How SLOT Machines REALLY Work!

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All information in this video is opinion only and should not be relied on as expert opinion.

[DavesGarage]

"The outcome is determined when you hit spin, and then you get to watch a little movie on the reels to show you what the outcome was"

[tomysshadow]

The example I've heard for how a slot machine works is, imagine there is a bag with a million white marbles in it, and one black marble. You get to pull any one marble out of the bag, and if you pull out the black marble, you win. _Intuitively, _ you would think that over time, if you keeping pulling out more marbles, the bag gets smaller until only the black marble is left, so you'll surely win if you just keep going. However, in actual reality, every time you pull out a marble, the bag is refilled and reshuffled around, so you are always pulling out of the big, million marble bag. The bag does not get smaller.

[carsonbujold]

As a slot technician, I wish I could just send this to all the people that play at the casino I work for lol. The main question I get asked... "Can you just give me the jackpots?" And it's always the same answer " if I can.. I would be playing these machines lol"

[DBR]

I used to work in slot Manufacturing. You basically hit the nail on the head for every point. One thing I may mention is at the random number generator it's not necessarily cycling through millions of combinations. Each factor in the game has its own decision point which is weighted. There is a number assigned to each event that can happen in the game. Then several random numbers are chosen. I'm going to make a video shortly that clearly explains how the math Works behind the scenes

[Tstumpman]

I worked as a programmer for the second largest slot machine company and directly worked on converting type III machines into type II machines. So I have a fair bit of direct knowledge of the inner workings of both of those types. Dave is basically correct in everyone he's said here but if anyone's got any further questions about that I could maybe answer.

[alanmusicman]

I remember building a TTL "slot machine" in the very late 1970s - that was the first time i realised how they must work. Mine was really simple, it had a freewheeling counter going from 0 to 15 at high speed and when you pressed the go button the state of the counter's bit 3 was latched into a win/lose bistable. Then it flashed segments on a seven segment display for a while - just for effect - and then lit up backlit "Win" or "lose" transparancies accordingly. So, on my machine I had a 50-50 chance of winning or losing - rather better than any fruit machine I have ever played! But, as you show here the basic principle was the same the random moment when you press the start button is when you really win or lose. It was, I think, the second or third electronics project I ever built - felt like such an adventure!

[tompipes]

Thank you Dave, very insightful video! My aunt lived in Las Vegas and she always had these theories of how the slots worked from certain times when the machines were full to finding certain slots that had better odds of winning. She always reminded us of her winnings record, but never mentioned how much was spent to achieve it.

[ihbarddx]

Until three years ago, I worked with a company that helped casinos optimize their floor arrangements of slot machines. Yes, the odds of winning are going to be the same for each pull in a session, and past runs of winning or losing do not affect future events. That said, the casinos track the payouts of each machine on the floor, and they may pull a machine that is paying out too much. If there is contention between theory and evidence, the house acts on evidence – even if it’s just bad luck.

[gordeng]

Good one Dave, I was a slot tech and later a slot manager in Cripple Creek, Colorado all thru the 90s and the early 2000s. everything you said is Factual!

[gslogar]

I think you did explain the changing of odds in machine. In Las Vegas the chip that defines the odds are controlled by the gaming commission they insure the machine odds are strictly control. Further, if a casino wants to changes the odds on a machine they must inform a gaming commission employee that they want to change the odds on a specific machine and that employee must witness and approve that change with video evidence. That is a pain for the casino owners so it will take very special conditions for the casino to change the odds. It rarely happens.

[BMWLdx]

I knew a guy who was/is working for a slot company in he said, they made the software if you hit like 2 Jackpot bars and missed, the next spin often showed the 3'ed jackpot bar on the missing reel, just to make you think you were soooo....close to hit it you keep on playing !

[philipstephens]

I once worked for a company that created a slot machine game for iPhones. Even though it didn’t pay out real money, the algorithm used for determining the outcome of each “pull” was exactly the same as described in this video: each spin was independent of every other, and on average the virtual slot machine paid out 95%. In other words, we programmed the virtual slot machine using the same rules used for real slot machines in Las Vegas. The starting state of the machine was randomized, BTW, so the outcome never depended on where the reels ended up on the previous pull.

[pdrg]

A factor you might enjoy is that (even as a hangover in all video machines but since mechanical reels) the symbol pattern of the physical reel maps onto a much larger virtual reel, in the same order etc but one physical lemon on a physical reel may actually be a series of 4 lemons with a single winning symbol either side. This gives the appearance of "near misses" even when they weren't even close. More importantly, it means you can control the odds precisely, and this this how it was and likely still is implemented as it can be proved "fair" at every stage.

[thinkerbell]

Nice explanation! It’s a bit more complicated when you factor Laws of Volatility. I was Director of Engineering on 1st electronic gaming machines (74) IGT. We purchased 1st electronic slot company (Fortune Coin (78). The RNG technology has evolved dramatically, we would say “there is no random” as most everything repeats…eventually. The psychological factor is huge factor which you touch on, it’s bigger. Good work….flashback for me..Bob

[aofgrant]

I'm not a gambler, but I found that fascinating. Thank you Dave!

[capicolaspicy]

On the subject of lowering the payout percentage when a game becomes very popular, all I can say is that in 10 years working at a Hard Rock Casino as a tech, they have never had me change the payout after a game was placed on the floor. The paperwork and permissions to change that do not allow the house to arbitrarily change percentages at will. Also while I know they are testing remote optioning of the machines from the back of the house in Las Vegas, to my knowledge it is not in any kind of an implementation in general yet. As a technician I don't like the idea personally. As a contractor it would take away a fair chunk of the work I currently get paid to do. This was a good video about how they really work!

[chrismike]

Thanks for this breakdown! I can verify that before the days of networked slots things were very different. A friend was a slot tech at a local casino and explained that the payout rate they had to adhere to was an average across the machines, so they might have five machines that paid 85% and one that paid 98%. Then, rather than changing the payout on a machine which involved a lot of work and the state gaming board, they would often rearrange the machines when the casino was slow. At that time you could remember the asset tag of a machine that seemed to pay well and find it elsewhere in the casino if it moved.

I'm sure the move to networked machines made a considerable difference to the bottom line, even if it kept the reporting numbers relatively unchanged.

[rickpontificates]

I'm a casino game coder and there are a couple other things of note. IGT invented the "virtual reel" (Telnaes patent) that makes the reels virtually bigger than they physically are. Also, the minimum legal payout is 75% and this can be combined between regular play (base game) and the bonus play. Aristocrat recently had their MK5 Buffalo game disapproved because the outcome was found to be tied to a player event (spin) and people figured out how to cheat it. The random number generator isn't really random and it "re-seeds" itself periodically, causing win and lose cycles (which a player can observe) but this cycle isn't absolute and wins can still occur at any time.

[biologicalagent]

I work with a guy named Jon who many years ago made a ton of money helping casinos coordinate jackpots between slot machines. I’ve got a lot of other nitty-gritty details, but it basically worked out to where that shared jackpot between network machines was paid out multiple times due to a transaction not being respected.

[JarrodMcKitterick]

"chasing ghosts in the casino" ! Fantastic way to describe it. Thank you for this and all your other topics you cover!