by John Robison
Do the slot machines on the ends of aisles pay better than the machines in the middle? How about the machines near the table games? They’re tight, right? And are the machines near the coin redemption booths loose? Join us on our journey for finding loose slot machines.
The loose slot machine is the slot player’s Holy Grail. Much as King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table searched Britain for the Holy Grail of myth, slot players search casinos for loose machines. Slot players have formulated many theories about where casinos place their loose machines to aid them in their quest.
Before we can figure out where the loose machines are, we have to figure out what they are. There is no U.S.D.A. system for grading the looseness of machines and no national or international standard that determines whether a machine is tight or loose.
So, what is a loose slot machine?
Say we have two 94% payback machines. Are they loose? I bet some people say yes and some say no. Why isn’t there agreement? Let me add a little more information to the scenario to see if it gives you an idea of why one person calls a 94% payback machine loose and another calls it tight. What if I told you that one machine was a nickel machine and the other a dollar machine? For most people who play nickel machines, a 94% machine is among the best-paying machines in their area. For most people who play dollar machines, on the other hand, a 94% machine is among the worst-paying machines in their area. The person who called 94% loose probably plays lower-denomination machines, while the person who called 94% tight probably plays higher-denomination machines.
Let me add one more piece of information. The dollar machine is a video poker machine. Dollar video poker players would rather have root canals on all their teeth with no anesthesia while their fingernails and toenails are ripped off than play a 94% payback machine. They have many adjectives for a 94% payback machine, but loose is not one of them.
You see, loose isn’t an absolute. Looseness depends on your frame of reference. Looseness is actually a comparison. We shouldn’t say “loose.” We should really say “looser”. We should really be asking where the looser machines are. But let’s bow to common usage and continue using the term loose machine.
So, what is a loose machine?
First is to always play max bet. Second is to play the highest denomination you’re comfortable making the max bet on - quarter slots tend to pay better than penny slots; dollar slots tend to pay better than both; and so on. Third - and this is the big one - remember that every spin is an independent event. Period, full stop. A slot machine house edge is known by casino managers as the “hold”, and hold percentages vary a great deal, and do tend to be smaller at more expensive slots, frequently found to be around 1- 3% at the five dollar slots.
Quite simply, a loose machine is a machine that has a higher long-term payback percentage than another machine. The loose machines in a casino are those machines that have the highest paybacks. These are the machines that will take the smallest bites out of your bankroll in the long run. No wonder slot players are constantly searching for them.
Over the years, players have developed a number of theories about finding loose slot machines. Casinos place loose machines near the entrances, for example, so passersby can see players winning and are enticed to enter the casino and try their luck. The loose machines are also at the ends of the aisles to draw players into the aisle, where the tight machines are.
And, of course, a loose machine is always surrounded by tight machines. You never have two loose machines side by side. That’s done for players who like to play more than one machine at a time. If they should happen to stumble upon one of the loose machines, they’ll be pumping their winnings from it into the tight machines around it.
More theories. The machines near the table games are tight because table games players don’t want to hear a lot of bells and buzzers going off and happy slot players whooping it up after a big win. Another reason the machines near the table games are tight is because table games players will occasionally drop a few coins into a slot machine and they don’t expect to win anything, so why give them a high payback.
Similarly, the machines near the buffet and show lines are tight. People waiting in line are just killing time and getting rid of their spare change. They’re not going to play for a long time or develop a relationship with those machines, so the machines can be like piggy banks – for the casino! Money goes in and rarely comes back out.
The machines near the coin redemption booths, on the other hand, are loose. Players waiting in line for coin redemption are slot players and the casino wants them to see other players winning. Seeing all those players winning will make them anxious to get back on the slot floor to try their luck again.
Finally, finding loose machines in highly visible locations is most likely. Again, casinos want players to see players winning and be enticed into trying to get a piece of the casino’s bankroll themselves.
These are the theories I can think of off the top of my head. Maybe you know of some others. Most of the theories have a basis in psychology. When we see others winning, we’ll want to play too because 1) we’re greedy, 2) we’re envious, or 3) we see that at least some machines really do pay off and if we keep trying we might find one too.
Based on my own discussions with slot directors, interviews with slot directors, and seminars I’ve attended, I don’t think these theories are relevant in today’s slot world. To see why, we have to look at how slot machines and slot floors have changed.
Picture a slot floor of 10-20 years ago. Even if you don’t go back that far, I’m sure you’ve seen pictures on TV or in books. The slot machines on a casino floor in that era are arranged in long rows, much like products out for sale in a supermarket aisle. There’s no imagination used in placing the machines on the floor. The machines are placed using cold, mechanical precision.
On page 193 in Slot Machines: A Pictorial History of the First 100 Years by Marshall Fey, there’s a great picture of Bally’s casino floor in Atlantic City that illustrates my point. The picture shows hundreds of slot machines all lined up in perfect rows like little soldiers. The caption reads, “Like a Nebraska cornfield, rows upon rows of Bally slots extend as far as the eye can see.”
Try an online casino for FREE. We have over 15 No Deposit Bonus Codes. No credit card needed, just sign up and start playing!
Compare that image with the slot floor layout at a casino that was designed in the last five or so years. Studies have shown that players feel very uncomfortable playing in long aisles. They feel trapped when they’re playing in the middle of a long aisle, particularly if the casino is crowded. As a result, modern casinos have shorter aisles and when a long aisle can’t be avoided, it will be wider than others so players won’t feel like they can’t get out.
One of the finding loose machines theories has casinos placing loose machines at the ends of aisles to draw people into the aisles. Having shorter aisles means having more machines at the ends of those aisles. Can all of these machines be loose?
In addition to being uncomfortable in long aisles, players are also uncomfortable being put out on display for the other players. Perhaps they feel like they might become a target if their good luck is too visible.
One slot director I heard speak said that he tried to create “comfortable niches” for his players. Instead of being in a fish bowl, visible to most of the slot floor, players in his niches can be easily seen by only the other players in that niche.
Another theory about loose machine placement is that casinos place them in highly visible areas. Modern casinos still have highly visible areas, but the areas are visible to a smaller number of players. A loose machine in this area will influence fewer players than before.
The last change in the slot floor that I want to mention is perhaps the biggest change of all. Casinos used to have hundreds of slot machines. Now they have thousands. One slot director in Las Vegas said in an interview a few years ago that with so many machines on his floor, he didn’t have time to micro-manage them. He and his management decided the hold percentage they wanted for each denomination and he ordered payback programs close to that percentage for his machines. Furthermore, he said this was the common practice in Las Vegas.
As much as the slot floor has changed, the changes on the floor are dwarfed by the changes in the slot machines themselves. One thing that struck me about that picture of Bally’s is how all the machines look alike. They really do look like soldiers being inspecting, all standing at attention and in identical uniforms, or like rows of indistinguishable corn plants. In fact, it looks like there are only three different games in the 10 machines in the first row in the picture. Granted, the majority of the machines in Bally’s casino were Bally machines. Still I’m surprised by the lack of variety in the machines in the front row in the picture.
I heard that one theory why Americans have gotten heavier is that we have access to a wider variety of foods today than we had before. When meals consisted of the same thing time after time, it was easy to pass up second helpings of gruel and eat just enough to no longer be hungry. But now we have Chinese one night, Mexican the next, followed by Thai, burgers, pizza, and pasta -- it’s easy to overeat on our culinary trip around the world.
Just as variety in food creates desire, so does variety in slot machines. “Hey, I used to watch The Munsters all the time. I’ll try that machine.” “I never miss The Apprentice. I’ll give that machine a go.” “I played Monopoly all the time as a kid.” “I have a cat and a dog and a chainsaw and a toaster.”
Not only is there more variety in themes on machines, there’s also more variety in paytables. Back in the 1920s, a revolutionary change in slot machine design was paying an extra coin for a certain combination. Adding a hopper to the machine in the electro-mechanical era made it possible for the machine to pay larger jackpots itself instead of requiring a handpay from a jackpot girl. Adding a computer to the slot machine made it possible for today’s machines to pay modest jackpots of a few thousand coins all the way up to life-changing jackpots of millions of dollars.
The computer also makes it possible to add more gimmicks to machines. Gimmicks like “spin-til-you win,” symbols that nudge up or down to the payline, haywire repeat-pays, and double spin all add more variety and interest to the games.
Today’s machines are immeasurably more interesting and fun to play than those of even just a decade ago. Each new generation of machines has crisper graphics and better sound than the prior generation. Slot designers are working overtime to devise compelling bonus rounds that will keep players playing for just one more crack at the round. How many people playing Wheel of Fortune are trying to win the jackpot? Not many. Most people keep playing to get one more spin of the wheel.
Slot directors today don’t need to pepper their slot floors with loose machines to stimulate play. Today’s machines themselves generate more desire to play than seeing a player doing well.
Now I'll finish our discussion of where slot directors place loose machines with some additional thoughts, with a few anecdotes I've heard at slot seminars, and with what I think will be the final nail in the coffin of loose machine placement philosophies.
One of the placement theories says that tight machines should be placed near the table games because the table games players don’t like a lot of noise while they’re playing. Have the people putting forth this theory ever been near a craps table? A craps table with a shooter on a hot roll has to be one of the loudest places -- if not the loudest place -- in the casino. Craps players can be a boisterous lot even when the table isn’t hot. Okay, I can see players needing peace and quiet at blackjack tables (It’s difficult to count cards even in a quiet casino.), but not at craps, roulette, Let It Ride, and other tables. In any case, the casino can adjust the volume level on a machine. The slot director can put a very quiet, loose machine near the tables and not disturb a single table games player.
Another problem with following a loose machine placement philosophy is that it limits the flexibility slot directors have in moving their machines around on the slot floor. If the directors are going to give up a little bit in payback on some machines, they certainly will want to get their money’s worth and ensure that these machines are in locations where they’ll be played, be seen being played, and entice other players to play. Slot floors have only a limited number of high visibility areas. Slot directors won’t want to waste any of their high-paying machines in the more numerous less visible areas, where the machines won’t be encouraging other players.
Now I’d like to share some anecdotes I’ve heard at panel discussions during the big gaming show (first the World Gaming Congress, then the Global Gaming Expo) that’s held in Las Vegas each year.
First, one slot director described an experiment he conducted in his casino. He had a carousel of 5 Times Pay machines that all had the same long-term payback. He ordered new chips to lower the payback percentages on a couple of the machines to see if anyone would notice. The machines with the lower long-term paybacks received just as much play as the higher-paying machines. No player, furthermore, ever complained that some of the machines in the carousel were tighter than others.
In another seminar, a slot director shared the philosophy he used to place some machines that he had inherited from another property. These machines, he said, had lower long-term paybacks than the payback he usually ordered for machines on his slot floor. He said, 'I read the same books that the players read. I put these lower payback machines in the spots that the books said should have the high payback machines.'
My last anecdote is about a decision made by the slot director at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas many years ago. He was ordering 10 Times Pay machines for his slot floor and he was concerned about the low hit frequencies available for those machines. (Machines with multiplying symbols tend to have low hit frequencies, and usually the higher the multiplier, the lower the hit frequency.) The slot director was afraid that his players would think the machines were very tight because they hit so infrequently. He said that he ordered higher paybacks than he usually does for those machines in an attempt to offset the low hit frequency. The machines would still have a low hit frequency, but at least the average value of a hit would be a little higher than if he had ordered a payback percentage nearer the percentage he usually ordered. He hoped that would be enough to keep his players from thinking these were tighter than the other machines on his slot floor.
Although I think these anecdotes are the exceptions that prove the rule that some casinos at least order the same long-term paybacks for machines of a particular denomination, there is evidence that some casinos may not. In the first edition of Casino Operations Management, for example, Kilby and Fox list a number of “general philosophies that influence specific slot placement” including: “low hold (loose) machines should be placed in busy walkways to create an atmosphere of activity” and “loose machines are normally placed at the beginning and end of traffic patterns.”
They then say that “high hit frequency machines located around the casino pit area will create an atmosphere of slot activity.” I’m not sure whether they’re saying high hit frequency should or shouldn’t be placed near the pit. In any case, note that one philosophy said that loose machines create an atmosphere of activity and another said that high hit frequency machines also create an atmosphere of activity. This is the perfect segue into what I think puts the final nail in the coffin about loose machine placement theories.
There is no correlation between long-term payback and hit frequency. A low hit frequency machine can have a high long-term payback. High hit frequency machines, in addition, can have low long-term paybacks. Larry Mak, author of Secrets of Modern Slot Playing, recently queried the Nevada Gaming Control Board to find out the payback reported on penny machines. The Board said it was 90.167%. Most of the penny video slots have very high hit frequencies, yet the overall average long-term payback is very low.
The usual reasoning behind putting loose machines in highly visible areas is so slot players can see other players winning. Maybe we should be more precise here and say that players will see other players hitting and assume that they are winning because they are playing loose machines. But because there’s no correlation between hit frequency and long-term payback, these players can actually be playing machines with low long-term paybacks.
I don’t put much stock in loose machine placement theories, but I do believe slot directors may follow a hit frequency placement philosophy. Slot directors may try to place high hit frequency machines in visible areas to encourage play. This philosophy says and implies nothing about the long-term payback of the machines.
John Robison is the author of 'The Slot Expert's Guide
to Playing Slots.' His website iswww.slotexpert.com
By John Robison
Almost every casino has its own gaming guide, and every casino gaming guide I've ever read recommends playing full coin at all times on all slot machines. Many slot books make this same recommendation. The reason the books and guides give for always playing full coin is that you get the maximum long-term payback possible from a machine only when you play full coin. This statement is true for some machines. For others, it isn't. Moreover concentrating only on long-term payback completely ignores the fact that you are putting more money at risk when you play full coin than when you play short coin. Is the extra risk always balanced out by the increase in payback?
Are you really better off playing full coin at all times on all machines? I analyzed the programming on over 1,000 slot machines to formulate Robison's Rules for Playing Full Coin, which follow.
Play one coin at a time on Straight Multipliers.
A Straight Multiplier is a machine on which the payoffs for the winning combinations for the second coin are exactly twice those of the first coin, and the payoffs for the third coin are three times those of the first, etc. An example of a Straight Multiplier is a two-coin Double Diamond machine, which pays 800 coins for the jackpot when you play one coin, and 1,600 coins for the jackpot when you play two coins.
Playing more than one coin at a time on a Straight Multiplier is a waste of your bankroll. You’re not buying any new winning combinations, nor are you buying a bonus for a winning combination.
The long-term payback of a Straight Multiplier is the same regardless of how many coins you play. Let’s say you’re going to play 1,000 spins on a one-dollar two-coin Double Diamond machine with a long-term payback of 95%. It makes more sense to expose only $1,000 to that 5% house edge, for an expected loss of $50, than $2,000, for an expected loss of $100.
Play one coin at a time on Bonus Multipliers - A Bonus Multiplier is just like a Straight Multiplier, only one or more combinations pay a bonus over the straight multiple. A three-coin Double Diamond machine, which pays 800, 1,600, and 2,500 coins for the jackpot when playing one, two, or three coins, respectively, is an example of a Bonus Multiplier. The straight multiple for the three-coin jackpot is 2,400 coins, but this machine pays a 100-coin bonus for playing the third coin.
Even though Bonus Multipliers encourage you to play full coin to qualify for their juicy bonuses on some winning combinations (usually just the top jackpot), those combinations hit so infrequently that even huge bonuses on them increase the long-term payback by very little.
Let’s look at an IGT Red, White and Blue machine. One payback program available for this machine pays a 2,800-coin bonus on the top jackpot for full-coin play. The long-term payback when playing one coin at a time is 91.757%, while the long-term payback when playing three coins at a time is 92.47%. The 0.713 percentage point increase in long-term payback does not make it worthwhile to play three coins at a time, unless you also cut back on the number of spins in such a way that you give the same amount of action. If you play at the same pace, you'll end up playing three times as much money in the machine, but you won't get enough of an increase in payback with full-coin play to offset the increase in money you expose to the house edge.
Let’s compare the expected losses for the three styles of play: one coin at regular pace, three coins at regular pace and three coins at a slow (one-third of regular) pace. Let’s say we play through $1,500 at regular pace playing one coin at a time. The long-term payback is 91.757% when we play one coin at a time, so the house edge is 8.243%. When we play $1,500 against that house edge, our expected loss is 8.243% of $1,500, or $123.65. If we play three coins at a time at the same pace, we decrease the house edge to 7.53%, but we triple our action to $4,500. Our expected loss is $338.75. But if we can play three coins at a time at one-third pace, we play through only $1,500 at the full-coin house edge and have an expected loss of only $112.95.
It’s nearly impossible to maintain a slow pace when playing the slots. The sights and sounds of the casino are all designed to get you excited and to make you lose track of the passage of time. If you’re like me, you can keep a slow pace for a few minutes, but soon you’ll find yourself back at your regular pace and exposing too much of your bankroll. Because of the difficulty of playing at a slow pace, I recommend that players play one coin at a time on Bonus Multipliers.
I should mention one other thing about Bonus Multipliers. Many times the bonus is just a few hundred coins, but sometimes the bonus is huge, thousands of coins. If you can’t stand the thought of missing out on a big jackpot bonus because you played only one coin, do as I do and stay away from Bonus Multipliers with big bonuses.
A few years ago, I was at Bally’s Wild West casino playing one coin at a time on a bonus Multiplier that paid bonuses for full-coin play on multiple combinations. I hit one of the lower-paying bonus combinations. As I was waiting for my handpay, a passerby said that, “I bet you wish you had played full coin.”
I said, “If I had known I was going to hit on this spin, I would have played full coin.” Of course, I didn’t know that. Also, if I had been playing full coin all along, I would have run out of session money long before this spin. Instead, I chose to stretch my bankroll by playing one coin at a time and I was fairly sure that I was playing at a lower expected loss than playing full coin.
Play full coin on Buy-A-Pays - On Buy-A-Pays, additional coins buy additional winning combinations. The paytable on a Buy-A-Pay is displayed as a set of boxes, one box for each coin you can play. The box labeled “1st Coin” shows all of the winning combinations that the first coin buys and how
much each combination pays. The box labeled “2nd Coin” shows all of the winning combinations and payouts that the second coin buys, and so on. If you play only one coin and a combination bought by the second coin lands on the payline, you don’t win anything.
When you play additional coins per spin on a Buy-A-Pay, you activate additional winning combinations and you buy increased hit frequency and increased long-term payback. Sometimes the payback on the first coin played in a Buy-A-Pay is very low—sometimes even as low as the regulations in a jurisdiction allow.
One of the payback programs available for a two-coin Sizzling 7s machine pays back 95.315% when played with one coin per spin, and 98.088% when played with two coins per spin. If you played 1,000 spins, your expected loss would be 46.85 coins (4.685% of 1,000 coins) if you played one coin at a time, but only 38.24 coins (1.912% of 2,000 coins) if you played two coins at a time.
Although you're better off playing full coin on the Sizzling 7s payback program in the machine in my example above, there are other Sizzling 7s programs in which you are better off playing only one coin at a time. I can't guarantee that the increase in payback you buy with the additional coins will always outweigh the additional risk you have when playing more coins at a time. But because that possibility exists, I recommend playing full coin on Buy-A-Pays.
There's another reason to play full coin on a Buy-A-Pay besides the mathematical one. It's an emotional reason. It can be very frustrating to have a winning combination land on the payline and not get paid for it because you didn't bet enough coins. Playing full coin eliminates that potential frustration.
Play full coin on Hybrids - Some paytables are part Buy-A-Pay, part Multiplier. One additional coin buys new winning combinations and the other multiplies the payoffs on already activated winning combinations. I call these machines Hybrids for lack of a better name.
The split personality of the Hybrid presents us with a dilemma. We know it's not worth playing full coin on a Multiplier, but it frequently is worth playing full coin on a Buy-A-Pay. How do we reconcile this conflicting advice?
Let's look at one of the Blazing 7s payback programs. On this machine, the second coin is a multiplier for the bar combinations and the third coin buys the payoffs on the Sevens. This payback program pays back 91.33% when played with one coin at a time, 95.10% when played with two coins at a time, and 97.18% when played with three coins at a time. Let's play 1,000 spins on this machine. Your expected loss is 86.7 coins (8.67% of 1,000 coins) if you play one coin at a time, and 98 coins (4.90% of 2,000 coins) if you play two coins at a time. But your expected loss drops to 84.6 coins (2.82% of 3,000 coins) if you play three coins at a time. You're better off playing full coin.
Some Hybrids have what I call a hidden Buy-A-Pay. On these machines you have to play full coin to be eligible to play a bonus game. When you have the opportunity to play a bonus game only when you play full coin, you must play full coin. There's no way to know how much the bonus game adds to the long-term payback and the increase could be enough to make playing full coin the best bet.
You may remember a Hybrid with a hidden Buy-A-Pay slot machine from Anchor Gaming called Wheel of Gold. This machine is actually the progenitor of the Wheel of Fortune machine. You have to play three coins on a Wheel of Gold to be eligible to spin the wheel in the top box on the machine. I looked at the payback of each coin played individually, and I discovered that the amounts you could win when you spun the wheel pushed the payback of the third coin to well over 100%, 123.43% to be exact. The catch, of course, is that you have to play the first two coins, on which the house has a big edge, before you can play the third coin, on which you have the edge.
The long-term payback on this machine was 80% when you played one coin at a time and 94.99% when you played three coins at a time. Let's say you played 1,000 spins. At one coin per pull, your expected loss is 200 coins (20% of 1,000 coins). At three coins per pull, your expected loss is only 150 coins (5% of 3,000 coins).
I always play full coin on a Hybrid and slow down my pace, but you can play less than full coin. As long as you buy all the winning combinations, you'll be playing with the highest hit frequency possible on that machine. Your payback however may not be as high as the machine can offer. Then again, even though the additional coins may buy increased payback, the increase in payback is usually not as great as it can be on a pure Buy-a-Pay.
Play full coin on Multi-Lines - Don’t confuse this type of machine with the Multi-Line/Multi-Coin video slot. This type of machine limits you to a maximum bet of one coin per line. I don’t think you will find many of them on casino floors in the future because the video slots give players much more betting flexibility, so Multi-Line players have switched to them.
My rule on a Multi-Line paytable is to let the player choose between playing one coin and playing full coin.
Dropping one coin at a time into a Multi-Line isn’t as bad as dropping one coin at a time into a Buy-a-Pay. The additional coins played in a Multi-Line machine buy increased hit frequency and, usually, only very small increases in average payback – just like on the Bonus Multiplier. The probability of hitting the jackpot is the same on all paylines, so even a large bonus for the jackpot on the last payline leads to only a small increase in payback. The extra coins don’t have the same positive effect on expected loss that they have on the Buy-A-Pay.
Let’s look at a typical payback program for a Multi-Line machine. One of the payback programs available for a five-line Double Diamond machine pays back 88.757% when played with one coin per spin and 92.516% when played with five coins per spin. For 1,000 spins, the expected loss rises from 112.43 coins (11.243% of 1,000 coins) for one-coin play to 369.25 (7.385% of 5,000 coins) for five-coin play.
Personally, I don’t like having winning combinations land on a payline that I haven’t activated, so I always play full coin when I play Multi-Line machines, even though it's not the right thing to do, mathematically speaking. Sometimes I put the math aside in favor of having more fun playing a machine.
Play one coin on each line on Multi-Coin/Multi-Line video slot machines - I never would have believed a few years ago that video slots would take over as much of the slot floor as they have. Some casinos today have half or more of their slot floors filled with video slots.
My rule for the number of coins to play on video slots is also to let the player choose between playing one coin at a time and one coin per line, though there's a strong economic argument for playing only one coin at a time.
Additional coins played on a video slot usually buy only increased hit frequency, because each combination pays the same amount regardless of which payline it lands on. Playing one coin at a time stretches out your bankroll and your playing time. Playing one coin at a time, in addition, is less frustrating on a video slot than it is on a Multi-Line. The paylines on an Australian-style slot are so complicated, it's difficult to tell when you have a winning combination land on a payline you didn't activate.
On the other hand, most video slots are low-denomination machines, so playing one coin on each line can be a smaller wager than playing full coin on a traditional three-reel slot. In this case, you can activate each payline, get a high hit frequency, and still risk less money per spin.
Furthermore, playing more than one coin per line is rarely a good bet, since the additional coins on each line usually just multiply the amount you win for each combination on each line. With no bonus for additional coins, you're not buying an increase in payback, so there's no advantage to risking more of your bankroll.
Read the paytables on video slot machines very carefully. A game might require you to activate every payline to be eligible for a bonus game, so you’ll want to play all lines on those machines. Some games, in addition, advertise the huge payouts available when playing full coin on all paylines, but when you read the fine print, the payouts turn out to be straight multiples of the number of coins bet per line or the total number of coins bet, and therefore the extra coins are not worth betting.
Play full coin on all Progressives - Regardless of what type of Progressive the machine is – video, reel-spinning, standalone, wide-area -- always play full coin. When you play less than full coin on a Progressive, you’re just building the jackpot for someone else, with no chance of winning it yourself.
I want to end this discussion with a word about why I make the recommendations I do and about controlling your pace when you play.
Here's the general rule for when it makes mathematical sense to play full coin: Play 'n' coins per spin if the house edge when playing 'n' coins per spin is less than 1/n times the house edge when playing one coin per spin.
The house edge on the Wheel of Gold machine we looked at is 20% when you play one coin per spin and only 5.01% when you play three coins per spin. That's less than 1/3 times 20%. You can play this machine with full coin at the same pace as someone playing one coin at a time and still win more in the long run.
Now let's look at the house edge on the RWB Bonus Multiplier above. The house edge at one coin per spin is 8.243% and the house edge at three coins per spin is 7.53%, well above 2.748%, the percentage at which the expected loss for the one-coin player equals the expected loss for the full-coin player. The machine will hammer the full-coin player if he plays at the same pace as the one-coin player.
The machine will win about three times as much money from the full-coin player, even though the full-coin player is playing at a lower house edge. The problem is that the house edge isn't cut low enough for the full-coin player to play at full speed. The full-coin player gets killed because he has triple the action of the one-coin player, but his house edge isn't lower than one-third the one-coin player's house edge.
If the full-coin player, on the other hand, can slow down so he plays one spin for every three the one-coin player plays, he will give the same amount of action as the one-coin player, but at the full-coin's lower house edge. It's true that the full-coin player will experience greater volatility because he has fewer spins (Remember the confidence intervals?), but in the long run the slow-playing full-coin player will lose less than the full-speed one-coin player.
The problem in this scenario is in playing slowly. Controlling your pace when you play is not as easy as it sounds. The casinos want you to play fast because they have the edge on every spin. The more spins slot players play per hour, the more money the casinos make.
Try it some time. Note the time that you start playing a slot. Now play it for a few minutes and keep track of the number of spins you play. If the slot club uses a countdown or an open formula for cashback, you can use the number of points or dollars you earned to tell you how many spins you played. Otherwise, you'll just have to count. When you're finished playing, note the length of time you played and the number of spins you played.
Now try to play one-third the number of spins in the same length of time. Note your starting time and start playing. When you've finished playing the appropriate number of spins, note the elapsed time. It's shorter than the elapsed time in the first trial, right?
Do 5 Dollar Slots Pay Better Than Free
It's not easy to cut your pace down to one-half or one-third of your usual pace. Because few people can effectively control their pace when they play, I recommend playing one coin at a time on some machines even though you will be playing at a higher house edge. My goal is to limit your losses. There are two components in your expected loss: the house edge and how much money you expose to it. Many times, the best way to cut your expected loss is to focus on the second variable in the equation and cut the amount of money you expose to the house edge.
Do 5 Dollar Slots Pay Better Than Home
John Robison is the author of 'The Slot Expert's Guide
to Playing Slots.' His website iswww.slotexpert.com