Best Odds In Slot Machines
Picture yourself dropping a coin into a slot machine and winning the “big one.” That may be most people's dream, but it rarely happens. For example, most casinos set their slot machines to pay out only 83-to-99 percent of the money they take in. Play at a gas station, bus terminal or any other place that has slot. Slots with The Best Odds While it may not be possible to use strategies to improve your chances of making a profit, your odds of winning can vary a lot with the games you choose to play. The basic rule is that the more symbols have a slot machine or an online slots game the lower will be the winning probabilities. Slot odds best machines Imagine playing a game of slots with three reels and 20 symbols on each reel. Your goal is to uncover three Liberty Bell symbols (or any other symbol) on the pay line. Slot machines don’t give player the opportunity to make multiple bets in combinations like craps or roulette, or to take advantage of ever-shifting odds as card counters do in blackjack. Nevertheless, slot machines players have tried systems play for generations. Ultimately, however, slot machine odds are unchanging, the same on every spin.
So who pays for those Volcanic eruptions? Pirate Battles? Carnival Parades? and Glittering Showrooms? Slot Machines. 60-65% of casino revenue is generated by those bell-ringing one armed bandits that seem to multiply on casino floors like rabbits. So how does the average player gain an advantage and possibly win? Well... aside from cheating (which we really don't suggest you get involved in) the only way to gain some sort of advantage is to choose your slots with utmost care and discrimination.
Slot machines in Las Vegas are required by law to payout 75% of the money that goes into them, actual payout in Las Vegas is approximately 95%. Will you be the one that takes the money instead of gives it? That is up to luck, but with a little investigation one can easily learn to identify which machines are more favorable to the player than others. Slot machines are all about the payout... Red White and Blue, Double Diamond, Dick Fucking Clark, Cherry whatever. At the end of the day what every slot player needs to do is look at the pay schedule on the machine they want to play. Very often the same machine one row over will pay 5,000 credits on 3rd credit jackpot while you're playing on a 2,000 3rd credit machine. Plain and simple you're cheating yourself.
Slot Spotlights
A few notable slot machines we here at VT have found more playable, or more interesting, than the other nonsense out there like Leprachaun's Gold or Tabasco Slots or whatever.
We like machines that have the best payouts on the lowest winning spins. These will keep you going longer between larger wins and not enact the ATM-In-Reverse principle seen at many of the larger joints (Venetian being the worst we've experienced).
100 or Nothing
Red, White and Blue
Slot Machine Jackpots Photo Gallery
Wheel of Fortune
Wild Cherry
Slot Machine Payback Percentages
Below are the slot payback percentages for Nevada's fiscal year beginning July 1, 2002 and ending June 30, 2003:
5¢ Slot Machines
The Strip - 90.32%
Downtown - 91.50%
Boulder Strip - 93.03%
N. Las Vegas - 92.97%
25¢ Slot Machines
The Strip - 92.59%
Downtown - 94.83%
Boulder Strip - 96.47%
N. Las Vegas - 96.63%
$1 Slot Machines
The Strip - 94.67%
Downtown - 95.35%
Boulder Strip - 96.48%
N. Las Vegas - 97.21%
$1 Megabucks Machines
The Strip - 89.12%
Downtown - 88.55%
Boulder Strip - 87.76%
N. Las Vegas - 89.41%
$5 Slot Machines
The Strip - 95.33%
Downtown - 95.61%
Boulder Strip - 96.53%
N. Las Vegas - 96.50%
All Slot Machines
The Strip - 93.85%
Downtown - 94.32%
Boulder Strip - 95.34%
N. Las Vegas - 95.32%
The Math of Casino Slot Machines
For every dollar you wager in a slot machine, you will lose 100% - Payback% of that dollar. For example, you're at Bellagio playing the $1 Double Diamond slot, wagering Two Credits ($2) per spin. According to the table, for every $2 spin you will lose 5.33% of that bet... just shy of 11¢. Granted these 11 cents don't get extracted instantly... this is computed over time. So if your bank roll limit is $10 it will take you, on average 52 spins before your bankroll is toast (under $1) and you are out of credits.
How was this number derived:
STAKE x (Payback Percentages) = STAKE x (Payback Percentages) = STAKE x (Payback Percentages) = ...
Repeat calculation until the number gets below the minimum bet - if you play long enough, you're gonna go broke. THAT is a FACT. Slot machines are entertaining, relaxing, require little thought beyond pressing a button. IF you want to truly GAMBLE, you might want to look into Video Poker, and eventually Blackjack as other options.
Granted, sometime in there you just might hit that $500 win on the Wheel of Fortune, or The Elvis progressive might shake rattle and roll $1000 your way... but the math inside the machine determines that you will in fact lose a certain percentage of your wager on each spin, and the more you spin... the more you will lose despite short runs of successful jackpots. If you find you are UP... leave. Every spin of a slot machine generates a random number that has NOTHING to do with previous numbers. SLOT MACHINES do NOT run in streaks (even if you might wish to think they do). Don't expect to get any of the money you put into a machine out of it unless you learn to press the CASH OUT button.
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- Appendices
- Slots Analysis
- Miscellaneous
Introduction
The following table ranks the Las Vegas casinos according to the looseness of their video display reeled nickel slot machines. The returns are based on a sampling of five different types of machines. The data collected goes back as far as October 2001 so the information is a bit dated.
Las Vegas 5 Cent Slot Survey
| Rank | Casino | Average Return |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Palms | 93.42% |
| 2 | Gold Coast | 92.84% |
| 3 | Sahara | 92.81% |
| 4 (tie) | Bourbon Street | 92.63% |
| 4 (tie) | Imperial Palace | 92.63% |
| 4 (tie) | Slots a Fun | 92.63% |
| 7 | Key Largo | 92.60% |
| 8 | Western | 92.57% |
| 9 | Ellis Island | 92.56% |
| 10 | El Cortez | 92.56% |
| 11 | Orleans | 92.56% |
| 12 | Circus Circus | 92.56% |
| 13 | Gold Spike | 92.55% |
| 14 | Fitzgeralds | 92.54% |
| 15 | Fiesta - Rancho | 92.53% |
| 16 | Arizona Charlie's East | 92.51% |
| 17 | Barbary Coast | 92.50% |
| 18 | Terrible's | 92.49% |
| 19 | Arizona Charlie's | 92.49% |
| 20 | Hard Rock | 92.47% |
| 21 | Town Hall | 92.47% |
| 22 | Longhorn | 92.47% |
| 23 | Riviera | 92.23% |
| 24 | California | 92.14% |
| 25 | Lady Luck | 92.10% |
| 26 | Nevada Palace | 92.06% |
| 27 | Plaza | 91.94% |
| 28 | Luxor | 91.92% |
| 29 | Paris | 91.92% |
| 30 | San Remo | 91.88% |
| 31 | Excalibur | 91.84% |
| 32 | Palace Station | 91.84% |
| 33 | Ballys | 91.82% |
| 34 | Las Vegas Club | 91.76% |
| 35 | Four Queens | 91.75% |
| 36 | Texas Station | 91.71% |
| 37 | Casino Royale | 91.67% |
| 38 | Boulder Station | 91.55% |
| 39 | Aladdin | 91.5% |
| 40 | O'sheas | 91.48% |
| 41 | Hilton | 91.40% |
| 42 | Boardwalk | 91.28% |
| 43 | New York New York | 90.99% |
| 44 | Horseshoe | 90.96% |
| 45 | Sam's Town | 90.89% |
| 46 | Santa Fe Station | 90.87% |
| 47 | Flamingo | 90.86% |
| 48 | Golden Nugget | 90.85% |
| 49 | Stratosphere | 90.8% |
| 50 | Tropicana | 90.71% |
| 51 | Golden Gate | 90.64% |
| 52 | Silverton | 90.57% |
| 53 | Main Street Station | 90.56% |
| 54 | Westward Ho | 90.40% |
| 55 | Fremont | 90.37% |
| 56 | Castaways | 90.36% |
| 57 | Monte Carlo | 90.24% |
| 58 | Stardust | 89.97% |
| 59 | Frontier | 89.91% |
| 60 | MGM Grand | 89.81% |
| 61 | Harrahs | 89.32% |
| 62 | Treasure Island | 89.32% |
| 63 | Mirage | 89.3% |
| 64 | Caesars Palace | 89.05% |
| 65 | Mandalay Bay | 88.87% |
| 66 | Rio | 88.72% |
| 67 | La Bayou | 88.26% |
| 68 | Mermaids | 88.26% |
| 69 | Bellagio | 87.42% |
| 70 | Venetian | 86.66% |
| 71 | Airport | 85.02% |
Excluded Casinos
The Suncoast and Rampart Casino in Summerlin do not allow playing slots and taking notes at the same time. I can not include any casino that prohibits the method in which I gather data.
Location Averages
The next table shows the average return by location.
Returns by Region
| Location | Average Return |
|---|---|
| Off strip | 92.07% |
| Downtown | 91.66% |
| Strip | 91.47% |
| Total | 91.74% |
The above sign can be found across the street from the Palms. Although I did the study Anthony Curtis published it in the LasVegas Advisor, which is how it become well known. The'...' in the sign encompases quite a bit of information,which was conveniently left off the sign. Actually the study only says that the Palms had the lowest nickel video slotsof the casinos surveyed in Las Vegas. The small print at thebottom says, 'Independent study conducted between November2001-February 2002 on Austin Powers, Fortune Cookie, Reel'em In, and Wheel of Fortune games. They left off LeopardSpots, and the study began in October.
Observations
There seemed to be no truth behind slot placement myths. Machines on the end of a bank did no better on average than those in the middle. There was also no correlation between return and proximity to such things as the main door, table game pit, high traffic areas, and low traffic areas.
Most casinos were very consistent in their slot returns.If one nickel machine had a return of x% then all others like it also returned x%. However some casinos did mix up loose and tight machines, most notably Treasure Island and the California casinos.
Methodology
A kind and anonymous source provided me with par sheets for the games in question. The EPROM (Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory) chip is what tells the machine the order of the symbols on the reel, in some cases how the stops are weighted, how much each winning combination pays, and any other pertinent information about how much the machine pays.It is up to the slot manager to select which EPROM chip to order according to the return percentage desired. On atypical game there might be about 8 different possible return percentages, ranging from about 85% to 98%.
Each of the different par sheets has five sets of distinct reels. On video display slots the stops are not weighted; in other words all stops are equally likely. The distribution of each symbol on each reel is what determines the theoretical return of the machine. For example a higher paying machine may have more of the higher paying symbols.
On the machine itself three consecutive symbols arevisible on five different reels. By comparing actualobservations of results to the par sheets it is possible todetermine which reels the machine uses, and thus which par sheet and which return. There are various three-symbol combinations that appear in at least one but not all par sheets. So if one of these combinations occurs on an actualmachine it narrows down the possible par sheets. By playingenough the player can narrow down the possible par sheets tojust one.
To help identify the unique combinations I wrote a computer program for each game, which had the exact reel order of all 5 reels of all the par sheets. The program then counted the number of par sheets with each possible three-symbol combination. If the number was greater than 0 and less than the maximum then that combination was identified along with the associated par sheets it belonged to.
It is then a matter of simply playing the game and comparing the outcomes to the list of partially unique combinations. It only takes about 5-10 plays per machine to narrow down the possibilities to just one par sheet.
The averages in the table are actually an average of averages. For each kind of machine at each casino I took an average return. Then I took the average of these averages over the five kinds of machines I tested for.
Slot Machine Definition
There is some confusion about what constitutes a 'slot machine' or 'slot.' My definition, and that of most gamblers, is a gambling machine with either actual spinning reels or video representations of the them.
People in the gaming business and regulators generally refer to a slot machine as any gambling machine, including reeled slots, video poker, video keno, video blackjack,etc.. For purposes of statistics both casino managers and regulators combine all the electronic gambling machines together. For example, the Slot Chart in Casino Player magazine and reports by the Nevada Gaming Control Board do not isolate just reeled slots but consider all electronic games a 'slot.' Therefore my return percentages should not be expected to agree with those reported by the casinos or regulators. As far as I know mine is the only source to isolate just the return of reeled slots.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Rob Feldheim for helping with the slot play and record keeping. Rob helped me with most of the casinos on the east side of town and part of downtown. I would also like to thank par Sheet Pete (not his real name)for providing the par sheets, without which this project would not have been possible.
Internal Links
Go to slot machine appendix3B (Jean/Primm slot returns).
Go to slot machine appendix 3D(Henderson slot returns).
Go to slot machine appendix 3E(Las Vegas quarter and dollar slot returns).
Go to slot machine appendix 3F(Montreal slot return).
Go back to slot machines.
External Links
The main-stream media has covered this study in depth. Here are links to some articles.
- Turning'em loose, an article that appeared in the Las VegasReview Journal on May 19, 2002, about the possible effectsof this study.
- One-Armed Bandit or Robin Hood?, an article by myself for Contingencies Magazine explaining the methodology, results, and weaknesses of the study.
- Play by the rules and the one-armed bandits will still win. Boston Globe article about slot machines, in which my Las Vegas survey is mentioned and my advice quoted. (cache)