When you play slot machines, there’s not much you can do to change the results. You can’t use strategy, and finding a machine with a high return to player percentage is usually a matter of luck.
But this doesn’t mean that you can’t take a few steps to improve your results and enhance your gaming experience. These same steps can help you avoid making too many embarrassing mistakes when you play slots, too.
Here are five ways to avoid making embarrassing mistakes when you play slot machines. And if you read all the way to the end of the article, you’re going to finally learn the hidden truth about slot machine play.
Slot placement isn’t random. Although casinos would like you to think that everything on the floor is. Nov 27, 2020 A reel-spinning slot machine typically features 3 or 5 reels/cylinders with symbols and blanks printed on them. Matching these symbols in certain combinations leads to a winning payout. Video slots play the same, but they may have up to 7 reels, each representing three rows of five symbols. At first glance it seems online slot machines are a 100% game of chance. And they really are, at least in the terms of a single game round. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t influence your chances by using the right betting strategy and choosing the right game to play.
1 – Play for Free
I know that there are as many gamblers that love to play slots more than all of the other games in the casino combined. In every casino I’ve been in, there are at least as many slot machine players as other gamblers sitting around and losing their hard-earned money.
The reason I mention this is because most of the people reading this article are going to ignore the advice in this first section. They aren’t interested in doing anything except feeling the rush of a winning spin and having high hopes of winning a jackpot.
But the smartest thing to do if you want to avoid embarrassing yourself while playing slot machines is to play free slots before you play real money slots. I understand that free slots aren’t as exciting as real money slots and that you can’t win playing for free. But the other side of this is that you can’t lose when you play free slot machines either.
Even if you ignore the fact that you can’t lose when you play slot machines for free, there’s another important reason why you should play for free before playing for real money.
You can’t play slots for free in your local casino, so you’re going to have to sign up at a mobile or online slots casino for free play.
2 – Walk Before You Run
Slot machines come in all types of variations. If you want a simple machine, you can still find three-reel machines that are easy to understand. And if you want to see slots with revolutionary features, you can find all kinds of flashy video slot machines with bonus rounds, special mini games, and just about anything else you can think of.
While many newer slot machines are fun to play and have all sorts of extra things going on, the truth is that these machines can be confusing. When I talk to someone that’s just getting started playing slot machines, I give them a piece of simple advice.
I tell them to find a simple three-reel slot machine that has a clear pay table. If you plan to adhere to this advice, make sure you understand the pay table, and take things slow. Put a few dollars in the machine and hit the spin button or pull the lever. Look at where the reels stop and see if you won anything.
Of course, you don’t really have to know all of the pay tables, because the machine takes care of all of the losses and wins. But I like to know what’s going on, so I prefer simpler machines over the newer flashy machines.
Free Slot Machine
3 – Play in Isolation
The best way to avoid doing anything embarrassing while you play slots is to play by yourself. The good news is that slots are perfect for this.
You can play slots at an online or mobile casino in private. Even if you play slot machines in a live casino, you can usually find a machine where no one is playing beside you. Of course, some gamblers play slot machines because they can find people to interact with when they play.
The point is that no matter what your goal is when you play slot machines, you can find a situation that works for you. I prefer to play slots without being bothered, so I play them at home most of the time.
I only play particular types of slot machines, and it’s easy to find what I want when I play at an online casino. I only play slot machines with a top jackpot amount of at least $100,000 and a wager amount of $1 or less per spin. It’s not always easy to find these machines when I gamble in a live casino.
4 – Bonuses Cover Many Mistakes
When you look at online and mobile casinos, you see all kinds of bonus offers. Some of these bonuses are $10,000 and higher. And almost every bonus you see is designed for slot machine players.
This is good news because you need a big bankroll if you’re going to play slots. Many slots players wager over $1,000 every hour, so you need as much money as you can get when you’re chasing a big jackpot.
The biggest mistake you could make is probably choosing to play slot machines in the first place. I cover this in the next section, but for now, you need to get as much money as you can when you play slots. A big slot machine bonus is the best way to make your bankroll bigger.
Something that most gamblers don’t know is that all of these big slots bonus offers come with some conditions. Most of them have conditions that make it almost impossible to come out ahead, no matter how big the bonus is.
Read the terms until you completely understand the bonus situation. The odds are that you’re going to keep playing slots until you run out of money anyway, but you still need to understand what you’re getting into before you get a slot machine bonus.
5 – The Truth About Slot Machines
The truth about slot machines is something that most slots players don’t want to hear. The truth is that you should simply stop playing slot machines. They’re some of the worst games in the casino, and they take your money faster than almost any other game in the casino.
You can risk more money playing slots every hour than most other casino games even if you’re just betting $1 or $2 on every spin. And the casino edge is huge compared to many other games like blackjack, baccarat, and video poker.
I admit that slot machines do offer some things that most other casino games offer. You can win a large jackpot on a small wager. But the odds of hitting a slots jackpot are small. In fact, most slots players never win a jackpot over $5,000 in their entire life.
If you’re stuck on playing slots, and aren’t willing to learn how to play any of the gambling options with better odds, the main thing you need to do is learn how to limit your slots losses.
The only way to do this is to risk less when you play slot machines. This means you need to find slot machines with lower wager limits and play fewer spins than most players. Of course, many slots players find fewer spins boring, but they also lose more money over time than slower players.
Conclusion
Don’t jump into playing for real money before you try playing slots for free. You can’t play free slots in a land-based casino, but you can easily find free slots games on your phone or computer.
Start with simple slot machines before you play the machines with bonus games and special features. The more advanced games can be confusing to beginning slots players.
To avoid embarrassing situations, play slots by yourself. When you get a big bonus to play real money slots, the bonus helps overcome many mistakes. And finally, don’t forget what you learned about the truth of slots play!
The gaming industry is big business in the U.S., contributing an estimated US$240 billion to the economy each year, while generating $38 billion in tax revenues and supporting 17 million jobs.
What people may not realize is that slot machines, video poker machines and other electronic gaming devices make up the bulk of all that economic activity. At casinos in Iowa and South Dakota, for example, such devices have contributed up to 89 percent of annual gaming revenue.
Spinning-reel slots in particular are profit juggernauts for most casinos, outperforming table games like blackjack, video poker machines and other forms of gambling.
What about slot machines makes them such reliable money makers? In part, it has something to do with casinos’ ability to hide their true price from even the savviest of gamblers.
The price of a slot
An important economic theory holds that when the price of something goes up, demand for it tends to fall.
But that depends on price transparency, which exists for most of the day-to-day purchases we make. That is, other than visits to the doctor’s office and possibly the auto mechanic, we know the price of most products and services before we decide to pay for them.
Slots may be even worse than the doctor’s office, in that most of us will never know the true price of our wagers. Which means the law of supply and demand breaks down.
Casino operators usually think of price in terms of what is known as the average or expected house advantage on each bet placed by players. Basically, it’s the long-term edge that is built into the game. For an individual player, his or her limited interaction with the game will result in a “price” that looks a lot different.
For example, consider a game with a 10 percent house advantage – which is fairly typical. This means that over the long run, the game will return 10 percent of all wagers it accepts to the casino that owns it. So if it accepts $1 million in wagers over 2 million spins, it would be expected to pay out $900,000, resulting in a casino gain of $100,000. Thus from the management’s perspective, the “price” it charges is the 10 percent it expects to collect from gamblers over time.
Individual players, however, will likely define price as the cost of the spin. For example, if a player bets $1, spins the reels and receives no payout, that’ll be the price – not 10 cents.
So who is correct? Both, in a way. While the game has certainly collected $1 from the player, management knows that eventually 90 cents of that will be dispensed to other players.
A player could never know this, however, given he will only be playing for an hour or two, during which he may hope a large payout will make up for his many losses and then some. And at this rate of play it could take years of playing a single slot machine for the casino’s long-term advantage to become evident.
Short-term vs. long-term
This difference in price perspective is rooted in the gap between the short-term view of the players and the long-term view of management. This is one of the lessons I’ve learned in my more than three decades in the gambling industry analyzing the performance of casino games and as a researcher studying them.
Let’s consider George, who just got his paycheck and heads to the casino with $80 to spend over an hour on a Tuesday night. There are basically three outcomes: He loses everything, hits a considerable jackpot and wins big, or makes or loses a little but manages to walk away before the odds turn decidedly against him.
Of course, the first outcome is far more common than the other two – it has to be for the casino to maintain its house advantage. The funds to pay big jackpots come from frequent losers (who get wiped out). Without all these losers, there can be no big winners – which is why so many people play in the first place.
Specifically, the sum of all the individual losses is used to fund the big jackpots. Therefore, to provide enticing jackpots, many players must lose all of their Tuesday night bankroll.
What is less obvious to many is that the long-term experience rarely occurs at the player level. That is, players rarely lose their $80 in a uniform manner (that is, a rate of 10 percent per spin). If this were the typical slot experience, it would be predictably disappointing. But it would make it very easy for a player to identify the price he’s paying.
Raising the price
Buy Slot Machine
Ultimately, the casino is selling excitement, which is comprised of hope and variance. Even though a slot may have a modest house advantage from management’s perspective, such as 4 percent, it can and often does win all of George’s Tuesday night bankroll in short order.
This is primarily due to the variance in the slot machine’s pay table – which lists all the winning symbol combinations and the number of credits awarded for each one. While the pay table is visible to the player, the probability of producing each winning symbol combination remains hidden. Of course, these probabilities are a critical determinant of the house advantage – that is, the long-term price of the wager.
This rare ability to hide the price of a good or service offers an opportunity for casino management to raise the price without notifying the players – if they can get away with it.
Casino managers are under tremendous pressure to maximize their all-important slot revenue, but they do not want to kill the golden goose by raising the “price” too much. If players are able to detect these concealed price increases simply by playing the games, then they may choose to play at another casino.
Is There A Particular Slot Machine Better At Playing Against
This terrifies casino operators, as it is difficult and expensive to recover from perceptions of a high-priced slot product.
Getting away with it
Consequently, many operators resist increasing the house advantages of their slot machines, believing that players can detect these price shocks.
Our new research, however, has found that increases in the casino advantage have produced significant gains in revenue with no signs of detection even by savvy players. In multiple comparisons of two otherwise identical reel games, the high-priced games produced significantly greater revenue for the casino. These findings were confirmed in a second study.
Further analysis revealed no evidence of play migration from the high-priced games, despite the fact their low-priced counterparts were located a mere 3 feet away.
Importantly, these results occurred in spite of the egregious economic disincentive to play the high-priced games. That is, the visible pay tables were identical on both the high- and low-priced games, within each of the two-game pairings. The only difference was the concealed probabilities of each payout.
Armed with this knowledge, management may be more willing to increase prices. And for price-sensitive gamblers, reel slot machines may become something to avoid.