Any smart gambler knows that, to be successful at gambling you need to know your odds. Knowing your odds and the probability of winning allows you to gauge your situation properly, make wise choices and investments. This applies to every game of chance, including slot machines – especially slot machines. Slot machines are very simple, easy to understand and easy to use. Slot machines feature lots of colorful lights, flashy colors, and use a lot of vivid imagery to entice players and make them feel like they can win big. This is the prime opportunity for a captivated player to dive head-first hoping to win, not knowing what their odds are and how likely they are to win. Simply being an informed gambler allows you to make wise choices about these scenarios, and I'm here to help you become an informed gambler.
The first thing you need to know is that slots are random. We all know what “random” means, but there are misconceptions about what the term can entail. The reels of slot machines are controlled by microprocessors which determine, at random, which combination will come up. This does not mean that the winning combination has the same chance as any other combination of appearing, because these variables can be weighted to the casino's best interests. It is, despite this, still random, just that the window of opportunity is smaller or larger, and thus more or less likely to be randomly generated. This might be better understood in its real context: slot machines at a casino offer hundreds of thousands of possible combinations (Not an exaggeration), while only 2-3 dozen combinations offer payouts. The odds are lower or higher on some machines, depending on the possible combinations.
Another misconception is that odds are unyielding – that, if a slot machine offers 1-in-200 odds, there will be a winning spin every 200 spins, no matter what. This is a fallacy though, as odds don't work that way. The mathematics behind it would be as follows: “The possibility of winning over X amount of spins would be 1-(.995^x)” This simply means that you will never have a 100% chance of winning, even after 200 spins. In fact, 200 spins will offer roughly a 63% chance of winning. This is the nature of odds, and is something people often misunderstand. 1-in-200 means that each spin has a 0.5% chance of winning, regardless of the result of previous spins on the slot machine.
It is this sort of misconception that also leads people to believe slot machines are rigged. When going for a jackpot and dealing with extraordinarily low odds, people begin to feel discouraged and think that slot machines never pay out. But slot machines are not rigged, they're designed properly and functionally to benefit the casino, with odds that aim to take more money in than is paid out. Because of this, the odds of hitting the jackpot are (and should be) extremely low. Seeing the exact numbers helps realize this sometimes: in a three-reel slot machine, there are usually 64 stops on each reel (sometimes as many as 256 on each reel), and the odds of getting the jackpot would be 64^3, or over 1 in 262,000. Using the earlier formula, spinning the wheel 262,000 times would yield about a 65% chance of winning the jackpot. Though you'd hit many medium-sized payouts along the way, hitting the jackpot is mostly a matter of lucky timing.
A way for you to get around these astronomical odds is to play multi-line slot machines. You'll have more opportunities of winning, and even though those payouts won't be huge, they'll come frequently and at a much higher chance.