Question About Slot Machines

[TRBNGR]

On my recent trip to the borgata, my girlfriend and I played some slot machines to pass time when I noticed a stop spin button. My question is, Is there any way to gain an edge by stopping the spin early? For example, let's say it took three 'wilds' in a row to win on a given machine with five reels. After you get two 'wilds' in a row, could you use hand-eye coordination to stop the third reel on a 3rd 'wild'? Cuz, I wanna quit my job and make the real money playing slots /images/graemlins/tongue.gif
(fwiw - Ive read Getting the Best of It, but nothing else in regards to slot machines)

[CORed]

I seriously doubt it. Modern slot machines work with a random number generator. The reels are really just a display device, so I suspect that all the "stop spin" button does is makes the reels stop sooner, in the same positions they would have stopped if you hadn't pushed the button.

[Terry]

What CORed said. The outcome (final position of the reels) is decided by the software at the instant you insert a coin, pull the handle, or push the “Spin” button.

There are ways to beat some slot machines but this is not one of them.

[TRBNGR]

Good to know... As far as ways to beat slots are you talking about just playing Progressives with very large jackpots? Or something else?

[Terry]

Although they are still lucrative and there are still teams that do it, chasing progressives is pretty much 1980s stuff when it comes to slot play.

There are quite a few types of video poker machines that can be beaten with correct strategy and some of those strategies are quite easy to learn. Some games that aren’t actually beatable by strategy are close enough that they become so when the cash back from the casino’s slot club is added in.

There are now very good books and software available that can turn you into a professional video poker player literally overnight. There have been plenty of posts about it here and elsewhere on the net, so doing your own research won’t be very hard. If your searches turn up the names Bob Dancer and/or Dan Paymar, you are on the right track.

If you pursue slot play, expect to be treated with disdain by poker players. Eventually you will become immune to it and will stop trying to it explain it to them ... you will just nod sheepishly and stick your card and your money into the machine ... triple points just started and you know the machine is worth $57.63/hr ... there is really no need to convince them ... and when you play poker with them tomorrow, just say “Oh, I did about like I expected.”

Beyond video poker, there are thousands of machines around that actually show you on a graphics display how close the machine is to paying out a sort of mini-jackpot. It has amazed me for years that these things are so easily beatable and so readily available. They require virtually no skill and a bankroll of only around 300 coins to assure never going broke. Next time you are in a casino, seek out a Wild Cherry Pie, Money Factory, or a Diamond Mine machine, look it over, and think about it.

Tell ya what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna give it away right here, right now. Let’s take Wild Cherry Pie since it was the first of this type of “banking machine.”

This is a standard reel machine with a graphic of a pie shell on top. When you play the machine, a picture of a cherry occasionally pops into the pie shell. When the pie shell gets full, the machine pays out a mini-jackpot. Think about that. I will repeat it. When the pie shell gets full, the machine pays out a mini-jackpot.

Do you want to play this machine when the pie is empty? Do you want to play it when the pie only needs one more cherry to be full? When it needs two more? Three more? Learning just how many empty spots are still profitable is the key. For that, I leave you to your own devices.

There are dozens of this type of machine with various themes; a package of money nearing the end of a conveyor belt, a mine shaft filling up with diamonds, a flag rising toward the top of mast, on and on. They all show you how close the machine is to paying out.

The first Wild Cherry Pies were $5 machines at the Tropicana in Vegas. The people who got there first were making $5000 a week. It got really ugly, people paying off security guards and casino executives to throw people out when their machines got close to paying out. One of the “in the know” players got thrown out. He wrote a couple books (out of pure spite, I think) giving the correct strategy for a whole bunch of those machines.

The $5 machines disappeared, but $1 machines are good for a few hundred or so a day, even playing quarter machines can earn $100/day if a person does the legwork to find a good “route”. There is still competition, mostly in the form of simply “lurking” the machines. Some of the more aggressive types might do some rude coughing, sneezing, drink spilling, smoking, or such to try to move a tourist off a machine. Security tends to tolerate the lurkers but the aggressive types do eventually get 86'd.

So there ya go. I think I’ve said more than enough. Don’t bother telling anybody, though. They probably won’t believe you anyway. All good poker players are too smart to play the slots. /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[bholdr]

great post, terry, thx.

[KingMedicine]

absolutely awesome post, terry.

[TRBNGR]

Yes thanks again for taking the time to type this up Terry. I want to write a more detailed follow up but that will have to wait till tonight...