The Slot Expert's Guide to Winning at Slots and Video Poker

You can hear me give my slot and video poker tips live on The Good Times Show, hosted by Rudi Schiffer with Frank Scoblete, which is broadcast from Memphis on WMC 790AM Saturday morning from 10-12 CT.

A few weeks ago, I gave a tip about how you can short-circuit the normal process a slot machine goes through to award credits by pressing any button on the machine. When you press a short-circuit button while the machine is racking up credits, the machine either abandons counting and awards the credits in one fell swoop, or it goes into an accelerated counting mode.

On most machines, hitting a short-circuit button does nothing but short-circuit the count. It does not start a new game. But I found some machines, specifically some made by Aristrocrat and Atronic, on which hitting a short-circuit key not only short-circuits the count, but also initiates a new spin. That creates a problem if your're like me and you sometimes hit any convenient button to short-circuit a count. I suddenly found myself spinning the reels with a max-coin bet.

This week's tip: Be careful when using short-circuit buttons on video slots. You might want to play it safe and use only the button for the number of coins you want to bet per line for short-circuiting.

Send your slot and video poker questions to John Robison, Slot Expert, at slotexpert@home.com.

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