How To Pick The Best Slot Machine To Play
How to pick the right slot machine at a live casino (or online).
Take a trip to any physical casino and you’ll find hundreds if not thousands of slot machines lining the gaudy carpet. Getting the right amount of entertainment for your buck is the real goal. All responsible gamblers know this. But that doesn’t mean you have to hide the fact that you really want to win a jackpot!
You’ve probably heard a lot of superstitions over the years. Bring a good luck charm, like a rabbit’s foot or some special jewelry. Feel the machines; the hot ones are ready to spew forth their wealth! Wait for an old lady to leave a machine and take it; local seniors know the best slots! None of these are reliable ways to choose a good game. Winning slot machines really is more of a science, thankfully.
How to Pick the Right Slot Machine
When looking for casino slots machines, you need to look at the following aspects of the games to choose the best slots title: Return to Player (RTP) percentage – the return to play percentage. Choosing Slot Machines: Finding the best candidate slots to play. Summary for Choosing Slot Machines After a casino has been chosen, it’s time to select candidate slot machines most likely to result in a. The best you can do is just pick a slot that’s fun to play. Even though all slots work in the same basic manner, they come in all different types and styles. You have traditional reel slots, video slots complete with storylines and even 3D slots like those found at Bovada. It’s best to forget about getting an advantage when playing slots.
For the most part, I’m going to focus on live casino slots; those located in a real, physical casino. I’ll also touch on the digital (online) variety before I’m done, so keep reading for more info on that.
There are three factors to consider when choosing what machines to play. The cost, the position, and the jackpot size.
Cost to Play
Most casinos offer slot banks in a scaling range of coin denominations. You have your penny slots, nickel slots, quarter slots, and dollar slots. Which one do you think is more likely to pay out a jackpot? If you said the $1 slots, you’re right. The higher the cost to play, the higher the payout percentage (amount machines pay-out compared to take-in, over years of play).
The scary part is that casinos know how people’s minds work. Most players think $1 is a lot to play per spin, so they drop down to the $0.25 machines. It’s not so damaging on your bankroll, but still expensive enough to pay far better than the cheap-o games, right? This is where the casinos get you! Those quarter slots are actually the worst of all!
The average payout percentage for slot machines on the Las Vegas Strip, by coin size, is:
Penny Slots = 90.82% RTP
Nickel Slots = 91.88% RTP
Quarter Slots = 89.98% RTP
Dollar Slots = 92.63% RTP
Position of Slot Machines
Location, location, location! That statement doesn’t just apply to real estate. The positioning of a slot machine can have a huge impact on its payout percentage. Picture this… A slot machine is located in a far shadowy corner of the casino. Someone wins a jackpot on it. The bells chime, the lights flash. How many people in the casino are going to notice? Just those in the vicinity of that corner, right?
If that machine were centrally located, perhaps near the table games area, a lot more people would know about it. Some table games players might even switch to slots for a while hoping to mimic that win. Casino managers thought of this long before I did. The highest paying slots will be centrally located among the masses.
Jackpot Size Matters
There are two basic types of jackpots – static jackpots and progressive jackpots. A static jackpot pays a specific amount for triggering a specific feature or symbol combination in the game. A progressive jackpot is won in the same way, but the prize slowly grows larger and larger until it’s won, similar to a lottery drawing.
As much as you want to win that larger, ever-growing prize, you’re better off steering clear of progressives. Their payout percentages tend to be much lower; often paying 85-86% at live casinos.
Winning Slot Machines Online
As promised, I’ll take a moment to touch on the topic of online slot machines, too. These games are different in some ways, so it’s not the same as picking the right slot machine at a live casino. The big difference is that internet casinos don’t have massive bills to pay each month. They can afford to give up more in payouts, and they do.
Online slots have an average payout percentage of 96.2%. That’s far higher than any of the games in Vegas. Changing your coin size rarely effects the payouts, either. Most games you can play for a penny, or a dollar, and get the same payout ratio. Progressives are the exception. The more you spend on those, the higher your odds of winning the jackpot. But like land-based casinos, the payback percentage on progressives are worse. Unless you’ve got plenty of cash to spare, don’t bother with them.
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Introduction to Choosing Slot Machines
Once a specific casino has been determined to currently be the best of any available, choosing slot machines becomes the next step towards making a profit at slots.
Remember, statistics supplied to state gaming commissions show that the odds of winning are, on average, somewhere around 90%. By assessing all available casinos, then selecting the best possible, you’ve already improved your odds of winning – perhaps by several percentage points.
Whatever your gambling goals are, we’ll talk about those in the next step Identifying Gambling Goals. For now, we need to consider choosing slot machines that will most likely improve our overall odds even more.
So, we’ve walked into our best casino to choose slot machines with the highest odds of winning we can find. How do we select a good slot machine? Most people don’t – they dive right in without much of a plan. Well, we have a plan.
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Why? Because everybody says it’s all about luck. If you pick wrong, “Well,” they say, “better luck next time.” Remember, casino employees are trained to say things like that. If you’d won a jackpot instead, you can believe they would have said, “You’re lucky! I’ll see you later when you win another jackpot!”
Slot attendants have a job to do, and it most certainly isn’t to get you to leave when you should. And, it’s difficult to not to influenced by such comments. But, try not to be.
In the following sections, I’ll briefly explain the following aspects of choosing slot machines:
- How odds are set within a slot machine
- Choosing denomination and maximum credits based on bankroll
- Basics of reading a slot machine’s paytable
- A simple way to use paytables to pick the best machines, and avoid the worst
Two Separate Odds of Winning
The odds of winning for a slot machine is a limited number of settings from the manufacturer. Besides understanding limited settings are available, it may help to understand that slot machines have two odds of winning to determine:
- If a player will or will not win anything
- How much that win will be, i.e., the jackpot amount
Why is understanding these two types of odds significant when choosing slot machines? Because winning slot machines come in all jackpot sizes. You’re still winning if you’re getting enough small jackpots that your bankroll isn’t shrinking. Even if it is slowly depleting, the bankroll can last quite a bit longer, so that’s also a winning slot machine.
Winning many jackpots this way is bankroll cycling. It may not seem very satisfactory, but whether it does or not depends entirely on what your gambling goals are. One type of gambling goal, earning maximum complimentary gifts, is most often achieved via bankroll cycling.
Another point about setting slot machine odds is, how often they change? Of course, it depends on the age of the casino, as discussed in the previous step Assessing Casinos, or if it’s been renovated lately.
In my experience, older-style casinos change their slot machine odds every 7-10 days. Newer-style casinos can change their slot machine odds whenever the machine has been idle for 15 minutes or more, without a players club card inserted or the machine temporarily locked by a slot attendant.
Matching Bankrolls to Denomination/Credits
Only you can decide how much bankroll you want to risk gambling. I highly recommend bringing only as much money you can safely afford to lose comfortably.
Bankrolls quite literally determine which slot machines you can play. But, there’s more to it than understanding a $100 bankroll lets you play a 1-credit, $100-denomination exactly once, with very, very little chance of winning.
Whatever bankroll you have limits which slot machines can be played and how much it can be played. Slot machines have denominations ($0.01, $0.25, $1, $5, $10, etc.) and the maximum credits that can be placed in a single bet.
Slot machines typically must run for a while before wins become more likely. Yes, wins can occur at the first press of a button. They can also happen within the first few bets, where casinos offer a taste. But, usually, they need to run for a while.
About 100-120 bets is the right amount to be prepared to play to determine if you’re sitting at a winning (or breakeven) slot machine. Yes, be careful initially, perhaps making as few as 20 bets, to determine if it happens to be a “bad” machine. Trust your instincts!
If it is a poorly performing machine, a “tight” slot machine, it won’t pay out anything at all. Quick decisions are necessary here, so limited betting gives a clue to its performance, yet still leaves enough to gamble with on another machine if it isn’t – assuming you stop playing it as soon as you notice it’s not performing well enough.
So, again, you determine how much bankroll you can afford to spend. Now, take that number and divide it by 120 bets. If your bankroll is $60, then that’s 50 cents per bet. In such a way, the right choice is a 2-credit, quarter-denomination slot machine. Or, a 50-credit, penny-denomination slot machine.
Always remember to play maximum credits for the highest odds of winning. Meaning, your casino may not have a 2-maximum-credit quarter or 50-maximum-credit penny machines. But, perhaps they have a 1-maximum-credit quarter or less-than-50-maximum-credits penny machines. Such slot machines would provide more than 120 bets of play, which is going in the right direction!
Reading a Slot Machine’s Paytable
When choosing a slot machine to play, a crucial aspect of winning is to review its paytable before playing. Frankly, the casino industry gains an advantage over players that don’t read slot machine paytables.
Located somewhere on a slot machine is one or more tables showing the number of credits won if specific combinations of reel symbols appear in the pay line after the player makes a bet. Below is a relatively generic example of a paytable.
The figure shows reel combinations along with their jackpot depending on the number of credits bet. Paytables don’t typically explain how much credits
Not every reel combination and its associated jackpot are usually shown in a paytable. Other reel combinations not shown in the top rows are also presented in the paytable area. Slot machines with WILD symbols can represent it with a myriad of other possible reel symbols.
A final element of paytable example provided is specific information on winning reel combinations, which can include an indication of how the slot machine operates during play. The bottom row of symbol explains that that slot machine has reel symbols which will move after the reels stop momentarily.
Such additional features may not activate until the maximum credits are bet. It can sometimes be difficult, or impossible, to determine this. Most slot machines with bonus rounds will provide at least some information about it within its paytable.
Developing a habit of reviewing and studying a slot machine’s paytable can help improve your ability to judge the financial risks involved with playing that slot machine.
How to Avoid the Worst Slot Machines
The best way to improve the odds of winning via slot machine gambling is to stop making “sucker bets”. In less colorful language, avoid playing slot machines with terrible odds of winning.
How To Pick The Best Slot Machine To Play At Casino
First and foremost, understand when choosing slot machines that there are indeed terrible slot machines at a casino. By merely avoiding them whenever possible, on average, your long-term gambling return will improve. Each time we raise our odds like this, we’re pushing closer to achieving our gambling goals. So, let’s make sure we do that, shall we?
Calculate this “Goodness Ratio” as follows:
- When choosing slot machines, as discussed above, find the paytable with the denomination and maximum credits that best matches your available bankroll.
- Take a close look at the paytable. What is the maximum possible jackpot when maximum credits are bet?
- If the top jackpot is displayed in currency, divide it by both the denomination of the machine and the maximum credits
- If the top jackpot is displayed in credits, divide it by only the maximum credits
This “Goodness Ratio” tells us how worthwhile a specific slot machine is to play relative to others. By using this approach, any slot machine can be compared to any other slot machine.
Example: In the paytable above, the maximum jackpot is 2,400 credits with three maximum credits. Therefore, its Goodness Ratio is 2,400 / 3 = 800.
Repeat this calculation for slot machines of interest. While this Goodness Ratio will be similar for many slot machines, it can be startling to find “sucker bet” slot machines that might not otherwise be avoided.
Summary for Choosing Slot Machines
After a casino has been chosen, it’s time to select candidate slot machines most likely to result in a relatively high-value win. The size of your available bankroll, whatever it is, is an essential factor in this selection process. The bankroll size needs to be matched to the slot machine’s denomination and the number of maximum credits.
Here, we’ve also discussed how slot machines calculated odds twice: once to determine if you’ve won, and again to determine how much you’ve won. Another critical aspect discussed to improve a player’s performance was the basics of reading a slot machine’s paytable.
Finally, we talked about the “goodness” ratio to help select candidate slot machines and, perhaps critically important when improving our odds of winning, knowing precisely which slot machines must be avoided.
Next Steps
The next step on your journey to improving slots performance is Identifying Gambling Goals. Enjoy!
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I sincerely hope you find it both enjoyable and useful. For questions, call my voicemail hotline at 702-90-SLOTS, email me at Jon Friedl, or reach out to me through social media:
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Have fun, be safe, and make good choices!
By Jon H. Friedl, Jr. Ph.D., President
Jon Friedl LLC