How To Make A Slot Machine Out Of A Box

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Introduction to How Slot Machines Work

In these series of posts, I continue to answer the most common questions about slot machines asked via Google searches. This post explains the simple question of how slot machines work.

In this post, I will discuss the operational components of a slot machine from the point-of-view of a slots player. Meaning, the various interface areas on the front of a slot machine. These player interface areas include:

  • Service Light
  • Bonus Display (Optional)
  • Pay Table
  • Players Club
  • Results
  • Play Console
  • Ticket In, Ticket Out (TITO)

Additional relatively minor interface areas are not listed or shown below. These areas are the locations audio speakers, audio volume control (optional), display lights, lever arm, and a hearing aid jack to accommodate those with a hearing disability.

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Service Light

A slot machine’s service light is generally located at the very top of a slot machine to be easily visible to casino employees. Because of this uppermost location, it’s also known as the candle within slots terminology.

Slots players can switch on the service light by activating the service button on the player console. Or, it will enable by itself if the player wins a hand pay jackpot or the slot machine develops a service fault. Faults might include lack of paper, a full cash-in condition, mechanical or electronic tampering, or an internal electronic failure such as CPU overheating, etc.

Modern casinos have a slot attendant call/dispatcher communication system using a headset and microphone. This setup is helpful for spotting problems on the casino floor. An activated service light automatically notifies the casino operating system. The casino dispatcher then informs the slot attendant responsible for that section of the casino.

Once the notification is sent out, a lit candle is of little practical use. At best, it guides the responding slot attendant the last few feet to the customer needing attention and, also, provides some reassurance to the waiting customer.

Slots players may activate the candle for a multitude of reasons. In general, they do so to deliberately call a slot attendant to their location, for any of a host of reasons only limited by imagination.

Pro-Tip #1: Service Light

Sometimes slots players need to leave a slot machine briefly but don’t want to give it up to someone else. If this break is relatively brief, say 10-15 minutes, use the service button to call over a slot attendant. The slot attendant can temporarily lock up the slot machine at the request of the player.

The slot machine can be unlocked later by the player via insertion of only their service card … or after 10-15 minutes when the temporary lockout automatically expires. For the specific length of lockout times, ask any slot attendant at your casino.

Bonus Display Area

If a specific slot machine has a bonus round available, then it will often have a second display area. Video slots may use the same primary display screen but abruptly display the bonus round game theme instead. However, video slots most often have a secondary display screen available for bonus rounds.

The Bonus Display area is optional and dependent upon the specific slot machine model. The location of this bonus display varies. More often than not, it is high up on the slot machine to be viewable by other players from a distance.

Casinos offset their losses by offering slot machines with bonus round display visible from a distance. Frankly, wins on these highly visible and usually loud bonus displays are seen by many. This obvious win encourages other casino patrons to play slot machines.

Pro-Tip #2: Bonus Round

Bonus rounds generally cannot be activated unless that slot machine’s maximum credits are bet. By not betting maximum credits, the player automatically lowers their odds of winning.

If betting maximum credits on a specific denomination slot machine is not affordable, pick another affordable slot machine. I discuss this approach in detail at Choosing Slot Machines.

Pay Table Area

The Pay Table area lists information on the jackpot amounts for specific reel combinations. It can also display some or all of the game theme rules. This area may be permanently displayed on the slot machine, or possibly only available through an interactive series of images available by touchscreen.

In either case, all possible wins may or may not be displayed. Sometimes the list is highly abbreviated, and displays only the highest jackpots, due to space limitations. Other times, mainly with touchscreen displays, a series of images can be switched between to view every possible winning combination.

However, pay tables typically provide the highest value jackpot. Slot machine game themes with multipliers or “wild” reel symbols have their most top value jackpots being the result of these reel symbols. Alternatively, it may not show all multipliers or “wild” symbols in the tabulated list of win-reel combinations. Instead, they may be in writing along the edge of the paytable interface area.

But, with large touchscreens has come the capability to provide full paytable information along with game theme rules. Some slot machines now have this feature and, perhaps, more will have it in the future.

Many paytables show the number of credits that would be won for a specific combination of reel symbols. Or, they may show a monetary amount. In either case, these tables have separate columns for winning combinations dependent upon how many credits are bet. The farright column typically shows the winning jackpots available when betting maximum credits.

Some examples of credit and denomination combinations are:

  • 1-credit slot machines having a $100 denomination
  • 3-credit slot machines having a $5 denomination
  • 5-credit “quarter slots” having a $0.25 denomination
  • 300-credit “penny slots” have a $0.01 denomination

Pro-Tip #3: Pay Tables

Frankly, learning the paytable of any slot machines played is a relatively easy way to improve the odds of winning at slots. Many typical slots players believe there is no skill involved in winning at slot machines. Casinos gently foster this misunderstanding, as it is to their benefit. Don’t fall for it.

Traditionally, slots players find it acceptable to play slot machines with visual succinct paytables. Frankly, casinos would instead have their customers spend their time playing a game they don’t understand.

The casino isn’t making money if a player spends time studying or reading until they do understand rather than playing the machine.

One easy-to-learn skill to improve the odds of winning at slots is choosing which slots to play based on their paytables. I discuss this in detail at Choosing Slot Machines.

Players Club Area

The Players Club area contains a card reader, numbered keypad, and a small display. A security feature of players club cards is for players to choose a PIN to enter when they wish to access their player account.

Newer-style slot machines have a touchscreen display, which removes the need for a physical keypad. Meaning, it’s part of the touchscreen display.

Bets can be made on a slot machine without a players’ club card. At most casinos, it typically is not required. Neither is the PIN needed to play the device or view basic information. For example, a running total of reward points earned during the current play session is generally on display.

The PIN is required, however, to:

  • access certain portions of player’s casino account
  • transfer banked funds
  • activate “free play” provided by the casino as a complimentary gift

Results Area

The Results interface area is where the reel combinations are seen after making a bet. Whether a video slot machine or a slot machine with physical reel, this is where the results of a bet are provided.

Interpreting whether a reel combination is a winner requires an understanding of the paytable. This result is fundamental to how slot machines work.

Of course, the slot machine will immediately display the results. A small display beneath the reels shows:

  • the total amount of money or credits available in the machine
  • how many credits most recently bet
  • the jackpot amount won if any

Jackpots are usually in credits, where each credit equals the denomination of the machine rather than the amount bet, as well as a monetary amount.

Player Console

The Play Console typically has physical buttons, a cash/ticket reader, and a ticket printer. The buttons include:

  • Cash Out for requesting the removal of any player funds in the machine
  • Service to request a casino attendant
  • A Series of Buttons for selecting the number of credits to bet, or placing the maximum possible bet
  • Cash Out for removing any remaining bankroll
  • Repeat to making another bet for the same credit(s)
  • Denomination to select a specific bet denomination (optional)

The player console may have several possible button configurations, dependent upon the model of the slot machine. Given how often game themes are switched to maintain the interest of players over time, it is common for player consoles to be standardized over many machines within a casino.

Also, it is becoming common for consoles to have embedded displays visible through their semi-transparent button covers. This array of small screens are linked together to show visually stunning composite images displayed across the entire array of buttons.

Ticket In, Ticket Out (TITO)

By the beginning of the 21st Century, the use of coins was removed from casinos. This removal was for the sake of convenience of both the casino and customers. Both had issues with handling so many coins. Customers because of the difficulties inherent with carrying so much weight, but also gambling delays due to full (or empty) slot machine coin hoppers.

Casinos had issues with coins as well, including customer complaints due to delays caused by a full (or empty) slot machine coin hopper. This inconvenience was a coin logistics issue, which also included higher costs of maintaining a larger vault space and coin processing equipment and services. As casinos became more popular, coins became more difficult for everyone.

As a result, Ticket-In, Ticket-Out technology was pulled into casinos. They are now integral to how slot machines work. This automation is the same technology that was beginning to be seen in Automated Teller Machines (ATMs). Once proven out, this slot machine technology was here to stay like so many others.

Summary of How Slot Machines Work

I’ve discussed the operational components of a slot machine from the point-of-view of a slots player. This explanation of how slot machines work included the various player interface areas on the front of a typical slot machine.

There are additional relatively minor interface areas. These areas include audio speakers, audio volume control (optional), display lights, lever arm, and a hearing aid jack to accommodate those with a hearing disability.

Related Articles from Professor Slots

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Have fun, be safe, and make good choices!
By Jon H. Friedl, Jr. Ph.D., President
Jon Friedl, LLC

Apparently playing slot machines is more fun than just about anything. Old articles about the casino industry used to tout that slot machines made up 70% of a casino’s revenue, on average. More recent literature suggests that it’s even more than that—along the lines of 80%.

I live near the Winstar Casino, and I have a number of friends who visit the casino at least once a week—sometimes more—just to play slot machines there. I’m not a fan of slot machines to begin with, although I enjoyed The Big Lebowski slot machine for about an hour during my last visit with my buddies.

I thought it would be fun to write a post explain how a smart person might play slot machines. I don’t know how smart I am, so a lot of this post will just look at what I THINK a smart gambler might do. Maybe this will help inform your own decisions.

1- Smart Slot Machine Players Don’t Play with Money They Can’t Afford to Lose

You’ve probably seen the expression, “scared money always loses.”

This is true for any kind of gambling, but maybe not for the reasons you think. It’s not a supernatural occurrence based on the vibrations you’re sending out into the universe.

The fact is, slot machines are a worse bet in the casino than almost any other. The odds are against you, and in a significant way.

If you have money set aside for rent, or for a utility bill, or for a child support payment, you shouldn’t gamble it on a slot machine. Slots are negative expectation games.

In fact, you shouldn’t gamble money you can’t afford to lose on positive expectation games, either. That’s because games of chance are RANDOM. In the short term, you can lose any game, even if you have a mathematical edge over the casino or the other players.

Any money you gamble with should be earmarked as part of your entertainment budget. The healthiest way to approach gambling on slot machines is to treat it as entertainment. You’ll sometimes win money, and that’s great, but there’s no way to become a professional slot machine player.

Don’t even try.

2- Smart Slot Machine Players Keep Detailed Records

I often relate a story about how I used to work in middle management in a corporation in Dallas. I wanted to be good at my job, so I studied several management books. One of the first and most important things I learned is that performance measured is performance managed.

This means that if you’re not keeping written records managing your performance, you’re making a mistake.

Of course, slot machine players aren’t professional gamblers, and they can’t improve their performance by playing more skillfully.

But I’m convinced that smart gamblers, even recreational gamblers, benefit from mindfulness. One of the easiest ways to be mindful of something is by paying attention to it. If you’re keeping records, it’s easy to pay attention to it.

Another benefit to keeping written records of your results at the casino is for tax purposes. If you win more than $6000 on a slot machine, the casino sends a notice to the IRS to report the income. If you’ve lost $4000 prior to that at the casino, you can probably deduct that and only pay taxes on your net winnings—the winnings minus the previous losses in that calendar year.

Finally, the biggest mistake I see most slots players making is their belief that they’re winning more often than they’re losing or that they’re breaking even.

The payback percentages for the slot machines in Oklahoma can’t possibly be higher than 75% or 80%. But all my friends are convinced that they’re losing far less money than they actually are losing. Some of them, in fact, are convinced that they’re net winners.

I have one buddy, though, who gambles so much that he’s moved up to the next tier of the players club. He gets a free cabana by the pool. He knows how much he’s lost so far this year. Even though he plays a lot and loses a lot, he knows the amount.

Knowing is better than not knowing.

3- Smart Slot Machine Players Count Funny Things

Some of the best advice I’ve ever read about playing the slots is that the most important thing you can do to minimize your losses is to slow down your rate of play. The more spins you make per hour, the likelier you are to lose a lot of money per hour. You don’t even necessarily get more pleasure out of it.

I took a recovering meth addict to the casino with me once. I’ve never seen anyone play a slot machine faster. If she wasn’t making 900 bets per hour, she was coming close. I’ve also never seen anyone lose that much money that fast.

I’d had a discussion with gambling writer Michael Bluejay a week before my last visit to the casino, though. He’d mentioned that he’d read one of my posts about how important rate of play was to your predicted hourly loss. It got me thinking about making actual measurements of my own rate of play next time I was at the casino.

The average number of spins per hour that everyone quotes when talking about slot machines is 600 per hour. I decided to see how close I came to that number, so I counted off each spin as I made it. I also waited until all my winnings were credited before making the next spin.

I made 201 spins in half an hour. (I used the stopwatch function on my phone to track this.) This means I was making 400 spins per hour on average.

How To Make A Slot Machine Out Of A Box

That’s only 2/3 of the average, so I’ll lose 2/3 of what the average player will lose spending the same amount of time on the machine.

If you really think of gambling as entertainment that you’re paying for on an hourly basis, you’ll easily see why this is a good thing. Bargain gambling is good gambling.

I also tracked how much money I lost over that time period, so I was able to do a short-term calculation of the machine’s payback percentage. I know that with only 201 trials, my number isn’t close to perfect. But it’s still fun and interesting to track such things.

From a longer-term perspective, if you’re keeping records, you know how much you’re losing, and you don’t fall into the trap that some people do of thinking they’re winning at a game they’re actually losing.

4- Smart Slot Machine Players Take Advantage of the Players Club

I’ve weighed the pros and cons of the players club. Most writers in this industry, by the way, make an unqualified recommendation that you always join the players club. I don’t think this should be the default choice for everyone, though.

Here’s why:

The players club is a tool the casino uses to market to gamblers. If you’re more susceptible to advertising than the average person, you might wind up losing more money to the casino than is reasonable or expected.

Or you might just hate getting advertising in the mail.

The players club card is a credit card shaped plastic card that you insert into the machine so that the casino can reward you for your play. They give you points based on how much money you place in bets. These points aren’t related directly to your losses, either—they’re related to the amount you gamble.

If you wager $450 per hour through a slot machine with the card inserted, you’ll get points based on that amount even if you win over the course of an hour, a session, or a visit to the casino.

These points are then used to give you rewards like free food, lodging, and entertainment. The casino knows that the more you play, the more money they make in the long run. Their losses are averaged over thousands of players per day, and so are their wins. Since the slot machines pay out less than they take in, the casino has no doubt about its profit potential.

These rewards are cool and worthwhile, usually. I think, for most gamblers, especially smart ones, the benefits outweigh the drawbacks here.

But you know better than I do how important your privacy is. If you don’t want to get ads via direct mail, being a member of the players club might not be for you.

Keep this in mind, too. The casinos track your activity on the slot machines closely. This gives them aggregate information about player tendencies that they can use to push players’ psychological buttons.

For Example

Suppose a casino analyzes their slot machines’ hit ratios versus time spent on machine. They learn that the average time on the machines with a hit ratio of 30% is 90 minutes per game.

But on the machines with a hit ratio of 25%, the average time spent on average on each game is only 60 minutes.

The payback percentage can be adjusted to anything the casino wants, regardless of the hit percentage. You can have a slot machine with a hit percentage of 30% with an 85% payback percentage, but you can also have a slot machine with a hit percentage of 25% with the same 85% payback percentage. All the slot machine makers need to do is adjust the payback amounts and probabilities for the various combinations of symbols.

They don’t do this in any kind of short-term way.

But the longer they collect this kind of data, the more of it they have, and they’re becoming incredibly efficient at exploiting slot machine players’ psychological tendencies.

You have to decide if it’s smart to contribute to that.

5- Smart Slot Machine Players Learn How the Machines Work Before Playing

Maybe this should have been the first bullet point, but that other stuff is SO important, too.

Any fool can put money in a slot machine, press a button, and win or lose.

But what’s fun about that if you don’t know what you’re looking at?

Here’s one of the best slot tips you’ll ever find – If you really want to have fun on a slot machine, you need to understand what you’re doing.

Buffalo gold slot machine odds. Moreover, he was a prolific inventor during this period.

Let’s start with the really basic stuff:

At most casinos, you can put money into the machine in various ways:

  • Cash
  • Coins
  • Payout tickets
  • Player cards

If you’re using cash, you can use almost any denomination you can think of, from $1 on up to $100.

Most modern slot machines don’t take coins anymore, but if you can find one, you just drop the money into the slot. (That’s where the games get their name, by the way.)

The payout tickets can be used just like cash in modern slot machines. You also use them when it’s time to cash out—you just take them to one of the machines that converts them into currency. When I started, you still got your winnings in coins. Those days are long gone.

You can use your player card to put money in the machine if you’ve been awarded rebates to your card in the form of credits.

No matter which method you use, the slot machine converts your money into credits on the machine. You can see how many credits you have in the machine at any time. The total is always prominently displayed. Depending on the game’s denomination, you might have trouble converting that amount to cash in your head. But the machine will do that for you when you cash out.

Some slot machine games include their pay tables on the machine itself, but others require you to access a screen via their touch-screen. (Look for an option labeled “HELP.”) The pay table lists the symbols along with what the payouts are for the various possible combinations of those symbols. It will also include information about where the pay lines are. These are the lines along the front of the machine where the symbol combinations occur.

This screen will also explain things like the bonus games, scatter symbols, and wild symbols.

Finally, you need to know where the CASH OUT button is. Don’t just sit there and play until all your money’s gone just because you can’t find the CASH OUT button. That really is crazy.

6- Smart Players Know that Denominations Can Be Misleading

You’ll hear a lot of people talk about “penny slots,” “nickel slots,” and “quarter slots.”

This does not mean that you’re betting a penny per spin, a nickel per spin, or a quarter per spin.

Most games encourage or force you to bet multiple coins per pay line, and you usually need to bet on multiple pay lines, too.

The most recent slot machine I played on was a penny slot called Lightning Sevens. It was a penny slot, but you had to bet 5 units per line to be eligible for the jackpots. (The game had 4 progressive jackpots, too.) The game also had 25 paylines.

As a result, I was betting $1.25 per spin on a penny slot machine.

How to make a slot machine out of a box set

This is another reason you should pay close attention to the HELP or INFO screen. On a lot of slot machine games, you can win the top jackpot even if you’re not betting max coins. But some games have lower payouts for the lower denominations.

It’s important to know the difference.

7- Smart Players Don’t Worry about the Locations of the Machines

One of the strategies you’ll often see touted on websites and in old books about playing slot machines is to try to play the games on the edges, nearest the walkways. The theory is that the casinos put the loosest machines there to attract more players to the games.

This might have been true at one casino at one time a long time ago.

But that’s almost certainly not true in a modern casino.

How To Make A Slot Machine Out Of A Box Game

Casino managers probably employ some type of methodology related to the placement of their machines, but it’s probably subtle enough and complicated enough that you’ll never be able to use that logic to your advantage.

In fact, smart slot machine players don’t really worry about any kind of slot machine strategy at all. After all, the smarter you are, the more you realize that no slot machine strategy has any kind of validity at all. These games are entirely random.

You see, it’s worthwhile to study basic strategy in blackjack. It’s even worthwhile to learn how to count cards. Your decisions matter at the blackjack table—mathematically.

But on a slot machine, all you can do is put your money into the machine and hope for the best.

I’ve seen all kinds of silly advice that’s supposed to help you become a winner at the slot machines. For example, I read one author who said that if you get more than 7 spins in a row with no winners, you should switch machines. The same author suggests setting a percentage of your “session bankroll” as a win goal and a loss limit.

You’re then supposed to quit when you’ve won that much or when you’ve lost that much.

That kind of money management strategy doesn’t really matter, though. In the long run, you’re just playing one huge, almost infinite session. Arbitrarily taking breaks during your lifetime gambling session doesn’t increase your chances of winning.

The only way to do that is to only play slots once, get lucky, quit while you’re ahead, and never play again.

That’s a smart strategy in its way, but it’s a little limiting if you enjoy playing slot machines.

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8- Smart Players Avoid the Biggest Progressive Slot Machines

A progressive slot machine is one which has an ever-increasing jackpot. These come in 3 varities:

  1. Standalone progressives
  2. In-house progressives
  3. Wide area network progressives

A standalone progressive takes any bet that’s made on that machine and applies a small percentage of it toward its jackpot, which gets larger as a result.

An in-house progressive is networked with other slot machines in the same casino. Any bet on any progressive in that in-house network increases the size of the jackpot for all those machines.

A wide area network progressive is a game that’s networked with multiple slot machines in multiple casinos. Any wager made on any machine in the network increases the size of the overall jackpot, which can increase its overall size.

Here’s why smart slot machine players tend to avoid such machines, though:

That tiny percentage that goes to fuel the jackpot comes out of the payback percentage. The full payback percentage on the machine isn’t fully realized until you’ve won it. In the case of the largest progressive jackpots, that might not happen ever.

Megabucks is the best known of the largest progressive jackpots. The jackpot starts at $10 million, and it’s not unusual for the jackpot to get as high as $20 million.

As you might guess, the probability of winning Megabucks is on a par with winning the lottery.

And we all know that smart gamblers don’t play the lottery, right?

The opposite of a progressive slot machine, by the way, is a “flat-top” machine. That’s a game where the jackpot is a flat dollar amount. It doesn’t change as the game is played.

Flat top machines generally have better payback percentages than progressive machines.

Conclusion

How To Make A Slot Machine Box

Let me be clear about this:

Slot machines are always a negative expectation bet. No amount of smarts or strategy can help you overcome this mathematical edge.

This doesn’t mean you can’t play slot machines like a smart person. You just need to do what a smart slot machine player does—treat the games as the entertainment devices that they are. Treat the money you wager on such machines as an entertainment expense.