Strictly Slots December 2022

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linked wide-area progressive machines because of the lower payback percentage.Simply compare the machines listed on page 22 and 23 of the November issue of Strictly Slots and decide which one you would play. I wish Strictly Slots would consider doing a stand-alone publication that lists all of the payback percentages and hit frequen cies of the machines in your database. I would gladly buy a publication like this. —Mike D. Brenham,TX The lower overall payback percentages on big-money progressive slots are a necessary tradeoff if casinos are going to offer those life changing wide-area progressive jackpots. It is a math problem for the game programmer: If a penny game offers a 90 percent payback percentage, only so much of that percentage can be dedicated to the base game.The rest must go to fund and grow that top jackpot. If it’s good overall payback you want, go with a machine level progressive.If you’re shooting for that pie in the sky, you’ll need to fund that pie somehow. The Risk of Staying Too Long I usually do pretty well in the casino.My problem is, I never seem to leave a winner—or at least,not leaving with as much as I should.Here’s a recent example of what I’m talking about. Last week, I won a solid $3,565 jackpot thanks to a great hit on a video poker game— Ultimate X. I had been playing for about an hour and a half when I hit,and at that point I was down about $600.That win was a great shot in the arm, made even more thrilling because I was almost out of money for the night. Now I had a decision to make: do I leave ahead nearly $3,000,or do I keep playing,hoping to win more and have fun doing it? You can probably guess what happened. I decided to stay and play a little longer since I now had a sizable bankroll.Plus, this could be the start of a winning streak and I wanted to take the most advantage of it. That didn’t happen. I played video poker a little longer and got nothing. Lost $400 dollars. I decided to switch things up and went to try a few slots. I lost $200 on one machine, $300 on the next, and another $300 on the third. I went back to my video poker machine and dropped another $400.This sort of thing went on for a while. I’d hit a little bit, but eventually lose more and more. In the end I left a winner, but instead of being ahead about $3,000 I went home with just about a $900 profit.

Was I wrong to continue playing? Should I have left immediately? I won for the night, but what I put back stings.And it’s not the first time it’s happened.What’s your advice? —M.D. West Palm Beach, FL The short answer is that it is okay to play a little longer after winning. But what you did sounds more like an excited frenzy—the thought that you’re fat with cash and unstop pable. You need a more reasoned approach to playing and managing your money.Gambling’s tough. It’s risky.And by and large the house has a much, much better chance of being the winner in any encounter than you do. So when you’re ahead, especially by a decent amount, it’s not to be taken lightly or frivolously. Good advice for the circumstance you describe, as soon as you had the money in hand, put the bulk of it in your pocket—about 70 per cent—never to be seen again while in the casino. (Some players will take half of the money and put the rest at risk, but a more conservative 70 percent is a better approach if you’d like to keep the bulk of your winnings.) So in this situation, you would be playing with 30 percent of $3,000, or $900.That amount of money affords you the freedom to continue playing while locking in a nice profit.If you win more, great.If not, you still leave the casino with more of those hard-fought winnings instead of the stinging pain of regret. Bingo Program With electronic bingo, can the jackpot game be pre-programmed so that the jackpot will not be won until they choose for it to be won? —Shirley G. Via the Internet John Grochowski responds: Electronic bingo numbers are drawn randomly and the opera tor has no control over when the winning pat terns will appear. That applies regardless of whether you’re talking about traditional-style bingo on electronic cards, or Class II slot ma chines where the game is really electronic bingo but the screen displays a slot-style interface. Regardless of the style of game, more than one person has to be playing. Bingo games are not banked by the house.Winners are paid from a pool of wagers made by all players on the system. On each machine, bingo numbers are delivered by a central server that is linked to all machines. But the house has no control over which numbers are drawn and delivered.

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10 DECEMBER 2022 ■ STRICTLY SLOTS ■ www.casinocenter.com