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When it comes to slot machines and their payout percentages, some players are concerned that they are not getting what the signs say.

Casinos will post signs above a single slot machine or over a bank of slot machines advertising what the payout percentage is. Bear in mind that the payout percentage signs above a bank of slot machines do not necessarily mean all of them have that payout percentage—only one needs to in order for that sign to go up.

With the economy being down visitors to brick and mortar casinos is down. Yet they still need to pay their employees, pay their utilities and pay rent. Those who play slot machines wonder how they make it work with visitors, read: revenue, down.

In short, they are worrying that the slot machines are not in fact paying out like the payout percentage signs say, that the casinos have perhaps changed the slot machines payout percentages to spin in a little extra money.

I am happy to say that this is not the case. The payout percentage, also known as a machine’s payback, is not affected by the casino’s expenses. In fact they do not have anything to do with each other.

A slot machine’s payout percentage is the calculation of how much that slot machine is paying out from the total amount of wagers made on it.

Basically the percentage of payout only has to do with that slot machine because it only takes into consideration how much was wagered on it and how much of those wagers were paid back to players. Because the payout percentage is solely based on the wagers of players it has nothing to do with the casino’s expenses.

So players of slot machines can rest assured that the payout percentages on their favorite slot machines have not been altered because of the casino’s expenses.

And besides it would take too much time and too much paperwork, not to mention a good-sized chunk of money, to change the payout percentage of a slot machine. They cannot be changed on a whim and without that state’s gaming commission knowing about it.

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I have heard that not many online slots players give payout percentage much thought. However, those who play slot machines in the brick and mortar casinos are more concerned with the payout percentages of the machines.

This could be because slot machines, or banks of slot machines, will have their payout percentages openly advertised. Players in brick and mortar casinos are very much aware of which bank of machines has a better likelihood of paying out than others.

Whereas, the payout percentages of online slots games are not placed out in the open in an online casino. This is not because online slots games have bad payout percentages—they are actually a little better—but because there is no real place to advertise them.

But it is possible to find out what the payout percentage is for an online slots game. These can be found on sites that focus solely on reviewing online casinos and online casino games.

Payout percentage should be important to online slots players. As a rule, slots—in a casino or online casino—are losing casino games. They are designed to take your money over time. It is true that there are players who win jackpots and larger sums of money, but it is not common place.

The point of the thrill of slots is to play in hopes that you will be the winner of the jackpot. And while this is fine, it is important to keep in mind that slots are designed to take money. And that is why payout percentage is important.

The higher an online casino’s payout percentage and the higher an online slots game’s payout percentage is, the better the likelihood that you could have more frequent payouts or higher payouts.

This is why an online casino’s payout percentage or an online slots game’s payout percentage is so important: the game is going to take your money most likely—the best that you can do is to find a way to slow that taking down so that you can enjoy the game for longer and hopefully hit that jackpot.

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I have this one casino in Vegas that I like to visit on trips out that way. And over time I have noticed that there were an increasing number of penny slot machines. And then this last time there were fewer tables for card games and more and more penny slots. It is a penny slot take over!

I am not saying that this is a bad thing. The economy is tough right now. A good number of casino patrons do not have the money for a larger bankroll like they used to have. For slots players this means lower how many coins we wager per line, and the denomination of those coins.

It is not uncommon now for the slots player who used to play quarter slots to now be playing nickel or penny slots. This happens because players see playing penny slots as being a way of making their bankrolls last longer.

The problem with penny slots though is that slots players can have a tendency to wager more in the long run than they normally would. Penny slots give players a false sense of ease that they are not wagering much.

But because of that false sense of ease, slots players will play longer, wagering more.

And that is why casinos like penny slots. They are popular. For one thing those who truly are playing for fun will play the penny slots. But the big reason is that they are the money makers of the casinos.

For one thing, slot machines do not require benefits and sick days, and their healthcare is in the form of a mechanic. Now worries about vacation or overtime with these machines.

Players will often wager more than one coin per line, driving up the cost of each spin. Penny slots also carry low payouts—another benefit to the casinos. On top of that, the false sense of security will keep slots players playing longer and wagering more than they realized.

Because penny slots are now the money makers of the casinos, slots players will be seeing more and more of them. Just keep in mind how long you have been playing to avoid losing more of your bankroll than you intended.

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The payout percentage should play a large part in how you play slots, be it online slots or slot machines in a brick and mortar casino.

Payout percentage is the amount to money that is paid back to players in winnings. It is calculated by adding up the total winnings that a slots game pays out and dividing it into the total amount that was wagered on that game. The resulting number is then multiplied by on hundred to get the percentage.

Let’s say that a slots game paid out $9,000, but $10,000 was wagered in total. The math would look like this:

9,000 / 10,000 = 0.9 x 100 = 90%

That slots game’s payout percentage is 90%, meaning that 90% of what it takes in is paid out to players while the casino keeps the remaining 10%. This does not mean that one player will win 90%, or that an individual player will get 90% back. He might get 30% back while another player gets 60%. The payout percentage takes about the game overall.

For those who play online slots, the payout percentage tends to be higher than those found in brick and mortar casinos. This is because online casinos have less overhead to worry about paying, so they can offer higher player returns.

When looking for an online casino to play slots at, look at the payout percentage of the games themselves, but also look at the payout percentages of the online casino itself. The online casino’s payout percentage is an overall look at how it pays out. Online slots players will want to look for the online casino and slots games with the higher payout percentages.

For those of you who play in the brick and mortar casinos, slot machines are often grouped together with the payout percentage posted on a sign above the grouping. This is where the casino is getting tricky. That sign does not mean that all of those machines carry that payout percentage; only one slot machine has to have the payout percentage. The others most likely have a lower percentage.

Be mindful of this when playing in the casinos. There is no way to tell which machine it is that has the best payout percentage. The best that you can do is to leave a slot machine that seems cold.

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For some strange secret reason casinos guard the par sheets for their slot machines like they are the most valuable treasure ever to be had. But as a special treat to loyal and long standing players, sometimes a casino host will reveal—reveal, not show—the par sheet of a loyal player’s favorite machine.

But what do these sheets really say and are they really worth guarding that closely?

A par sheet is a statistical analysis of a slot machine and its programming. It is not an analysis of its performance.

A slot machine is programmed when it is manufactured. This is when the par sheets are made. Since the slot machine has not yet been played in a casino, but it has a par sheet, so this proves that a par sheet is not an analysis of performance.

Really what a par sheet holds is information about how the slot machine is supposed to perform. Casino staff can see if a machine is performing ‘on par’ by checking its actual performance against what the par sheet says.

Par sheets give details such as how many times a symbol appears on a reel and the number of hits each combination should have. That last one, it is not used to predict when a combination will hit though. It allows the casino staff to monitor a slot machine. Say a combination is supposed to have 92 hits, but the recorded hits show that the machine is hitting that combination for a lot fewer hits, it means that something in the programming is off and the machine needs to be looked at, possibly repaired.

Another statistic given on a par sheet is the calculation of that slot machine’s payout percentage. This will be broken down by each number of coins wagered, with the payout percentage for each coin wagered given. This gives the slot machine a minimum payout percentage and a maximum payout percentage.

If you are ever given the opportunity to see a par sheet, especially one for your favorite slots, take a look. It will not give you any secrets on how to beat the machine or win more money from it—that sort of information is not on a par sheet.

But it is interesting to see the ‘behind-the-scenes’ view of you machine; you can see how many times a symbol appears on a reel. And while such information won’t help your slots strategy (it does not tell you the order of the symbols on a reel) it does make for interesting knowledge. Think of it as gaining trivia knowledge about your favorite slots machine.

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While winning is of course always appealing to a slots player, what else makes the game entertaining?

For one thing the graphics. If a slots player is expected to sit in front of their computer and playing the same game for any length of time, the graphics on the game need to be engaging. On that note, while classic, the traditional 9, 10, J, Q, K and A that have graced slots games for decades are not engaging.

With the extensive number of themes that are on the hundreds of online slots games, seeing those classic symbols, no matter how dressed up they are, just are not fun to look at. And when the rest of the symbols are animated, seeing some letters and numbers sitting still just is not a form of entertainment.

And that is what a slots game is essentially. It is first and foremost a game of chance. But slots are a game of chance with all the razzle, dazzle of a show. A slots game will be more successful if it can catch and keep the attention of slots players.

Slots players find that if all the symbols tie into the theme it is a more entertaining game. It is even more entertaining if they are all animated.

This also applies to the bonus games. It is disappointing to watch the reels spin and spin and spin, then to trigger a bonus game that is as simple as pick-a-prize. Bonus games are seen as the great prize to be awarded. Bonus games are supposed to be entertaining on top of rewarding.

The entertainment of a slots game is not the icing on a cake. It is a key part of attracting and keeping a slots player. And those classic 9, 10, J, Q, K and A symbols do not help a slots game’s appeal at all.

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Some slots players swear that Random Number Generators (RNGs) are programmed to reject a winning combination.

To break it down, players feel that casinos have programmed the computers in slot machines to reject winning combinations. The RNG might be random and be choosing its outcomes in an unbiased way, but these players swear that the computers are programmed to recognize when the RNG has randomly chosen a winning combination and to reject it. They also swear that this happens in moments while the reels are still spinning.

And these slots players would be wrong.

The fact is that Nevada outlawed such programming when computerized slots first started becoming mainstream. And other states have followed suit.

What this means is that the computers inside slot machines, or in slots games for that matter, cannot reject an outcome generated by the RNG. Such actions would undermine the fairness and randomness testing that these machines and games undergo before being released to the public.

So where do these ideas of rigged machines come from?

They seem to come from slots players who tend to lose more often than win. And this goes back to the idea that these slot machines and slots games are somehow beatable. It seems that it is in our nature to try to overcome an obstacle when we really want something.

In the case of slots games, we really want to win. So we start looking to find ways to win or to name the things that are standing in our way. A good many slots players will see that there is not a thing they can do to affect the outcome of a slots machine. The next line of thinking is that there must be something in the game itself that is preventing me from winning.

And that is the truth. But it is not a rigged computer, but the nature of the game of slots—slots are games of chance. It is chance that causes us to lose. Unfortunately there is not a way to overcome chance. All we can do is to keep playing slots and hope we win. In the mean time we can enjoy ourselves while we play and focus on factors we can control.

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So slots players spend many hours trying to an effective strategy to increase their chances of winning. The truth is that this is not possible. By nature, slots games are games of chance in which the odds are stacked against us. It is true. In slots games, even though we can win a chunk of change through free spins and bonus games, over time you will spin your bankroll away.

Yes, it is possible to win a jackpot or a large payout. And there is no other feeling quite like winning such. But the reality is that this does not happen every day.

Because the outcome of a spin is determined by the Random Number Generator (RNG) and a slots player cannot influence the RNG, players need to look at other ways to influence their slots play.

Since there is not any way to really impact a slots player’s play offensively, slots play needs to be looked at from a more defensive point of view. If slots are a game of chance and the casino is taking more of my money than it is giving me in the long run, what can I do?

First you can choose what slots game or slot machine you play on. There are hundreds of different slots games. The casino does not tell you which one you have to play—you get to choose. So check out what the payout percentages are on the slots games that you are considering playing. The one with the highest payout percentage is the one you want to play.

You can also choose your speed of play—how many spins you make per hour. If you use the Stop Spin feature or are very eager to get those reels spinning again, you are playing more spins per hour, wagering more money per hour, and therefore losing more money per hour. So control your rate of play. Limit your number of spins per hour and do not touch that Stop Spin button!

Know when to walk away from a slots game. While there is no set way to determine this, you can judge for yourself if a slots game is cold or not. If you just are not winning at a game, walk away from it rather than keep feeding it money. And once you have won a large payout—one that puts you over your starting total—call it a win and quit for the night rather than risk losing it.

While you cannot control or influence the outcome of a spin of the reels, you can control how you play. And that has a big effect on your overall slots play.

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For those of us who have played and keep playing slot machines in land-based casinos—or boat casinos—we have all encountered slot machines we love and slot machines we wished had never been made. I am referring to the hot and cold machines.

When a slots player is talking about a cold slot machine he is talking about a machine that just does not pay out no matter how much money you put in. You might get a few small payouts, but for the most part you are only losing money.

Then there are the slot machines we all love—the hot ones. A hot slot machine is one that pays out pretty often and in fairly good amounts. These are the slot machines that you can make money on. You will still lose some money but you are likely to walk away with some extra money in your pocket.

When we slots players find a hot slot machine we are loathe to give it up. We will play it for long periods of time, only leaving when we have to. And when we return to the casino we head straight for that same slot machine, hoping that no one else has planted themselves in front of it. And if someone is already there, we hope that they do not play through all the ‘hotness’ of the machine.

But then the day comes that we walk in and head straight for our favorite slot machine only to discover it is gone. We will not believe our eyes. We will think it is a mistake. And we will look around to make sure we are in the right area.

But we are in the right area. The machine is gone.

Naturally our first thought is that the casino has figured out how much the slot machine is paying out. We will think that they have gotten rid of it. I mean, these slot machines have computers and those computers report to the casino. So the casino knows that machine is paying out and has taken it away because they really hate having to pay out money.

As much as this makes sense in your head, this is not the case. The casino has not removed the slot machine because it pays out too much. They have not taken it ‘out back’ to tinker with it to make it pay out less. What they have done is moved the machine to a different location.

Retail stores do it all the time. In the attempt to keep the casino looking fresh and to encourage movement around the casino, machines can and will be moved around.

So the next time that hot slot machine has disappeared on you, take a walk around the floor and see if it has been moved to another location.

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