Each slot machine will pay out at a different percentage depending on its return-to-player percentage. Generally, slot machines pay out somewhere between 74% and 99%.
New slot machine players are going to find a lot of advice for beating the slots. Have a healthy skepticism when a slots expert tells you they know how to beat the slot machines. Among the games in a casino, video slots (in general) have a high house edge. Besides finding gaming machines with high jackpots and a low house edge, no skill or strategy is required to play slots. That means you can’t expect to increase your odds of winning in most situations.
Read through the advice below to optimize your chances of winning at slots. None of the advice assures winning sessions. Instead, it helps you stretch your bankroll, so you enjoy playing the slots longer. Also, the longer your bankroll lasts, the more chances you’ll have of hitting the big jackpot every slots player wants.
Use a Slots Card
Upon entering a live casino, sign up for a slots card. This provides comps and cashback, which automatically lowers the house edge by a bit. Never play a spin without using your slots card. In an online casino, accept the highest slots bonus and play according to the terms and conditions until you meet the wagering requirement. Once again, this lowers the house edge on online slots.
Make Max Bets
Look at the payout chart on a slot machine to determine how jackpots are paid. On many slot machines, the 5-coin bet pays out a higher percentage on the top fixed jackpot. For instance, a 1-coin bet might pay $200, a 2-coin bet might pay $400, a 3-coin bet might pay $600, and a 4-coin bet might pay $800. You might expect the 5-coin bet to pay $1000, but many slot machines pay out $1200 or $1500 in that case, trying to convince bettors to make the max bet.
If the jackpot increases a bigger percentage with a maximum coin wager, then it makes sense to make the max bet on a slot machine. If the bet size is too high for your tastes, then lower the coin denomination and make a max bet at that level. Of course, if there is no additional jump between the 4-coin and 5-coin bet, then you can wager a single coin and max out the coin denomination to the bet size you like.
Read the RTP Information
If an online casino or land-based casino publishes its return-to-player information, read through the RTP percentages to find the video slots with the best RTPs. Return-to-player or expected return is the percentage of a theoretical $100 you expect to see returned to you. It is a theoretical percentage based on probability, so an RTP of 95% does not assure you’ll be paid $95 for every $100 you put in the machine. You might lose $50 or you might win $150, or you might win a progressive jackpot and go home rich.
The point of the RTP percentage is to give a player an idea of their expected return. If two slot machines sit next to one another and one has an RTP of 93% and the other an RTP of 95% (and both have similar jackpots), then it pays to play the game with the higher percentage. Over time, this leads to you maintaining a higher percentage of your bankroll.
Money Management Techniques
Read about bankroll management techniques. “Money management” or “bankroll management” is a series of steps you take to lock on winnings when good luck happens and limit your losses when a bad streak occurs. These do not assure that you’ll win, but it optimizes your bankroll.
Players should know three core bankroll management methods: percentage betting, win goals, and loss limits. Learn to calculate your bankroll and divide this into percentages. Then bet between 1% and 5% of your bankroll on any given hand, depending on your capacity for risk. This limits the amount of your stake you lose on any given session, keeping you playing for longer throughout your vacation. It is a given that people go to the ATM machine or credit card when they lose their whole bankroll — which means you spend more than you intended. The point of percentage betting is to assure your bankroll last through your whole trip, so you never have to replenish.
What Is a Bankroll?
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“Bankroll” is not defined as your entire bank account. It isn’t defined as your discretionary spending budget or the money you have earmarked for entertainment expenses. Instead, it is a part of your discretionary spending cash and entertainment budget which is set aside specifically for gambling. In this case, a bankroll is less than your entertainment budget.
Once you have your bankroll figured, divide this into easy to understand percentage. If you have a bankroll of $1000, then divide this into percentages. These are simple calculations, but you should have an understanding of 1%, 2%, 5%, 10%, and 20% of your bankroll. In the earlier example, 1% would be $10, while 2% would be $20. 5% would be $50, 10% would be $100, and 20% would be $200.
Now that you have these, decide whether to bet 1% to 5% of your bankroll. Most experts suggest betting no more than 1% to 2% in order to maintain your bankroll throughout your casino trip or online slots session.
Setting a Win Goal
Next, set your win goal. This is the amount of winnings you set as your goal for any given slots session. If you have a win goal of 10%, then your win goal would be $100 for any given slot machine sessions. As soon as you hit that goal, you walk away from the slot machine — no matter what. A win goal is a hard-and-fast rule, because it locks in winnings. One of the biggest mistakes players make is losing back their winnings, because they think they’re on a hot streak.
Setting a Loss Limit
Even more dangerous is trying to win back cash you just loss. To protect against this tendency, set a loss limit. Once again, make this your hard-and-fast rule. Typical loss limits can be 5%, 10%, 15%, or 20% — though 20% means you could lose the entire bankroll in 5 slots session. 10% to 15% is a good middle ground. Once you’ve lost that amount, walk away from the slot machine under all circumstances. The slots game is not “due” to pay out, so step away from the machine and clear your mind.
Win goals and loss limits guard against gambler’s fallacy. Gambler’s fallacy is the idea that the law of averages assures or weight the odds in your favor. Slots use random number generators and every spin is entirely separate from the previous spin. Losing the last spin does not make it more likely you’ll win the next spin. The odds stay the same, no matter how many wins or losses in a row you’ve had.
Avoid Progressive Betting
For that reason, avoid progressive betting systems like the Martingale system, D’Alembert system, Fibonacci system, and so on. Betting experts have used computer simulations to track the progressive betting methods against flat betting (same bet each spin). Flat betting beats all of the progressive betting schemes over 1 billion spins.
Progressive betting seems like it’s working, because it leads to a lot of small winning sessions. The problem is that it also has a handful of huge losing sessions which wipe out all the wins — and then some. You can’t beat the house edge with the Martingale system, however it might look to the naked eye. The Fibonacci numbers are incredible, but they are not a magical way to beat the casino.
The reason progressive bets are bad is they increase the size of your bets (in some systems exponentially). If you start with $5 or $10 bets, a streak of bad luck has you betting hundreds of dollars on one spin. That’s busts your bankroll and leads to a “risk of ruin” — meaning you’ll lose your whole bankroll if you hit a bad luck streak. No matter what you read online, flat bets are better.
Take Breaks for Rest and Refreshments
Play when you are at your best physically and mentally. Don’t play when you’re tired or sleepy. Don’t play when you’re hungry or thirsty. Take frequent rest and restroom breaks. If you get bored, take a break and walk the casino. Play another game to change up the betting pattern.
When you are rested and engaged, you won’t have distractions that might lead to bad decisions. The idea is to have fun, so if anything is causing you to lose focus on the entertainment aspect of the game, walk away and save your bankroll.
Don’t Go on Tilt
Tilt is a concept in poker where a player makes decisions based on emotional responses instead of solid strategy. It can cost a player a lot of money if they make bets based on anything but rational decisions. While going on tilt is not a concept in slot machine gambling, every game of chance has a personal component.
In short, don’t play when you’re agitated. Take stock of your inner thoughts. If your ego or anger is causing you to make irrational decisions, take a deep breath and calm down. If that doesn’t work, walk away and clear your head. It stinks to lose a series of bets, but what stinks more is to lose a series of bigger bets when you’re trying to make up for lost bankroll.
If you are a keen slots player then you will know that one of the most useful pieces of information about a slot that you can discover is the payout percentage for the game.
Unfortunately, the term is ripe for misunderstanding and novice slot players often misunderstand what the term actually means, which can lead to them having totally unrealistic expectations of how much they can expect to win on a slot from any given session.
This can then lead to them feeling frustrated, cheated even and less inclined to play the slot again, which is a shame as it is their misunderstanding that is the issue, not the slot or casino in question.
The problem often stems from misunderstanding what the term 'payout percentage' actually means and how it is applied on the slot.
So in this article, we'll attempt to explain clearly what this means.
What is a payout percentage?
A payout percentage is simply the percentage of the total amount of money that the slot will take in over a typical amount of time, that it will pay out back to players in the form of winnings.
That percentage can range from as little as 75 percent up to around 98 percent.
In essence, that is what payout percentage is. There is nothing more to it, but unfortunately, many people choose to think that this means that out of all the money they spend, they will expect to receive back between 75 and 98 percent back in winnings.
That is indubitably not the case and this misunderstanding occurs because people do not understand how the payout percentage is worked out, nor how the winnings used to calculate that amount, are paid out to players.
Suffice to say that a payout percentage is absolutely NOT a statement of how much of your wagering money you can expect to receive back in payouts on average.
Here's why:
Payout percentage - The number of spins
The first thing to note is that when an organisation such as eCOGRA tests the veracity of the claim that a slot has a payout percentage of X per cent, then they run a series of tests to authenticate that claim.
This involves spinning the reels of the slot millions of times in order to generate what the actual payout percentage is of the slot.
It is only when the reels of the slot are spun a huge amount of times that the payout percentage shows any meaning. As such, it is a statistic which is only meaningful for the casino, rather than the player who is unlikely to have the funds or time to spin a slot the many hundreds of thousands of times needed in order to generate payouts of the percentage levels of the slot.
On fewer spins, numbering 10,000, 1,000 or less, there can be a huge difference to the stated payout percentage. A slot may seem to run 'hot' and payout considerably more than the payout percentage (even run at a loss over that period of spins), whereas at other times it may seem to run 'cold' and pay out considerably less than the stated payout percentage.
The key thing to note here is that for a player, the number of spins they play is usually so small, that payout percentage is almost irrelevant. The more spins you play the more relevant the payout percentage becomes, but only if you spin the reels thousands of times over a sustained period.
Even then the payout percentage is still only an average mark. Sometimes the slot will pay out more over one million spins than the stated percentage, other times less, but usually these measures will average out to give a mean percentage level.
Therefore, it is best to view the payout percentage as simply a measure of how much the machine pays out over millions of spins and not really relevant to your chances of success.
Payout percentage - Structure of payouts
The other key aspect to the payout percentage to understand is how the payouts of a machine are structured and that this is equally important to understanding why you are not likely to earn back 75 to 98 percent of what you spend.
The best way to do this is via a hypothetical example. So let's say I developed a slots machine that has a payout percentage of 95% and let's say that in a typical month, this machine generates 1,000,000 in revenue from players playing 1,000,000 spins in that period.
If my hypothetical machine then followed the payout percentages exactly, then 5 percent of that 1,000,000 (50,000) is the casino's operating profit from the machine. That leaves 950,000 to be shared between all the players.
However, slot machines are designed to offer a range of awards, paying out smaller rewards more often and the big jackpot prizes less frequently. Let's say that my machine has paid out one large jackpot prize of 500,000 in the last month, plus three other smaller jackpot prizes of 100,000 apiece.
That means just four lucky players have accounted for 800,000 of the payout percentage. Out of 1,000,000 spins, that means just 0.0004 percent of players have accounted for 84.2 percent of the total payout percentage.
That means the remaining 99.9996 percent of players have just 150,000 in winnings to share amongst them from 9,999,996 spins. You don't need to be a mathematics genius to realise that therefore the vast majority of players of this hypothetical slot would receive a payout that is nowhere near the stated payout percentage.
Percent Win Slot Machines Machine
However, four lucky players have receive a payout well in excess of the payout percentage! Sounds a bit like a lottery, right?
The structure of how your slot pays out is key to understanding that payout percentage is not a figure of how much you will win on average, but simply how much the machine pays out on average over a massive number of spins. Furthermore, how often a machine pays out top prizes, will also mean that the vast majority of players will not experience a payout percentage anywhere near what is stated.
That isn't an error, or misleading, simply a fact that over small sample sizes, the averages stated in the payout percentage are irrelevant.
So while payout percentages may not be useful in letting a player understand how much of their stakes they'll win back, where they are useful to punters is in giving them a comparative measure to judge which machines are most likely to offer them a return.
In theory, you are more likely to win playing a slot with a 95 percent payout percentage than you are a slot with a 75 percent payout percentage.
However, once again, because the number of spins you play will be so small, the chances of you noticing a difference between the slots is negligible. It is entirely plausible that you will play the 75 percent pay out slot and win more than the 95 percent payout percentage slot.
So the key lesson to learn about payout percentages is not to think they are stating how much you will win back on average in your session, but that they are a simple, general tool to assess how profitable the machine is for the casino.
Playing games of chance, which includes lotto, keno, scratch cards, slots, and many other games, can bring massive wins for the lucky. Take these games for what they are. And remember, there's no harm in trying your luck!
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