Ask the Slot Expert: Different slot machines, same math

I was working on getting the complete set of Silver Strike tokens in the machines that Red Rock brought out of moth balls at the end of last year. Playing the machines was not as convenient as playing newer machines. The Silver Strike machines did not support cashless gaming, so I had to put cash or a ticket into them. The machines also did not support a cash credit balance, so they would print a ticket for the remainder of anything that couldn't be represented by whole quarters when you put in a ticket.

I needed one token to complete my collection. I admit that I was getting tired of winning dupes of the tokens I already had and not getting the token I needed. Instead of playing 100 spins on each visit as I did in the beginning, I procrastinated and said I would skip playing them this visit and try again next visit.

When they removed one of the machines, I should have taken that as a signal that I should stop putting it off and try to get that last token, but I still put it off. When I finally decided that it was time to try again, I went to the where the remaining machine was.

It was gone. My collection will have to remain incomplete -- unless I buy the remaining token off eBay.

I almost had disappointment at Suncoast too. It was gift day and I wanted to earn enough tier credits to get the gift. I could spend hours and hours playing NSU or somewhat fewer hours playing a lower-paying video poker paytable, or I could do a quick $250 through a slot and be done with it.

Slots it is. I also thought it was time to pay another visit to my favorite Quick Hit Blitz machine, Quick Hit Blitz Red. I like the red sevens.

Not today. Someone was playing it and someone was playing the machine next to it, Quick Hit Blitz Blue.

Fortunately, the two Quick Hit Blitz machines that were back-to-back with Red and Blue were both available. Will it be Purple or Gold?

It really doesn't matter. Although I didn't see the PAR sheets to prove it, I'm pretty certain that the math on all four of these machines is the same. The only things that are different are the symbols.

All machines have a Wild symbol and the Free Blitz Games symbol. Gold has Bar, Double Bar, Triple Bar, Gold 7, Watermelon, Bell and Diamond. Purple has Bar, Double Bar, Triple Bar, Red 7, Cherry, Bell and Diamond. The only things different between these two machines are the color of the 7 and replacing Cherry with Watermelon.

Blue and Red are similarly similar. Both machines have Bar, 5-Bar, Cherry, and Bell. They both also have 7, Double 7 and Triple 7. They're red on Red and, you guessed it, blue on Blue.

It's clear that the same reel layouts can be used for both Red and Blue, the only difference being in the color of the 7 symbols. The same reel layouts can also be used for both Gold and Purple.

Contrary to what I wrote a few paragraphs ago and hoped when I sat down at the Gold machine, I don't see an easy way to use the same layouts -- and thus have the exact same math -- for both my beloved Red and the Gold machine I settled for.

The Red and Blue machines pay on Mixed Bars and Mixed 7s. Two symbols make up the collection of Bar symbols and three symbols make up the set of 7 symbols.

Gold and Purple have only one symbol set, Bars, that pay mixed. It contains three symbols. But we can't map Gold's Bars to Red's 7s because the 7s pay more than the Bars. In addition, we don't have a set of two symbols that pay mixed on Gold and Purple. Gold and Purple can, therefore, use the same layout but it will be different from the layout on Red and Blue.

Even though the slot designers had to sharpen their pencils to create a new layout for Gold/Purple that doesn't mean that the statistics (hit frequency, long-term payback) are going to be different for them compared with Red/Blue.

Manufacturers usually have about the same hit frequency for all variations of a title. They don't want someone like me who had to settle for Gold unknowingly play a machine that has a much lower hit frequency than the Red I wanted to play and, perhaps, get turned off to Quick Hit Blitz completely.

Even though I didn't get a bonus round in the 100 not-so-golden spins I played on Gold, that's not unusual for Quick Hit Blitz. I've had many blocks of 100 spins on my beloved Red without a bonus. Nevertheless, I think that the probability of hitting the bonus is about the same on all color variations.

I suspect that the long-term paybacks are about the same for Red/Blue and Gold/Purple too. This isn't due to the slot mathematicians, though, but to casino policy. The days of casinos ordering tight and loose machines and placing them strategically on the slot floor are long gone. Casinos today decide how much they want to hold on their slot floor and then order the appropriate long-term paybacks on their machines. The same set of machines in another casino may pay back the same, more, or less, depending on that casino's policy.

I first noticed the re-use of reel layouts looking at PAR sheets for games similar games like Double Diamond and Double Jackpot. Double Diamond was the game that got all the love from players, but the reel layouts and math were identical for Double Jackpot. The only difference was the jackpot symbol.

Sometimes different machines can have a lot in common under the hood.

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