. when you've lost the money you budgeted for that particular gambling session. In this instance, walking means straight out of the casino, into your car, and out of the parking lot. There should be no side trips to the cage to cash a check or to the ATM machine to lay your hands on money that you earmarked for other purposes. Whenever you play slots in a land-based casino, a mobile casino, or an online casino like CoolCat, some things should be factored in before you start playing them for real money. This guide will show you the simplest ways to trick the slots and the system, to give you the best return on your playtime. But wait—if it is a machine malfunction, that's on the casino, right? You still get your money, don't you? In October 2016, a New York woman thought she'd won $43 million from a slot machine, but a casino attendant told her that the machine had malfunctioned. To compensate for the error, the casino offered hera free steak dinner. Many experienced players brag about their ability to spot the patterns of the slot machine and stop the reels on the winning combination. 'It comes with experience' they say. On the other hand, there are those players that say that stopping the reels will prevent you from winning. Their reasoning is that the machine knows that. Dec 29, 2015 If you're in a casino, you can assume you're being watched. 'Say someone wins $500,000 on a slot machine jackpot,' says Derk. That's going to get out attention and we'll stop.
- On Casino Slot Machines Should You Stop The Night
- On Casino Slot Machines Should You Stop The
- On Casino Slot Machines Should You Stop The Money
By John Grochowski
Slot machines are the easiest games to play in casinos, but sometimes players are faced with reel dilemmas.
If you're an eagle-eyed player who can spot winning combinations in a microsecond, will putting a quick stop to your reel spin improve your chance of winning?
And what about games with no reels at all, such as the skill-based games from GameCo? Should we really call them slot machines?
It seems the reels themselves sometimes prompt questions from players, and emails about both topics popped up recently.
Let's take the second question first.
To older players who make up a sizable portion of the slot-playing public, some of the new skill-based slots seem more like something you'd have on your PlayStation than casino games.
One example is GameCo's Danger Arena, a first-person shooter in which you're asked to gun down robots as you navigate the aisles and obstacles in a warehouse. Your payback depends on the numberof robots you shoot.
Most skill-based slots at this point leave the skill elements to bonus events, as in Konami's Frogger or IGT's Tulley's Treasure hunt.
But GameCo and other companies breaking into the slot industry are eliminating reel play altogether and making the skill portion the main game.
Is that a slot machine? It is as long as players embrace the games and terminology. After all, the meaning of 'slot machine' has evolved over nearly 140 years.
In the original sense, virtually no games are really slot machines anymore. They don't have coin heads, so there is no slot to drop in coins to activate machines. A few older machines with coinheads remain in play at some locations, but mostly, we buy in with paper currency or tickets.
The term 'slot machine' has been around since the 1880s. It originally referred to any coin-operated device. If you dropped coins into a machine and got a chocolate bar, you were buying yourcandy from a slot machine.
That changed in the 1900s, and slot machine came to mean specifically coin-operated gambling devices. The term has persisted through the elimination of coin slots, and it's almost certain topersist through the changes on modern gambling devices.
And now, let's go back and answer the first question.
As for the stopping the reels as soon as you see a winner on the screen, that not only does not help you win, it actually can hasten your losses.
A reader checked in early in the fall to say she'd just noticed that on many video slot machines, if you hit the spin button again while the reels are in motion, they will stop. The first timeshe tried it, she got a bonus event, and that encouraged her to try it again.
After that, her results were mixed, just as with any other method of play, but it left her wondering if a player who practiced, practiced and practiced could be come adept enough to stop thereels when winning combinations appeared.
Others have had similar thoughts, and a number of years ago I wrote about a player who accidentally double-hit the spin button and saw the reels stop quickly.
Unfortunately for players, stopping the reels early doesn't change your results on 99.99999 percent of slot machines. That's just shy of 100 percent because International Game Technology usedsomething similar in the early skill-based game Blood Life. It was a three-reel game and the skill was in stopping the reels. Each would spin until you touched the glass in front of the reels,and skilled player could get better outcomes.
That's not the case on games in casinos today. Stopping the reels early does not change results, but what it can do is lead to faster play with more spins hour. That can be a realbudget-breaker.
When you play video slots, the random number generator has already determined your outcome by the time the reels are spinning, and you're going to get the same result regardless of whether youstop the reels early or let them halt in their own time.
Let's take the second question first.
To older players who make up a sizable portion of the slot-playing public, some of the new skill-based slots seem more like something you'd have on your PlayStation than casino games.
One example is GameCo's Danger Arena, a first-person shooter in which you're asked to gun down robots as you navigate the aisles and obstacles in a warehouse. Your payback depends on the numberof robots you shoot.
Most skill-based slots at this point leave the skill elements to bonus events, as in Konami's Frogger or IGT's Tulley's Treasure hunt.
But GameCo and other companies breaking into the slot industry are eliminating reel play altogether and making the skill portion the main game.
Is that a slot machine? It is as long as players embrace the games and terminology. After all, the meaning of 'slot machine' has evolved over nearly 140 years.
In the original sense, virtually no games are really slot machines anymore. They don't have coin heads, so there is no slot to drop in coins to activate machines. A few older machines with coinheads remain in play at some locations, but mostly, we buy in with paper currency or tickets.
The term 'slot machine' has been around since the 1880s. It originally referred to any coin-operated device. If you dropped coins into a machine and got a chocolate bar, you were buying yourcandy from a slot machine.
That changed in the 1900s, and slot machine came to mean specifically coin-operated gambling devices. The term has persisted through the elimination of coin slots, and it's almost certain topersist through the changes on modern gambling devices.
And now, let's go back and answer the first question.
As for the stopping the reels as soon as you see a winner on the screen, that not only does not help you win, it actually can hasten your losses.
A reader checked in early in the fall to say she'd just noticed that on many video slot machines, if you hit the spin button again while the reels are in motion, they will stop. The first timeshe tried it, she got a bonus event, and that encouraged her to try it again.
After that, her results were mixed, just as with any other method of play, but it left her wondering if a player who practiced, practiced and practiced could be come adept enough to stop thereels when winning combinations appeared.
Others have had similar thoughts, and a number of years ago I wrote about a player who accidentally double-hit the spin button and saw the reels stop quickly.
Unfortunately for players, stopping the reels early doesn't change your results on 99.99999 percent of slot machines. That's just shy of 100 percent because International Game Technology usedsomething similar in the early skill-based game Blood Life. It was a three-reel game and the skill was in stopping the reels. Each would spin until you touched the glass in front of the reels,and skilled player could get better outcomes.
That's not the case on games in casinos today. Stopping the reels early does not change results, but what it can do is lead to faster play with more spins hour. That can be a realbudget-breaker.
When you play video slots, the random number generator has already determined your outcome by the time the reels are spinning, and you're going to get the same result regardless of whether youstop the reels early or let them halt in their own time.
Randomly generated numbers are mapped to potential results, and that map tells the reels where to stop. If the RNG has spit out a random number that tells the first reel to stop on a singlebar, then you're going to get a single bar — regardless of whether you hit the button a second time for a quick stop or just let them take their own sweet time.
On Casino Slot Machines Should You Stop The Night
By bringing the reels to a quick stop, you're immediately in position to bet again. The amount of time it normally takes the reels to spin is cut out of the equation. If you keep stopping thereels, you spin many more times per hour.
What does that do to your bankroll?
Let's say you bet 40 cents per spin at 500 spins per hour on a penny slot that has a average 90 percent return to players. You can play more than 500 spins per hour without quick stops, but 500is a nice, steady pace that lets you watch your wins and stop to sip your drink.
At that pace, your average hourly risk is $200 with an average loss of $20.
What if you increase that pace to 1,000 spins per hour? Then total wagers increase to $400 and average loss to $40.
And what if you quick stop spin after spin, focusing intently on slot play and increasing your pace to 2,000 spins per hour? Your wrist would get tired, you might get a little headachy withsome eyestrain, but your bet total would rise to $800 with an average loss of $80.
In the wagering world, speed favors whoever has the mathematical edge. In blackjack, faster games are better for advantage players including card counters, but worse for less-skilled players.
On the slots, you can't change the house edge. Quick-stopping the reels doesn't help you, but it does help the house.
So really, there's no reel dilemma. Unless you're just in a hurry to win or lose and then move on, let the reels stop in their own sweet time.
'How do I know when I should quit playing a particular machine?' This is probably the most frequent question I am asked. Although it's a basic query, the answer is not so straightforward.
On Casino Slot Machines Should You Stop The
• when you're playing a negative-expectation game (one in which the casino has the edge and over the long run you're mathematically guaranteed to lose). Serious gamblers and professionals, whose main interest is profit, will tell you to walk away from that kind of game even before you drop in a single coin. However, the goal of casual players is entertainment; they're looking for the fun factor. They want to play a variety of machines and they don't want to learn complicated strategies. They're hoping for the big win and are depending on luck. However, math can still be their ally. They can 'walk' often, bouncing from machine to machine with wild abandon. The more time they spend changing machines instead of actually playing them, the less they will lose. The money they don't lose is money won!
• when a promotion -- one that made a bad or so-so play a good one -- ends. We've played many negative-expectation games when a promotion transformed the casino edge into an advantage for the player - but when the promotion was over, we walked.
On Casino Slot Machines Should You Stop The Money
Common Sense Tells You to Walk
• when you're hungry, tired, or need a bathroom break. When you haven't eaten for a long time, your blood sugar drops and you can't think clearly. When your eyes start to blur from staring too long at a video screen or spinning reels and when your shoulders, arms, and back start to burn from sitting too long in the same position, you will not make wise decisions.
• when the environment is not pleasant, comfortable, or healthy. I often have to change machines when the air-conditioning is blasting Arctic air directly down on my already-aching neck and shoulders. Another typical 'move' situation comes when the smoke from the cigarette of the person right beside me is drifting straight into my poor allergy-suffering sinuses. You may want to move if the seat is uncomfortable or your chatterbox neighbor is a whining pessimist or a constant complainer.
• when the machine you're playing has a fuzzy or jumpy screen that gives you a headache, or the bill acceptor doesn't work and you hate to feed coins, or there is a sticky video poker button that causes you to make mistakes on your card holding.
• when you've lost the money you budgeted for that particular gambling session. In this instance, walking means straight out of the casino, into your car, and out of the parking lot. There should be no side trips to the cage to cash a check or to the ATM machine to lay your hands on money that you earmarked for other purposes.
• when your partner wants you to quit and join him or her in a non-gambling activity. I don't have exact statistics on how many relationships break up in a casino, but I suspect there are many. Try to consider these 'interruptions' as desirable breaks from the intensity of gambling. Besides, even gamblers need to stop and smell the roses.
Emotions Tell You to Walk
• when you reach your personal win/loss limit.
• when you're losing AND it's getting to you. A 'fresh start' on a new machine or a short break can do wonders for your mood.
• when you've been up and down for a long period of playing time and finally get even or up a little. Being on a gambling roller coaster is an exhilarating but exhausting ride, and sometimes Brad and I choose to quit a session when we have finally achieved a small win.
• when you're getting bored or you just aren't having fun.
• when you win a jackpot. However, this is not for the reason that most people give when they do so: 'Now this machine won't be due for another jackpot for a long time.' Remember, there is no little computer chip that tells the machine not to give another jackpot right away. The machine has the same mathematical chance to give a jackpot on the next hand as a week later. However, there IS a valid psychological reason for many people to walk after a big win: It's fun to CELEBRATE! The joy of winning is a universal human emotion. Stop and savor the feeling.