10 Commonly Committed Errors When Playing Slot Machines

Although this was not always the case, the majority of gamblers now play slot machine games. For several decades, "serious" gamblers sat at table games while their wives chatted at the slot machines. However, beginning in the late 1990s, casinos and game makers began to improve the slot gaming experience by making it more engaging and rewarding. The old physical reel machines made way for newer video slot games with "virtual" reels, which took up more floor space. In addition, progressive games were linked together to achieve higher payouts.

As time passed, much of the stigma that male gamblers once associated with slot machines lost way to a lively party scene centered on slot machines. The cabinets became larger, more comfortable, and better wired for sound. Bonus rounds were added by game designers, who subsequently made some of them more enticing to male players by emulating adventure games or arcade-style combat games. Some fantasy-themed slot games presented stories as well.

These and other improvements have transformed slot games into the casino industry's primary source of revenue. And we now enjoy playing slot machines since they are entertaining, have excellent music, and don't feel like the old one-armed bandits that grandma used to play. If you're going to play slots, you should do so for the enjoyment of it, yet everyone wants to win when they gamble. This begs the question of what kinds of mistakes even the most astute gamblers make. Here is a list of 15 blunders that intelligent individuals make when playing slot machines.

1. Assuming that all slot machine games operate in the same manner

Slot machine games are classified as Class III games in the United States under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. Despite the fact that many Native American casinos were only able to offer Class II gambling for many years, you might find various slot machine-like games on their floors. What is the distinction between these Class II games and conventional Class III slot machines?

The IGRA defined Class I games as traditional games of chance that are a component of Native American culture and are unlikely to pique the broader public's attention or investment. The IGRA classified bingo, pull tabs, and "non-banking games" as Class II. Everything else was labeled as "Class III gaming."

Native American casinos had to invest in bingo games that did not appear like bingo games in order to compete with commercial casinos that offer Class III slot gambling. To accomplish this, they hired game designers to create games that looked like slot machine games but were actually bingo games. In other words, the bingo games determined the outcomes of the gambling rounds.

A typical slot machine in the United States employs three or more reels to generate random patterns of symbols. Onboard computers manage the devices electronically to ensure consistent and fair play. Random number generators are used by computers to spin the physical or virtual reels. The games are programmed to generate statistically predictable patterns, allowing a possible return to player to be calculated using simple probabilities.

Surprisingly, US law demands that each reel have its own random number. Outside of the United States, slot machine games are determined by a single random number and then spun to form patterns that fit the predetermined results, similar to the Class II bingo-based games developed by Native American casinos.

Class II hybrid bingo and slot games thus function much more like non-US slot games, with the exception that the results of the bingo games are used to decide outcomes rather than individual random numbers.

2. Assuming that the theoretical return to player demonstrates how much money is returned to players

The potential return to player is frequently mentioned in gambling books, articles, and by specialists. This is a percentage value that is often larger than 90% but less than 100% and is used to calculate the "house advantage." The house edge is the notional amount of money that the casino keeps from all wagers placed by game participants. The house edge is commonly expressed as a percentage that, when added to the theoretical return to player, equals 100%.

The issue with thinking about return on investment and house edge is that these figures indicate what should happen over many months or years of continuous play. Separate players experience vastly diverse outcomes during their individual gaming sessions. Some gamers lose their whole bankroll. Some players are lucky enough to win huge prizes.

In any particular reporting period, which is often a month, casinos may win more or less than their theoretical edge. Those calculated over a six-month period, the percentages of wins and losses may look significantly different than when calculated over a one-month period.

The player in "theoretical return to player" is neither a person, nor is it a hypothetical person or statistical model; rather, the player is all of the people who play the game. The wording "theoretical return to [all] participants [over expected life of the game]" would have been more appropriate.

3. Slot Machine Gambling Using a Betting System

Betting systems differ from money management strategies in one important way: a betting system is intended to recover lost funds. A money management strategy simply governs how money is spent.

People are constantly looking for new betting systems that would offer them an advantage over the casino, despite the fact that betting systems are notoriously flawed. Casino games are intended to benefit the house over time. The longer you play the game, the more likely it is that the casino will take your whole bankroll. Betting systems believe that if you lose money, you simply keep playing until you win it back.

So how can the casino rely on your continuous participation to generate a profit while you rely on your participation to recoup your losses?

With betting systems, there are two issues. For starters, they demand an infinite amount of money, which players never have. Second, casinos limit the amount of money you can bet on any given game. Your betting strategy will eventually reach a limit, undermining its potential ability to pay earlier losses.

Betting systems all have one thing in common: they require you to modify the amount of your wager based on some criteria unique to your gaming experience. If you lose money on a gamble, you should usually increase your next or soon-to-be future wager to compensate.

However, raising the amount of the wager only puts more of your money at danger until you can improve your odds of winning on the next bet.

4. Playing just high-wager slot games

High stakes slot games are thought to pay out more than low stakes slot games. These games, however, are frequently available in several currencies and employ the same programming. The notion that a $10 game pays more than a 25 cent game is predicated on the expectation that the casino will adjust the chip on the high-value machine to provide a greater theoretical return to the player. When confronted about this, many casino staff respond that casinos rarely alter the chips because to laws.

According to former slot machine designer Peter Hand, the games he knew were marketed with multiple chips with RTP settings ranging from 80% to 98%. Hand also mentions that in the 1960s, a slot technician in Reno inadvertently increased the payout ratio for a small number of machines to 95%. The casino opted not to cut the rate to match other machines because the 95% machines received more play and earned more money than machines with lower payout percentages. Over the next five decades, competitive forces compelled most major casinos to increase the payout rates on their slot machines.

The main issue is that a casino has no incentive to change the payout percentages on slot machines if the players can tell the difference. As a result, merely playing high-wager slot games increases risk without increasing return.

5. Always betting the maximum amount

Another prevalent misconception among slot gamers is that you should always bet the maximum amount. There is no incentive to do this unless the game pay table says that your percentage payback improves (and some do) for max wagers.

Progressive games may demand you to wager the maximum amount in order to be eligible to win the progressive jackpots. However, because progressive jackpots are rarely paid in comparison to other winning combinations, the theoretical return on maximum bets in progressive games decreases.

The only advantage of betting more is that the prizes are multiplied by the bet level; thus, a three-of-a-kind prize at 200 credits is worth more on a $5 wager than on a $1 bet. However, the larger your bets, the faster your money is spent and the fewer rounds you can play on the game. The chances of earning the greatest paying combination in slot games increase with the number of plays, not with the maximum wagers.

6. When the money runs out, play fewer than the maximum number of pay lines.

When all pay lines are active, slot games that allow you to modify the amount of active pay lines produce the most winning combinations. In other words, as you activate more pay lines, the payback percentage of these slot games increases. This, however, is a result of the mathematical model used to create the games, not a programming gimmick.

A game with 25 pay lines must have a theoretical return to player that matches the maximum active pay lines. This indicates that when all pay lines are engaged, the maximum amount of winning combinations occur. Deactivating the pay lines, on the other hand, simply makes certain parts of the playing reels ineligible to pay a prize. The reels continue to use the same slot and symbol combinations for 1 active pay line as for 25 active pay lines. As a result, as more pay lines are deleted, the theoretical return to player decreases dramatically.

If your balance gets low while playing maximum pay lines, it is best to switch to a game with lower minimum wagers for all winning combinations.

7. Playing Only Progressive Slot Games

Although playing different types of games might be enjoyable, the payback percentages on progressive slot games, particularly wide-area progressives, are lower than for non-progressive games. This is due to the fact that a percentage of the wagers placed are added to the pool for progressive jackpots, and that percentage is subtracted from the 100% total, which is normally divided between the theoretical return to player and the house edge.

Because modern broad area progressive games are leased to casinos, a percentage of wagers is paid to the game maker in addition to the percentage set aside for progressive jackpots and the percentage set aside for the house edge.

Although these percentages have no direct effect on how much you win or lose, they are utilized to change the percentages that are applied to the random numbers used by the games to determine the outcomes of reel spins. To put it another way, in order for the manufacturer, casino, and jackpots to get their part, players must win either fewer huge wins or fewer prizes.

Of course, progressive jackpots can be really large, and it's exciting to be the lucky few who win them. However, progressive slot games are more expensive than non-progressive slots.

8. Assuming that games in high-traffic areas pay more

Insiders in the industry have differing perspectives on this rumor, which may be traced back to a book published in the 1990s. The idea is simple: a casino slot manager has a few loose games that pay out more frequently than most, and he arranges such games where the most people will see them pay out.

But is this usually the case? According to some gambling journalists who interviewed slot managers, their sources claimed to apply reverse logic because they were aware of books that instruct gamblers to favor games in high traffic, high visibility zones. As a result, they positioned their loosest slots further within their casinos.

All of these anecdotes are unverifiable, and even if they are all true, everyone has already heard them. And what, exactly, is a loose game? If the games are regulated, they must adhere to a certain payback %. The lowest regulated proportion in the United States is meant to be around 85%, however commercial gaming regulations do not apply to Native American gambling venues, and their Class II machines would not be subject to the same restrictions as Class III games.

Older slot machines provide a lower potential return to player than contemporary slot machines. Some of the mythologizing about loose slots may be due to a misunderstanding about which games offer higher percentages. If the percentages are declared, the games cannot depart from the algorithms that are intended to match those percentages. The specified theoretical return to player should alter when the chip is changed. However, not all slot games provide this information.

In the end, it is preferable to consult the game's pay table for an estimate of projected payback percentages. If that information is provided, the location of the game on the casino floor becomes immaterial. If the game does not publicize its potential return, players should focus on whether they enjoy the game rather than whether it is "loose."

9. Assuming that the outcomes of slot machines are only determined by random numbers

Modern mathematics has yet to develop an algorithm capable of producing truly random numbers. Although a description of random number theory would be extensive, what slot players need to know is that those random numbers are mapped to narrow ranges of numbers on the playing reels that represent virtual slots and physical slots.

A modern five-reel slot game may have up to 256 slots per reel. The symbols in the slots are translated to the symbols seen to the players, either through graphics or real reels that are instructed to land on specific symbols. Random number generators can generate numbers that are found in billions of numbers. To convert the randomly computed value into a number ranging from 1 to [maximum number of slots per reel], a particular technique (several are available) is used.

In other words, the algorithm generates a large number, which is then fed into a simple algorithm that maps the value to anything between 1 and 256 (the maximum number of slots in a virtual reel), which is then mapped to something between 1 and 22. (the maximum number of slots on a physical reel).

However, because some symbols appear more frequently across all reels than others, the real number of possible unique symbol combinations is much, much smaller than the total number of possible permutations of reel numbers. For example, 5 reels with 22 slot positions generate 5,153,632 possible slot position combinations, however due to symbol duplication, the real number of unique symbol combinations may be only a few thousand. The likelihood of any given winning combination happening is determined by the number of slot combinations that match that combination of symbols.

This dizzying quantity of arithmetic assures that we cannot predict game outcomes while restricting their outcomes to a very restricted range of possible possibilities. As a result, random numbers play just a minor but significant role in determining slot game outcomes.

10. Playing Secondary Games with Prizes Earned in the Primary Game

If you've ever played a slot machine that gave you the choice to "Gamble" after you won a prize, you were being invited to play a secondary game, a game within a game. These "Gamble" options are intended to lure you in with sucker bets. The features are ingenious techniques for slot game developers and casinos to avoid legally imposed minimum payback percentages for games.

Assume you are playing in a country where slot games must yield a theoretical return to player of 85%. When compared to games like blackjack, baccarat, and even roulette, this is quite low. However, it is far superior to the ordinary lottery game. Nonetheless, every time you win a prize, this fictional slot game activates a "Gamble" button.

So, assume you bet $1, win $10, and then opt to use the "Gamble" tool. These games have straightforward rules. They ask you to predict which way a coin will land when thrown, the color or suit of a playing card, or whether the next card shown will be higher or lower than the most recently revealed card. You might be able to double or treble your money. These may appear to be good odds, but the chances of winning are 50% for the two alternatives and 25% for the four possibilities.

In other words, you just risked your investment on a game with an 85% chance of winning, won, and now the machine is pushing you to risk your reward on a game with a 25% to 50% chance of winning. Stick to the core game and disregard the bonus features. These aren't free games. They are simply games that benefit the casino much more than the standard slot game.

Conclusion

There is no danger in playing a slot machine game as long as you play with money you can afford to lose and understand the risk you are taking. Slot games are today more enjoyable to play than they were 20 to 30 years ago. That is good news.

The bad news is that, as competition and gambling legislation have compelled casinos to make their games more fair to gamblers, the casinos have found a friend in the myths and psychological games that cause players to make stupid mistakes.

The most common blunder is overthinking everything about casino games. You should truly expect to lose part, if not all, of the money you bring with you. If you want to enjoy supper and potentially some free entertainment, make sure you don't lose more money than you would if you paid for a wonderful dinner and a show.

While this is not to suggest you will not win, as some players do, you must spin the reels as many as possible because you cannot buy the jackpot. At the very least, if you play for more than a few minutes, you will have a better chance of earning one of those large payoffs.