Can casinos manipulate slot machines

Online casino sites to play on real money

This tactic is of course an expensive one and needs to be applied according to your bankroll. If you have a big bankroll, you should go for the highest jackpot in every spin. If you have a small bankroll, you should find slot machines with low maximum stake/coins. 4. Recognizing the symbol. The stop number is then compared with the slot machine’s lookup table. That table lists the symbol for each reel that should appear given a particular stop number.

Slot machine players

Who plays the slot machines? - online gambling

Myth: “slot machines are for old ladies on ferry crossings and caribbean gambling cruises”.

The reel story: gambling and ferry crossings go together like flights and airports. It has been a phenomenon as early as the mississippi river boats in the 1800’s, if not earlier. As the mississippi river connected waterways for numerous trade avenues, many gambling establishments were popular, not only with professional gamblers, but also with many of the cash carrying travellers and traders.

Nowadays, the slot machine is a popular way to kill time during ferry crossings all over the world. There are even boats where the main purpose for the voyage is to gamble, like poker cruises in the caribbean. If the boat leaves a country or a state where gambling is illegal, the casino and the slot machines will open as soon as the ship is three miles offshore in international water. Gambling is always popular on these voyages.

But are the slot machines principally popular among old ladies? A glance at the slot floors in vegas and on some european ferry crossings could sometimes indicate exactly that.

It turns out this old stereotype is still somewhat true today, but only to a certain degree. Slot machines are popular amongst people from both genders and most age groups.

According to recent studies, while about 66 percent of male casino players play the slot machines, totally 81 percent of female casino players choose slot machines as their primary game. As for demographic age, recent statistics published in the U.S. News and word report show casino players having a median age of 47 and a median income of $41.000.

Grizzly_granny says: “slot machines have been a hit among aging ladies for as long as I can remember”.

Keeping it random - how to manipulate slot machines

Myth: “casinos can manipulate and rig the slot machines with the flip of a switch”.

The reel story: we can say it right away: this myth is false. How can we reach such conclusion: let us explain how, in five easy steps.

1: the randon number generator. The moment you make your bet and spin a slot machine’s reels, a computer algorithm decides the outcome of your spin through a computer program called a random number generator (RNG). This RNG generates thousands of numbers each second.

2: dividing the RNG numbers. One of these randomly selected numbers is selected for each reel and is already plotted algorithmically into each reel’s stop position. This plotting is the result of dividing the random number generated by the RNG by 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, or 512.

3. Where will the reel stop? Once the RNG-generated number has been divided by one of these numbers, the remainder of the resulting value represents the number of the stopping position of the reels.

4. Recognizing the symbol. The stop number is then compared with the slot machine’s lookup table. That table lists the symbol for each reel that should appear given a particular stop number.

5. Did you spin a win? Then, the slot’s computer chip checks the internal pay table to determine whether there is a winning combination. If there is, the computer further checks the appropriate amount of the winning combination’s payout.

Spins247.Com says: it sounds complicated, we know, but wouldn’t you want it to be?

Slot machine slang: casino words and expressions

It’s not brain surgery, but there are some words and expressions you need to know when playing slot machines.

Reel - the circular devices on which the slot machine symbols are printed on. A typical slot machine has three to five reels. These reels spin and stop revealing the symbols on a:

Payline - a line on the slot machines face, where the symbols must line up on in order to win. You can see how much you win for each combination on a:

Paytable - an area on the slot machine that shows the different winning combinations, what they will pay and how much must be wagered in order to win certain amounts, bonuses or jackpots.

On some slot machine you will also find a “ticking” number which keeps increasing. These slot machines are called:

Progressive slot machines - a network of slot machines that are linked together to pay out one large jackpot. A percentage of every amount played from every machine is put towards one large jackpot. When someone wins this jackpot, the jackpot is reset (usually not to zero) and starts to grow again until someone wins again, and so on. These jackpots can usually not be won with a:

Wild symbol - symbols that can represent all the other symbols, like a joker in some card games.

Slot machine tactics – be a slot room casino slut!

Myth: ”there is no such thing as a good tactic for slot machines”.

Believed by: pessimists, realists and anti-gamblers all over the world, for more than 100 years.

The reel story will devote a double blog entry to the subject of slot machine tactics. Not because they are very complicated, but because they are very important.

There are mainly three things you need to consider when looking for slot machine tactics that will optimize your profit. One has to do with gameplay, one has to do with mathematics and one has nothing to do with marriage. Read on and you will understand why.

1: play with maximum coins

You are generally not left with many options for actual slot machine gameplay. Different slot machines have different set-ups, some with the option to hold reels and spin again, some with extra bonus rounds, some with other odd features, but one option that is common amongst most slot machines is the option to choose how many coins or how much you wish to wager for each spin.

Always, always, always choose maximum coins or maximum stake.

Because when you play with maximum amount or maximum coins, you trigger the full jackpots and the highest winnings. This may well prove to be your destiny when the right symbols on those holy reels finally appear in perfect symmetry in front of you.

Many people in the history of slot machines have been struck by the shock of perfect reel symmetry, only to find out that the full jackpot was not triggered because maximum amount or coins was not wagered. Normally there are also higher winnings to be won in comparison with the amount wagered when the amount wagered is the maximum.

Good examples in that last category include intercasino’s triple olives 25c and eurocasino’s fishy fortune.

2: find the slot machines with the highest payout percentage

As simple as it sounds. In order to maximize profits, you need to choose your slot machines carefully and concentrate on the ones with a high payout percentage.

You should also make sure that when you find a slot machine, casino or slot room with a high payout percentage, you should make sure their numbers are being controlled by a trusted, external auditor.

3. Be a slot room casino slut!

Casinos and slot rooms are not like wives or husbands, its ok to be unfaithful or even a slot room slut. In fact, we strongly recommend it. We actually believe in this so much that we almost renamed the whole blog “in diana jones and the hunt for the holy reel”.

By spreading your deposits with different casinos and slot rooms, you can greatly capitalize on the bonuses offered to new customers.

Spins247.Com says: the general idea here is to minimize loss and maximize profit while you wait for a jackpot to come along. So… 1: play with maximum coins, and find a slot machine with a low maximum stake if your bankroll is limited. 2: find casinos and slot machines with high payout percentages. 3: be a slot room slut.

G aming G uru

Slot Machine Players, can casinos manipulate slot machines.

Do casinos manipulate slot machines?

Last week my wife and I were up at mystic, conn., and we went to mohegan sun. Nice place. We played 25-cent slots only. That's all we can do (oh well . . . Grind players).

I tried to follow all you pros' advice and do one coin at two-coin machines. I tried a couple of $1 machines and lost $30 in minutes. I played many 25-cent slots even by cashier's booths and busy aisles away from the table games, round carousels, although mohegan seems to have tables intermixed all over.

I managed to win over 200 quarters but these were won only with cherries and multiplier symbols (only one triple 7s). No bars. Plenty of blanks on 1st reel. This was just like las vegas all over again last year when we were there five nights. The video poker was $1 denomination and that was a no-no for me for five coins a spin. The table games were $25 a hand. I know how to play blackjack and pai gow poker and caribbean stud but at $25 a shot . . . Forget it.

I just wanted to play these at the real casino but reality ($) prevented that. I've had software at home for these games (masque and bicycle microsoft). OK, at home is not like the casino but in order to play these I have to learn the strategy from the pro websites such as bill burton pai gow, wizard of odds caribbean and others. Masque gives you blackjack strategy and spanish 21 (and beautiful but very tight IGT and bally slots).

To get back to slots. I intended to have in my left pocket the total money to spend on slots and winnings in the right pocket. After the left pocket is empty I would count up the winnings and then a decision to play further would have to be made. That's the hard part when you want to stay longer. However after the way the machines were not giving much I forgot my plan and machine hopped. I was really upset knowing that casinos use us to make 60 to 70% profits.

In reality we all expect to walk out with the session money and even a small profit. That's not possible. But the feelings are there nevertheless. I also like to spend a few hours there. We were there 5 hours. I wasn't steaming per machine however. As we covered both casinos of sky and earth I did not see a lot of coins dropping. Only a couple of persons along the way. I think in your book you say you like to do 100 spins. I do up to 15 before I give up on a dead machine. What am I doing wrong, john?

Win or lose. Regardless of RNG, I believe electronic devices can be manipulated from RNG to the reels. I did not think this when I played. I don't want to be sour grapes. But when these machines are giving so little your frustration can think this.

I don't put much stock in loose machine placement theories today. Most slot directors order roughly the same payback percentage for all of their machines of a particular denomination. I don't think you have anything to lose by playing machines in highly visible locations, but I also don't think you have much to gain.

Keep in mind that the play one coin strategy works best on multipliers. It shouldn't be used on buy-a-pays.

I don't know when or where you stayed in las vegas, but I guess it was one of the high-end resorts. You have to expect high minimums all the time at high-end resorts and everywhere else too when a lot of visitors are in town.

Even though your expected loss may be less at the $25 table than at the quarter slot, you have to have the bankroll to see you through dry spells. A bad run of luck and your bankroll is gone and you're out of the game. Next time you go to las vegas, try treasure island or the off-strip casinos for lower minimums.

I'm not sure what you mean when you refer to 60 to 70% profits. No machine has that high a house edge. It is true, however, that the slots can provide 60 to 70% of total casino profits.

As for manipulation, it's illegal. It's perfectly natural though, as you point out, to try to find a reason for why we have bad luck. Pure chance just doesn't cut it.

Best of luck in and out of the casinos,
john

G aming G uru

Ask the slot expert: can casinos manipulate your slot play via your players card?

Can you explain how the following scenario happened?

I'm a silver cardholder at a local casino. I play slots most of the time. After losing a bit, I decided to switch machines and go to the second floor, where the points earned when you play are doubled.

After playing 20 minutes or so, I decided to order coffee from a waitress. She asked me if she could see my card. I told her it's inserted in the machine. She then asked if I'm a gold card or platinum cardholder. I said I'm silver. She declined, saying they can only serve coffee for platinum or gold cardholders. I can have coffee on the ground floor for free from those waiters roaming around with their trolleys carrying coffee.

I asked to see a supervisor. After a while, a supervisor came and addressed me by my last name. I told her I simply wanted coffee. She said coffee will be served in a while.

How did she know my name when I only met her that moment and when my card was still inserted in the machine?

I concluded that, while a player is playing the slot machine with his card inserted, casinos can actually know and monitor his plays and they can manipulate his play through his card.

I see from your signature that you're in manila. They certainly are stingy with the coffee in the philippines -- at least at your casino. Is it really that difficult to get coffee up to the second floor that only upper-level cardholders can have a cup?

You're half right about your suppositions about what casinos can do via your players card. The whole point of playing with a card is so the casino can know who you are and can monitor your play. Some casinos have a system that displays a graphic representation of the slot floor. Machines are color-coded or otherwise differentiated so the casino can tell that a machine is being played, if a card is being used, and maybe even the elite level of the player. If a card isn't being used and the player has played a bit, the system can indicate that there is a "hot player" on the machine and a slot club representative can approach the player and offer a card.

In your case, the waitress told the supervisor to speak with a player at machine such-and such, and the supervisor probably just checked the system to find out your name so she could call you by name.

I've noticed that there are cultural differences with privacy and anonymity. Privacy laws in the united states are lax and most americans don't mind giving up some anonymity in exchange for the perks of the players club. Europeans, on the other hand, have stronger privacy laws in their countries and I've heard some slub club directors say that a lower percentage of european players enroll in the club.

In any case, in my limited training in customer service, I was taught that one way to mitigate a potentially stressful situation is to address the customer respectfully as mr. Or ms. Whatever. There's nothing nefarious about the supervisor addressing you by name. She was just trying to be courteous and respectful.

Let's move on now to your conclusions. The first part is that casinos can know and monitor your play. Yes, that's right. That's the whole purpose of using the card.

The second part is that they can manipulate your play. I'm not sure that you mean by "manipulate your play", so I'll address the statement two ways. First, there's no way the casino can manipulate the results you get when you play -- at least not in the united states. In the U.S., regulations require that the random number generator be free from any outside influences, including whether a player is using a players card. You'll get the same results regardless of whether you use your card. Card or not, there's no way the casino can direct the results of a spin.

Now let me address your statement literally -- that is, instead of manipulating your results the casino literally manipulates your play. That's really the purpose of the slot club. By dangling all these wonderful perks like free rooms, free meals and free play, the club is designed to get you to play more in that casino and less in others and really just to get you to play more period. It's up to the players to not get caught up in chasing comps and gambling more than they intended.

Send your slot and video poker questions to john robison, slot expert™, at slotexpert@slotexpert.Com. Because of the volume of mail I receive, I regret that I can't reply to every question.

From the back office, a casino can change the slot machine in seconds

LAS VEGAS, april 6 - from his small back office in the treasure island casino, justin beltram may soon be able to change the wheels of fortune instantly.

Mr. Beltram, a casino executive, is the point man in a high-technology experiment that could alter the face of slot machines, and their insides, too.

With a few clicks of his computer mouse, mr. Beltram can reprogram the 1,790 slot machines on the casino floor, adjusting the denominations required to play, payback percentages, even game themes.

Las vegas is constantly tinkering with its slot machines, which generate more than $7 billion annually in nevada, roughly double that taken in by table games. Despite their growing popularity and an increase in overall gambling proceeds in recent years, casino operators want to win back more of the money their customers are now spending elsewhere -- on food, lodging and other entertainment, or at indian casinos or for online gambling.

In the past, changing out a slot machine was a complicated operation and entailed opening it, replacing the computer chip inside, then changing the glass display that markets the game's theme. The alteration usually took a day and could cost thousands of dollars, from ordering parts to modifying the machine.

"now, I just come to my office, and select the program," said mr. Beltram, the 28-year-old executive director for slots at treasure island, which is owned by the MGM mirage. "with the technology, it takes 20 seconds."

The concept is being tested for the next few months under the gaze of state gambling regulators. If regulators approve, casino operators will be able to centrally adjust the slots to cater to different crowds -- older players and regulars during the day and younger tourists and people with bigger budgets at night.

That could mean testing consumer confidence as well. Some critics wonder whether centrally controlled slots are not a few steps away from the distant, but instant and unchecked control enjoyed by internet casino operators.

Mr. Beltram insists he does not plan to capriciously change the odds, which he said would be bad for repeat business and could run afoul of regulators.

The development of networked slots underscores the growing convergence of gambling and technology. Slot machines, once highly mechanized, are now highly computerized; only about half the machines have actual spinning cylinders. The rest are computer-generated facsimiles that allow gamblers to play numerous animated reels at once, and induce them with the promise of bonus rounds. Gamblers now insert debit slips that track how much money they have, making the coins people once collected in buckets a distant memory.

Coming soon are high-definition screens that will enhance the animation to keep gamblers engaged and draw bigger crowds, and even better speakers to project crisp sound right at players.

More generally, casino operators have sought in recent years to use technology to offer new games and make a science of their business. They are experimenting with stocking blackjack tables with money chips embedded with digital tags that can automatically measure how much a gambler has wagered and on what kinds of hands.

Casinos also are testing wireless devices that would allow people to play games like keno and eventually blackjack while sitting in public areas, like the swimming pool.

But these advances are raising some eyebrows. In the case of the new slot machines, regulators want to make sure the systems cannot be invaded by outsiders, while consumers want to know casino operators cannot too easily manipulate the odds, said david G. Schwartz, director for the center for gaming research at the university of nevada las vegas.

"let's say you're playing at 2 and you're doing great and you come back at 6 and the pay tables have changed," mr. Schwartz said, adding that he wondered how much latitude casino operators would have to change their returns.

He also worries that some players could receive preferential odds if, for instance, they are high rollers, thus creating an uneven gambling field.

By law, nevada casinos must on average return at least 75 percent of slot machine wagers. The reality is they return more than 90 percent, casino operators say, though they do not publicize the figures. Also under the law, they cannot modify the payback percentages while someone is playing.

State law allows them to change the odds after a machine has been idle for four minutes, and then they must not allow anyone to play the machine for four more minutes. During that time, the screen must indicate a change is being made to the game's configuration, said travis foley, laboratory manager for the technology division of the nevada state gaming control board, who is overseeing the treasure island test.

Typically, those changes now are made in the middle of the night when there are fewer players in the casino.

Mr. Foley said the technology "does expedite the change" to a new theme, wager denomination or payback percentage. "but it's not a new capability."

For his part, mr. Beltram said fierce competition for slot machine players would keep him from playing fast and loose with his odds. The bigger goal, he said, is to cater inexpensively to consumer demand. He cites as evidence a recent visit by a high roller from rhode island.

Mr. Beltram said the gambler, who liked to play slots in the high-stakes slots room where individual wagers can go from $2 into the hundreds of dollars, requested a $25 double diamond slot machine. Mr. Beltram ordered the computer chip and glass plate from international game technology, which makes the machine, and had them in place 24 hours later.

The lost day potentially cut into profits. If the customer had been able to play earlier, "who knows what he would have spent?" mr. Beltram said. As it turned out, the high roller returned a day later, played the new game and wound up winning money.

But a lot of money is left on the table with low rollers as well. It's just a matter of giving them what they want when they want it, mr. Beltram said. "throughout the day, there are more locals, so during the day we might have more video poker. At night, we might have more slots," he said. "customers get stuck on themes they like," he said, and those themes can be programmed in.

Mr. Beltram said he expected the system to be in place by the end of this year or the beginning of next year.

Ed rogich, spokesman for international gaming technology, said a similar test was taking place at a casino operated by the barona indian tribe, just outside of san diego.

Most casinos already link their slot machines and can view their performance from a central server. The difference is that the latest advance is the first time casinos can push information out to all their machines, creating the potential for "dumb terminals," as they are known outside gambling, on which the software can be modified centrally, easily and instantly.

The concept of networked slot machines is undergoing a different kind of test down the street from treasure island at a casino called the barbary coast. There, near the front door, sits an enormous circular wheel of fortune slot machine with seats around it for nine players. In front of each player is a monitor on which they play an individualized version of the game. The twist is that a monitor in the center of the game, viewable by all, indicates which players have hit the bonus round.

At various points, those players who have hit the bonus round -- meaning they are eligible to increase their winnings by a certain multiple -- can cause the wheel of fortune in the center to spin; whatever number lands in front of each eligible player indicates the bonus amount.

The individual players are not affecting each other's outcomes, but the game creates a feeling of community, almost like craps players cheering for each other at the table.

Regular slot players say they have mixed feelings about the potential for the centrally controlled games.

Rexie lestrange, who lives in lodi, calif., and was recently visiting las vegas on business, said she welcomed the next generation of slot machines.

"I liked all kinds of pictures and noises and things happening," she said as she sat in treasure island playing lawman's loot, a penny slot machine with a reel of video images of cowboys, trains, settlers and bags of loot. "the old slots I don't like because they're boring."

But she said she did not have an opinion about the casinos using servers to change their slot machines.

"I just wish they would pay out more, obviously," she said.

Correction: april 17, 2006, monday an article in business day on wednesday about an experiment to link slot machines in las vegas casinos to a central computer network misstated the number of machines being tested by the treasure island casino. It is 16 -- not 1,790, which is the total number of machines in the casino.

Slot machine myths and misconceptions

No other segment of the gaming industry has benefited more from the technology revolution than the slot machine. Once considered the ugly stepdaughter placed on the gaming floor to appease the spouses of table players, the slot machine has been transformed into the fairy princess of the gaming world. With her, she has brought a dowry of riches no one would have imagined for the casino and a few lucky players as well. Over twenty years ago the slot machine accounted for 30 percent of the casinos' profits. Today it accounts for about 70 percent. Computer technology and the ability to play with little to no gambling knowledge makes it possible to offer life-changing jackpots big enough to turn a pauper into a king.

However, the fact that it doesn't take much gambling knowledge to play means that most people don't understand the inner working of the slots -- which makes it easy to explain a loss or a win with some false logic. Like any other "wives tales" these are passed from person to person until they become gospel. Most of these myths and misconceptions are harmless but they can add to your frustration and take away some of the enjoyment of your casino visit. Let’s take a look at a few of the most popular myths and the truth behind them.

Myth #1

Someone hit a jackpot on the machine you just left -- so you would have won that jackpot if you kept playing.
This is probably one of the most common notions about slot machine gambling -- but it's patently false. The slot machines have a computer chip inside that runs the random number generator (RNG). The RNG is continuously cycling through numbers even when the machine is not being played. These numbers correspond to the stops on the wheel that display the winning or losing symbols that you see when the reels stop. When you hit the spin button or pull the handle, the RNG picks the combination at that given microsecond. If you had stayed at the machine, it is highly unlikely that you would have stopped the RNG at the exact nano-second to display that same combination of numbers. In the time it takes to talk with a friend or sip your drink the RNG has cycled through thousands of combinations.

Myth #2

You can tell the odds of winning by counting the symbols on each wheel.
Actually, you can't. The RNG generates a number for each spin. There can be hundreds of virtual stops on each wheel even though you only see a few symbols. For example, you may see 20 symbols on each wheel of a three-reel machine. You figure 20 x 20 x 20 = 8,000 combinations and your chance of hitting the jackpot is 1 in 8000. In reality, the computer chip may program 256 stops for each wheel which makes the odds 256 x 256 x 256 =16,777,216 combinations. Being able to generate millions of combinations is the reason that slots can offer large paybacks.

Myth #3

Casinos can loosen or tighten the slot machines with the flip of a switch.
In actuality, the slot machines have a computer chip in them that determines the payback percentage. These are preset at the factory. In order for a casino to change the payback, they would have to change the chip. In most jurisdictions, there is paperwork that has to be filled and submitted to the casino control commission for each machine if the chip is changed. It's time-consuming and the chips are very expensive. For this reason, it is more economical to decide on the payback percentages before purchasing the machines and having the factory ship them with the proper chip.

Myth #4

A machine that has not been paying out is due to hit.
There is no way to determine if a machine is due to hit. Each spin is a random occurrence and has no bearing on what has happened previously. Don't ever play more than you should because of this misconception -- it will be devastating to your bankroll if you do.

Myth #5

The temperature of the coins played will affect the way a machine pays.
Unfortunately, the machine is not affected by temperature. It doesn't matter if you play hot, cold, old or new coins. The coin slot is a mechanical device and has no feeling.

Myth #6

If you use your slot club card the machine will pay back less.
This may well be the most damaging myth of them all. There is no link between the card reader and the RNG, but by not using your player's card you are denying yourself valuable comps and sometimes cash back from the casino.

Can casinos manipulate slot machines

Is the casino allowed to manipulate the odds / payouts of a particular slot machine tailored to the specific individual playing it?

Casinos, especially those in hotels, resorts, and cruise ships, will give their guests a card that’s their room key, “resort pass”, charge card, etc. Players are encouraged to swipe it at the slot machine they’re playing. Often there’s a premium offered for certain behavior, a giveaway or freebie for playing one hour, a better giveaway for playing two hours in a row, etc.

Now the casino can track the behavior of an individual, and over time can likely build a reasonable profile with that data. How long do they play at a stretch? Do they bet the maximum, minimum, or something in between? Is there a threshold at which this person stops playing if they feel they’re “losing”? How much of a payout does it take for them to feel like they’re “winning” and keep pumping in quarters? Does this person react better (i.E. Keep playing) with frequent, small payouts? Or with less frequent, larger payouts?

Are slot machines stand-alone, individual, discrete units? Or are they simply terminals of a larger network? I suspect the latter. And if they’re terminals of a network, then they can be told to do whatever the network, i.E. The casino, tells them to do. Right?

(these numbers are just for illustrative purposes, I’m pulling them out of my hat so they’re likely not representative of the real world but serve to illustrate my question.) for player A the casino finds that if they get $0.80 back for every $1.00 they put in they think they’re “winning” and will keep playing, but will walk at any less. Player B is a zombie who just keeps feeding it quarters and never notices that they’re only getting $0.60 back for every $1.00 they put in. Why give B $0.80 if the casino can get away with giving them $0.60? And letting A continue to play at $0.80 brings more revenue than A not playing at all, which they will do at $0.60, so why not give them payouts of $0.80 per $1.00?

Player C is just in it for the freebie. They play an hour, get their free steak dinner, then stop. Why give them $0.80 per $1.00? Heck, they’re only betting the minimum anyway, give them $0.50. And be sure they don’t win any jackpots because they’re not likely to put it back in the machine anyway.

Player D had a dinner reservation at 6:00, paid their bill at 7:30, and has tickets for a show at 8:00. The resort knows all this because they’re all booked and paid with the “resort pass”. Now they’re at a slot machine, obviously killing time before they show. Again… they’re probably going to play for a half hour regardless of the outcome, so why give them a larger payout?

A particular section of the slots is getting lethargic, players are slowing down, it needs some excitement to pick up the pace. Player E has been drinking moderately (even the ‘free’ drinks are tracked) and their profile suggests they’ll continue to play even when they win big. They’d be a good candidate for flashing lights, bells, some hoop-la, they’ll celebrate, and hopefully encourage other players nearby to continue to player (or play faster, or bet higher, etc.). So the casino directs their machine to give them a relatively big payout. An hour or so later a different part of the floor needs some spectacle, player F fits the profile, time for a win.

Casinos know the player, know which machine they’re at, and can control the machines in real time. Right? So why don’t they manipulate them as I’ve described here in order to keep people playing? Do they or don’t they? And are there any laws regarding whether or not they’re allowed to? 1

Can you guess who controls slot machine odds?

Introduction to controls slot machine odds

Who controls slot machine odds is a popular question from slots enthusiasts. It’s quite an interesting question, which I thought my audience would appreciate an answer to.

My most recent encounter with this general question was during the Q&A segment of another gambling podcast, episode #634 from five hundy by midnight. They had a question from david which was, “when a new themed penny slot debuts, what is the typical hold percentage? Does it vary by machine, casino, or both?”

Tim and michelle, co-hosts of the long-lasting five hundy by midnight, a gambling podcast that’s all about las vegas, answered the question well, if somewhat briefly.

I’m sure my own audience would like the answer too, so I’m providing a few more details as well as a more general answer with a bit of the why of it all.

This segment has the following sections:

Introduction

A bit of background on legal requirements

A bit of history on physically setting odds

Slot machine types based on how odds are set

Identifying who controls slot machine odds

Does it really matter who controls slot machine odds? Yes!!

Summary

Keep reading … or listen instead!

… or watch!

A bit of background on legal requirements

To answer this question, I’ll need to delve into a bit of recent history to explain how odds are set in older-style standalone slot machines using a random number generator (RNG). This way is how many people incorrectly believe the odds are currently set on ALL slot machines.

However, starting around 2008, a lot changed with setting slot machine odds. These changes are due to the emergence of new gaming technologies, not only in slot machines but also with the development of casino operating software. Both provide casinos with an increased operating efficiency and therefore low operating costs.

With so many more people visiting casinos in the last decade, and with their profit margins getting smaller every year, casino operators find they cannot afford to ignore the savings opportunities of new technologies.

The second driver for this change to how slot machines are controlled is due to ongoing developments in statutory regulations for gaming jurisdictions. In the U.S., these gaming jurisdictions are the states, territories, or federal district that legally allow gaming.

In essence, casino operators have to follow the gaming regulations for the jurisdiction wherein they are located. In part, these gaming jurisdictions often include laws which place an upper and lower limit on the pay back return for slot machines.

To not lose their gaming license, or to otherwise get in trouble with gaming control authorities, casino operators must remain in compliance with these legal gaming requirements.

Note that commercial casinos have to be comply to gaming regulations as set by the U.S. State, territory, or federal district they are located in. Native american tribal casinos also have to comply with their own set of gaming requirements, which are usually not based on state law.

Rather, these are defined by negotiation between a federally-recognized tribe and the state within which they are located by carefully crafting a state-tribal compact ultimately approved by the U.S. Department of the interior.

So, within this overall context, who controls slot machine odds? At a high level, gaming regulators determine the legal limits, if any, for payout returns on slot machines. This is accomplished via state law or negotiated compacts, and usually not changed for a decade, if that often.

Casinos operators are, often but not always, required to provide weekly or monthly reports on actual payout returns to show their gaming authority they are compliant. Sometimes, depending on each gaming jurisdiction, these statistical reports are then provided to the public by the state gaming commission.

Going further, these regular reports can break down these actual payout returns by casino, table games, slot machines, gaming machines, by the denomination of slot machines within a specific casino, or even if the machine has a progressive jackpot. What is done is very specific to the gaming jurisdiction where the casino is located.

Given all these variability of what is or is not done within a U.S. Gaming jurisdiction, I’ve created an online series of posts for my audience of slots enthusiasts. It’s meant to help them navigate this dynamic environment of state-specific gaming regulations.

For more information on your specific state, territory, or federal district of interest, see slot machine casino gambling, state-by-state: A weekly blog.

So, at its high level, slot machines are controlled by gaming regulators by the placement of legal requirements for payout return percentages. Sometimes, however, these state-specific gaming regulators do not set limits on payout returns. Put another way, they have deliberately chosen to not set legal limits.

When this happens, somewhat obviously, casino operators do not have a legal requirement for setting payout returns. However, to remain open and not close due to lack of customers, they still have to be careful to not set their payout returns too low.

It’s worth noting that most gaming regulations set a low limit on payout returns to which casino operators deliberately stay well above. To do so is just good business.

A bit of history on physically setting odds

The random number generator (RNG) was developed for slot machines by bally technologies in 1984. About a decade later, most slot machines had this RNG, which allowed for easily adjustable odds of winning.

Beforehand, the odds of winning were set in an entirely mechanical manner. This worked well for decades, until the technical development of slot machines began to cause difficulties. Basically, as credits to bet and number of pay lines increased, the physical mechanisms for determining odds began to reach certain physical limits.

Slot enthusiasts loved having a choice of how many credits to bet, as well as playing a slot machine with more than one pay line. Increased credits and pay lines also led to much higher jackpots.

All of these developments led to odds of winning being needed for many more possible outcomes, which mechanical devices for determining the odds of winning began to not be able to handle. In fact, these mechanical devices began to fall behind and actually became less and less random in nature.

As an aside, the topic of randomness is actually quite interesting. True randomness is very difficult, if not literally impossible, to generate. Often, when randomness is needed in either an mechanical or electronic device, various methods are used which are “random enough.”

Technically speaking, there is no such thing as an existing perfectly random number generator. At best, there are only pseudo random number generators, one variant of which was patented by bally technologies in 1984.

Moving away from our brief sortie into the philosophy of randomness, the invention of the RNG solved for slot machine manufacturers this limitation of mechanical devices for determining randomness in slot machines. But, it created another problem: with adjustable odds of winning via electronic rngs, casinos would need to have a large workforce to do that adjusting.

And so, that is what casinos did. They built and trained a workforce of slot mechanics to adjust the odds of winning on their new slot machines to meet their desired performance metrics.

However, the size of that workforce would increase tremendously depending on how often those odds of winning were adjusted. For older style slot machines, this is at least 7 days and may be as much as 2 weeks, as I’ve expressed in professor slots episode #21: winning at slots on older casinos-kentucky slots 2018.

Most recently, since 2012 or so, relatively newer casinos have been able to reduce this costly workforce thanks to new casino operating systems. These systems not only help casinos manage large promotional events with less overall issues, but also allow them to remotely adjust the odds of winning on slot machines connected to the casino’s central computer system.

Of course, this connection to the casino’s central computer system is currently limited to a wired connection due to potential security concerns as well as WIFI bandwidth limits. As a result, using a central computer in this manner is only possible if all the slot machines are physically “wired up.”

Doing so requires sufficient building infrastructure, such as clearance beneath floors and behind walls, to allow for these many, many cable connections. This is only practically possible in all new casinos being built as well as older casinos being heavily renovated. That is to say, renovated to have far more than simply new carpeting and wallpaper.

With wired connections from slot machines to a central computer, the reduced cost of a smaller workforce of slot mechanics, much faster adjustment of casino performance metrics to daily or even hourly updates, and more satisfied customers due to efficiently run events, the question remains. Who controls slot machine odds?

To get closer to the answer to this question, we’ll next have to discuss how the legal limits of payout returns are set on actual slot machines. Why? Because slot machines can be categorized by how their odds are set. And, how those odds are physically set will tell us who really controls them.

Slot machine types based on how odds are set

Slot machines can be divided up into methods by which their odds of winning are set. These slot machine types include:

Standalone

Casino-specific progressives

Multi-casino progressives

State-wide progressives

Remotely controlled onsite by casino

Remotely controlled offsite by gaming regulators

Standalone slot machines are those which are most often found in older casinos, but are technically slot machines including within their cabinets the ability to set and provide odds of winning with a random number generator. A workforce of slot mechanics adjust the odds of winning periodically as directed by the casino operator.

In general, there is a limited number of settings available for these older slot machines. Youtube videos are available from individuals who have personally purchased an older style, standalone slot machine showing exactly how these odds are set.

For those videos I have viewed, there were six possible settings which could be entered after opening up the slot machine door. These settings were based on codes from a booklet provided by the slot machine manufacturer.

Keep in mind that videos such as these are the general source of knowledge most people have about the internal workings of slot machines. Employees of slot machine manufacturers and casinos with access to these payout settings simply aren’t sharing this information due to non-disclosure agreements and other legal restrictions.

Besides which, accessing the control for changing the odds of a slot machine is quite problematic. The slot machine is alarmed, so any tampering without official access (employee card key, entry code, physical key) are required to even open a slot machine door. Not to mention, the casino surveillance system sees all.

Discussing the three types of progressive slot machines mentioned will be the dedicated topic for another time. I’d discuss how the ownership of these progressive slot machines matters with regards to how the odds of winning are set. Briefly, the amount of the progressive jackpot is primarily based on how many slot machines are included.

For instance, these can be a carousel of slot machines in a certain area of a casino, it can be a larger number of slot machines located throughout a casino, or a large group of progressive slot machines located at multiple casinos.

These large group could actually be of two types: multiple properties of the same casino operator, or multiple casino operators, within a single gaming jurisdiction, i.E., state.

Already discussed are slot machines remotely controlled onsite at a casino through the use of a central computer operating system. Only new or heavily renovated casinos have the facility infrastructure to handle the sheer number of cables necessary.

If they are controlled onsite, these slot machines have their odds of winning adjusted daily or hourly by remote access. How often these adjustments are made is, rather unfortunately at this time, a matter of debate.

I’m currently trying to track down state legal requirements of which I’d heard rumors. The rumor I heard was that a slot machine must be idle for at least 15 minutes without a players card being inserted before the casino is allowed, if desired, to remotely adjust its odds of winning. Further, the rumor stated that this practice was typical and originally based on nevada gaming regulations.

However, this rumor doesn’t pass the so-called smell test. At this time, I’ve currently reviewed state gaming regulations for over 38 U.S. States, territories, or a federal district. I’ve yet to find any substantiation for this rumor. Alternatively, it may well be an accepted business practice built-in to the advanced casino operating systems.

Why do I feel strongly that slots players are protected from having their odds of winnings reduced while playing? It’s simple – the state control board controls the odds of winning on slot machines, and everything I’ve seen, read, and studied tells me they work for you.

I just can’t imagine state gaming commissions would allow something this untoward, this nefarious even, to occur. They have careful casino operating system approval processes in place to prevent it, they watch casino operations like hawks (often from within the casino), and any casino that decides not to be fully compliant is in for a world of hurt if/when caught.

Finally, there are slot machines having their odds controlled off-site by state gaming regulators. These are most or all video lottery terminals style slot machines.

Video lottery terminals are, as their name implies, instant lottery machines. That means they are controlled by the state lottery, which is set up to remotely handle many, many such terminals at any given moment.

Identifying who controls slot machine odds

Who controls slot machine odds at a casino you are considering whether or not to visit? Who controls slot machine odds on the slot machine you’re sitting at?

As I’ve discussed before, both on my webpage assessing casinos as well as professor slots podcast episode #3: assessing casinos, alaska slots 2017, deciding which local casino you want to spend your time at is an important decision for determining your baseline success at slots.

So, you’ll likely want to know who controls slot machine odds when you’re choosing between, for instance, an older, pre-2012 casino with standalone slot machines or a racino with many new video slot machines.

The top level choice is really about your own gambling goals, as also discussed on my webpage identifying gambling goals or, alternatively, within professor slots podcast episode #5: identifying gambling goals, arizona slots 2017.

But, whether your gambling goal is entertainment, earning maximum comps, or take-home money, having better odds of winning on a slot machine will help accomplish that goal. So, ignoring other important considerations such as drive time, the spread of the buffet, players club, and etc., the type of slot machine is definitely a consideration.

Casinos with standalone slot machines where the actual machine in front of you has its own dedicated random number generator is relatively easily determined. Ask someone, how old is the casino?

Or, if you don’t want to ask someone or look it up online, just take a look at the slot machine in front of you. Specifically, look at the player card interface area. What does its display look like? Is it a touchscreen display?

Or an LED display like those seen outside of a bank showing the time and temperature for a passerby to see? If it’s a touchscreen, the slot machine is most likely not standalone. If it’s an LED, it most likely is a standalone slot machine.

Determining whether or not a progressive slot machine is connected to a single carousel, across several carousels within a casino, across several casinos owned by a single casino operator, or across several casino operator properties will be, as previously mentioned, the topic of an upcoming post.

Next up are non-video slot machines with touchscreens at the players card interface. These are all slot machines centrally controlled by a computer onsite at the casino. You can confirm this by learning the date of the casino’s original opening or when it was last heavily renovated.

Keep in mind that a very few casinos have both, assuming they have expanded their original structure not by renovating it, but by building a new casino facility right next to it.

This is the case with foxwoods resort, which is itself an older style casino. However, they recently build fox tower right next to it, which is a newer style casino.

Finally, there are video slot machines. It can be difficult, if not impossible, to tell the difference between a video slot machine and a video lottery terminal. A video slot machine is controlled onsite by the central computer at the casino. A video lottery terminal is controlled offsite by the state lottery.

The only sure way to tell the difference between these two slot machine types is to take a look at what the state gaming commission says they are at that casino.

For instance, in ohio, there are currently 4 commercial casino resorts and 7 pari-mutual racinos. The 4 casinos have traditional reel and video slot machines all controlled by a central computer located onsite.

However, ohio’s seven racinos have a mix of traditional reel and video lottery terminals slot machines. The traditional reel slot machines are controlled onsite with a central computer while all of the video lottery terminals, which externally look exactly like video slot machines, are controlled offsite by the state lottery’s central computer systems.

Does it really matter who controls slot machine odds? Yes!!

With this improved understanding of how casinos work, let’s consider these two facts. First, that there are types of slot machines, specifically those that are standalone or remotely controlled by casino operator or state. Second, that there are the several ways slot machines can have their odds of winning set on an ongoing basis, depending on their specific type.

So yes, actually, it does matter who controls slot machine odds. Why? Because this is where patterns of winning are found. When slot machines are set up to be as random as possible, and that assigned level of randomness is unchanged over days and weeks, then long-term statistical principles rule.

Meaning, on average over the long haul, people will always loss money playing slots. Put another way, profits are only possible in the short term.. This specifically applies to all slot machines controlled by the state, such as video lottery terminals.

However, when the odds are changed hourly or set over 100% for promotional purposes, then there are better times to play a slot machine – and all that slot enthusiasts need do is figure out when that better time is in order to win more and, potentially, make some level of profit. That’s what I did: I made a profit at slots by looking for and finding winning patterns, when I won 90 taxable jackpots in 9 months.

Only casino operators change their odds hourly or deliberately adjust them for promotional purposes. The state has no need or desire to do so, getting their money no matter what, while the casino is a business, with stockholders and a board of directors, obligated to try to succeed financially.

The casino puts in the time and energy to hit their financial performance metrics. The casinos hire the best general manager who themselves hire the best possible team.

Put another way, the casino has a business need to adjust the odds of winning on their slot machines to eke out a living while the state only needs to be patient. Businesses are not patient – they try things in their ongoing quest for success.

And, really, that struggle is what has changed since around 2012 with the technology behind the winning odds of slot machines. Casinos are always trying new things. And, when they have control over setting the odds on slot machines, they adjust them to try to succeed.

Before 2012, this amounted to increasing the odds of winning to be over 100% on a single slot machine near a busy area in their casino, as a promotional tool with its own limited budget.

With the new casino operating technologies, casinos have been given a finer control over setting those odds. This has allowed them to try new things, which they very much like to do. These new things are to adjust the odds on slot machines more often than ever before.

In financial terms, they’re trying to tune their financial performance metrics on a daily or even hourly basis, something that was never before possible.

I’ve never worked for a casino, so have never been pitched a new casino operating system by a slot machine manufacturer’s sales team. But, it’s obvious that this “tuning” is part of the pitch being made to casino operators. Without having seen it, how can I believe this? Simple. I’ve won a lot at slots through pattern recognition.

What’s happened is that, and it matters not at all how it came about, casinos have obviously bought into the idea of finely tuning their financial performance metrics.

In the case of slot machines, which is the only game as casino offers that I’m interested in, they’ve broken the long-term constant randomness of the odds of winning on a slot machine. Therefore, as all statisticians know, patterns emerge.

So, again, yes it does matter who controls slot machine odds, because those controlled by the casino have had their randomness broken. It matters because slots enthusiasts can look for emerging patterns on these casino-controlled machines, then use them to win more.

In the future, I’ll talk more about the winning patterns I’ve found using this understanding. In the meantime, I hope I’ve made it clear how and why they exist.

Summary of can you guess who controls slot machine odds?

In summary, who controls slot machine odds is answered by understanding they are controlled by the machine, the casino staff, both, possibly the state if the machine is a video lottery terminal, and by slot machine manufacturers themselves in the case of most progressive slot machines.

This control over the odds of winning was historically a mechanical device supplanted by an electronic random number generator invented in 1984, afterwards allowing slots machines to be developed having more credits, denominations, and pay lines as well as higher jackpots.

There’s currently older-style casinos with standalone slot machines and newer-style casinos built to have the facility infrastructure necessary for physically wiring up their slot machines to be remotely controlled by a computer server.

I’ve discussed how to tell the difference, as well as explained how slot machines can be remotely controlled by the casino or, in the case of video lottery terminals, by computers established for this purpose by the state lottery agency.

Finally, I’ve discussed if any of this matters to slots enthusiasts looking for an advantage. It does matter. In essence, any slot machines with odds of winning directly controlled by a casino have patterns of winning because casinos keep adjusting those odds to meet their financial performance metrics.

These patterns make it possible for savvy slots enthusiasts to improve their own gambling performance.

The top 12 casino psychology tricks used on players

There’s so much more going on in the average casino than meets the eye. However, most of us tend to be aware of only what’s happening on the surface; we see only what the casino wants us to see. Our senses are dazzled by the lively atmosphere that is complete with lights, sounds, drinks and food, which keeps us entertained and comfortable, feeding the thrill and hope that we’ll be the next big winner. Happily, we move around the casino floor completely oblivious to the fact that these gambling establishments are employing casino psychology tricks to keep us playing and spending more.

There’s a reason why the casino almost always wins. The following are 12 tricks casinos use to manipulate gamblers into playing for as long as possible.

If you don’t wear a watch to the casino or you forgot your phone at home, good luck finding out the time. Time has no meaning in a casino. You won’t find a clock in sight and there are no windows or skylights to help you determine if it’s light or dark outside. Casinos are purposely designed to look the same, regardless of the hour. Whether it is 3am or 3pm, the atmosphere is unchanging. When you’re in the casino, your internal sense of time shuts off. All that exists is a now that stretches on until you leave. Players who don’t know the time aren’t in a hurry to quit playing.

Most customers of casinos will agree that these gambling establishments have the gaudiest carpets around. Believe it or not, these brightly colored carpets, with wild swirling patterns and psychedelic designs, are no mistake. They are, in fact, another one of the casino psychology tricks that keep players alert and happy, encouraging them to play more. A garish carpet won’t lull your eyes to sleep; it will shock them back to wakefulness.

Casinos are a symphony of non-stop sound, lights and color. Flashing slot machine lights and happy, up-beat noises captivate players and boosts their moods, making them feel excited and hopeful that they could win. All the machines, no matter the one you play, is alive with sound and lights, drawing you in and encouraging you to continue placing your bets. In addition to sound effects and other noise, most casinos also play a soundtrack of music that is pleasing to the ear. In some cases the music may be soft, repetitive and easy listening, for the purpose of putting gamblers in a trance-like state. While sometimes music may be upbeat and stimulating.

You’ve had a good time and you’re ready to leave the casino. That’s when you realize that you have no idea how to get out. You start making your way through the maze of tantalizing slot machines and game tables, only to find yourself encountering more of these tempting traps at every turn as you search for the exit. The confusion you feel as you try to figure out the labyrinth-like design is normal, and it is one of the age-old tricks employed by casinos to keep players gambling. Casinos are virtually void of landmarks, making it easy for you to get lost. This, in addition to alluring games, can make it difficult to leave.

Hungry? Need to use the bathroom? Want to cash out your chips or ticket? No problem. Just be prepared to encounter lots more tempting casino game action along the way. Restrooms, the cashier and restaurants tend to be situated deep inside the building. You won’t have trouble finding them, but they’re purposely located deep in the casino so that if your next step is to leave the establishment, when you’re finished with these services, you’ll be forced to walk past a sea of eye-catching gambling entertainment during your long walk to the exit. This trick is the casino’s last ditch effort to snag the customer willing to make that final impulse bet.

Although your gambling adventure may begin with cash, after you feed your money into a slot or video poker machine, your cash becomes digital credits. Without inserting actual cash into the machine, every time you make a bet, it’s easy to forget how much you’re spending. Once you cash out from the machine, a ticket is printed with your remaining balance. Since you’re not holding physical paper money in your hand, it’s easy to feed that ticket into another machine and keep playing. The only way to get your winnings or your cash back is to visit the cashier. Casinos make it easy for you to play, but not easy for you to walk away.

If a machine or table never paid out the occasional small win to players, casinos would lose the interest of their customers. To keep them happy, how casinos manipulate players (into thinking that they have a shot at winning big) is by having the machines tease players with near wins and appease them with small payouts. Players will continue to feed their money into the casino, thinking that they’re close to the big win. In other words, while you may need three cherries to win the jackpot, perpetually spinning two cherries isn’t getting you any closer to the win, even though the casino has you convinced otherwise.

Some casino games are designed to provide players with a feeling of “control.” for instance, craps lets you roll the dice and keno lets you pick your numbers, while blackjack and other card games let you decide what move you’ll make after the cards are dealt. This illusion of control can fool some gamblers into thinking that they have a higher chance of winning, which can result in them playing for longer.

If you visit casinos often enough, eventually, you’ll encounter a player hitting the jackpot. You’ll know when it happens; everyone knows. All the bells and whistles go off, lights flash and the staff show up to administer the win. Drawing this kind of attention catches everyone’s interest and is among the very cleverest psychological tricks of casinos. The reason is that it pretty much guarantees that the same single thought will run through most of the minds of all gamblers who witnessed it: “if they can win, maybe I can, too.”

Free drinks aren’t like other freebies from the casino, or like other tricks casinos use to trap players, for two major reasons. First, alcohol affects the brain, slowing it down. Even a player who doesn’t get drunk can still make poor decisions under the influence of alcohol. Second, gamblers who are buzzed or drunk are far more likely to be liberal with their money. Essentially, alcohol corrupts the way a gambler thinks, which is often a detriment to them but a benefit to the casino. Free booze is arguably the dirtiest tactic used by casinos to encourage gamblers to spend.

Just like free drinks, casinos are also known to give away other freebies to loyal players, especially to high rollers (the big spenders), their most important players. Some of the free perks offered to players may include free hotel rooms, luxurious suites, food, tickets to shows, and other prizes. All of these comps that the casino gives out “free” to players, make players (both low and high rollers) feel important. They feel that they have gained something even when they’ve lost, which makes it more likely that they’ll return. The reality is that whatever casinos give away in perks, they make back hundreds of times over from the same people awarded the comps.

One of the more bizarre tricks is casinos reportedly use higher levels of oxygen in their establishments to help keep players awake. Pumping in this extra oxygen from pressurized tanks, help gamblers to free refreshed and alert, which enables them to gamble for longer, without getting tired. There has also been talk that some casinos even release pheromones, which would promote feelings of comfort and euphoria, making the environment all the more appealing and addictive.

Keep these casino psychology tricks in mind the next time you visit the casino and use this knowledge to your advantage. You’ll have a far more gratifying experience and a lot more fun when you remember that, no matter how much a casino might try to trick you, ultimately, you are the one in control of your actions.

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About the author

The gambler

As a member of the vegasmaster writing staff, I pride myself on delivering quality information about my favorite topic: the online gaming industry. In addition to playing a wide-variety of online casino games, I keep up on the latest igaming news and trends. My passion for the industry has made me both an experienced player and researcher.

Slot machine facts you should know

Slot machines have become most casinos’ bread and butter.

Just a couple of decades ago, these games were targeted at women and the elderly. Casino managers didn’t take these games or the people who played them seriously.

Most of their money came from high rollers at the blackjack and craps tables.

This all started to change in the middle of the 1980s, but these changes really took off during the 1990s.

Now slot machines and their players dominate the industry.

If you’re interested in gambling and casinos, you should know the following facts about slot machines.

1. “time on device” (TOD) is the #1 metric that casinos and slot machine manufacturers are concerned with.

Casinos and gambling machine manufacturers have figured out that the #1 predictor of a game’s profitability is the average amount of time a gambler spends on that device. When designing new games, the slot machine manufacturers (IGT, bally, WMS, and others) focus on features that will increase this number.

One way to look at a game with a high “time on device” is how well it hooks a gambler into “the zone”. This is a state of mind where it’s just the gambler and the machine. According to some anecdotal reports, this type of thinking takes the place of concerns about winning big.

You can think of this zone as a space where time and normal social stresses cease to have meaning.

I’ll leave that for the reader to decide.

2. Slot machines are the only casino game with opaque odds.

All casino games have a house edge that can be calculated if you know 2 things:

The payoffs for each bet.

The odds of winning each bet.

Most casino games use a deck of cards or a pair of dice or something comparable to generate their random results. Those are examples of games where you know the odds of winning a bet.

After all, there are 52 cards in a deck, so the odds of getting a particular card are 51 to 1. All the other probabilities can be calculated if you know the make-up of the deck.

There are only 6 sides on a die in a game of craps, so there are a finite number of combinations. Calculating the odds of any given outcome is relatively simple math.

But on a slot machine, you have symbols that pay off at a certain rate when you get certain combinations of those symbols on the screen at the same time in a line. But you have no means of determining the odds of getting a particular symbol on any particular spin.

Without that piece of information, you have no way of telling what the house edge is.

As a result, the house edge for slot machines is often higher than the house edge for other games. Blackjack has a low house edge of between 0.5% and 1% (assuming you play well). Even if you play badly, the house edge at blackjack probably maxes out at 4% or so.

But the house edge for most slot machines is 5% or more. And you have no way of knowing if the game you’re playing has a house edge of 5% or 25%. In fact, 2 identical machines sitting right next to each other can have dramatically different payback percentages.

That’s because the random number generator is inside the machine. You can’t examine it.

Some online slots games have certified payback percentage information posted on the internet casinos’ sites.

3. Slot machines now make up 85% of the average casino’s revenues.

The casino industry changed dramatically in the middle of the 1980s. At that time, slot machines were considered a distraction for women. The boyfriends and husbands were the real gamblers and stuck with games like blackjack and craps.

The slots didn’t even have stools in front of them in those days. They were placed in the hall or near the elevator—the idea was to avoid taking up space on the gambling floor. They were located in spaces where people were moving from point A to point B.

It only took a decade for slot machines to start generating twice as much revenue per year as all the table games put together. By 2003, gambling machines were generating 85% of the casinos’ revenues.

You’ll often see 65% or 70% quoted on various websites, by the way. My best guess is that this number WAS true at one time, but the internet is like a giant echo chamber. Once someone has written a page somewhere quoting a statistic, other webmasters publish similar pages paraphrasing those earlier pages. Few online writers spend a lot of time doing actual research from legitimate in print sources.

4. Modern progressive slots often have jackpots comparable to lottery sized jackpots.

A progressive jackpot game is one in which the size of the top jackpot grows with every spin of the reels. You can find 3 kinds of progressive slots:

Standalone progressives

Local area progressives

Wide area progressives

A standalone progressive jackpot only grows when you play that individual machine.

A local area progressive is networked with a group of other slot machines within the same casino. Play on any of those machines causes the jackpot for all those games to grow. If the jackpot is hit on any of those machines, the jackpot on all the machines resets to its starting point. (it’s a shared jackpot.)

Wide area progressives are the games that are networked across multiple casinos. These are the games where the jackpots get high enough to compete with lottery games.

The biggest example of a wide area progressive is megabucks. The jackpot for this game starts at $10 million and grows until it’s hit. The jackpot has grown to over $30 million on at least 2 different occasions.

This kind of jackpot has a couple of significant differences from the lottery:

The odds of winning are roughly double that of winning the lottery.

You can play rapidly and see your results instantly. (when playing the lottery, you have to wait for the drawing.)

Even though the odds of winning a progressive jackpot are significantly better than the odds of winning the lottery, a progressive jackpot is still a bet where the odds are stacked against you in an almost comprehensible way. The odds of winning the lottery are about 1 in half a million. The odds of winning the megabucks jackpot is about 1 in a quarter million.

Another difference is that you’ll see smaller payouts more frequently when playing on a megabucks slot machine. It is a slot machine, after all.

5. Today’s slots have little in common with the original games.

Slot machines were originally made up of a few mechanical parts:

Modern slots are made up of over 1200+ individual components put together by 300+ people from design to the manufacture and assembly of those components. The parts involved now include items that charles fey, the inventor of the slot machine, wouldn’t even recognize:

Bill validators

Machine cabinets

Random number generator software

Touchscreens

These games used to be straightforward. You inserted coins, pulled a lever, and looked for a combination of symbols across a pay line. Now you have to choose how much to bet, insert paper money or tickets, and press buttons or a screen in order to start the game. You can bet as little as a penny per line per spin or $100 per line per spin—on the same machine.

The reels are 3D animations on a video screen, and instead of a single pay line, you have potentially dozens of ways to win (and/or lose). The pay table is also available on screen, but you have to navigate to another screen to look at it.

And many of these games are now linked to other games and to computer programs which gather data that goes straight into the hands of the casinos’ marketing departments.

6. Gambling machines’ growing popularity has been the result of a perfect storm.

Multiple factors have added to the growth of these games’ popularity throughout the united states. Some of this has to do with the economy during the reagan and bush administrations.

Those 2 administrations cut federal funding to most states during the recession. The governments of those states needed to find ways to generate revenue without directly raising taxes. Legalizing and taxing gambling proceeds was an easy way to do it.

While this was going on, video games in general were also exploding in popularity. And since most machine gamblers were women and elderly people playing for low stakes, industry spokespeople began discussing their industry using a redefined term—“gaming”, rather than “gambling”.

The combination of these factors with the technological innovations going on at the time created the perfect storm that made slot machines far and away the biggest source of revenue in the united states gambling industry.

7. Slot machines are now legal in 41 states.

In the year 2000, slot machines were only legal in 31 states. They’ve since been legalized and regulated in 10 additional states. Other states are considering legalization, too.

But these close to 1 million machines aren’t the only example of the industry in action. There are countless underground machines available even in states where gambling machines aren’t legal. These games are unauthorized and unregulated—you’ll find them in bars, gas stations, and restaurants in states like texas, where there are no legal casinos.

These unregulated games are often billed as “amusement devices” or “sweepstakes games”. In texas, the colloquial term for them is “8 liners”, and entire businesses (“game rooms”) are dedicated to allowing gaming enthusiasts the opportunity to play for prizes you could easily buy at dollar general. I visited one game room where you could win a dozen cans of creamed corn or some garden tools.

8. Slot machines are more popular and common in japan than the united states.

It would seem that 800,000+ slot machines in one country would set a record. But it doesn’t. It just makes the united states #2 worldwide.

The #1 country for slot machines is japan. They have close to 5 million slot machine games in the country. And considering that japan has a population roughly 1/3 of that of the united states, the number of slot machines per person is considerably greater.

For every 27 people in japan, you’ll find a slot machine. In the united states, you’ll find one slot machine for every 350 people.

So, yes, we have a lot of slots in the united states. But we don’t even come close to having the kind of slot machine fever that they have in japan.

9. Slot machines are more popular with locals than with tourists.

Another example of how the gambling landscape in the united states has changed is the rise of the local gambler. The population of las vegas quadrupled from 1980 to 2010, from 450,000 people to 2 million. But 2/3 of vegas residents gamble.

And 2/3 of THOSE gamblers play at least monthly, for 4+ hours per session. Many of those play twice a week or more. Neighborhood casinos cater to these local players by offering them amenities specific to their needs (like child care).

These factors have combined to make low rolling local gamblers a more dominant force in the economy of the local vegas economy than high roller tourists.

Station casinos, in particular cater to local gamblers in las vegas. They’re known for offering some of the best odds on video poker machines in the world. Their house edge might be lower on these games, but they make up for it in volume.

10. Slot machines don’t really get “hot” or “cold”.

One of the best examples of the gambler’s fallacy is the belief that a slot machine game gets hot or cold. The idea is that a game which is paying out a lot is somehow “hot” and will continue to pay out. Alternatively, if a game is not paying out much, it will continue to be “cold” and will be less likely to pay out.

The reality is that in any situation dealing with random results, apparent streaks of luck (both good or bad) will happen. But those streaks of luck are only apparent in retrospect. They don’t affect future results in any way.

If you have a 1 in 1000 chance of winning a jackpot on a spin of the reels, you have a 1 in 1000 chance of winning on the next spin of the reels—regardless of whether or not you won anything on the previous spin.

In probability terms, a spin of the reels on a slot machine is considered an “independent trial”. This means that previous results have no effect on future results.

Modern slot machines use a random number generator to determine their results. This is a computer program that generates thousands of random numbers per second, each of which is tied to a particular result on the reels. The split second that you hit the “spin” button (or pull the lever), the RNG (random number generator) stops.

There’s no way to realistically predict which number it will land on. The machine goes through too many numbers per second.

11. The majority of attendees at gamblers anonymous meetings gamble exclusively on machines.

This has been true since the middle of the 1990s, which is a remarkable difference from the decades prior to the 1980s. In previous decades, the majority of attendees at gamblers anonymous meetings were sports bettors or card players.

This coincides with another, related historical event. In 1980, the american psychiatric association endorsed “pathological gambling” as an official psychiatric condition. It has since been renamed “disordered gambling”.

Here’s an interesting statistic about gambling addicts, too. They have the highest rate of suicide attempts (20%) of any type of addict.

But the percentage of the general population that meet the criteria for this condition is less than 2%. A less serious version of this diagnosis is that of “problem gambling”, which makes up 4% of the general population. But these gamblers make up a disproportionate amount of gambling revenue—possibly 30% to 60%, depending on which estimate you’re looking at.

The percentage of the general population that engages in general gambling, on the other hand, has been estimated to be 20%.

12. Slot machine gamblers become addicted gamblers 3 to 4 times as fast as other types of gamblers.

Multiple studies have demonstrated that the nature of slot machines and their design contribute to the rapidly addictive quality of these games. The easy availability of such games also contributes to this figure.

Some people are more likely to develop an addiction than others. But some activities are also more likely to cause an addiction, too.

You could draw a comparison between marijuana use and heroin use. One is clearly more addictive than the other. Slots are almost certainly more prone to cause addiction than blackjack or craps.

13. Online slot machines work in essentially the same way as land-based gambling machines.

Brick and mortar slot machines might look and sound a little bit different from the games you play at online casinos, but in reality, they’re actually quite similar in how they work under the hood. The big difference is the technology you’re using to access the results.

Online casinos use the same kinds of random number generator programs as land-based casinos. They just serve up your results via animation that is sent to your computer via the internet.

Land-based casinos are using slightly different hardware to give you your results, but the games actually work the same way in terms of how the random number generator works.

14. The nature of slot machines contribute to their addictive quality.

What is it about slots that make them more addictive than other kinds of gambling?

Multiple factors contribute to this:

It’s a solitary game. You’re not dealing with other people at all when you’re playing slot machines or video poker.

You’re in action more or less continually. In other gambling games, you have to wait for results and to place your next bet. With any kind of gambling machine, the bets and results happen so quickly that they’re practically continuous. The average slot machine player makes 600 wagers per hour. Compare that with the average of 100 roulette spins per hour or 200 blackjack hands per hour. (and those numbers are the average for a player with no other players at the table—if other players are at the table, the number of bets per hour can drop by 70% or more.)

These rapid events stimulate and de-stimulate the brain faster than most non-gamblers can even imagine. Even experienced gamblers probably underestimate (or don’t even think about) the effect that this kind of gambling has on your brain chemistry.

This kind of gambling creates a trancelike state. It’s no wonder that slot machine aficionados are sometimes called “slots zombies”. You can compare this kind of difference from other forms of gambling to how television differs from movies. Craps is all about adrenaline and excitement compounded with camaraderie at the table. Movies are all about entering a dreamlike state. Slots and television both create more of a state of hypnosis. It’s a type of psychological numbness.

15. Slot machine systems and strategies don’t work.

You’ll find plenty of snake oil salesmen on the internet who claim to have some kind of inside insight into how these games work and how you can win at them more often. But they’re all equally worthless.

Many of them like to share the idea that you can get a clue as to which machines are ready to pay out based on the symbols that are showing on them while they’re at rest. This is called the “zig-zag” system.

The reels are just for show. The actual results are determined by the random number generator inside the slot machine.

This kind of thinking MIGHT have had some relevance in the 1970s, but modern slot machines don’t have mechanical parts and aren’t subject to this kind of prediction.

Other systems have to do with using the gambler’s fallacy to predict which games are hot or cold. Gambling author (if you can call him that) john patrick promotes several nonsensical (and complicated) systems that try to predict whether a machine is hot or cold. One of his theories is that you should stop playing a game if you’ve had 7 spins in a row with no winnings.

These systems and strategies can make for an interesting way to pass the time and play, but they don’t do anything in terms of increasing your chances of walking away a winner.

If you are going to try some kind of betting system when you’re playing slots, please don’t spend money buying someone’s system. Those kinds of gurus are preying on the weak-minded and uninformed. You shouldn’t support such business practices, online or off.

16. Slot machines have a lot in common with “skinner boxes”.

B.F. Skinner was a behavioral scientist who studied how motivated animals became when they got rewards from a box. He learned through his experiments that animals were more motivated by a box that gave our periodic rewards than they were by a box that gave out consistent rewards.

If you think about the implications of that for a minute, you’ll see the obvious application to slot machine technology. If you won on every spin, you’d be less motivated to play than if you won on occasional spins.

Slot machine designers and casinos can test various hit frequencies to see which games generate the highest TOD figures. (remember “TOD”? It stands for “time on device”.)

This kind of testing is comparable to split testing in the world of marketing. It’s a simple task to put 10 almost identical slot machines on a casino floor, but have half of them with a 60% hit frequency and half with a 70% hit frequency. All you have to do is track which game has the higher average TOD, then adjust the parameters accordingly.

Copy writers have used a similar approach with sales letters for decades. They’ll write 2 versions of the game letter, but they’ll change a single word from one letter to another. Then they’ll send out 1000 versions of each letter and see which letter generated the better response rate. They use that as their new control letter to beat by changing another word.

17. The most popular games are riding on the coattails of another intellectual property.

You can find plenty of slot machines with original themes. Lucky larry’s lobstermania is a good example of such a game.

But you’re more likely to find games which are based on other intellectual properties. The most famous example of this is the wheel of fortune slot machine game.

You can find multiple variations of this game, and all of them are hugely popular. IGT was so interested in the popularity of this game that they actually did surveys to find out why customers like it so much.

Here’s what they found out:

Most of the people playing wheel of fortune slots on a regular basis said it reminded them of watching television with their grandmother.

Game shows are a popular source of intellectual property that is used to create slot machine games. Wheel of fortune is just one example. You’ll also find slot machines based on jeopardy, the $20,000 pyramid, and who wants to be a millionaire. Many of these are available both online and off.

Television shows are also a popular source for slot themes. The beverly hillbillies, gilligans island, and bewitched are just 3 examples of this kind of game. You can find plenty more by visiting any nearby casino. Baywatch is a more recent example.

Movies are also ripe for adaptation into a gambling game. Titanic is one of the more popular slot machine games based on a movie, but you can find games based on the terminator and aliens, too. There are countless examples, in fact.

Even individual celebrities often lend their names and personalities to these games. Some of the more popular ones include elvis presley and dolly parton.

In fact, anything you can think of that people are interested in can (and probably has been or will be) converted into a slot machine game. Online games inspired by other intellectual properties often include superhero based games like those from playtech, which holds the license for online gambling games based on marvel comics characters like captain america and iron man.

Conclusion

You might think that slot machines are a relatively uncomplicated subject, but the reality is that they’re a fascinating phenomenon. Enormous amounts of revenue are generated for companies worldwide by these machines and the people who play on them.

Casino management and the companies designing these games understand how they work better than almost anyone.

But you owe it to yourself to know about slot machines, too, especially if you’re a gambler who’s going to play them.

Some anti-gambling activists argue against slot machines in the same way that gun-control activists argue against guns.

Admittedly, some of their arguments are compelling. The nature of these games seems to be significantly different from the nature of other games.

I still don’t think there’s anything wrong with enjoying slot machine games responsibly, though.

Russians engineer a brilliant slot machine cheat—and casinos have no fix

In early june 2014, accountants at the lumiere place casino in st. Louis noticed that several of their slot machines had—just for a couple of days—gone haywire. The government-approved software that powers such machines gives the house a fixed mathematical edge, so that casinos can be certain of how much they’ll earn over the long haul—say, 7.129 cents for every dollar played. But on june 2 and 3, a number of lumiere’s machines had spit out far more money than they’d consumed, despite not awarding any major jackpots, an aberration known in industry parlance as a negative hold. Since code isn’t prone to sudden fits of madness, the only plausible explanation was that someone was cheating.

Casino security pulled up the surveillance tapes and eventually spotted the culprit, a black-haired man in his thirties who wore a polo zip-up and carried a square brown purse. Unlike most slots cheats, he didn’t appear to tinker with any of the machines he targeted, all of which were older models manufactured by aristocrat leisure of australia. Instead he’d simply play, pushing the buttons on a game like star drifter or pelican pete while furtively holding his iphone close to the screen.

He’d walk away after a few minutes, then return a bit later to give the game a second chance. That's when he'd get lucky. The man would parlay a $20 to $60 investment into as much as $1,300 before cashing out and moving on to another machine, where he’d start the cycle anew. Over the course of two days, his winnings tallied just over $21,000. The only odd thing about his behavior during his streaks was the way he’d hover his finger above the spin button for long stretches before finally jabbing it in haste; typical slots players don't pause between spins like that.

On june 9, lumiere place shared its findings with the missouri gaming commission, which in turn issued a statewide alert. Several casinos soon discovered that they had been cheated the same way, though often by different men than the one who’d bilked lumiere place. In each instance, the perpetrator held a cell phone close to an aristocrat mark VI model slot machine shortly before a run of good fortune.

By examining rental-car records, missouri authorities identified the lumiere place scammer as murat bliev, a 37-year-old russian national. Bliev had flown back to moscow on june 6, but the st. Petersburg–based organization he worked for, which employs dozens of operatives to manipulate slot machines around the world, quickly sent him back to the united states to join another cheating crew. The decision to redeploy bliev to the US would prove to be a rare misstep for a venture that’s quietly making millions by cracking some of the gaming industry’s most treasured algorithms.

From russia with cheats

Russia has been a hotbed of slots-related malfeasance since 2009, when the country outlawed virtually all gambling. (vladimir putin, who was prime minister at the time, reportedly believed the move would reduce the power of georgian organized crime.) the ban forced thousands of casinos to sell their slot machines at steep discounts to whatever customers they could find. Some of those cut-rate slots wound up in the hands of counterfeiters eager to learn how to load new games onto old circuit boards. Others apparently went to murat bliev’s bosses in st. Petersburg, who were keen to probe the machines’ source code for vulnerabilities.

By early 2011, casinos throughout central and eastern europe were logging incidents in which slots made by the austrian company novomatic paid out improbably large sums. Novomatic’s engineers could find no evidence that the machines in question had been tampered with, leading them to theorize that the cheaters had figured out how to predict the slots’ behavior. “through targeted and prolonged observation of the individual game sequences as well as possibly recording individual games, it might be possible to allegedly identify a kind of ‘pattern’ in the game results,” the company admitted in a february 2011 notice to its customers.

Recognizing those patterns would require remarkable effort. Slot machine outcomes are controlled by programs called pseudorandom number generators that produce baffling results by design. Government regulators, such as the missouri gaming commission, vet the integrity of each algorithm before casinos can deploy it.

But as the “pseudo” in the name suggests, the numbers aren't truly random. Because human beings create them using coded instructions, prngs can't help but be a bit deterministic. (A true random number generator must be rooted in a phenomenon that is not manmade, such as radioactive decay.) prngs take an initial number, known as a seed, and then mash it together with various hidden and shifting inputs—the time from a machine’s internal clock, for example—in order to produce a result that appears impossible to forecast. But if hackers can identify the various ingredients in that mathematical stew, they can potentially predict a PRNG’s output. That process of reverse engineering becomes much easier, of course, when a hacker has physical access to a slot machine’s innards.

Knowing the secret arithmetic that a slot machine uses to create pseudorandom results isn’t enough to help hackers, though. That’s because the inputs for a PRNG vary depending on the temporal state of each machine. The seeds are different at different times, for example, as is the data culled from the internal clocks. So even if they understand how a machine’s PRNG functions, hackers would also have to analyze the machine’s gameplay to discern its pattern. That requires both time and substantial computing power, and pounding away on one’s laptop in front of a pelican pete is a good way to attract the attention of casino security.

The lumiere place scam showed how murat bliev and his cohorts got around that challenge. After hearing what had happened in missouri, a casino security expert named darrin hoke, who was then director of surveillance at L’auberge du lac casino resort in lake charles, louisiana, took it upon himself to investigate the scope of the hacking operation. By interviewing colleagues who had reported suspicious slot machine activity and by examining their surveillance photos, he was able to identify 25 alleged operatives who'd worked in casinos from california to romania to macau. Hoke also used hotel registration records to discover that two of bliev’s accomplices from st. Louis had remained in the US and traveled west to the pechanga resort & casino in temecula, california. On july 14, 2014, agents from the california department of justice detained one of those operatives at pechanga and confiscated four of his cell phones, as well as $6,000. (the man, a russian national, was not indicted; his current whereabouts are unknown.)

The cell phones from pechanga, combined with intelligence from investigations in missouri and europe, revealed key details. According to willy allison, a las vegas–based casino security consultant who has been tracking the russian scam for years, the operatives use their phones to record about two dozen spins on a game they aim to cheat. They upload that footage to a technical staff in st. Petersburg, who analyze the video and calculate the machine’s pattern based on what they know about the model’s pseudorandom number generator. Finally, the st. Petersburg team transmits a list of timing markers to a custom app on the operative’s phone; those markers cause the handset to vibrate roughly 0.25 seconds before the operative should press the spin button.

“the normal reaction time for a human is about a quarter of a second, which is why they do that,” says allison, who is also the founder of the annual world game protection conference. The timed spins are not always successful, but they result in far more payouts than a machine normally awards: individual scammers typically win more than $10,000 per day. (allison notes that those operatives try to keep their winnings on each machine to less than $1,000, to avoid arousing suspicion.) A four-person team working multiple casinos can earn upwards of $250,000 in a single week.

Repeat business

Since there are no slot machines to swindle in his native country, murat bliev didn’t linger long in russia after his return from st. Louis. He made two more trips to the US in 2014, the second of which began on december 3. He went straight from chicago O'hare airport to st. Charles, missouri, where he met up with three other men who’d been trained to scam aristocrat’s mark VI model slot machines: ivan gudalov, igor larenov, and yevgeniy nazarov. The quartet planned to spend the next several days hitting various casinos in missouri and western illinois.

Bliev should never have come back. On december 10, not long after security personnel spotted bliev inside the hollywood casino in st. Louis, the four scammers were arrested. Because bliev and his cohorts had pulled their scam across state lines, federal authorities charged them with conspiracy to commit fraud. The indictments represented the first significant setbacks for the st. Petersburg organization; never before had any of its operatives faced prosecution.

Bliev, gudalov, and larenov, all of whom are russian citizens, eventually accepted plea bargains and were each sentenced to two years in federal prison, to be followed by deportation. Nazarov, a kazakh who was granted religious asylum in the US in 2013 and is a florida resident, still awaits sentencing, which indicates that he is cooperating with the authorities: in a statement to WIRED, aristocrat representatives noted that one of the four defendants has yet to be sentenced because he “continues to assist the FBI with their investigations.”

Whatever information nazarov provides may be too outdated to be of much value. In the two years since the missouri arrests, the st. Petersburg organization’s field operatives have become much cagier. Some of their new tricks were revealed last year, when singaporean authorities caught and prosecuted a crew: one member, a czech named radoslav skubnik, spilled details about the organization’s financial structure (90 percent of all revenue goes back to st. Petersburg) as well as operational tactics. “what they’ll do now is they’ll put the cell phone in their shirt’s chest pocket, behind a little piece of mesh,” says allison. “so they don’t have to hold it in their hand while they record.” and darrin hoke, the security expert, says he has received reports that scammers may be streaming video back to russia via skype, so they no longer need to step away from a slot machine to upload their footage.

The missouri and singapore cases appear to be the only instances in which scammers have been prosecuted, though a few have also been caught and banned by individual casinos. At the same time, the st. Petersburg organization has sent its operatives farther and farther afield. In recent months, for example, at least three casinos in peru have reported being cheated by russian gamblers who played aging novomatic coolfire slot machines.

The economic realities of the gaming industry seem to guarantee that the st. Petersburg organization will continue to flourish. The machines have no easy technical fix. As hoke notes, aristocrat, novomatic, and any other manufacturers whose prngs have been cracked “would have to pull all the machines out of service and put something else in, and they’re not going to do that.” (in aristocrat’s statement to WIRED, the company stressed that it has been unable “to identify defects in the targeted games” and that its machines “are built to and approved against rigid regulatory technical standards.”) at the same time, most casinos can’t afford to invest in the newest slot machines, whose prngs use encryption to protect mathematical secrets; as long as older, compromised machines are still popular with customers, the smart financial move for casinos is to keep using them and accept the occasional loss to scammers.

So the onus will be on casino security personnel to keep an eye peeled for the scam’s small tells. A finger that lingers too long above a spin button may be a guard’s only clue that hackers in st. Petersburg are about to make another score.

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Slot machine facts you should know

1. “time on device” (TOD) is the #1 metric that casinos and slot machine manufacturers are concerned with.

2. Slot machines are the only casino game with opaque odds.

3. Slot machines now make up 85% of the average casino’s revenues.

4. Modern progressive slots often have jackpots comparable to lottery sized jackpots.

5. Today’s slots have little in common with the original games.

6. Gambling machines’ growing popularity has been the result of a perfect storm.

7. Slot machines are now legal in 41 states.

8. Slot machines are more popular and common in japan than the united states.

9. Slot machines are more popular with locals than with tourists.

10. Slot machines don’t really get “hot” or “cold”.

11. The majority of attendees at gamblers anonymous meetings gamble exclusively on machines.

12. Slot machine gamblers become addicted gamblers 3 to 4 times as fast as other types of gamblers.

13. Online slot machines work in essentially the same way as land-based gambling machines.

14. The nature of slot machines contribute to their addictive quality.

15. Slot machine systems and strategies don’t work.

16. Slot machines have a lot in common with “skinner boxes”.

17. The most popular games are riding on the coattails of another intellectual property.

Conclusion

Russians engineer a brilliant slot machine cheat—and casinos have no fix

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Russians engineer a brilliant slot machine cheat—and casinos have no fix

From russia with cheats

Repeat business

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