was not going to be a cheap night for me. That fruity little number he ordered goes for twenty bucks a glass.    "Cheating the old mechanical and electro-mechanical machines was easy," he said. "The reels in those machines are driven by a complicated set of gears and pulleys. The machines have levers or circuits that detect where the reels stop, and the machine pays off based on the symbols displayed on the reels. If you can control where the reels stop, you can cheat the machine. 

"We called one group of cheaters Œhandle mechanics.' A handle mechanic weakened the mechanism that drives the reels by jerking down on the handle with the force of King Kong. After he gaffed the machine ..."    "Gaffed?" I asked.    "Yeah, gaffed," he said. "You know, prepared the machine so he could cheat it. After he gaffed the machine, he played it normally until he got winning symbols on the first reel or two. Then he pulled down on the handle until it was just about to set the reels in motion. Then he pushed down on the handle very quickly. That action kept one or more of the reels from spinning. Because the handle mechanic started each spin part of the way to a winning combination, he won on a lot more of his spins than a straight player. A really good mechanic could keep two reels from spinning, and a virtuoso could keep all three from spinning." 

The waitress arrived with our drinks. She asked who got the rum and Coke. I said I did. She gave it to Mr. Slug. I should've expected it. The girls who work these tables weren't hired for their memory skills. After she put the wine glass down in front of me, she pointed to a card in a Plexiglas stand on our table and asked, "Can I get you gentlemen anything off our snack menu?"    "You could get the stains off it," I said. Neither Mr. Slug nor the waitress appreciated my joke.    "Don't mind him," Mr. Slug said. "I'll have something. I'm starving." He picked up the menu to get a closer look at it. "Bring me the fried mozzarella sticks, extra marinara sauce. You want anything?" he asked holding out the menu to me.

"

"

 "What did that do?" I asked.

 "The two joints created an alternate electrical path to energize the coin payout circuitry. There's no current flowing through the normal circuit because the machine is not paying out a win. But there is current flowing through the cheater's circuit. The payout circuit has power, so it pays out coins. When it was time to move to another machine or when the cheater felt some heat, all he had to do was pull the wire and the top joint out of the machine and there was no evidence left behind." 

"

"

One guy flattened out a wire coat hanger and fished it up a $100 machine with a mechanical coin counter. The machine couldn't count the coins it paid out correctly with that coat hanger interfering with its coin counter. He got over $200,000 before he was caught.    "More sophisticated cheats used a device called a monkey's paw to cheat machines with mechanical coin counters. A monkey's paw is a piece of thin, flexible steel about a foot long with one end bent to look like a claw. The cheat inserted the monkey's paw up the payout chute until he hit the coin counter. Like the coat hanger, the monkey's paw interfered with the coin counter causing the machine to over-pay.

"

"The device to cheat the optical coin counter is called a Œmini-light.' It has a battery at one end and a light emitter at the other. Shove it up a machine near the light sensor and switch it on. Now the machine can't count the coins it pays out. It's literally blinded by the light. You can turn a 20-coin credit meter into a 200-coin cash-out. You just have to be careful that you switch it off every once in a while so the machine can register a coin. Otherwise, the machine will think the hopper is empty."

Mr. Slug took a big swig of his wine. His glass was now half-empty. "Every machine has a device called a coin comparator. It checks the tokens the player inserts against a reference token. If they match, the comparator sends the token down the coin-in chute, which contains a switch that registers a coin played. If they don't match, the comparator sends the token down the reject chute, which directs the token to the coin tray. If you can defeat the comparator, you can play for free or at least for less than the posted denomination.

"You can use slugs and counterfeit tokens to fool the comparator. A counterfeiting ring got caught in New Jersey a couple of years ago. They made millions of dollars worth of counterfeit tokens. Someone at the company that makes the slot tokens was in on the scam.    "On some comparators, a slot attendant can put a cocktail straw in the mechanism and it will pass every coin. How'd you like to play a $5 machine for a nickel a pop? One casino found straws in 200 of their machines.

"

The waitress came back with the mozzarella sticks and put them down in front of Mr. Slug. She asked if we were ready for another round. We were. She made herself scarce again.    Mr. Slug picked up a mozzarella stick, drenched it in the marinara sauce, and shoved the whole thing in his mouth. "Casino security chiefs are merely concerned by customers who cheat," he said while chewing his mozzarella stick. Bits of half-chewed cheese flew from his mouth as he spoke. "Employees who cheat terrify them. Once someone has the keys to the machine, they have the keys to the kingdom.

"

"I saw one slot attendant take handful after handful of tokens out of one machine's hopper. She had so many tokens in her pockets she had to steady herself on the machines as she walked to keep from falling down. Surveillance saw her waddling through the casino like a pregnant penguin.

She got greedy. She got caught."

Mr. Slug finished his glass of wine. I finished my rum and Pepsi.  "There are two people who know more about a machine than anyone else: the person who programmed it and the person who tested it. One Midwestern casino knew this guy was ripping them off on a multi-game machine, but they couldn't figure out how he was doing it. He got five five-of-a-kinds in 25 minutes. Every time someone walked by him, he would switch to another game in the machine. They sent a surveillance tape to a testing lab that also consults on possible fraud cases. One of the guys in the lab said, ŒI know that guy. He was here a couple weeks ago. He programmed that machine.' " 

The waitress returned with our second round of drinks. This time we each got the correct drink. Mine was Pepsi again. Mr. Slug took a sip of his wine, and continued. "I saved the best for last, the most famous slot cheat, far from the most successful, but probably the most famous. Maybe you saw him on PrimeTime Live a few years ago claiming that slot machines are deliberately programmed to be deceptive. He claimed that slot machines are programmed to show near misses to keep people playing. Well, here's the true story of Ron Harris. 

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Harris got nervous and high-tailed it to the Philadelphia airport to fly back to Las Vegas. He was arrested when he landed at McCarran. After his arrest, the Gaming Control Board launched an investigation into his activities. They found the cheating programs on his work computer." 

Mr. Slug drank the rest of his wine. "One last thing. Don't get any ideas about trying to get rich by cheating the slots. The casinos don't take too kindly to folks cutting into their profits. And lower profits mean lower tax revenues, so the state also won't show you any sympathy when you get caught. And the casinos have a nearly 100% conviction rate."

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She pulled out six checks from her apron pocket, shuffled through them until she found ours, and put it down in the middle of the table. "Pay the cashier on the way out. Hope to see you back here again."    I reached for the check, but Mr. Slug got it first. He looked at it and then he pulled a roll of money out of his pocket. He peeled off a double sawbuck and one of those new $50 bills that look like play money and dropped it on the table. The tips "are" good at this table.

"

John Robison is an expert video poker player and Midwest Gaming & Travel Video Poker Insights columnist. He is also the managing editor of Frank Scoblete's Gaming Pages at RGT Online: www.rgtgaming.com.

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Get A Clue: Just the facts about how slot machines really work. by John Grochowski 

Slot machines are the biggest attractions in modern casinos, and the biggest mysteries. More than 70% of casino revenue comes from electronic gaming devices. Those are mostly slots, along with video poker, video keno, video blackjack and specialty games. In some jurisdictions, that revenue figure surpasses 80%. Everyone, it seems, is trying to solve the Case of the Giant Jackpot. But before you spend your money chasing down any prime suspect, let's gather a few clues about slot machines and how they work.

** A casino's overall payback percentage does not tell you how you will do on any one machine in one session.    Even a machine's individual payback percentage can't tell you how you will do during any one session, and we don't have that information anyway. The casinos aren't telling us which specific machines are the big payers and which are tight-fisted. Regardless of whether a machine pays 80%, 99% or somewhere in between, players will sometimes have winning sessions and more often will lose money. Yes, players will win more often on the higher-paying game, but there's no way to tell when the winners are coming.    What monthly statistics from state gaming boards tell us is how much a casino's slots paid in the previous month. A published chart may tell you that in a given month nickel slots at your local casino paid 90%, quarter slots paid out 92% and dollars paid out 95%. That does not mean that if you play a dollar machine, you can expect a 95% return on that session. Those statistics are casino-wide averages that do not necessarily apply to every machine. The same casino may have dollar games that return 80%, 85%, 99% and
anything in between. You might be plunking your dollars into a 95%-er, but you might have hit on an 80% bandit. Additionally, those statistics are at least a month old by the time you see them, and often they're two or three months old. That's plenty of time for a casino to have made big changes, for better or for worse.

** It's impossible to tell a high-paying slot machine from a coin-gobbler just by looking at it.    Put two Double Diamonds machines side by side, or two Reel ŒEm Ins, or two Blazing 7s. They may have identical looks, identical graphics, identical paytables. Do they give players an identical chance to win? Not necessarily. Manufacturers make slot programs with a wide range of payback percentages. One machine may have a computer chip inside with a program that in the long run will result in 88% of all money wagered being returned to players. The identical-looking machine next to it may have a chip programmed for a 99% return. Or they may both be programmed for something in between. Your chances of winning are a lot better on the 99% machine than on the 88%-er, but there's no way to tell from the outside which is which.

** Slot machine results are as random as humans can program a computer to be. What you see on the reels or on the video screen is a representation of what's happening in a computer program in the game's inner workings. Every modern slot machine, be it a traditional reel-spinner or a video game, includes a program called a "random number generator,'' or "RNG.''    The RNG is programmed with numbers corresponding to potential reel stops, and it continuously generates numbers, even when the game is not being played.  When you push the button or pull the handle to play the machine, the number the RNG is generating at that instant determines what you will see on the reels. There is no way to tell what numbers the RNG is spitting out, or what combinations you are about to see. You can't see it happening, nor can any slot executive. The only way to find out is to play the game and see what happens.

** If another player hits a jackpot on a machine you've just left, the jackpot probably would not have been yours if you'd stayed put.    Remember, the RNG runs continuously even when the game is not in use. In the time it takes you to leave the machine and someone else to sit down, the RNG spits out hundreds of random numbers, all corresponding to reel combinations you'll never see because no one was hitting the button or pulling the handle at that instant. For you to have the same results as the player who followed you, your timing would have to be the same down to the microsecond. The random number generator runs through dozens of numbers a second. It is extremely unlikely that your timing would so exactly match that of another player that you'd hit the same random number. Just pausing to say hello to the player next to you, or to order a drink, or to scratch your ear is enough to pass by a few random numbers and change your results.

** The odds of hitting a jackpot are the same on every pull.    It is possible, although rare, to hit the top jackpot on a slot machine two pulls in a row. It also is possible to go tens of thousands of pulls without hitting the top jackpot at all. Both possibilities fall within the range of normal probability.    Let's say you have a slot machine whose RNG has been programmed with 10,000 possible reel combinations, only one of which is the top jackpot. That means that on the average, in the long run, we will see one jackpot per 10,000 pulls. (Some machines are programmed so the jackpot turns up more often; others, including the big progressive games such as Megabucks, pay out jackpots much less often). On our machine, we have one chance in 10,000 of hitting the jackpot on each pull. What if you've just hit the jackpot? What are your chances of hitting the jackpot again on the next pull? Answer: They are still 1 in 10,000. What if you've gone 9,999 pulls without the jackpot? Then what are your chances of hitting it on the next pull? Answer: They still remain 1 in 10,000.    In that respect, slot machines work just like most table games. In roulette, the chances of any given number turning up are one in 38. If the last number was 17, the chances of 17 turning up again on the next spin remain one in 38. If there have been 37 spins in a row without 17 showing up, the odds are still one in 38. It's the same with the slots. Whether we win or lose on any one pull or series of pulls, our odds of winning on the next spin of the reels remains the same.

** After a jackpot, machines do not have to turn cold to make up the payout.    Any slot machine has more cold streaks than hot streaks, but a machine doesn't necessarily turn cold after a big hit. Jackpots are a normal, expected event in a slot machine's life. The normal mathematics of the games will absorb the jackpot over hundreds of thousands or millions of spins.    Let's say we're betting three coins at a time at a machine with a top jackpot of 10,000 coins, and that the machine is programmed to pay 95% in the long run. We hit the jackpot on our first pull. How low must the payback be over the next 999,999 spins to bring the overall percentage back to 95% for one million reel spins? Would you believe a drop to 94.7% would do it? After a big jackpot, results remain random. There are cold streaks after jackpots, and there are hot streaks too, just as at any other time.    Of course, players believe machines turn cold after jackpots. That's why slot supervisors ask you to play another spin after a hand-paid jackpot. They don't want the game to sit vacant because others are afraid to try with a previous jackpot still on the reels. But the casinos are in this for the long haul, and they know the machines continue to pay at a normal rate after a big hit. Jackpots just blend into the background of millions of spins of the reels.

** An individual player is no more likely to hit a jackpot in a crowded casino than in a near-empty one.    More jackpots are hit in crowded casinos because there are more machines being played. But for an individual player, the chances of hitting the jackpot remain the same as if the rest of the casino was empty. The crowds around other machines do not change the odds on the game that you're playing.

** Players win just as often when they use their slot club cards as when they don't.    Just as the RNG doesn't know how many coins you've wagered, it doesn't know whether you're using a slot club card. The RNG and the club card reader are separate programs on different chips. Using the card makes no difference in your results.    Some players seem to think that since they are accumulating comps on their club cards, the casino will make them pay for it with a lower return on the machines. Such differential paybacks are illegal. Anyway, the casino goes to a lot of time and trouble to enroll you in the slot club and put you in the data base so they can offer you incentives to keep you coming back. Are they likely to risk putting off slot club regulars, their most loyal, valuable customers, by skimping on returns at the slot? Not a chance.

** Players win just as often when they bet the maximum coins as when they bet only one coin.    The random number generator doesn't know how many coins you've wagered. It's on a separate computer chip from the coin-counting program. The percentage of winning combinations will be the same, regardless of how many coins you wager. There's a little selective memory at work here. Many players have experienced cold streaks betting maximum coins, then switched to one coin and hit a winner or two. "Aha,'' they say, "I win more when I bet one coin.'' But players who start by betting one coin usually don't start betting more in a losing streak. That leaves fewer opportunities for someone to say, "Aha, I win more when I bet the max.'' In the long run, everything, winning combinations, losers, cold streaks, hot streaks, shows up in the same proportions, regardless of how many coins you bet.

** Payback percentages are highest on most machines when players bet maximum coins.    On most slot games, there is a big jump in the top jackpot as a reward for playing maximum coins. It might be as simple as making the jackpot $1,000 if one coin is wagered, $2,000 if the bet is two coins, but jumping to $5,000 for a three-coin bet. A player will hit the top jackpot just as often no matter how many coins are wagered, but the rewards will be disproportionately greater if maximum coins are wagered. That effect is heightened on games with progressive jackpots. There, you might see a game in which three jackpot symbols pay $1,000 if you bet one coin, $2,000 for two coins, but a big progressive jackpot of $10,000 or more for three coins. On progressive machines, payouts are usually lower or less frequent on other winning combinations because more of the coins taken in are used to fund the top jackpot. Players should never play a progressive machine without betting maximum coins. If your bankroll is such that you must play for less than the maximum bet, play a non-progressive machine.    Most of the new breed of multi-line, multi-coin video slots do not incorporate a big jump in the top jackpot for playing maximum coins. On those games, you'll get the same payback percentage even if you play only one coin per payline instead of making maximum bets.

** On video slots and other bonusing games, the bonus rounds are part of the normal overall payback percentage.    If you're playing Monopoly, sometimes you're going to get a trip around the board. If you're playing Wheel of Fortune, sometimes you're going to get to spin the wheel. If you're playing Let's Make a Deal, sometimes you're going to get to barter with Monty. That's all part of the game, and is accounted for in the mathematics that go into devising a slot machine. If a particular Reel ŒEm In machine is programmed to pay 92%, then that 92% includes any winnings the player accumulates when choosing a fisherman on the pond. One consequence of that is that payback percentages on non-bonus spins of the video reels are lower than those on regular reel-spinning games. The bonus rounds then bring the video games up to par.

** When a slot attendant opens a machine after a jackpot, he's not flipping a switch to lower the payback percentage.    An attendant may open the machine to check the electronic record of what the random number generator says should have been on the reels. If the electronic record doesn't match what's actually on the reels, the spin can be declared a malfunction and the casino can deny you the jackpot. In fact, in some jurisdictions the casino is required by law to deny the jackpot if the record doesn't match what's on the reels.    That doesn't happen often, but it happens, and it must be checked. In most jurisdictions, a slot attendant can't lower the payback percentage with a simple flip of a switch. In the most tightly regulated states, changes must be made by replacing the chip that contains the random number generator. A gaming board official must observe while evidence tape is broken, the old chip removed, a new chip installed and sealed with new evidence tape. It's not impossible to change a machine's payback percentage, but it's not done routinely just because someone hits a jackpot. For the casino, jackpots are a normal part of business, part of the cost of attracting customers.

** There is no "jackpot button'' casino operators can hit to reward loyal players.    Slot department managers will do a lot of things for a loyal customer. They can give you free meals, rooms, valet parking. They can comp boarding passes in jurisdictions where riverboats still charge admission. They'll give you cash back or merchandise on your players club card. But they will not give you a jackpot. There is no such thing as an operator-controlled jackpot button. Such a device would be illegal. Operators leave it to the random number generator to determine jackpot winners.    When will the jackpot number come up? That is truly a mystery to everyone; manufacturers, operators and players alike.

John Grochowski is Midwest Gaming & Travel's Casino Q&A columnist, syndicated gaming columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and the author of the Casino Answer Book, the Slot Machine Answer Book and the Video Poker Answer Book.

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