Casino Player September 2022

PLAYING THE MACHINES

REEL DEAL

Understanding the Slot As the casino industry expands, the same old slot-machine myths survive—many through a misunderstanding of how slots work

➤ by Frank Legato

A s casino gaming expands to new U.S. states, both physically and online,blogs and instructional websites continue to crop up to create new online communities of slot players. The majority of the information on these sites is valid; many offer the same good advice about choosing slot machines, budg eting your bankroll and scrutinizing games online for free before spend ing your money. However, there are still too many sites perpetuating old myths about slot play that, for the most part,grow from a misunderstanding of how slot machines work.One recent blog, for instance, noted that a 97 percent return-to-player, or RTP—the now-common description of the game’s payback percentage—“means you’ll win back 97 percent of every wager.” That’s not what it means at all. A 97 percent RTP or payback percentage means that 97 percent of

all wagers on a slot game—that’s all bets on a game, throughout the life of the machine,measured in years—will be doled out among all players that have played that game.You still need luck to nab a substantial chunk of that 97 percent of wagers. The RTP percentages listed at online gaming sites and the payback percentages listed by manufacturers for casino slot machines are actu ally theoretical statistics arrived at by simulating millions of spins on a slot machine.Mathematicians map out possible results on a slot machine and assign them numbers.The game developer uses those maps to create a pay table,assigning appropriate portions of the possible results to wins on the pay table. Symbols that create big wins are given a few numbers in the pro gram; lower wins and blanks are assigned a bunch of numbers.Then come the simulations of years of play, and the calculation of a theoreti cal payback percentage or RTP.

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