Ask the Slot Expert: Dissed by Blitz, rewarded by Reel Boost

Question: Have you ever noticed you never play a machine that someone just put a great deal of money into? You have to wait 10-15” then play it you will most likely win ?

Answer: I guess this theory is a variation on the "machine is ready to pay" theory. This is the first time I've ever heard it with a waiting period. I assume you mean 10-15 minutes and not seconds.

It doesn't matter whether you wait to play a machine after another player. Your chances of hitting a winning combination are the same on every spin. It doesn't matter whether the last player hit the jackpot or emptied his wallet into the machine. It doesn't matter whether you start playing the machine as soon as the other player leaves or wait a few minutes. Your chances are the same on every spin.

That said, your plan does no harm. And I never argue with success.

If waiting for a little while after another player loses and leaves a machine works for you, keep doing it.

I have an update on the shoddy treatment my favorite Quick Hit Blitz machine gave me last week. I was going to give it another shot at showing me some love today.

I could see from a distance that no one was playing my machine or the one next to it. As I got closer, I could see that the neighboring machine was not displaying the idle screen or the attract screen. It was displaying an error message on an otherwise blank screen.

When I got to the bank, I saw that the chairs were in disarray and the eight machines in this pod were all out of service, many showing just the out-of-service message on their screens and some, like mine, showing a game screen with the out-of-service message displayed over it. A cruel fake out for someone who was looking forward to seeing if he could repair his relationship with the machine.

I wanted to ask whether the machines were going to be moved (Oh, please!) or removed (Drat!), but there was no one around.

A friend of mine says that success is going with Plan B. There was only one person playing on the NSU Deuces machines, so I sat down to spend some quality time playing NSU. I should really be playing more NSU because I have a small advantage on it on point multiplier days, but, as I've written before, I've gotten a bit bored with single-hand video poker and I want to earn tier points more quickly.

After 400 hands, I cashed out with a $100 loss and I went back to the Blitz machines to see if anyone was working on them. No one was there.

Close to the Blitzes are another one of my goto Quick Hit games, Quick Hit Reel Boost. I hadn't played that in a long time. Plan B Step 2: Play Quick Hit Reel Boost.

My experience with this machine is how a machine should welcome back a player. I played 500 spins and hit four bonus rounds, pretty close to my estimate of one bonus round per 100 spins. I had two sub-$50 bonus rounds and one at around $100 and one at about $200.

In the bonus round on this machine, you start with four of the 12 reel sets (games) displayed active. You activate additional games by collecting stars that land in the middle reels of the games.

When I got to the point that I needed more stars to activate the next set than I could collect with the number of spins I had left, I found myself rooting against having a star appear in a game. The star would do me no good and it might interrupt what could have been a winning combination.

All told I broke even. Much better than last week when I had a large loss playing my "favorite" Quick Hit Blitz machine.

The good times -- well, relative good times -- continued on my favorite multi-hand video poker machine. I left with a $200 loss, but that was much better than last week when I hit my loss limit for the day before I reached my hand goal.

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