Gambling authorities are there to ensure that the gaming industry is operating correctly. Slot machines are the loudest and most colorful attractions in a casino. With their fun themes and large jackpot values, they’re designed to pull you in and drain you of your money in small increments. Though slot machines always favor the house, you can use a few tricks to help you beat the odds.
- How To Win Slot Machines Gta 5
- Best Slot Machines To Win On
- How To Win Slot Machine In The Philippines
Your chances of winning with slot machines vary from one game to the next. You may first look to a game’s return to player (RTP) to determine your odds. RTP shows how much you can expect to win from a game in the long run. If a slot features 97% RTP, then it’ll theoretically pay back $97 for every $100 wagered.
Many online slots providers offer payout percentages for their games. You can usually find this info in the help screen or simply google it. Volatility is another important factor towards determining your winnings. It measures how closely short-term results line up with the RTP.
Unfortunately, volatility isn’t easily accessible. Most games don’t offer a volatility rating like they do payout percentages. Luckily, you can figure how volatile a slot is through one simple way. I’ll discuss this method along with other ways that you can measure your short-term odds of winning.
Why Is Volatility Important to Your Slots Results?
Slot machines offer a wide range of payouts. They deliver small prizes, jackpots, and bonuses. You earn more money for landing combinations with high odds. A prize that only hits 1 in every 500,000 spins will pay far more than a prize that’s delivered 1 in each 1,000 rounds. The former type of payouts are what make slot machines exciting. However, they also increase the volatility.
The house must retain its edge with each slot to make profits. Therefore, they can only program big payouts to hit every so often. Meanwhile, they program smaller prizes to be delivered more frequently. Low payouts help pad your bankroll as you chase bigger wins. In summary, larger payouts make slot machines more unpredictable. Low-paying prizes, on the other hand, decrease the volatility and see you win more often.
You should consider volatility whenever choosing a slot machine. Assuming you have a large bankroll, then you may not be too affected by short-term unpredictability. If you’re hoping to stretch out a small bankroll, then you should look for less-volatile slots. These will bring more payouts and keep you in the game longer.
Jackpots Tell Everything
You might already know what kind of volatility you’re comfortable with. But how do you determine the predictability of a slot machine? In the best-case scenario, you’ll choose a game that offers a volatility rating. Some slot machines feature this rating in the help screen.
For example, you might see a game’s volatility rated at 3 out of 5 stars. This figure means that the game falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Again, though, most slots don’t offer this information.
Here’s a comparison to illustrate this point:
Slot #1
- A slot machine offers a $3,000 progressive jackpot.
- Based on the top prize, this game’s volatility is likely very low.
Slot #2
- A slot boasts a $2 million progressive jackpot.
- This huge top prize indicates a highly volatile game.
Remember, this method is rather rudimentary. However, the jackpot can still provide quick information on a slot machine’s proposed volatility. You should focus on the seeded amount when dealing with progressive jackpots. After all, the seed amount represents what providers must pour into the game.
Two games could feature identical $100,000 jackpots. But if one is seeded at $10,000 and another at $5,000, then the latter will probably be less volatile. After all, the provider doesn’t need to put as much money into the game in this case.
Other Factors that Determine Volatility
You can only learn so much by looking at the jackpot alone. Therefore, you should consider the following factors to get a truly accurate determination of volatility.
Size of Other Payouts
The jackpot isn’t the only payout that can be large. Some slot machines feature several large prizes beyond the jackpot. I consider any payout worth 500 coins or more to be big. Assuming a game boasts 3-4 or more prizes like this, and then it’s quite volatile. In contrast, games that don’t feature many, or any, payouts worth 500 coins will pay more consistently. They don’t have large prizes that they must make up for by putting you through numerous losing streaks.
Bonus Rounds
Most slot machines offer bonuses, including free spins, pick’em rounds, re-spins, and second-screen rounds. These bonuses are meant to increase entertainment value by introducing different gameplay. However, they can also feature big prizes. In some cases, the top bonus payout is larger than the jackpot. Such bonus prizes ramp up a slot machine’s volatility.
Random Features
In addition to bonuses, slots can also offer random features, including extra wild symbols, additional scatters, and expanding wilds. For instance, a slot might randomly throw more wild symbols onto the reels. Or, it could turn a regular symbol into an expanding wild. Such features help turn losses into wins and wins into even bigger prizes. However, these random payouts also take away from the regular wins.
Cascading Reels
This feature refers to when symbols from winning combinations disappear. Icons from above fall into their places and potentially create more wins. Cascading reels give you an opportunity to net more payouts in a single round. However, they’re yet another feature that boosts the volatility level. After all, cascading reels give you the opportunity to net lots of payouts in a single spin. You’ll go through plenty of rounds where you don’t win anything with these games.
Number of Winning Ways
Many modern slots offer countless ways to win. Some games now boast hundreds of thousands or even millions of winning ways. These Megaways slots feature reels that hold a varying amount of symbols. Certain games allow reels to hold up to 12 icons. This format is further enhanced by the lack of paylines. With Megaways, you form wins by landing symbols in adjacent reels. I’ve seen online slot machines that offer between 117,649 and 60,446,176 ways. This sheer number of winning possibilities is definitely exciting. However, the fact that you can unlock so many ways also makes the payouts less consistent.
Should You Play Volatile Slot Machines?
The key theme here is that volatile slots boast big jackpots and/or other features. These games are more exciting than less-volatile games, but they also don’t pay as frequently. You must weigh how you feel about waiting on payouts versus chasing big jackpots and bonus prizes. If the latter excites you most, then you shouldn’t have any trouble dealing with volatility.
However, you’ll likely experience frustrating times where you quickly lose your bankroll. These situations are often the result of volatile slot machines. Assuming you want to maximize your entertainment time while playing slots, then you should opt for more-consistent games. Sure, playing for 1,000-coin jackpots and only being able to unlock one bonus feature isn’t quite as thrilling. But you’ll win a higher volume of payouts on less-volatile slot machines.
Conclusion
If you’ve ever wondered why you go through extreme hot and cold streaks with slots, then you can look to volatility. Volatility determines how much you can expect to win in the short run. You can choose less-volatile games to boost the number of payouts you win in the immediate future.
Unfortunately, the same slots don’t offer big jackpots, Megaways, and multiple bonuses. You must take a greater risk when choosing slot machines that offer the latter. Everything comes down to your personal preferences. Are you hoping to stretch your bankroll, or spin for the largest jackpots and bonuses?
You can’t rely on jackpot size alone, though. Some slots are really volatile, because they offer large bonus prizes, Megaways, random features, and/or cascading reels. That said, you should take these other factors into consideration to get a more-accurate depiction on a game’s volatility.
I went to a party Saturday night, and whenever I go to parties, someone inevitably learns what I do for a living. (I write about gambling.)
This always leads to one of two or three outcomes:
- I hear a gambling anecdote about my new friend or one of their friends
- My new friend asks me how to win money gambling. Sometimes they specifically ask how to choose the winning slot machine
- Both #1 and #2 (this is actually the most common outcome)
I enjoy all these outcomes, by the way, but here’s what happened at this specific party.
A friend of mine started telling me the story of his friend who got fired from Walmart. Later the same day, his newly unemployed friend went to the Choctaw Casino in Durant and won $40,000 playing a slot machine.
How To Win Slot Machines Gta 5
My friend’s question to me was, “How do I do that?”
How can *I* choose the winning slot machine?
This post has the answer, but it’s almost certainly not what you’d think.
You Can’t Win by Choosing the Slot Machine With the Highest Payback Percentage.
When I search for this phrase in the most popular search engines, I see pages touting this advice repeatedly:
You have to play the slot machines with the highest payback percentage.
What’s a payback percentage?
It’s also called “return to player” or “RTP.”
A slot machine’s return is the amount of money paid out to a slot machine player compared to the amount of money the player wagered. The RTP gets expressed as a percentage.
If you made $100 in wagers on a slot machine and won $125, you’d have a return of 125%. If you won $90, you’d have a return of 90%.
The difference between the return and the amount you wagered, obviously, is the casino’s profit.
The payback percentage, or return to player (RTP), is a statistical prediction of a slot machine’s return over a massive number of spins. The closer you get to infinity, the closer the game’s results should get to the payback percentage that the game is programmed to have.
In the long run, all slot machines have a payback percentage of less than 100%. This means that, in the long run, you’ll always lose at slot machines.
How to Calculate the Payback Percentage of a Slot Machine
This theoretical payback percentage can get easily calculated if you have the probabilities behind the machine. It’s just the probability of each win multiplied by the amount of that win, divided by the amount you’d have to play every probability.
If, for example, a slot machine game had 10,000 possible combinations, and if you hit every combination, you’d win 9,000 coins, and the payback percentage would be 90%.
A slot machine doesn’t have to pay out less after a win to “catch up” to its payback percentage. Every spin of the reels on a slot machine is 100% random. The casino makes its profit because of the discrepancy between the odds of winning and the odds that each payout offers.
The payback percentage is not available to the consumer at most casinos. You have no way of calculating it because you have no way of knowing what the probability of getting a specific symbol on a stop is. You can’t calculate the probability of a combination of symbols without that information.
You have the payouts for the prizes, but you don’t know what your probability of winning those prizes is.
Where Does the Casino Put the Slot Machines With the Highest Payback Percentages?
You could play two identical slot machine games sitting right next to each other. One of them might have a payback percentage of 91%, while the other might have a payback percentage of 96%.
You have NO way of telling which machine is better than the other, even if one of those games is paying out more than the other. After all, the payback percentage is a long-term phenomenon.
In the short run, anything can happen.
Best Slot Machines To Win On
But even if you DID know the payback percentage for the game, you couldn’t choose the winning slot machine just by choosing the one with the higher payback percentage.
The probability of winning the big jackpot on most machines is at least 1000 to 1.
If you play for two hours, you might make 1,200 spins. You might even win the big jackpot.
But you’ll (usually) have wagered more money on the machine than you won.
You’ll find advice about how to find the slot machines with the highest payback percentages, but most of it is useless. At one time, sure, the slot machines closest to the aisles might have had higher payback percentages.
However, I’ve seen multiple interviews with multiple casino managers who insist that isn’t true.
What About Playing Higher-Denomination Slot Machine Games?
You’ll also see people explain that the payback percentage on the higher-denomination machines is better. This is true as a general rule, but it might or might not be true at the casino where you’re playing. The penny and nickel machines might average 91% at your casino, while the dollar machines might average 95%, but that’s an AVERAGE.
This doesn’t mean that you’ll automatically have a higher payback percentage just because you played a higher-denomination machine.
Even if you did, you’re still fighting a negative expectation game.
Should I Play Slot Machine Games With Higher Volatility?
- What about volatility?
- Is a slot machine with a higher volatility more likely to be a winner?
- Or should I look for the games with lower volatility?
A slot machine’s volatility is its variance from the predicted results. The higher the volatility is on a game, the wider the swings between the wins and losses tend to be.
A game with high volatility pays out less often but can sometimes offer bigger payouts to compensate.
How To Win Slot Machine In The Philippines
A game with low volatility pays out more often, but those payouts are still low enough to guarantee the casino a profit.
The slot machines at your local casino aren’t labeled according to their volatility, by the way. There’s not a special section for low volatility slots.
You can, though, get an idea for the volatility of a slot machine game via your observations of how often they pay out.
To make your own estimate, you need to count how many spins you make. You also need to count how many of those spins are winners (as opposed to losers).
Divide the number of winning spins by the number of spins you’ve made, and you’ll have the hit ratio for that sample set.
The more spins you’ve made, the more likely the hit ratio you’re seeing is close to the expected ratio.
If you make 500 spins on a game in an hour, and 150 of those spins are winners, the hit ratio for that game is 30%.
If 200 of them were winners, the hit ratio would be 40%.
The game with the 40% hit ratio is the less volatile game.
But keep in mind that an hour’s worth of spins is not representative of the long run. Those are still short-term results. The longer you play, the more accurate your results will get.
You COULD also estimate the slot machine’s actual return over those 500 spins.
Multiply the amount you wagered per spin by the number of spins you made. Then divide how much the game paid out by that amount to get a percentage.
If you put $500 into a $1/spin game, and then you make 500 spins, you’ve wagered $500.
Let’s say you have $400 left after all that wagering. This accounts for all your wins and losses, so the payback percentage — the observed return — is 80%.
That doesn’t mean that this is the theoretical return, but it might be close — especially if it’s a low volatility machine.
Does any of this information help you choose the winning slot machine, though?
You Can’t Use the Zig-Zag System to Pick a Winning Slot Machine
You might have already heard of this system, but if not, here’s how it’s supposed to work.
The zig-zag system tries to identify slot machines that are about to pay out by looking at the pattern of the symbols on an inactive machine. You’re supposed to look through the slot machines on the casino floor and find one where the winning symbols are in a zig-zag pattern on the front of the machine.
It doesn’t really matter much what the pattern looks like. As long as three winning symbols are present somewhere on the front of the machine, that machine is supposedly “ready” to pay off.
Proponents of the system even suggest that games with two winning symbols showing are getting close to paying off, too.
The idea is that the symbols are coming up more often because the game is getting ready to pay off. Therefore, you’re supposed to sit down and play until those symbols actually do line up on one of the pay lines, and you win.
You can picture these zig-zag symbols in your mind as diagonal lines connecting the symbols on the front of the machine. They might make a V or upside-down V, for example. This is also called a diamond, and it’s supposed to be the best pattern you could ask for.
I can only think of one problem with the zig-zag system.
It doesn’t work.
Understanding why involves understanding something about how a slot machine works. Those spinning reels on the inside of the machine aren’t actually physical reels. They’re controlled by a random number generator. This is especially obvious with video slots, where all the action is entirely animated.
The random number generator (RNG) is a computer program that cycles through thousands of numbers per second. When you click the “spin” button or pull the lever, the computer program stops on a number. That number corresponds to a combination of reel symbols.
Before the reels stop spinning, the RNG has determined the outcome, win or lose.
Every spin of the reels is an independent trial. What’s happened on the previous spin has no effect on your subsequent spins.
What About John Patrick’s Slots Strategies?
My favorite strategies for playing slots come from a book by John Patrick. In it, he outlines several money management techniques which are supposed to help you win at slot machines. All of his strategies are more or less worthless.
Below are some of the concepts he suggests.
The first is the concept of a “naked pull.”
- A naked pull is a spin of the slot machine reels that results in no winnings at all.
- He suggests choosing an arbitrary number between 7 and 14 as your “naked pull limit.”
For example, you might choose 7 as your naked pull limit. If you play a slot machine game and get 7 losing spins in a row, you would quit playing that machine and move on to another machine.
This MIGHT help you avoid a low volatility slot machine game, but it doesn’t do much for your probability of winning in the long run. In fact, it does nothing in aid of that.
Having a naked pull limit, though, can be an interesting way to get in some action at multiple slot machines. In that case, you might have a more interesting and fun time playing, which is a type of winning in itself.
Another concept that he suggests is having a session bankroll.
- In other words, you have a bankroll of how much money you’re willing to gamble with.
- Let’s say you’re going to Las Vegas for three days and two nights, and you have $600 to gamble with.
- You might decide to have two slot machine sessions per day — one in the morning and another in the evening.
- You would then have six sessions planned, and you would divide your bankroll into six-session bankrolls of $100 each.
He combines the idea of a session bankroll with the idea of a loss limit and a win goal. These are just percentages of your bankroll that are going to serve as the end of your session.
For example, you might set a win goal of $50 and a loss limit of $20. If your bankroll slips to $80, you quit for the session. If your bankroll grows to $150, you quit for the session.
This, by the way, does nothing to increase your probability of finding a winning machine. It just means you won’t gamble an entire session bankroll.
It also means that sometimes you’ll grind out a winning session.
In the long run, though, you’ll wind up with a loss similar to what you’d expected based on the theoretical payback percentage of the machine. The longer you play, the more likely you are to wind up with those kinds of results.
All his systems combine these concepts to create cleverly named systems, but none of them do anything to get you an advantage at slot machines.
In Fact, No One Can Tell You How to Choose the Winning Slot Machine
You can’t choose a winning slot machine because you can’t predict the future. Slot machines are random. They’re also an example of negative expectation games.
If you play slot machines long enough, you’ll surely lose.
But Here’s the Good News
The expected return on these games is a long-term expectation. This means that not only CAN you win in the short run, but you’re almost guaranteed to have an occasional win in the short run.
In fact, the casino is counting on it.
If you never won, you’d never play.
The trick is to have some idea of what kind of win will satisfy you. When you know what that is, you can play until you hit it and call it a day.
As long as you understand that if you keep playing negative expectation games, you’ll eventually lose all your money, you’ll be okay.
- Treat slot machine gambling as entertainment.
- Quit if you get ahead by a significant amount.
And NEVER spend money on any kind of lame slot machine system that guarantees you the secret to choosing a slot machine that’s ready to pay out.
Conclusion
Slot machines are fun, and choosing a winning slot machine seems like a worthy goal.
Luckily for us, it’s a skill that everyone has in equal amounts. Everyone has a 0% probability of accurately predicting which slot machine is going to be the winning machine.
It’s not like the World Series of Poker, where the players’ skill levels have a huge effect on the outcome.
Sure, you can win at slots.
People do it every day.
It just takes luck and a willingness to lose some money trying to win.
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