Myths and misinformation about slots could fill a book! So let my start by explaining why you can trust this article over what you might see elsewhere:
I use the very best sources, such as actual slot machine par sheets from the game manufacturers, and the actual Nevada Gaming Commission regulations (PDF) on slots. The par sheets describe the actual probabilities of the games, and the laws regulate how the games work.
I was an assistant to the legendary Wizard of Odds for ten years; he’s done the programming for countless slots for online casinos (which work exactly like their real-life counterparts), and I helped him with his early slot research, even before he published his infamous survey in 2001-02 of how loose and tight various Vegas casinos were.
I’ve done the actual mathematical design of actual slot machines myself, professionally, for-hire.
Casino Player magazine ran one of my articles as a cover story.
I also put my money where my mouth is. To show that there’s no such thing as a winning slot system, for years I’ve offered hard cash to anyone who could demonstrate a winning system. (The current challenge is listed further down, and is currently at $5000.) No system-seller has ever dared take me up on it. I also used to offer a separate challenge to those who claim that higher-paying slots are located in certain areas of the casino, but I retired that one after many years because it was hard to keep up with all the loopholes people kept trying to find to exploit the test, and nobody ever took me up on it anyway.
To summarize how slot machines work, every spin is totally random, just like a coin flip. Nothing influences the outcome, not how long it’s been since the last jackpot hit, not whether your slot card is inserted, not whether the machine has been running hot or cold, nothing. Every spin has identical chances as the previous spin, period. There’s more about this on my How Slot Machines Work page.
With that out of the way, let’s talk slots.
