Results on Slots and Video Poker Are Random

Results on electronic gaming devices, including slot and video poker machines, are as random as humans can program computers to be.

I've been trumpeting that message ever since I started writing about casino games, and along the way I've collected stories of odd little coincidences.

There's the husband and wife in Bolingbrook who won $75,000 jackpots three months apart at Hollywood Casino in Aurora. There's the woman who had to settle for less than the progressive jackpot when she only played one coin, then had her spirits lifted a few weeks later when her husband won the full jackpot at the same bank of machines at the late, lamented Silver Eagle in East Dubuque, Ill. There was the woman who hit two royal flushes at video poker on the same cruise at Empress Joliet. On the next hand after the second jackpot, she was dealt four parts of another royal, but missed filling it in.

I have yet to hear from anyone who has hit sizable jackpots two spins or two hands in a row on the same machine, but it can happen because results are random. I have no doubt it has happened, more often than most of us think, and it just hasn't been publicized.

In my own experience, the closest I had come was hitting four deuces for 1,000-coin jackpots twice within half an hour on the same Deuces Wild machine last year in Las Vegas. That's no longer my closest call. I went one better recently at Harrah's in East Chicago.

I'd dropped in at Harrah's as part of my research for the series of casino reviews currently running in my column in the Sunday Showcase section. I'd played a little blackjack, looked over other table games, toured the themed slot rooms and was wrapping up my day in the video poker area. I looked over the paytable for a game called White Hot Aces so I could run it through the computer for potential column fodder, and I sat down to play a few hands.

I made a small mistake. On the opposite side of the bank of machines were some 25-cent Bonus Poker games, and I didn't realize I had left quarterland. I slid $20 into the bill validator, and was taken by surprise when only 20 credits rang up on the machine. At a maximum bet of five coins per hand, that gave me only four hands on the meter. I forged ahead anyway. My first hand was three of a kind for 15 credits. A few hands later, I hit another three of a kind, and I had 35 credits showing.

Then lightning struck, and it was as hot as the name of the game.

Dealt a pair of Aces, I discarded the other three cards. Up popped the other two Aces. On White Hot Aces, that's a 1,200-coin jackpot, and since I was playing for dollars, it meant $1,200 and a form for the IRS.

A friendly slot supervisor and security guard came to fill out a jackpot form, check my ID and reset the machine. I was given a receipt while they went to get my money, and I resumed playing. My first hand after the jackpot was a loser, then I got two pair for a five-coin return, then another loser.

Then, deja vu.

I was dealt a pair of Aces, and as I hit the buttons to hold those two cards and discard the rest, I started thinking it would be nice to get a third Ace, maybe even a full house to give myself a little playing room. I was thinking too small, for once again the draw brought the other two Aces. It was another $1,200 jackpot.

The security guard rushed back.

"You didn't do it again?"

I did.

"No, you DIDN'T," she laughed.

But I did. Twice within five hands, $1,200 jackpots.

Not quite consecutive hands, but it'll do in a pinch.