*******************************************************************
In This Chapter
When and why they appeared
9 common fantasies and their explanations

*******************************************************************

The players created many fantasies about the slots and the way they work. Most of them were born in mechanical and electromechanical eras of slots (before late 1980s). Modern players inherited them from the previous generations of players. Being undereducated about the role of RNG in computerized machines, they simply accepted old views in the act of faith. Let’s look at them one by one to get rid of them all.

1)   Play machines, which are close to a casino’s entrance or to other places of heavy traffic.

The rational behind that advice is that it makes sense for a casino to set up those machines for a higher payoff percentage. They will payoff more often than others and since they are more visible for a public than other machines, they’ll provide a good advertising for casino’s slots. That could be correct in 1950s. There are so many players now, casinos do not have to be especially generous with any particular machines. However, the principal reason why it is a wrong idea is RNG-based. As you’ll see from the next chapter, any payoff percentage connected reasoning is simply incorrect due to the fact that a percentage number can’t be specified, guaranteed or applied to a gaming public in principle.

2)      A coin temperature is an indicator of a “hot” or “cold” machine.

Only RNG determines the winning and losing combinations. Physical temperature of the coins and machine as a whole is irrelevant to the outcomes.

3)   The more money you put or the more time you played the closer the moment of a big payoff.             

Any combinations including big ones are randomly selected by RNG – the amount of money or time you already wasted has no effect on RNG work.

4)      Machine will pay better if you’ll increase your bet.

Payoffs are made according to RNG randomly selected group of numbers and that selection originates from a mathematical algorithm of RNG. Mathematics does not care how many coins you play.

5) Stop playing if a slots technician opens a machine because he can reset a machine to a lower payoff percentage.

Slots payoff percentages are set by the manufactures. A payoff percentage can only be changed by changing a machine's chip for a chip with a different program that contains worse payoff numbers and delivers worse frequency of payoffs. The manufacturers make the chips. Bureaucrats of Gambling and all kinds of regulators related to Gaming Control Boards and Divisions of Gaming Enforcement make a process of exchanging chips extremely difficult. Bureaucratic presence and approval are required every time a chip is changed. A casino technician does not do it every time he opens up a machine.

The principal reason for that advice being wrong is the same. Any payoff percentage related argument is not correct, because of an abstract nature of a percentage number – it’s a characteristic of a chip’s program inapplicable to the actual slots play by the players.

6) Slots pay better in certain hours of the day or in certain seasons of the year.

Probability-based mathematics and RNG following its orders don’t care less about the time of the day, a day of the week or a season of the year.

7) Certain ways of pulling a handle, pushing a spin button or dropping a coin can affect an outcome.

All fancy moves that you can make with the different parts of a machine and your own body will always have the same result – an access of RNG, which spits out a combination of symbols only to the liking of a mathematical algorithm, which RNG is based on.

8) If a player won a jackpot on a machine that you just played and left, that jackpot was “yours”.

After you left “your” machine and before another player hit a jackpot at least few seconds passed. During that time few thousands RNG decisions were made. The moment when another player accessed RNG coincided with RNG’s jackpot decision. If you stayed at that machine, you would win the same combination, if a millisecond moment of your RNG access coincided in time with the moment of RNG’s access by a lucky player. Theoretically it’s possible, but in reality it’s improbable – correct odds against it would dry your tears in a second. Thus, in all practical terms, “your” jackpot was not exactly “yours”. Nothing prevents you from showing some class and congratulating a winner.

9) Slot attendant can point you a hot machine.

An attendant can point you only a machine that was hot in the past. He/she has no idea what machine is hot now. They have no way of knowing that. Only RNG “knows” with 100% accuracy a machine’s temperature at any given moment.