Insider Slot Secrets:
  HOW SLOT MACHINES WORK

INSIDER SLOT SECRETS : HOW SLOT MACHINES WORK

Slots Before the Mid 1980s

Old-time slot machines were strictly mechanical. You pulled a handle, gears whirled, and the reels spun and came to a physical halt. Every symbol on the reel had an equal chance of appearing in the payline.

Since a reel was a physical drum located inside a machine, there were only so many symbols, including blanks, that could fit on a reel. The majority of reels had 20 or 22 symbols, or “stops,” including blanks. If there were three reels with one jackpot symbol on each reel, the chances of lining up three symbols for a jackpot were one in 8,000.

Modern Day Slots with Random Number Generators

In modern day slots, the symbols on the payline aren’t the result of physical spins. Instead, the symbols that show up are chosen by a computer program called a Random Number Generator, or RNG for short.

That means slot machine designers are no longer limited by the physical size of a reel. Instead, slot designers can put any number of symbols on a reel, and the game can be programmed as to how often each symbol should appear on each reel.

Slotty's Secret Slot Tip #14   Random Number Generators (RNGs) changed slots forever.

 

A typical modern slot game will have three to five imaginary reels, whether in an on-land casino or online. The slot game’s Random Number Generator is constantly cycling through possible outcomes, generating numbers corresponding to the symbols on each reel even when no one is playing the machine, or even when you are resting between spins.

Then, at the moment you hit the spin button on a slot game (again, whether online or on-land) you hit whatever numbers happen to have been up in the RNG cycle at that moment. These numbers dictate the symbols that will appear on each reel on the paylines.

This means that the result of your spin—including any jackpot hits or winning combinations—is determined at the moment you press that spin button, well in advance of the reels actually stopping. It also means that, if you hit the spin button a fraction of a second later, you will get a completely different result.

So, every time you press “Spin” you are hoping to have picked the exact instant when the winning combo has appeared in the constantly moving cycle. It’s a little like playing in the shooting gallery at a carnival. The magic numbers may be flying by at any second, and you are going to try to hit them. The only difference is that, instead of a gun, you are shooting at them with your “Spin” button.

Slot Payout Percentage

Slot machines are programmed to return a certain percent of the money wagered in them over an infinite number of spins. What that means is, although the slot may pay out a bigger percentage or smaller percentage over a small number of spins, over the long term the slot machine will pay out the programmed percentage.

You can view the monthly payout percentages for slot machines in both online and on-land casinos on the slot payouts page at Slot Secrets Online. If you study the charts month after month, you will see that any given casino’s payouts tend to hover around an average figure, with some occasional spikes up for big jackpot payouts that don’t happen very often.

Slotty's Secret Slot Tip #15   Playing at casinos that give back higher payout percentages will save or make you a lot of money. Slot payout percentages are higher in most online casinos than in any U.S. on-land casino.

You will also notice in our charts that the slot payout percentages tend to be higher in the online casinos. Online casinos can give back more to players because they don’t have to maintain expensive buildings and staff.

Slot Machine Hit Frequency

In the long run, playing at casinos that give back higher payout percentages will save you a lot of money. Over the long-term, you will keep more of your profits and give up less on your losses.

In the short run, a slot machine’s hit frequency will tend to mean more to your play than its payout percentage. Hit frequency is what most players mean when they talk about a slot being loose or tight, whether they realize it or not.

Slotty's Secret Slot Tip #16   It's hit frequency that makes the difference in whether a slot seems loose or tight.

High hit frequency slot machines, such as the new 20-line slots with wild and scatter symbols, free spins and bonus rounds, generally give back lots of small pays (often less than your original bet on the spin). This allows you to keep playing for a longer time.

Low hit frequency slot machines, like the long-time favorite Double Diamond that you find in on-land casinos, or its equivalents (Frost Bite, for example) in the online casinos, usually pay off less often—often a lot less often. A high-hit-frequency slot machine may pay off on 35-50+% of your spins. A low-hit-frequency slot machine may pay off on 10-25% of your spins. However, the low-hit-frequency machines are able to pay off larger amounts more frequently. In a sense, they are “saving up” all those smaller payouts to give you more frequent big scores.

To put it in technical language, the lower the hit frequency, especially of hits that pay less than your original bet on a spin, the shorter the slot game’s jackpot cycle—the number of spins it theoretically takes to hit all possible winning combinations, including top prize. What this means to the player is that the top jackpot hits quite frequently when compared to the higher hit frequency multi-line slot games.

It also means you need more of a bankroll to get you through the inevitable dry spells.

If you hit one of the bigger jackpots (or a few of the medium jackpots) on a low-hit-frequency machine, you will probably have a score to brag about. If you’re going for a score, this is much better than a win every other spin that is less than your original bet. On the other hand, if you don’t hit a score pretty quickly, your initial deposit will probably be gone!

Slotty's Secret Slot Tip #17   To hit more big scores of a size to brag about, select machines that give fewer payouts.

 

How Can You Tell?

We always try to play at places with good payout percentages. And with a winning slot strategy, we use both high-hit-frequency and low-hit-frequency slot machines at different times.

How can you tell whether a slot is a high-hit-frequency or low-hit-frequency machine?

This is trickier than you would think. You can’t just watch a machine for a little while to see if it seems to be running hot or cold. That’s because results over the short term have very little meaning. In other words, you might have just happened to arrive at the machine in time for a little hot or cold streak that has nothing to do with its overall hit frequency, and you can't tell whether the machine will be hot or cold for you. Payouts often come in batches, with long periods between hits.

So what do you do? Here are the secrets:

High hit frequency clues: The more symbols on a machine, the more chance there tends to be of a winning combination. Also, the more combinations that a machine pays off on, the more frequently you’ll hit. On top of that, the more lines you play, the more of a chance you have to hit at least something.

Low hit frequency clues: The more money that goes into the biggest jackpots or bonus rounds, the less money that is available for small pays, and the fewer hits. Also, the larger the smallest payout on the pay table, the less often you’ll hit and the meatier your occasional payouts will be. (Look for a minimum payout of at least 4 for 2 coins to avoid too many small payouts. Symbols that double payouts also help.) In addition, the fewer symbols and winning combinations, the lower hit frequency you’ll have.

How to "Clock a Slot": Another way to get a working estimate of the hit frequency on a slot on-land or online is to count the number of payouts or "worthwhile payouts" (if a big score is your goal) over 500 spins or more. (The longer the evaluation period, the more accurate your calculation will be.)

If you’re looking for a slot to hit a score on, don’t count any payout of two for one or less. On slots with lower hit frequencies, the hits that make a real contribution toward your profits are more likely to occur at the rate of one in 12, one in 18 or even as few as one in 25.

If the average number of bigger payouts is in the area of 12 or more per one hundred spins, it is probably too high to offer a fair chance of profit if you're going for a score. Too much of the payback percentage is consumed in smaller payouts.

Should your count indicate as few as four or five qualifying payouts per one hundred spins, then there may be too many small money-back hits and insufficient big payouts for a reasonable chance of one larger payout. This is a slot that may be worth clocking a bit longer.

In general, if we're going for a score, we become interested when the "worthwhile payout" count is between six and nine per one hundred spins.

If, on the other hand, we're in the part of the win cycle where we want to play longer, with the minimum of big swings, we look for the highest hit frequency we can find. A slot like Caesar's Empire, for example, will give you a payout about 50% of the time!

Watch for the Monthly Slot Reports at Slot Secrets: Every month we will be reporting on two new slot machines, and every report will be going into our permanent slot machine library to help you make wise choices for your own winning slot play.

AND NEVER FORGET THE FUNDAMENTAL SLOT MACHINE SECRETS...

Never forget the other easy to advanced things a slot player can do to hold his or her own and increase their chance of hitting a big jackpot on today's slot machines. To read more about these slot machine secrets, follow the links below.

1. Play at the casinos with the best slot machine payouts.

Higher payout percentages apply even to progressive jackpot slots. How do you find the slot machines with the best payouts? As fellow slot players, we’ve gathered all that information for you. You can find the current slot payouts for the best online casinos, as well as on-land casinos all over the U.S., on our Best Slot Machine Payouts page.

And we’ll let you in on another slot secret. If you come back and study those charts many months in a row, you will see that the slots in the online casinos we list have consistently higher payouts than the slot payouts in the on-land casinos anywhere in the U.S.

2. Play slots at reputable online casinos that offer a bonus.

If you only play for progressive jackpots at reputable online casinos, which give players generous bonuses to play on, you have more of a chance to win, no matter what else you do or don't do. Just take a moment and look, really look, at the valuable bonuses you'll find offered on our Hot Bonuses page and throughout Slot Secrets Online. And all you have to do to get this money to play on is click on a link and follow the instructions to collect.

Be sure to check the rest of Slot Secrets Online to learn all aspects of how slot machines work, because the secrets of how to win at slot machines are on every page, and we want you to learn every winning slot machine secret tip available. Our slot machine secrets and winning strategy are here for you. Learn how slot machines work and we'll see you in the slot winners circle!