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How to Win at Slots? Do the Math!4 June 2008
Using strategy implies that you are seeking to gain an advantage that hopefully will lead to victory. If that's the case, there is no strategy for playing the slots. Slot machines are programmed to guarantee a profit for the casino owners. There's no way around it and there's no way to beat them. It's all about the math. The vast majority of the money a slot machine takes in over the course of tens of thousands of plays is returned to gamblers as a collective group in the form of winnings. The only way for individual gamblers to win, however, is to have luck on your side. Every slot comes with information that details the math about that particular game, but those so-called "PAR sheets" are made available by the manufacturers only to casino operators. There's an excellent publication from International Game Technology (IGT) titled "Introduction to Slots and Video Gaming" which contains a section on slot math. You can download it from the company's Website at www.igt.com. Even though the information represents basic operations, a complete understanding of it gives slot players the knowledge necessary to take the mystery out of the games. Before analyzing one example, there are two facts about slot machines you need to keep in mind:
Our model is a traditional 3-reel spinning slot with a single pay line. If each reel has 32 "stops" (positions at which the reel can stop), you multiply 32 X 32 X 32 to determine the "reel cycle", or total number of possible combinations you can get, in this case 32,768. Of those 32,768 combinations, 3,277 of them are programmed to be winners of varying amounts. The "hit frequency" of this machine, therefore, would be 3,277 divided by 32,768, or 10 percent, meaning that the mathematical probability of winning is once every 10 spins. If the top jackpot symbol appears two times on reel one, two times on reel two, and once on reel three, the odds of hitting the top award during any given reel cycle are 2 X 2 X 1, or four times. Divide that into the total number of possible combinations and you get 8,192. The mathematical probability of hitting the jackpot is once every 8,192 reel spins. The math from machine to machine varies, depending upon the number of reels, the number of stops, and the number of times the jackpot symbol appears on each reel. For example, a 4-reel spinning slot could have 64 stops per reel, which translates into a reel cycle of 16,777,216 combinations, of which 2,516,582 are winners. A 5-reel video slot could have a reel cycle of 62,015,625 combinations, of which 3,931,452 are winners. The chances of hitting the top award car soar into the millions to one. This article is provided by the Frank Scoblete Network. Melissa A. Kaplan is the network's managing editor. If you would like to use this article on your website, please contact Casino City Press, the exclusive web syndication outlet for the Frank Scoblete Network. To contact Frank, please e-mail him at fscobe@optonline.net. Recent Articles
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