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Fruit machine fallacy

The first thing any fruit machine addict will claim when approached by an experienced slot jockey is that fruit machines are simply more fun that slots. We like to think this is an outright lie. The joy of gambling has to be in the winning or why the hell are you playing? Yes, some people say they gamble for fun, for the rush, for the joy of winning and losing; well, we all know it's a lie. Tiger Woods wouldn't play so much golf if he kept on losing. So what we've got here as a simple equation is that more wins equals more fun, especially when you're talking about what is essentially a low-brow form of gambling; the reel games. So, if you look at slots with their fantastic pay-out percentages of at least 90% you can already see this is much, much sexier than fruit machines which pay out around 75%.

Many pub fruity addicts also have this insane belief that a machine has a maximum coin capacity before it pays out. That in some way the machine designers are scared that the machine will break before it pays out. Well, we've all worked in the fruit machine industry for some time and do you know what the most common job engineers are tasked with? Well, maybe this will be a surprise to you but it's actually fixing machines that have broken themselves by taking too much money with the coin hoppers spilling out silver discs into the cabinet.

Another angle the fruit machine addict will try to operate on the slot jockey is the so-called element of skill within the fruit machine. This again is a bogus proposition; the fruit machine has usually decided within the RNG (random number generator) what level it will pay at, there is no way that the player can push the machine beyond this limit. The skill, as the fruity boys often argue, is knowing therefore when to stop asking the machine for more wins and nudges or a better feature game. We, on the other hand would argue this isn't a skill, with the picture we prefer painting being one of a gambling Oliver Twist asking the fruit machine game beadle if "please sir can he have some more". There is no way the player can make a value judgement on whether or not the machine will pay, other than by the false evaluation (that all fruit machine players make) on how much the machine has already paid. Truth of the matter is that with a RNG running the game, the jackpot is as likely to pay on the spin immediately after a jackpot stop, as it is a million spins after the jackpot stop; most fruit machines addicts (being the lower class of reel game player that they are) have trouble grasping this fact. It's this very fact (in fact) that explains why you simply cannot make a value judgement on how much a fruit machine will pay; hence there cannot be any skill in the game.

So, what do we recommend? We'd say have a few less beers and play the slots. Until you've managed to get your head around the fact that playing a slot machine reel game with nothing more than stacked wilds and free spins on offer is possibly the best gambling opportunity after card counting at Blackjack, you'll have you pockets robbed by those awful pub fruities time after time.

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Damian Lardchester can tell when a fruit machine addict is telling lies; he can tell as they're usually opening their mouths and talking about slot games.

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