What Determines When A Slot Machine Will Payout

Slot machines often get a bad rap from gambling writers. But the truth is, slot machines are the perfect gambling activity for certain types of people. They’re easy to understand, they’re easy to play, and they offer the possibility of big winnings.

The unicorns that most gamblers are looking for in the casino, though, are the loosest slot machines. What does that mean?

When a gambler describes a slot machine as “loose” or “tight,” she’s usually referring to the payback percentage for the game. Slots with a higher payback percentage than average are loose, while slots with a lower payback percentage than average are tight. Loose slots usually have a higher hit ratio than tight slots, too.

You’ll find plenty of inaccurate information about how to find the loosest slot machines in the casino. I try to avoid most of those inaccuracies in this post, but I do want to begin with a warning:

Probability is the branch of mathematics that deals with how likely an event is to happen. If you want to measure how likely you are to win a jackpot on a slot machine, probability is the way to figure that out. But the word also refers directly to that likelihood. Some times of day are better than others. This isn’t true. Casinos aren’t able to reprogram the. To maximize slot machines payouts, make sure you’re eligible for the bonuses offered. Some newer games avoid the issue by eliminating the option to play fewer paylines than available. A 40-line game might have buttons labeled “Bet 40,” “Bet 80,” “Bet 120,” “Bet 160,” and “Bet 200,” giving you options to bet one, two, three.

The probabilities involved with slot machines are “opaque.” That means you don’t have any way of knowing what the payback percentage for any particular slot machine game is. The random number generator that determines the outcomes is programmed to have each symbol come up with a certain probability, but there’s no way of knowing if that number has been set to 1/6 or 1/60. Even observing a large number of spins only provides limited insight into these probabilities.

You do know what the payouts are for the various combinations. But since that’s only half the equation, you can’t really know whether a game is loose or tight except anecdotally. I’m going to assume that anecdotal evidence has some value, but in terms of math, science, and statistics, anecdotal has no value at all.

1- Look for the Loose Slot Machines in the Locations Where Loose Slot Machines Are Found

Casino mapping is a real thing, but it’s not as simple as some gamblers would have you believe. If finding the loose slot machines were as easy as just playing the games located nearest the walkways, everyone would play those games to the exclusion of the other games.

That being said, it might be worth giving those games a try if they look like fun. They’re not more likely to be tighter than the other machines than any other game on the casino floor.

Liberty slots casino no deposit bonus codes 2017. I’ve read that some areas in the casino have lower payout machines than others, and it might be wise to avoid games in those areas. These might include:

  • The main slot machine floor. These games probably see the most action, so it would make sense for them to have lower payback percentages.
  • Near the table games. These games see more than their fair share of action, too. The same reasoning would apply.
  • Near the poker room. I’ve seen some gamblers swear that these are the worst machines in the casino. You have to wonder about a poker player who spends a lot of time playing slots, though.

Of course, there are other locations where the loosest machines might be located. Depending on whom you believe, these might include:

  • Anywhere that gets more traffic than usual. For example, if a slot machine is located near the elevators, it might have higher payouts to attract play from someone who might not otherwise play.
  • Anywhere that another gambler recommends. This is, of course, the classic mistake—relying on anecdotal evidence. It’s possible, though, that you might find a slot machine player who’s been paying close attention and knows where the loose machines are.

In fact, that leads me to my next point…

2- Don’t Be Afraid to Ask

The obvious person to ask about the location in the casino of the loosest slot machines is someone who works there. This isn’t a guarantee that she’ll be able to direct you to a loose machine, but she might have some insight based on her observations. Depending on how long she’s worked at the casino, she’s probably seen tens of thousands of even hundreds of thousands of gamblers over her career there. She might have noticed that a lot of them seem to be winning on slot machines in a certain location.

In fact, some casino employees even have their own favorite machines. If they play slots, they might have more insight into where the hottest machines are than you could imagine. Don’t pay much attention to the employee who tells you where last week’s big winner hit, though. That has no predictive value at all.

If you’re dealing with a cocktail waitress, it’s a good idea to tip generously. For that matter, no matter what they do at the casino, if they try to help you find a loose gambling machine, tip them. At some casinos, employees are forbidden from suggesting specific games. Sometimes you’ll find casino employees who just don’t want to be bothered with such concerns, too. Don’t be a jerk if that’s the case.

3- Don’t Play Slot Machines That AREN’T in Casinos

In towns like Las Vegas, slot machines are everywhere, in all kinds of businesses. Every bar in the city seems to have some slot machines. The airport is full of slot machines, too. You can even find slot machines in the gas stations and convenience stores.

We know one thing for certain about slot machine games in these non-casino locations:

They don’t pay out well. The payback percentage for airport slots in Las Vegas are the worst in the city. Bars aren’t much better, either. The owners and operators of these businesses figure they’re the only game in town and have a captive audience. So they set the payback percentages for those games accordingly.

Casinos, on the other hand, are competing with other casinos for the mindshare and hard-earned dollars of the casino gamblers. Since they’re in competition with the other casinos, they must offer payback percentages that are as good as their competitors’ or better.

This is one ironclad rule for finding the loosest slot machines in the casino:

ONLY play slot machines in a casino, not the slot machines in other businesses. That’s as good a starting point as any. The difference could be as significant as the difference between a 94% payback percentage and a 74% payback percentage.

https://ninjm7.netlify.app/white-lotus-casino-no-deposit-bonus-codes-may-2017.html. Assuming you’re a conservative, low-stakes player, here’s the difference in predicted hourly loss between those 2 examples:

  • Assume 400 spins per hour at $1.25 per spin, for $500 per hour in action.
  • A game with a 94% payback percentage will see predicted losses of $30/hour.
  • A game with a 74% payback percentage, though, will see predicted losses of $130/hour.

If that difference doesn’t seem significant to you, what are you doing playing penny slots anyway?

4- Look for the Plainest, Most Boring Games with the Fewest Paylines

Generally, the slot machines with lots of paylines have lower payout percentages. They’re able to compensate for this psychologically by having a high hit frequency. With 25 paylines, you might win something on almost every spin, even if it’s an amount lower than the amount you wagered in total.

For example, you might be playing a penny game with a max bet of 5 coins and 25 paylines. You’re betting $1.25 every time you spin the reels. Many times, 1 or 2 paylines might win, but the payout on those bets might only be 50 cents. That’s a lot compared to the nickel you bet on that individual payline, but you bet on 25 paylines, remember?

The human brain gets just as much of an endorphin rush from a “win” like that as it does a profitable win of more than your wager. The brain chemistry can’t tell the difference. That’s why it’s up to you make smart decisions about which games you play. If you can, find an old-fashioned looking slot machine with a single payline right down the middle. It should look mechanical, even though it’s powered by the same random number generator computer program as the other slot machines in the casino.

Since such games have no bonus features or bells and whistles, the casino can afford to have them pay out more than the big fancy games. I had a lot of fun on The Big Lebowski slot machines recently, but I can’t even imagine what such a big impressive game like that must cost a casino. The cost of the machine alone must be outrageous.

When

5- Stick with the Flat Top Slot Machines

Slot machines can be broadly lumped into 2 different categories:

Best
  • Progressives
  • Flat tops

A flat top slot machine is a game with a jackpot (top prize) of a fixed amount. This amount is usually 1000 times the size of your bet, give or take.

A progressive, on the other hand, has a jackpot that grows bigger as you play. The casino is able to grow the size of the jackpot by taking a tiny percentage of each bet and applying it to the jackpot amount. That amount can be seen as coming directly off the payback percentage for the game. Even if that’s not exactly how it works, when you think of how a payback percentage works, it might as well work that way. You won’t get rich playing flat top machines, but you’ll lose less money on them in the long run.

For that matter, you probably won’t get rich playing progressive slots, either. The odds of winning the jackpot are just terrible, comparable to playing the lottery. Sure, some people win the lottery. But I can’t imagine playing a game with a house edge that large repeatedly, hundreds of times per hour.

6- Play the Highest Denomination Game You Can Afford

You’d probably be surprised to know that penny slots are often as expensive to play (or even more expensive) than dollar slots. Here’s why:

Most penny slots require you to wager 5 credits or more per spin. It’s also hard to resist betting on multiple paylines. It’s easy to find a game with 5 coin bets on each line and with 25 paylines. Before you know it, you’re betting $1.25 on every spin.

But you could switch to a dollar slot machine and probably do a lot better. For one thing, you could just bet a dollar per spin on a single payline. Now you’re betting less per spin than you were on the quarter machine. But what’s really impressive is the difference in payback percentage.

According to The American Casino Guide, the average payback percentage for penny slots on The Strip in Las Vegas is 88.49%. On the other hand, dollar slots on The Strip average 92.63%. That’s a difference of roughly 4%, but what’s the difference in your bottom line?

Suppose you play 600 spins per hour on that penny machine. You’re putting $750 in action each hour–$1.25 per spin multiplied by the 600 spins per hour. With an 88.49% payback percentage, in the long run, you’ll average $663.68 back per hour. That’s an average loss per hour of $86.33.

No play those same 600 spins on a dollar machine, betting only a dollar on each spin. That’s $600 in action multiplied by 92.63% to get an average payback amount of $44.22. You’ll lose HALF the money on the dollar slot as you would the penny slot! That’s a significant difference, and one you should take note of.

Just be careful and read the pay tables. Slot machines vary a lot from one machine to another, and you should always play enough coins to activate the biggest jackpot. If the ratios change based on playing for fewer coins, you want to avoid that game or bet max coin. You might be surprised at how many slot machines DON’T require you to place a max coin bet, too, though.

7- Try Online Slot Machines

Since online casinos don’t have all the brick and mortar expenses of land-based casinos, their games sometimes offer higher payback percentages. You must balance this with the trustworthiness of the casino, though. Some internet casinos are notoriously hard to cash out of.

Of course, if you stick with the casinos recommended on this site, you probably won’t have to worry about that. Our team of casino reviewers and researchers has thoroughly vetted the properties we list here on our site.

And if you take how competitive they are as a measure for how loose their games must be to attract customers, you’ll find that the casinos on the web are even more competitive than the casinos in Las Vegas.

8- Track Your Results and Make Some Assumptions

I recently visited a casino and tracked my results carefully on a machine. Of course, there’s nothing especially scientific about 200 spins on a machine, but you’re still operating from more data than most players if you do this.

It’s not hard to project a payback percentage, either. Start by writing down how much money you put in the machine. Then count how many spins you make on that machine. When you cash out of the machine, take a note of how much you’ve lost. You multiply the number of spins you made by how much you were betting per spin. You divide the total amount of money you lost by how many spins you made. Then you know the average loss per spin and can convert it into a payback percentage.

In my case, I was betting $1.25 per spin, so I put $250 in to action over 200 spins. I lost $50, which amounts to 25 cents per spin. 25 cents divided by $1.25 is 20%, which is the house edge. The payback percentage is the amount you get to keep—in this case, 80%. (You just subtract it from 100%.) Your goal is to find a payback percentage that’s better than average. Tracking your results this way also makes playing slot machines more interesting, because you have something to pay attention to.

There’s no scientific way to find the slot machines with the best payback percentage—the loosest slot machines. We have some ideas that are something more than guesswork, but they’re also a far cry from anything scientific.You can follow every piece of advice in this post and still lose more money at slot machines than you ever thought possible. My suggestion is to keep a careful budget for your gambling, and only play with money you can afford to lose.

Gambling at a casino—especially on slot machines—should be considered an entertainment expense. Budget for it accordingly, and if you occasionally win, great. But don’t count on it.

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Slots machines, as games of chance (rather than skill), are generally more about having fun than they are about making money.

However, there are things you can do to maximize your wins and minimize your losses. For example, by calculating a slot machine’s payout percentage, you can obtain a larger picture idea of how much money you stand to win back. Other tactics include using effective bankroll management techniques, joining a slots club to benefit from its rewards programs, and more.

What Are the Odds of Winning on a Slot Machine?

Slot machine odds used to be easy to calculate. When you’re dealing with three reels, ten symbols on each reel, and a limited pay table, then it’s just a simple math problem. But the rise of electromechanical slot machines and (later) video slots added some complexity to the situation.

How Probability Works

Probability has two meanings. One is the likelihood of whether or not something will happen. The other is the branch of mathematics that calculates that likelihood. To understand the odds as they relate to slot machines (or any other gambling game), you have to understand the basic math behind probability.

Don’t worry though. The math isn’t hard. Probability involves addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, all of which you learned in middle school.

The first principle of probability is that every event has a probability of between 0 and 1. If something has no chance of ever happening, then its probability is 0. If something will always happen, no matter what, then its probability is 1.

Probability is, therefore, always a fraction. It can be expressed in multiple ways, as a decimal, as a fraction, as a percentage, and as odds.

A simple example is a coin flip. The probability of getting heads when you flip a coin is 50%. That’s common sense, but how is it determined mathematically?

You simply take the total number of possible outcomes, and divide the outcome you’re trying to determine the probability of it by that number. There are two possibilities when flipping a coin, heads or tails, but only one of them is heads. That’s 1 divided by 2, which can be expressed as ½, 50%, 0.5, or 1 to 1 odds.

What Slot Machines Pay Best

Odds are expressed as the number of ways something won’t happen versus the number of ways that something will happen. For example, if you’re rolling a single six-sided die, and you want to know the odds of rolling a six, you’re looking at 5 to 1 odds. There are five ways to roll something other than a six, and only one way of rolling a six.

When you want to determine the probability of multiple things happening, you use addition or multiplication, depending on whether you want to determine whether one OR the other event will occur, or whether you want to determine whether one event AND the other event will occur.

If you’re looking at an “OR” question, you add the probabilities together. If you’re looking at an “AND” question, you multiply the probabilities by each other.

What Determines When A Slot Machine Will Payouts

So if you want to know what the probability of rolling two dice and having one or the other come up with a six, you add the probabilities together. 1/6 + 1/6 = 2/6, which is rounded down to 1/3.

If you want to know the probability of rolling two dice and having BOTH of them come up six, you multiply the probabilities. 1/6 X 1/6 = 1/36.

How Slot Machine Odds USED to Work

Early slot machines were mechanical devices. They had three metal reels that had ten possible stops each.

Slot Machine Payout Percentage

To calculate the odds of a single symbol appearing on a reel, you just divide the one symbol by the total number of potential outcomes. So if you had one cherry on a reel, your odds of hitting that cherry were 1/10, or 10%.

To calculate the odds of getting three cherries, you multiple 1/10 X 1/10 X 1/10 and get 1/1000, or 0.1%.

If the odds of hitting that symbol are the same as all the others, then you have 10 possible jackpots you can win, which means that your chances of winning SOMETHING are 10/1000, which is 1%.

What Slot Machines Have The Best Payouts

Most people wouldn’t play a slot machine that lost 99 times out of 100, though, so slot machine designers added additional, smaller prizes for getting two symbols out of three for certain symbols. And as long as they paid out less in prizes than the odds of hitting those jackpots, then those slots are guaranteed to make a profit in the long run.

For example, if a prize for hitting three cherries was $1000, you’d be playing a break-even game, but if the prize were $750, it’s easy to see how the casino would be guaranteed a profit. The difference between the odds of winning and the payout odds is where the casino makes its money.

How Slot Machines Work Now

Modern slot machines use a computer program called a random number generator to determine the outcomes of the various spins of the reels. This creates an imaginary reel with a number of symbols limited only by the program in question.

A mechanical slot machine with 256 symbols per reel would be huge, too large to play, much less to build. But a computer can create an imaginary reel with 256 symbols per reel and take up no more space than an iPod Shuffle.

To make things even more interesting and entertaining, slot machine designers can program different probabilities for each symbol to come up. Most symbols might come up once every 256 spins, but others might come up twice as often, while still others might only come up half as often. Pala online casino promo.

This enables slot machine designers and casinos to offer slot machine games with far larger jackpots than they were able to when they were limited by mechanical reels. And they’re able to offer these large jackpots and still generate a healthy profit.

How Does This Relate to Payback Percentages?

The payback percentage is the amount of money that the slot machine is designed to pay out over an enormous number of spins. This number is almost always less than 100%. The difference between 100% and the payback percentage is the house edge, and that’s where the casino makes its profits.

A simple example can help illustrate how this works. Suppose you have a slot machine with three reels with ten symbols on each, and it only pays out when three cherries hit. The odds of winning that jackpot, as we determined earlier, is 1/1000.

If we set the jackpot as $900, and charge $1 per bet, the payout percentage for that game will be 90%, or $900/$1000. Of course, no one would play a slots game which only paid out once in every 1000 spins, which is why there are various smaller payouts programmed in.

There’s no way to tell what the payback percentage on a particular game is unless you have access to the par sheet for that machine. Casino management has that information, but players never have access to that info.

The best slot machine odds are almost always found in real casinos. If you see slot machines in an airport or a bar, be aware that the payback percentages on those games is much lower than you’ll see in a real casino.

How to Win at Slot Machines

Everyone would like to know how to win at slots, but the truth is that winning at slot machines isn’t any harder than losing at slot machines. You put your money in the machine, spin the reels, and hope for the best. Slot machines are meant to be fun; they’re not intended to provide the player with an income.

In fact, the reality is just the opposite. Slots are there to provide the casino owners with an income. How that works is one of the subjects of this page.

On the other hand, you can minimize your losses and increase your enjoyment of slots games by understanding how they work. You can also learn which slots pay back the most money. In the long run, the house will still have an edge over you, but understanding how much you can expect to lose in a given venue can help you make better bankroll management decisions.

In fact, it might be a good idea to modify you definition of “winning at slots”. Instead of considering yourself a winner if you bring home a big profit, consider yourself a winner any time you played and had a lot of fun.

How Slots Work

All slot machines in modern casinos use a random number generator (an “RNG) to determine the results of each spin. An RNG is a tiny computer that does nothing but constantly generate numbers. When you push the spin button, that microcomputer selects a number which determines the outcome. In fact, this happens before the reels have even stopped spinning.

On modern slot machines, the reels are just there for show. From a practical standpoint, you could put a quarter in a machine, push a button, and have the screen flash: “You lose!” or “You win $10”. The mechanism that determined the outcome would be the same, but who would want to play a game like that, especially if you know that the house has a mathematical edge over the player.

The spinning reels, the sound effects, and the bonus games are all there to make the game more interesting to play. If you don’t like the artwork, the music, or any other aspect of a slots game, don’t bother playing it, because those are the real rewards of playing. The chance of getting lucky and winning a jackpot is a real reward, too, but don’t ignore the other aspects of the game.

The random number generator is programmed to pay back a certain percentage of the money paid into it over a period of time. This period of time is known in gambling math as “the long run”, and it’s a lot longer than most people think. We’re talking about tens of thousands of spins, not dozens or hundreds.

This percentage that’s programmed into these machines is always less than 100%. If a slots game were programmed to pay back more than 100% of the money put into it, it would lose money for the casino.

Casinos aren’t in business to lose money.

The trick is to find slot machines that have the highest payout percentages.

Which Slots Pay Back the Most Money

If every slot machine game in the world had a payback percentage posted on the machine somewhere, it would be easy to determine which slots pay back the most money. You could limit your play to machines with a payback percentage of over 95% for example.

It’s too bad casinos don’t provide that information on specific games, though.

You can find information about specific locations and their payback percentages, though. Some gambling guides and magazines publish this information. For example, The American Casino Guide provides certified information about the payout percentages in various states. Not all states reveal this information, but it’s not a huge leap of logic to expect better payback percentages in states that do reveal this information.

For example, the overall payback percentage for slots in Black Hawk, Colorado is 92.8%. In Central City, Colorado, it’s 92.93%, and in Cripple Creek, it’s 93.66%. Alabama doesn’t release the numbers on their payback percentages.

Which casinos do you think offer the better game?

Best payout slot machine

A couple of guidelines hold true no matter where you play, though. One of those is that payouts are better in large cities with lots of gambling. For example, the payouts in Vegas are higher overall than the payouts in Colorado. And the payouts improve when you play for higher stakes. For example, penny slots in Vegas average around 88% to 91%, but dollars slots average between 93% and 96%. Finally, slot machines at airports usually offer the lowest payouts.

What does that mean for the player? It means that over the long run, if you wager $x on a particular game, you’ll win back $x times the payback percentage for that machine. If you’re playing a dollar slot machine on the Strip in Las Vegas, for example, and the payout percentage is around 93%, then if you place $10,000 in wagers, you’ll win back $9300. You lost $700.

Best Payout Slot Machine

That’s only a long term mathematical expectation, though. In the short run, anything can happen, and that’s what keeps people playing.

How to Maximize Your Winnings and Minimize Your Losses

How Slot Machines Pay Out

There are three ways to maximize your winnings and minimize your losses. The first is to always join the slots club, and always use your member card while you play. Slots club members get a percentage of their play returned to them in the form of casino rewards and cash back. This is normally a tiny percentage (think 0.1% or 0.2%), but it adds up, especially if you play a lot.

Don’t buy into the myth that playing with your slots club card lowers your expected return on the game, either. That’s not true. The random number generator in these games has no way of knowing whether or not you’re using your slots club card or not.

Slot Machine Payout Odds

The second way to increase your winnings and minimize your losses is to use effective bankroll management techniques. This means limiting the amount of time that you play, limiting the amount of money that you’re willing to lose in any session and in any given gambling trip, and finding other fun things to do with your time besides just playing the slots.

Finally, try to play the machines with the highest payout percentage. Over the long run, if you keep playing, you’ll probably eventually wind up a loser at the slots (unless you hit a huge progressive jackpot), but you’ll lose your money more slowly and get more entertainment value for the money you gambled.