Types of Slot Machines
The original slot machine dates back to 1887. Its inventor, Charles Fey, designed a machine with three reels featuring bells, hearts, diamonds, spades, horseshoes, and stars. These slots accepted one nickel, and featured a top payout of ten nickels.
Mechanical machines accepting one coin at a time are a thing of the past. Today's slot machines are controlled by microprocessors which include all aspects of the slot machines, including the reels. Although you will still see spinning reels on the computer controlled slots, it is virtually impossible to calculate the odds of receiving a payoff by observing the reels. With mechanical slots it was possible to calculate the probability of hitting a certain payoff by counting the number of times a symbol appeared on each reel. Once you knew the total number of symbols on each reel, it was fairly easy to divide the total number of times the symbol appeared, by the total number of symbols on all the reels, to determine the probability of any symbol, or combination of symbols, occurring.
This type of calculation is virtually impossible with computer-chip- controlled slots. The reels, if there are any, are strictly there for show. The actual payoffs are determined by complex random number generators. The reels, which appear to spin just like the old mechanical slots, are just there for appearance.
Unless you are playing in a venue featuring antique slot machines, you will not be able to avoid computer-controlled slot machines. However, there are still a tremendous variety of machines, and not all machines are created equal, at least not for slot pros who win at slot machines. Certain machines are much more likely to produce profits when played using slots strategies, and, of course, these are the machines we are interested in playing.
Before we zero in on the "best slots", let's talk about some of the slot machines we will find. Modern slot machines accept more than one coin, and multiply the payoff by the number of coins played. Some of these machines offer paybacks which are roughly proportionate to the number of coins played.
Buy-your-pay machines: Show different combinations of winning symbols dependent on the number of coins played. One coin gets you a basic group of symbols, two coins adds more symbols to the payoffs, and three coins get you even more symbols which offer payoffs. A lot of players have been burned more than once on these machines, when they did not look carefully enough at them before beginning to play, and then learned that less-than-full coin play was costing them too many payoffs.
Wild play machines: Give players the chance to win double, triple, or even four or five times the standard payoff, if one-or-more wild symbols are part of the winning combination of symbols.
Progressive slot machines: Feature jackpots which grow each time an additional coin is inserted. The lucky winner will receive the accumulated jackpot, which is reset to a minimum jackpot after each winner.
Mega progressive machines: Offer lottery-like payoffs in the millions. Many times these progressive are linked together with slots in many different casinos. Wide-area progressives offer the largest jackpots. When jackpots get up in the millions of dollars, there well may be thousands of slots linked together contributing to the jackpot.
House progressives: Are owned by a particular casino and linked to other machines throughout the casino. The jackpots on these machines can reach thousands of dollars.
None of the progressive slot machines pay back as well as regular slot machines, as part of every play has to contribute to the jackpot. When you play one of these machines, part of your play is contributing to the ultimate winner. If you don't win the jackpot, then this is just money down the drain.
Among the progressive slots, stand alone progressives usually offer better odds than linked progressives, and house progressives usually pay back better than mega progressive machines.
Other varieties of slots include video slots, offering such games as video poker, video blackjack, video keno, and video craps. There are also a number of specialty machines, which may be loosely termed "slot machines". These include giant slot machines called "Berthas", pusher games which have shelves of coins pushed around by paddles, and even horse-racing games.
|
