Slot clubs Many American casinos offer free memberships in “slot clubs”, which return a small percentage of the amount of money that is bet in the form of “comps” (complimentary food, drinks, hotel rooms, or merchandise), or sometimes as cash back (sometimes with a restriction that the cash be redeemed at a later date). These clubs require that players use a card that is inserted into the slot machine, to allow the casino to track the player’s “action” (how much the player bets and for how long), which is often used to establish a level of play that may make a player eligible for additional comps. Comps or cash back from these clubs can make a significant difference in the maximum theoretical return when playing slot machines over a long period of time.
Australia
Queen of the Nile (manufactured by Aristocrat), one of the most popular Australian poker machine games, also very popular in some American casinos
Slot machines in Australia are generally referred to as “video poker”, “poker machines” or “pokies”, but are officially termed Gaming Machines. Australia has seen changes in regulations leading to proliferation of gaming machine venues in various states, most notably New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. Revenue from gaming machines in pubs and clubs accounts for more than half the $4 billion in gambling revenue collected by state governments in 2002-2003 In 1999 the Australian Productivity Commission reported that Australia had nearly 180,000 poker machines, more than half of which were in New South Wales. This figure represented 21% of all the gambling machines in the world. On a per capita basis, Australia had roughly five times as many gaming machines as the United States. In New South Wales, gaming machine revenue increased from $A425.2 million in 1978 to $A238 billion in 1998. The proliferation of poker machines has led religious organizations and welfare groups to claim that this has increased levels of “problem gambling”.
Australian-style gaming machines use video displays to simulate physical reels, usually five. These machines have additional bonusing and second-screen features such as free games and bonus levels. They also allow for multiple lines (up to 50) or multiple ways (up to 243) to be played. This higher level of complexity offers greater opportunity of rewards for players.
Gaming machines are found in casinos (approximately one in each major city) as well as pubs and clubs (usually sports, social, or RSL clubs). There are suggestions that this high level of accessibility may be linked to problem gambling; however, the precise nature of this link is still open to research. The first Australian state to legalize this style of gambling was New South Wales in 1956 when they were made legal in all registered clubs in the state.
Laws governing gaming machines in Australia are controlled at the state level and as such, those laws vary between states. In the state of Queensland gaming machines in pubs and clubs must provide a return rate of 85% while machines located in casinos must provide a return rate of 90%. Most other states have similar provisions.
United Kingdom
Slot machines are usually known as fruit machines, one-armed bandits and AWP (Amusement with Prizes) in Britain. Fruit machines are commonly found in pubs, clubs, arcades, and some take-away food shops. These machines commonly have 3, but can be found with 4 or 6 reels with around 16 or 24 fruit symbols printed around them. These reels are spun, and if certain combinations of fruit appear, winnings are paid from the machine, or subgames are played. These are very similar to slot machines seen in casinos and elsewhere around the world, but the term “fruit machine” is usually applied to a type of machine more commonly found in pubs and arcades. These games have lots of extra features, trails and subgames with opportunities to win money, usually more than can be won from just the reels. However, the jackpots from these fruit machines are strictly limited. An old-fashioned word for these machines can be ‘Didlers’.
Fruit machines in the UK also almost universally have the following features, generally activated or not on a random basis:
* A player may be given the opportunity to hold one or more reels before spinning, meaning that a held reel will not be spun, but instead retain its result from the previous spin. This can sometimes increase the chance of winning.
* A player may also be given a finite number nudges following a spin (or, in some machines, as a result in a subgame); a nudge is a single-step rotation of a reel of the player’s choice.
Currently in the UK, the cost of an individual game (i.e. a single spin of all of the reels, together with the playing of any subgame that may be triggered by the result of it) may not exceed 50p. The maximum payout for an individual game depends on the type and the location of the machine, but is typically £35 in pubs where people under the age of 18 are not allowed entry. It is known for machines to pay out multiple jackpots, one after the other (this is known as a streak) but each jackpot requires a new game to be played so as not to violate the maximum payout. The minimum payout percentage is 70% in Britain, with pubs often setting the payout at around 78%. Private members’ clubs are allowed “club machines”, which have higher jackpots and are allowed to charge more per game.
These machines also operate in a different fashion to American slot machines. The latter are programmed to pay a percentage over the long-run. There is no reason why a jackpot cannot be paid straight after one has already been won, or that it must be paid because it has not been paid in a while. The probability of getting the jackpot in each game is independent of any other game, and these probabilities are all equal.
In the UK, though, the states that “The target percentage payout (which must not be less than the minimum agreed or defined for the machine type) shall be achieved within any 10000 games for S.34 (AWP) machines or 100000 games for S.31 (casino machines).” This means that, in the case of AWP, if the return for the last 10K games approaches the legal minimum, the machine is likely to increase the jackpot percentage to avoid ever falling below it.
You must remember anyway that an AWP machine takes on an amount above its payout percentage before winning, so if a payout is 95%, a machine will make the player lose £10 before paying out £9.50. As such, it is sensible to watch for people playing these machines but not winning as the likelihood of a win increases. This, however, is called Sharking.
This type of fruit machine is popular across Europe (in the countries where they are legal), and very popular in countries such as the Czech Republic, Russia, and Ukraine.
It has been alleged by the Fairplay campaign that UK fruit machines employ fraudulent techniques in which gambles and chances which appear to be random are in fact pre-determined and cannot be affected by player choices.
…at this point, you’ll have gambled the win up to £25. However, the machine doesn’t want you to gamble any further. If from the 5 you select “High”, the machine will spin in a 3 and you’ll lose. If, on the other hand, you select “Low”, the machine will spin in a 9 and you’ll lose…
The claims centre around the emulation of fruit machine hardware on Windows-based computers, which can allow for a fruit machine’s RAM state to be saved at a particular point and replayed making a different choice. Although there was only two practical example demonstrating this which the end user could replicate, there was a lot of debate between fairplay campaigners and the fruit machine emulation authors about the reliability of these claims. The authors suggested that the emulators did not have 100% complete core emulation and does not lead or prove the assumption that fruit machines “cheat”; The fairplay campaign, led by Stuart Campbell rubbished these claims publicly on various internet forums. After some TV and radio coverage on behalf of the fairplay campaign on this issue, the fruit machine industry has hit back at the allegations through BACTA, releasing a statement on the issue.
BACTA at the time, issued guidance to provide voluntary notices are to be put in place on a sticker for older machines or integrated on the “top glass” artwork, most fruit machine manufacturers have done this for circa 2005 machines. This is in fact the law now in the UK, and all machines carry a notice informing the user that the machine may at times offer the player a choice in which they have no possible chance to win. You can often find messages on the artwork on machines also stating not to reproduce the software, artwork, etc in any way, shape or form without permission. The newest UK machines are called ’section 16’s’ - these are 20 lines, across 5 reels of 3 symbols high, playable from 1 or 5 lines minimum (10p-50p spin) up to £2 which is 10p for all 20 lines. Like the RNG comments state, the RN sequence repeats itself, as anybody who plays on autoplay will note. Some machines let you play £4-10 for all 20 lines, on the pretext of upping the percentage from 92-94 or 96,
Japan
Japanese slot machines, known as pachisuro, are a descendant of the traditional Japanese pachinko game. Slot machines are a fairly new phenomenon and they can be found in mostly in pachinko parlors and the adult sections of amusement arcades, known as game centers.
The machines are regulated with IC chips, and have six different levels changing the odds of a “777″. The levels provide a rough outcome of between 90% to an astonishing 160% (200% if using skills). Indeed, the Japanese slot machines are “beatable”. The parlor operators, naturally set most of the machines to collect money, but intentionally place a few paying machines on the floor so that there will at least someone winning, encouraging players on the losing machines to keep gambling.
Despite the many varieties of the machines, there are certain rules and regulations put forward by the “Security Electronics and Communication Technology Association”, an affiliate of the National Police Association (NPA). For example, there must be three reels. Also, all reels must be accompanied by buttons which stop these reels, no more than 15 coins can be paid out per plays, credit meter cant go higher than 50, 3 coin maximum bet, etc.
Although a 15 coin payout may seem ridiculously low, the regulations allow “Big Bonus” and “Regular Bonus” modes where these 15 coin payouts occur nearly continuously until the bonus mode finished. While the machine is in bonus mode, the player is entertained with special winning scenes on the LCD display, and energizing music is heard, payout after payout.
Three other unique features of Pachisuro machines are “Stock”, “Renchan”.On many machines, when enough money to afford a bonus is taken in, the bonus is not immediately awarded. Typically the game merely stops making the reels slip off the bonus symbols for a few games. If the player fails to hit the bonus during these “standby games”, it is added to the “Stock” for later collection. Many current games, after finishing a bonus round, set the probability to release additional stock (gained from earlier players failing to get a bonus last time the machine stopped making the reels slip for a bit) very high for the first few games. As a result, a lucky player may get to play several bonus rounds in a row (a “Renchan”), making payouts of 5000, even 10,000 coins possible! The lure of “Stock” waiting in the machine, and the possibility of “Renchan” tease the gambler to keep feeding the machine. To tease him further, there is a tenj? (ceiling), a maximum limit on the number of games between “Stock” release. For example, if the tenj? is 1500, and the number of games played since the last bonus is 1490, the player is guaranteed to release a bonus within just 10 games.
Because of the “Stock”, “Renchan”, and tenj? systems, it is possible to make money by simply playing machines on which someone has just lost a huge amount of money. This is called being a “hyena”. They are easy to recognize, roaming the aisles for a “Kamo” ( “sucker” in English) to leave his machine.
In short, the regulations allowing “Stock”, “Renchan”, and tenj? has transformed the Pachisuro from a low-stakes form on entertainment just a few years back to the hard-core gambling it has become in 2006. Many people may be gambling more than they can afford, and the big payouts also lure unsavory “hyena” types into the gambling halls.
To address these social issues, a new regulation (Version 5.0) has been adopted in 2006 which caps the maximum amount of “Stock” a machine can hold to around 2000–3000 coins worth of bonus games. Moreover, all Pachisuro machines must be re-evaluated for regulation compliance every 3 three years. Version 4.0 came out in 2004, so that means all those machines with the up to 10000 coin payouts will be removed from service by 2007. Only time will tell how these changes will affect the Japanese Pachisuro industry.
Skill Stops
‘Skill Stop’ Buttons were added to some slot machine by Zacharias Anthony in the early 70’s which allowed the player to stop each reel allowing a degree of ’skill’ to satisfy New Jersey gaming laws of the day which required that players be allowed to control the game in some way. This is the first known use of the skill stop on slot machine. The conversion was applied to late model Bally slots. Because the typical machine stopped the reels automatically in less than 10 seconds weights were added to the mechanical timers to prolong the automatic stopping of the reels. There were approx. 50 machines involved in the original conversion. By the time the New Jersey ABC (Alcoholic Beverages Commission) had approved the conversion for use in New Jersey arcades the word was out and every other distributors began adding skill stops. The machines were a huge hit on the Jersey Shore. The rest of the unconverted Bally machines were destroyed as they had become instantly obsolete.
Common misunderstandings
“Hot” and “Cold” machines
Standard slot machines do not get “hot” or “cold”. The odds of hitting a winning combination are determined by a random number generator contained in the machine’s software and is exactly the same with every spin. Such slot machines are never “due to be hit” if they haven’t paid out a jackpot in a while. (Exception: UK-style AWP and Japan-style Pachisuro machines are progressive which means chances of winning will increase over time if the machine has not paid any wins out. Many also “force” wins on players in order to meet the payout percentage).
Placement
There is a science to the placement of slot machines on the gaming floor, but the highest paying machines are not necessarily placed in high-traffic areas. Typically, machines of similar payback percentages are grouped together, with 1% or less difference from machine to machine in the group.
Payout changes
* In most jurisdictions, casinos cannot alter the machine’s payout percentage by time of day, day of week, or remotely via a computer.
* Using a slot club card does not affect the machine’s payout percentage. The card just allows the casino to keep track of the amount wagered by a player and issue complementaries accordingly.
Missed opportunities
Consider these two scenarios:
* You leave a machine. Another player comes up and immediately hits a jackpot. You think, “If I had played just one more time, I would have won that jackpot.”
* A machine returns a higher jackpot for playing more coins. You play fewer coins, and a winning combination appears. You think, “If I had played more coins, I would have won more money.”
In both cases, you did not “miss” an opportunity to win. The results of modern slot machines depend on exactly when you play them. It is very unlikely in either case that you would have received the same result if you had played just one more time or just one more coin. This is because the random numbers being generated are constantly changing thousands of times per second. It is impossible to assume that the instant you would have made the play would be the same for the other opportunity, thus getting different results from the machine. See Random Number Generator above.
Addiction
Slot machines, like other gambling devices and games, can be addictive to some individuals.
