Understanding Slot Machines

How Do Slot Machines Pay
Best Time To Play Slot Machines

Introduction to How to Play Slot Machines

Understanding slot machine math can be daunt ing for even the most seasoned individual. You do not hav e to be an accountant, analyst, or even a statistician to understand the fundamentals of slot math. The take-away is to know why this math is so important. If playback doesn't begin shortly, try restarting your device. You're signed out. Videos you watch may be added to the TV's watch history and influence TV. On this page, we explain how slot machines work and the essential playing concepts that can make a difference for your bankroll. Slots have evolved drastically from the first mechanical three-reel devices. These days, most slots are electronic, showing animated symbols on HD screens. Understanding How a Virtual Slot Machine Works. In the last few years a number of developments have changed the way in which slot machines work. One of the latest developments is the virtual or video slot. Instead of featuring actual physical reels with the number of symbols being limited, this type of slot machine commonly has up to hundreds. Today’s slot machines are vastly more addictive to their earlier counterparts, but they work on many of the same principes, so going back in time is useful in order to aid our understanding. Charles Fey of San Francisco is widely credited as being the inventor of the gambling machine.

Do you remember the first time you entered a casino as a beginner slots player? I know I do. What I remember most is being extremely confused. It was so dark, yet with so many lights. And the smoke everywhere! Perhaps you remember something similar?

My intent is to be genuinely helpful to slots players. While I think I still have a long way yet to go before I’ve shared everything that’s needed, I also believe I have been somewhat of service so far.

But perhaps you are only just beginning your slots journey. What have I done for you to ease your way into becoming a healthy, happy slots enthusiast? So, this article is for you, the beginner slots player, to, well, help.

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Entering a Casino for the First Time

My first experience at slot machine gambling was in 2003 at a small tribal casino (Kewadin Casino in Manistique, Michigan) in the upper peninsula. I was taking a long drive back to graduate school in Iowa after visiting family in the lower peninsula and had found a hotel at which to spend the night.

A casino was located just down the highway from that hotel. I wasn’t aware of the casino being there until the hotel provided $20 worth of tokens to play at it.

I remember feeling a little nervous about entering a casino for the first time in my life. I mean, what would my family of non-gamblers think? But I gathered up my courage and went on in.

I found it to be a highly distracting place: loud, lots of flashing lights, and smoke. This was a time when smoking was more fashionable than it is today, so there was a great deal of cigarette and cigar smoke in the air. This is still true today in some states, such as Nevada, although ventilation has gotten a whole lot better.

I distinctly remember rapidly spending the $20 worth of tokens on slots. Plus, another $50 besides which I could ill afford to lose. At the time I was a poor graduate student on a research stipend working a side job as a temporary instructor of college physics. I’d just spent my food money for the trip home.

Did I win anything that first time at a casino? No, I don’t think so. Why don’t I know if I had won or not? Frankly, how would I have known if I had? If I did, it wasn’t enough to grab my attention.

Maybe a few numbers changed on the player’s console, and the slot machine made an unusual sound. So? What of it? From my perspective, it was doing that every time I made a bet anyway.

I left the casino after having spent $50 I could barely afford to lose. As I continued home on that long road trip, I started thinking about gambling with slot machines. Since then, I’ve more-or-less never really stopped doing so.

After a few months of dwelling on that first experience, I happened to be visiting the Omaha Zoo just over the western border of Iowa in Nebraska. There, I saw a casino (Lakeside Casino in Osceola, Iowa) on the river. Hint: it was a riverboat casino.

With those months of thinking figuratively behind me, I’d concluded from my first visit that I needed a rule for how much I should allow myself to spend whenever, or if ever, I entered another casino.

The careful rule I came up with was this: “Take a fixed amount into the casino, say $25, and spend only that plus whatever you make from it.”

With this simple rule and $25 in hand, I entered this second casino at about 2 o’clock in the afternoon on a Saturday … and left almost 12 hours later at 1 a.m. Yes, that’s right, 12 hours. Why? Because I’d carefully followed my rule.

My error was that I hadn’t been prepared for success. This has continued to plague me, by the way. The error which my simple rule didn’t account for was this: Almost immediately after entering this second casino, I won $500 on a 25-cent slot machine.

Doing so left me feeling quite emotional, which inclined me to try to stick firmly to the rule – which I proceeded to do. As the afternoon and evening passed into the early morning, I continued to win additional small, nontaxable jackpots.

Eventually, I spent my $25 along with what I’d won with it. And so, this was my second experience at a casino. I’d gone from slots gambling for 10 minutes to a marathon 12-hour session.

I did try to find a hotel that morning, instead of driving home at such a late hour (and coming as close as I’ve ever gotten to hitting a deer on the highway), but the nearby hotel wouldn’t accept a credit card – only cash.

The hotel staff insinuated that people would provide a credit card to the hotel upon arrival, but afterward max out their credit limit at the casino. At check-out, they wouldn’t be able to pay their hotel bill the following morning. That shocked me.

My point here isn’t about my not being able to get a hotel room, but that this was my first real clue that gambling was … complicated. It consisted of more than just the act of making a bet by pushing a button.

It exists in a unique environment where loud sounds, flashing lights, second-hand smoke, and even gambling abuses can occur. How fascinating!

My Initial Gambling Rules

After these first two casino gambling experiences, I spent more and more time thinking about them without much progress in learning how to win. I wasn’t yet thinking about how to win, however. Rather, I was mostly thinking about the potential dangers of what I was getting myself into.

Eventually, I made a decision to keep trying to figure out this whole slots gambling thing. I wasn’t expecting to win any significant amount of money, not ever. But I was hoping not to lose a significant amount of money.

At the time, for me, my primary motivation was wanting to develop better control over my emotions while gambling at a casino. When there, I was feeling overwhelmed by my strong emotions. I didn’t like feeling ruled, at times almost controlled, by my emotions.

If my reaction to these strong emotions was a personal weakness, I knew I wouldn’t just find myself exposing this behavior at a casino. I could potentially be surprised by it at any other time. For example, while living my life or when working professionally. I felt I needed to understand and, if I could, address it.

So, with this reasoning in mind for proceeding with gaining additional slot machine gambling experiences, I took a long look around where I lived for any nearby casinos within driving distance. As it happened, there was a nice casino relatively nearby.

This local casino (Prairie Meadows in Altoona, Iowa) had table games, floors of slot machines, a high limit slot room, and horse racing. And, oh, the splendor of the buffet!

To all my senses, it was simply delightful. So, with that limited assessment of a gambling establishment, about every month or more I’d take about $25 from my monthly stipend to go there with the full expectation of gambling it all away on slot machines.

But would I…? For what happened next, see The World’s Oldest Winning Slots Strategy is Still in Play!!

But that’s just my story. Instead, let’s talk about your story.

The Changing State of Gambling, in Brief

Legal large-scale gambling in the U.S. started in Nevada in 1931. There was Las Vegas, of course, but also Reno, Lake Tahoe, and others. It basically stayed there until legalized in Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1978.

Legalized gambling in Atlantic City provided casinos convenient to gamblers on the east coast. And this balance of gambling between Nevada and Atlantic City continued until around the end of the 1980s. At that point, everything started changing more and more rapidly.

Basically, in 1988 tribal casinos became permitted by federal law. Although, tribes did need to negotiate state-tribal compacts with the state their reservations were located within. These negotiations typically took years.

Another substantial change happened in the early 1990s when riverboat casinos became legal in several midwestern states. Originally, state law required these casinos to travel on water, or at least unmoor from a dock, before any gambling could occur.

In the mid-90s, online gambling started up outside of the U.S. This got out of control fast, until various legal restrictions began protecting players. For a while, this protection was to block online gambling in the continental U.S.

By doing so, the U.S. Senate was not just protecting players, but also land-based casinos hurt by online gambling from outside the U.S. Not long after, Canada did much the same. Besides tribal gaming, this was the limit of federal laws restricting gambling in the U.S. until the banning and recent un-banning of sports betting at the federal level.

What all this means is simple. Gambling has become prevalent in the U.S., especially the most popular type of gambling there is: slot machine casino gambling.

There is another side of the coin, as it were, to all this growth and expansion of gambling. All through these changes to the gaming industry in the U.S. and abroad, the technology of gambling was also growing and expanding.

For example, as you might imagine, the impact of microchips and the internet was profound to slots. For a succinct article capturing these near-constant technological developments of slots machines, see The Ultimate Guide to Slot Machine History.

My point of view is that slot machine casino gambling has changed a lot in the last few decades. Further, I believe that these changes will keep on happening. Knowing what has happened in the past will help us understand the future.

Some of the biggest changes occurring right now are related to slot machines no longer being fully random. Frankly, there are degrees of randomness. In the past, most casinos controlled the odds of winning on a slot machine by having slots mechanics physically adjust the odds on a regular schedule perhaps 2 weeks long.

Nowadays, at casinos built or heavily renovated since 2012, this is automated. Doing so both reduced the casino labor force and provided a near real-time understanding of the performance of the casino for its operator.

And therein lies the secret to winning at slot machine casino gambling. But all that is a bit much for the beginner slots player. What you need to know is, the randomness of slot machines isn’t always fully random. There are patterns to this randomness and, if you know to look for them, you can find them.

Beginning Your Slots Journey

Maybe you’ve yet to visit a casino. Maybe you have visited a casino and wondered what the heck just happened. You might even have gone many times but want to restart your slots journey for one of several reasons.

If you’re just started on your slots journey, you may not know how much playing slots has changed so much in the last few years. That’s fine, as more than a few regular slots players haven’t kept up with all the changes of late. Or, rather, what the changes mean.

So, let us begin your journey together. Your first step? Well, it’s probably not visiting a casino. Your first step is to search for info online. Maybe that’s how you found me!

How Do Slot Machines Pay

Most people have several casinos near them. In Iowa, for instance, every resident has at least one casino within an hour drive.

What about you? How many casinos are near you? Well, I shouldn’t explain how to use Google, but here’s a hint: Type “casinos near me” in Google. Doing so will show a map with all the casinos in your area. Cool, huh?

Or use my Online Resource for U.S. Casino Slots Enthusiasts with links to my state-by-state slots review articles including lists of state’s casinos as well as their websites … and a map!

What you want to do is visit the websites of casinos near you. See what they have to offer that you might like. Don’t focused entirely on gambling. For instance, you’ll probably want a nice meal occasionally, right? So look at what nearby casinos have to offer which might interest you.

That’s about all the preparation you’ll need to start, other than The Golden Rule of Slots.

The Golden Rule

There is a danger to gambling for the first time. I’m not a medical professional, so I cannot explain this danger as well as I would like. But this is the danger: You don’t know how you will involuntarily react to gambling until you do it the first time.

It’s kind of like that first alcoholic drink. With it, some people immediately realize they are an alcoholic. It can ruin lives and doing something about it successfully will be a life-long endeavor.

I don’t mean to scare you. Not at all. Many people find recreational gambling to be quite entertaining. But others find out they are compulsive gamblers. This can be hard on everyone. So, I have a few things to share about it.

First, please understand that casino’s reprimand employees, or fire them, if they tell a patron they are spending too much money and should go home. That’s just the sad truth. On the other hand, advertisements all over casinos explain how to get help.

Second, I don’t encourage non-gamblers to gamble. I assume anyone who finds me is deliberately looking for information on slots gambling. But, if you decide you want to gamble, then I take it as my responsibility to explain how to do it.

Third, there truly is a Golden Rule. Here it is: Don’t spend any money at a casino which you cannot afford to comfortably lose. That means you’re spending disposable income, which is money left over after paying all your bills along with an additional amount put into your savings account of choice.

Journey into the Unknown … Together

I suppose we should also discuss how a slot machine operates. Most newcomers sit down at a slot machine, put some money in, and start pushing some buttons. But what do the buttons do?

There are several physical components to slot machines, including various interfaces with the player. I’ve already written an article about the common elements of a slot machine called How Slot Machines Work from a Player’s Perspective.

That article, or at least the schematic of a slot machine found in it, should go a long way toward taking the mystery out of how all the buttons, panels, and interfaces work on a slot machine.

Another thing you’ll want to do is get a player’s club card from the casino. At its simplest, this is like your grocery card. In exchange for your contact information, you can earn points by spending money on gambling. They’ll also make some interesting offers.

You’ll get free stuff from the casino, most likely starting when you sign up. Sometimes, in the long term, it’s often the only way gamblers make a profit. Here’s another article with my explanation about these casino rewards clubs called Seven Advantages of Players Clubs for Playing Slots.

So, let’s recap what I’ve pulled together for you to start at slots:

Go to the websites of casinos near you to understand their differences relative to your wants and needs.
Check to make sure you have some amount of disposable income if you want to play slots.
Visit your casino of choice and get a player’s club card at the front counter or kiosk.
Pick a slot machine, make a bet, and see what happens next.

So, what does happen next? One example would be what happened to me, as explained. Or something similar. If I had one wish for you, it would be this. I hope you don’t win.

That’s probably shocking, but it really is for the best. If you win big at your first visit to a casino, it sets an unrealistic expectation you might take years to recover from … if ever. I hope you win big on your second visit to a casino. That’s what happened to me.

Once you’ve visited the casino a few times, maybe you’ll want to know more about why casinos are the way they are. If so, I have plenty of articles about them. But, that may be too soon. When you’re ready, they (and I) will be waiting here for you.

I hope you have a great time at the casino playing slots. As I’m always saying: Have fun, be safe, and make good choices.

Summary of Learn How to Play Slot Machines

Too often a beginner slots player gets lost. So much happens at once in a casino! Lights! Sounds! Smoke! There really is a lot going on for beginners. And, unfortunately, a casino doesn’t help. After all, it isn’t in their best interest to help.

Savvy slots enthusiasts understand what they are doing. We are all self-taught. Well, it’s time to fix stop leaving all that learning up to chance. With this primer, a beginner slots player no longer starts from scratch.

When you’re ready for more information on playing and winning at slots, it’ll be here for you. Best of luck and let me know if you have any questions!

History of slot machines

Gambling machines have been around since the end of the 19th century, but those first games are virtually unrecognizable when compared to those that are now in use.

Today’s slot machines are vastly more addictive to their earlier counterparts, but they work on many of the same principes, so going back in time is useful in order to aid our understanding.

Charles Fey of San Francisco is widely credited as being the inventor of the gambling machine. A few years after a basic creation by Sittman and Pitt of Brooklyn, New York, Fey designed a simple machine that had five symbols on three spinning reels.

Basic slot machines today work in the same way and they even have some of the same symbols that were chosen by Fey, who had horseshoes, diamonds, spades, hearts and a Liberty Bell on his machine.

Best Time To Play Slot Machines

The big breakthrough made by Fey was the reduction of symbols and settling on three reels, which made it a lot easier to make the automatic calculation of a payout. This was one of the ways in which the early slot machines were addictive – they paid out straight away.

Electromechanical slot machines were then created in the 1960s, while it took a further decade or so for the first video slot machine to be created.

The rise of the internet then led to online slots, with the development of 3D slots, virtual reality slots and progressive jackpot slots all gathering pace over the last few years.

Why are slot machines addictive?

Slot machines are addictive as the outcome is uncertain. Players do not know what is going to happen in a single spin of the reels – it could be nothing, or it could be a massive jackpot win.

Research has shown that uncertain outcomes can result in the release of dopamine in the brain. The chemical dopamine is linked to happiness and can be extremely addictive for some people.

Chasing that dopamine high can help to explain why people play slot machines and can become addicted to them as a result. The feeling they get when spinning the reels is a good one, regardless of whether they are winning or losing.

One study has even found that dopamine is released almost as much when people lose on slots as when they win, which may come as a surprise to a lot of people. Chasing losses is common among some gamblers and this is likely as a result of their desire to release more dopamine.

The immersive experience of slot games also contributes to addiction. It is not by accident that such games feature a lot of flashing lights, loud sounds and bright animations – it is a totally different experience to the calm of solitaire card games, for example.

All this contributes to capturing the attention of slots players, while they also combine with the reward uncertainty to boost addictiveness.

Beating addiction to slot machines

Gambling addiction is now recognised as a major issue in a lot of countries, but what can people do to avoid getting addicted to slot machines?

A lot of online casinos now have measures in place to allow people to stay in control. Factors such as deposit limits help to make sure that players can only gamble as much money as they can comfortably afford to lose.

Cooling-off periods are increasingly being put in place too, with users able to temporarily lock themselves out of an account. Others who want to step away entirely can opt to use a self-exclusion scheme, which is another way to prevent them from gambling on slot games.

Some banks even have a gambling block feature to help their customers avoid betting, while organizations such as Gamblers Anonymous can provide necessary help and support too.

Replacing slot machines with something else also works for a lot of people. Whether that is a calming card game like solitaire or another hobby entirely, this can help out a great deal.

Understanding and beating addiction to slot machines is likely to get even more challenging in the future as online gambling sites become more common around the world. But it can be done.

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