Dear Mark: How come
every time I get up from a machine, someone
sits down and immediately hits a big
jackpot? Bill F.
My twenty years spent working on the front
line, put me within a casino for at least
8,320 hours (20 yrs X 52 weeks X 8 hours a
day), I don’t need to get to my toes to
count how many times I’ve seen a person
desert a machine, someone new jump into the
still warm seat, and on the first spin, snag
the big one and sail into a charmed life of
champagne wishes and caviar dreams.
Seriously, Bill, how many machines have you
left, (and that’s probably hundreds if not
thousands over your career-pursuit of the
big one), and how many times has the next
player after you “really” hit it big on the
first three coins? Sure, it happens, and
yes, I’ve seen it, but far, far less often
than you see in your mind’s eye.
Besides, Bill, a slot machine uses a Random
Number Generator to determine which symbols
will land on the payline, and the RNG in the
slot machine is continually running whether
anyone is playing or not. Therefore, it is
highly unlikely that the player following
you would have stopped the RNG at exactly
the same nanosecond needed to produce the
mega-jackpot combination on the screen, as
you would have. There is little, if any
chance that both of your results would have
been the same.
Dear Mark: Is there any trick to winning at
slot tournaments? Sherry W.
In most slot tournaments, you play strictly
for points, and the player with the most
points at the end of the tournament wins. To
increase the frequency of winning
combinations, most states allow for a
separate tournament chip to be used in the
machine. That is why you see so many more
paying combinations when playing in
tournaments than you see in normal play.
So, Sherry, the trick here is to get your
little fingers moving as fast as they can
because the more those reels are spinning,
the more you give yourself a chance to
accumulate points.
You need to set the reels in motion as often
as possible to maximize your chances to
amass points. The faster you get at tapping
the max coins button, as soon as the reels
stop spinning, the better your chances are
of winning a slot tournament.
Dear Mark: Is there minimum payout
percentage on slot machines that must be
paid out? Dave N.
The legal minimum, Dave, is set by statute
in each state. Your letter comes from New
Jersey, where it’s 83%. Where I worked,
Nevada, it was slightly less. Yet that
percentage return doesn’t necessarily mean
you will see slot machines actually set that
low.
Players don't like having their money
gobbled up by machines that are as tight as
legally allowed. For that reason, along with
competition, you’ll find in general that
casinos tend to have higher paybacks on
their slots than the legal minimum, and
seldom will you find the real payout
percentage falling much below 90%.
Gambling Wisdom of the Week: "Bookie: A
pickpocket who lets you use your own hands."
--Henry Morgan
