- Casino Slot Machine Odds Of Winning
- Odds Of Winning Major Jackpot On Slot Machine
- Odds Of Winning Slots
The lights are flashing and the bells are ringing. Everyone dreams of winning a big jackpot on the slot machines. Unfortunately, the odds are against you. Casinos are not successful from people winning. They are successful from people losing. So chances are, you are not going to win big playing the slot machines.
Additional information: My wife cannot afford to play the maximum bet, but when she hits the jackpot combinations, she thinks she missed out. I keep telling her that I believe the odds of hitting those combinations would significantly decrease if she paid the maximum, but she doesn’t believe me. In statistics terminology, it would make sense to maintain the same expected return (payout multiplied by probability), in order to obtain the same overall percent payback for different players (although I doubt they are required to maintain such consistency). Using this assumption, if the payout increases disproportionately relative to the size of the bet, the probability would have to decrease. This would also be a good way for the casino to dupe players into increasing their bets to the maximum.
Slot machines are pegged to payout at a certain % by a computer chip. This percentage does not alter due to bet size at any time, so increasing your bet is essentially just losing your money faster. Higher denomination machines are typically programmed to payback a higher % than lower denomination ones, so that a $.25 machine will pay better than a $.05 machine which will pay better than a $.01 machine.
Regardless of bet size, even with the inflated jackpots for max bet, the expected payback remains the same on slot machines to the best of my knowledge. I don't think it's like video poker where betting max bet inflates jackpot size and increases expected value, but i'm not 100% sure.
As to MAX COIN... Most, but not all, slot machines offer inducements for players to play max coin but read the payout table to be sure that final coin actually buys you something. However, whether you put in Minimum Coin, Maximum Coin or Something in between, once you hit that little red button... its all up to the random number generator and the random number generator just goes along and does its thing with no knowledge at all about how many coins are in there or whose player card it is or if they've been tipping the waitress or not. So the EVENT is not influenced by the number of coins, only the payment for that event.
Expected payback? You mean each and every press of the little red button has to be a certain expectation?
The general rule is that a higher denomination machine returns a greater percentage, yes, but going to max coin on a lower denomination has to be compared. Its amount bet times expectation.
The odds do not change when you bet max. I believe that some jurisdictions require identical odds. I've never, out of hundreds of games, seen a game that behaves differently.
There would be no advantage for a gamemaker to do that kind of manipulation. The probability of hitting the jackpot is so low, that the manufacturer is free to riase the payout without changing the EV of the game very much.
It is very popular for the machines to be designed so that the player to be denied an entire class of high payouts if he does not put in max coin. Even though the house edge may not be that much worse, the player will eventually see hit a case where he would have been paid a much higher payout if he had more coins.
But every machine design can honestly say it has a lower house edge if you play more coins. It doesn't say how much lower.
An example from a real machine is 8.04% HA for 1 coin, and 7.48% and 7.30% for 2 or 3 coins.
One thing I will say now is that I think more of the average payout is related to the jackpots than you might think. For example, one local casino (Hollywood, FL) states that it pays out 94% of the bets wagered (i.e. a house advantage of 6%). I would conjecture that 5% or 10% if that payout is related to the jackpots. If it was really small – say 1% – then you would expect that, on the average, your credits would decrease by only $7 for every $100 you wager (such as 100 pulls on a $1 machine). But I will bet your average losses are much higher than that, unless of course, you hit a big win. This is because a significant portion of the 94% payback is related to the big wins.
I may be confusing the issue by using the word “jackpot”. I am not talking about the huge progressive jackpots of 100’s of thousands or millions that are rarely ever paid, but rather the smaller payouts of $1,000 to $10,000 that you might find on nickel and quarter machines. My wife, who only plays slots 5 to 10 hours a week, hits 3 or 4 of these “jackpots” every year. I know because I have to claim them on our tax return. Maybe I should call them 'big wins' rather than 'jackpots'?
Our next casino trip is later this week, so I should have a decent example to post sometime this weekend. If I am right about this, it is very important for players (such as my wife) to understand, so they don’t get duped into losing a lot of money, especially mine!
Question: Many slot machines offer a disproportionately higher return on the jackpot combination when the maximum size bet is played. Do they also decrease the odds of hitting the jackpot combination when the maximum bet is played?
Additional information: My wife cannot afford to play the maximum bet, but when she hits the jackpot combinations, she thinks she missed out. I keep telling her that I believe the odds of hitting those combinations would significantly decrease if she paid the maximum, but she doesn’t believe me. In statistics terminology, it would make sense to maintain the same expected return (payout multiplied by probability), in order to obtain the same overall percent payback for different players (although I doubt they are required to maintain such consistency). Using this assumption, if the payout increases disproportionately relative to the size of the bet, the probability would have to decrease. This would also be a good way for the casino to dupe players into increasing their bets to the maximum.
Your wife is right she did miss out on a bigger jackpot for not playing the maximum coins. The odds of hitting the jackpot do not change weather if she bets 1 coin or 2 but the payout changes. Casinos offer better payouts for max coins because they want to encourage people to bet the max. The odds could go from 96% payback to a 97 or 98% payback from minimum to max coins.
Slot machine odds used to be easy to calculate. When you’re dealing with three reels, ten symbols on each reel, and a limited pay table, then it’s just a simple math problem. But the rise of electromechanical slot machines and (later) video slots added some complexity to the situation.
How Probability Works
Probability has two meanings. One is the likelihood of whether or not something will happen. The other is the branch of mathematics that calculates that likelihood. To understand the odds as they relate to slot machines (or any other gambling game), you have to understand the basic math behind probability.
Don’t worry though. The math isn’t hard. Probability involves addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, all of which you learned in middle school.
The first principle of probability is that every event has a probability of between 0 and 1. If something has no chance of ever happening, then its probability is 0. If something will always happen, no matter what, then its probability is 1.
Probability is, therefore, always a fraction. It can be expressed in multiple ways, as a decimal, as a fraction, as a percentage, and as odds.
A simple example is a coin flip. The probability of getting heads when you flip a coin is 50%. That’s common sense, but how is it determined mathematically?
You simply take the total number of possible outcomes, and divide the outcome you’re trying to determine the probability of it by that number. There are two possibilities when flipping a coin, heads or tails, but only one of them is heads. That’s 1 divided by 2, which can be expressed as ½, 50%, 0.5, or 1 to 1 odds.
Odds are expressed as the number of ways something won’t happen versus the number of ways that something will happen. For example, if you’re rolling a single six-sided die, and you want to know the odds of rolling a six, you’re looking at 5 to 1 odds. There are five ways to roll something other than a six, and only one way of rolling a six.
When you want to determine the probability of multiple things happening, you use addition or multiplication, depending on whether you want to determine whether one OR the other event will occur, or whether you want to determine whether one event AND the other event will occur.
If you’re looking at an “OR” question, you add the probabilities together. If you’re looking at an “AND” question, you multiply the probabilities by each other.
So if you want to know what the probability of rolling two dice and having one or the other come up with a six, you add the probabilities together. 1/6 + 1/6 = 2/6, which is rounded down to 1/3.
If you want to know the probability of rolling two dice and having BOTH of them come up six, you multiply the probabilities. 1/6 X 1/6 = 1/36.
How Slot Machine Odds USED to Work
Early slot machines were mechanical devices. They had three metal reels that had ten possible stops each.
To calculate the odds of a single symbol appearing on a reel, you just divide the one symbol by the total number of potential outcomes. So if you had one cherry on a reel, your odds of hitting that cherry were 1/10, or 10%.
To calculate the odds of getting three cherries, you multiple 1/10 X 1/10 X 1/10 and get 1/1000, or 0.1%.
If the odds of hitting that symbol are the same as all the others, then you have 10 possible jackpots you can win, which means that your chances of winning SOMETHING are 10/1000, which is 1%.
Most people wouldn’t play a slot machine that lost 99 times out of 100, though, so slot machine designers added additional, smaller prizes for getting two symbols out of three for certain symbols. And as long as they paid out less in prizes than the odds of hitting those jackpots, then those slots are guaranteed to make a profit in the long run.
For example, if a prize for hitting three cherries was $1000, you’d be playing a break-even game, but if the prize were $750, it’s easy to see how the casino would be guaranteed a profit. The difference between the odds of winning and the payout odds is where the casino makes its money.
How Slot Machines Work Now
Modern slot machines use a computer program called a random number generator to determine the outcomes of the various spins of the reels. This creates an imaginary reel with a number of symbols limited only by the program in question.
A mechanical slot machine with 256 symbols per reel would be huge, too large to play, much less to build. But a computer can create an imaginary reel with 256 symbols per reel and take up no more space than an iPod Shuffle.
To make things even more interesting and entertaining, slot machine designers can program different probabilities for each symbol to come up. Most symbols might come up once every 256 spins, but others might come up twice as often, while still others might only come up half as often.
This enables slot machine designers and casinos to offer slot machine games with far larger jackpots than they were able to when they were limited by mechanical reels. And they’re able to offer these large jackpots and still generate a healthy profit.
How Does This Relate to Payback Percentages?
Casino Slot Machine Odds Of Winning
The payback percentage is the amount of money that the slot machine is designed to pay out over an enormous number of spins. This number is almost always less than 100%. The difference between 100% and the payback percentage is the house edge, and that’s where the casino makes its profits.
Odds Of Winning Major Jackpot On Slot Machine
A simple example can help illustrate how this works. Suppose you have a slot machine with three reels with ten symbols on each, and it only pays out when three cherries hit. The odds of winning that jackpot, as we determined earlier, is 1/1000.
If we set the jackpot as $900, and charge $1 per bet, the payout percentage for that game will be 90%, or $900/$1000. Of course, no one would play a slots game which only paid out once in every 1000 spins, which is why there are various smaller payouts programmed in.
There’s no way to tell what the payback percentage on a particular game is unless you have access to the par sheet for that machine. Casino management has that information, but players never have access to that info.
Odds Of Winning Slots
The best slot machine odds are almost always found in real casinos. If you see slot machines in an airport or a bar, be aware that the payback percentages on those games is much lower than you’ll see in a real casino.