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It seems that slots players will never tire of trying to find ways to crack the Random Number Generator (RNG) of online slots games and slots machines. I think they feel that if they can crack the RNG that they will then be able to beat the slots game, and collect that jackpot.

But the truth is that the RNG is not something that can be cracked.

Today’s ‘concern’ pertains to the RNG and previous spins.

Some players seem to think that the RNG takes into account the previous spin when pulling a result for the current spin. The truth is that the RNG does indeed take anywhere from the last spin to any number of spins into account when pulling a result for the current spin on an online slots game or slot machine.

Now, do not jump the gun on this. This is not by any means the secret, long sought after key to cracking RNGs and slots games open. There is a logical explanation to this:

The RNG has to take previous spins into consideration when pulling a result for a current spin simply because it would not due to have the exact same results as the last spin.

Actually that would be a pretty cool random jackpot idea—award a jackpot for landing exactly the same symbols in the same places as the previous spin.

The point is that, yes, the RNG does take precious spins into consideration. And if you were to go back in time and hit Spin on an online slots game or slot machine, you would get the same results on the next spin as you did the first time.

But there are two sides to this. While the RNG considering previous spins keeps the same results from being landed, this also means that it keeps the online slots game or slot machine from paying out the same jackpot too frequently.

This is a part of balancing the payout percentage of an online slots game or slot machine: the previous spin consideration of RNGs keeps the spins varied and also keeps the payouts from going crazy, paying out too much or not enough.

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I was doing some more thinking about one of the online slots games that I wrote about yesterday, Cashapillar. And while it is visually speaking a lovely online slots game with all the graphics and style that players come to expect from a Microgaming online slots game, there was still something about the game that bothered me.

Finally I realized what was bothering me so much. The paylines. All of them. There, to me at least, are too many paylines.

Think about it. Cashapillar has one hundred paylines. If a player is wagering only $0.01 per payline that still makes the cost of one spin $1. For some online slots players $1 is a lot for a single spin.

For other online slots players, the nickel and quarter players, the cost is even more. For the nickel online slots player the cost of a single spin is $5; and for a quarter player the cost is $25 per spin.

Compare that to what they would be paying per spin if they were playing a standard twenty five reel online slots game: $1.25 for the nickel player and $6.25 for the quarter player.

When comparing the two that is quite an increase.

What bothers me is that with those one hundred paylines, players can expect to run through their bankroll a lot faster, and potentially wind up wagering money that originally had not intended to just so that they can keep on playing.

And players do stand to lose more money faster when playing a one hundred payline online slots game than they would if they were playing the standard twenty five payline game.

Slots games are designed to take your money over time. Some take faster than others, but that is usually a result of the game’s payout percentage and odds. An online slots game with one hundred paylines is definitely going to take your money faster purely because of the paylines alone.

So while Cashapillar is a fun online slots game to play and visually amusing, it will be an online slots game that I play for fun since I do not want to spin my money away too quickly.

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Online slots and slot machines are a bit tricky when it comes to your slots betting to payout chances. Naturally, a slots player would have to be tricky in return in their slots strategy to help compensate for it.

Let’s say that you are a nickel player, meaning that you wager a nickel per payline. But you are a player who likes to play with multiple coins per payline. So in effect you are more of a quarter player because you are wagering closer to a quarter on a payline.

So you would think that the online slots game or slot machine that you are playing would recognize the increased wagering, and, recognizing the increased amount of wagering, payout accordingly like a quarter slots game would.

You would be wrong in thinking that. Remember that the house wants to hang on to every little bit of an edge that they can. It does not matter that online slots and slot machines are built to have an edge to take more money than they payout.

Even though the online slots game or slot machine is able to accept larger wagers because of multiple coins, it does not mean that it will payout on a larger scale.

So what should you do in terms of your slots strategy?

For starters look at your own slots betting. How are you betting? You say you are a nickel player, but you are wagering five nickels per payline, which is actually wagering a quarter per payline instead.

Look at your total bet per payline. If the number of coins you are betting has you betting a quarter per payline then you are not a nickel player. You are a quarter player.

And you want that quarter payout scale you will not find it betting multiple coins on a nickel slots game. But you will find that payout scale on a quarter machine while only wagering one quarter per payline.

The point is that you have to adjust your thinking about your own slots betting in order to proper work out your slots strategy. This means, in terms of slots strategy, looking at your slots betting and what you are betting in total per line rather than what coin you are betting.

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I often come across some commonly asked questions in relation to slots and slots strategy. Probably two of the most common inquiries is whether there is a way to tell when an online slots game is going to give up its jackpot or which online slots game pays better than the rest.

In regards to the first question, imagine that you could log in to your player account at your favorite online casino. You then click over to the list of online slots games, and you start checking on this one and that one. Finally you find one, make a few wagers and you have enough to pay all your bills this month and some left over. Naturally the leftover bit goes back into the slots game.

Sound too good to be true? Well it is.

Unfortunately there is no indicator that lets players know when an online slots jackpot will drop. If there were people would be playing all the time, there would be no incentive to work, and online casinos would run out of money and then close. And then you would have to work.

The thing to remember is that while an indicator would be nice, these are games of chance, not ATMs. They are meant to be played. And maybe you will win and maybe you will not. That is the point of a game of chance. And slots are the king of games of chance.

As for the second question about knowing if one online slots game pays more than the rest, there is a bit of an answer for that one.

Online slots games have payout percentages. A game’s payout percentage tells the player how much of the total wagers made by all players is paid back to players in winnings and how much goes to the online casino.

For example, if an online slots game has a payout percentage of say 90%, it means that 90% of the total wagers is paid out in winnings and 10% is kept by the casino.

But here is the thing with payout percentages. They do NOT mean that 90% of your own wagers is paid back to you. It just means that 90% is paid out in total.

The percentage that is paid back to players could come in the form of lots of little payouts or several large payouts.

Generally the higher the payout percentage the more that online slots game pays back. As part of a slots strategy, players can do a bit of research and find an online slots game with a high payout percentage and play that game.

But keep in mind—and in your slots strategy—that it does not necessarily mean that you will be the recipient of the entire percentage. Above all online slots games are games of chance—all you can do is make your wager, set the reels to spinning and hope for the best.

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The more and more online slots games I see being released, the more I see with an increased number of paylines.

When I first started writing about slots many of the new online slots only had twenty paylines.

Then within the last year or so I have seen the number increase to twenty five. And really that is not too big of an increase. If you are wagering $0.01 per payline, it makes a spin cost $0.25 instead of $0.20. So you get four spins per dollar instead of five.

But with the release of some of the new online slots games in July I noticed that several had forty paylines and there have been a couple with one hundred paylines so far this year. Again, at $0.01 per payline, that makes a spin cost $0.40 and $1 respectively.

This is where you online slots strategy comes in to play.

The point of strategy in the case of online slots is to keep you from losing money too quickly. Key points in online strategy are to do a little research and find the online slots game with the highest payout percentage. Also, stop spinning the reels as fast as you—this is not a race! Unless you are racing to lose your money.

So, online slots strategy for paylines. Obviously the more paylines a game has the more it costs per spin. Oh sure, you could choose not to play all of the paylines but that defeats the purpose of having all those paylines.

The best that you can do in terms of slots strategy and paylines is stick to the online slots games with twenty or twenty five paylines.

Such games still offer the features players like to see in online slots games (bonus games, free spins, wilds and scatters), but the number of paylines will not eat into your bankroll too quickly. And that is the point of online slots strategy—to save your bankroll so that you can keep on enjoying the game and maybe hit it big.

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Not everything is how it appears when it comes to slot machines. Initially they might seem like they are easy to read. All you really need to know is what the payouts are right?

Appearances can be on the deceiving side actually. And that is one of the downfalls in a player’s slots strategy. How can slot machines be one of those cases of ‘more than meets the eye?’

For one thing you do not want to base your decision to play a slot machine purely on its payout table. Work this into your slots strategy.

Let’s take a look at two example slot machines. And keep that above adage for your slots strategy in mind. Both machines have the same payout percentage of 95%.

For our first slot machine we are going to call it Little Winner. It is a $1 slot machine with payouts of $1, $10, $100 and $1,000.

The other slot machine we are going to call Big Winner. This is a $2 slot machine with these four payouts: $2, $20, $200 and $2,000.

The player with the almost non-existent slots strategy would think “Hey, I can wager $2 and win $2,000, which is a $1,000 more than if I were to play the $1 slot machine.”

In the above slots strategy the player makes his playing choice based on the payout table, believing that he should go with the slot machine that will give him the higher payout.

But here is what he does not know about slot machines: The probabilities on these two machines have been set differently. The probabilities of a slot machine are the chances of each winning combination being landed. The probabilities can be set differently and the payout percentage will not be affected.

Little Winner’s probabilities are set with 0.05% for $1,000, 0.24% for $100, 1.22% for $10 and 9.75% for $1 with losses at 88.74%. Big Winner looks like this: 0.02% for $2,000, 0.12% for $200, 0.61% for $20 and 4.62% for $2 with losses at 94.62%.

In summary, adding up the math, Little Winner has a hit rate of 11.26% while Big Winner has a hit rate of 5.38%. When comparing the corresponding payouts you will notice that the payouts on Big Winner are about twice as hard to land.

While a slots player is not able to know what the probability is on a slot machine, the whole point is to not immediately assume that the machine that has the highest payout is the machine to play. As we can see in the example, the player that assumed that would have lost more than the player who spins the reels on Little Winner.

Assuming is one of the things you do not want to base your slots strategy on.

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Over that last year or so those who play slot machines have been saying that there are fewer and fewer jackpots being paid out to players. In turn some players believe that casinos have changed the payout percentage of their slot machines.

It is not true.

Here is the deal. When a slot machine is put together in the factory the chip that is programmed with that machine’s payout percentage is installed. This chip is in place to control the payouts of that slot machine. Once it is installed the payout percentage is a done deal.

The only way a casino could change the payout percentage of one of their slot machines is to first submit a sheaf of paperwork to the Casino Control Commission requesting to change the payout percentage of a slot machine. This sheaf of paperwork would have to be submitted for each machine the casino wished to change.

If the request is approved the casino then has to purchase a new payout percentage chip and then pay for the old chip to be removed and the new chip to be installed in the slot machine. None of which is cheap.

What does all of this mean to you, slot machine player? It means that the casino does not just flip a switch to change the payout of a slot machine. It is a very detailed and time consuming process.

So why do there seem to be fewer jackpots?

It does not have anything to do with the casinos actually. But it does have to do with the economy.

People are making fewer trips to casinos. Some because of a lack of funds and others because they are choosing to play online casino games. With fewer people in the casinos and fewer people playing on slot machines, there are now fewer jackpots being paid out.

It simply comes down to that. Less people playing slot machines means less opportunities for a jackpot on a slot machine to be triggered, which means less actual jackpots being won from slot machines.

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Is there such a thing as too many paylines?

This is a question that has been spinning around in my mind since the recent releases of some of the new online slots games. Some of Microgaming’s new online slots games feature forty paylines. There was another new online slots game that had one hundred paylines.

The thing that I wonder about when it comes to the number of paylines is when is it too many?

Initially you might think that the more paylines you have the better because it means that you have more opportunities to land a combination and receive a payout. But to be a smart slots player you need to stop and ask yourself this before you start spinning the reels of a payline heavy online slots game:

Is the payout worth it?

If you were to land a large payout, then yes, the cost of the spin is definitely worth it. But unfortunately large payouts do not happen as often as we would like.

Let’s say that you are playing an online slots game with twenty five paylines and you a playing at $0.01 per payline. That is $0.25 per spin. If you land a combination that pays you $0.10 or $0.12, which is about average, you are still losing money.

Now think of that example and imagine you are playing an online slots game with one hundred paylines. You would be paying $1 per spin. And if you are only winning between $.10 and $0.25, you are still losing money despite the extra paylines that are supposed to help increase your chances of winning.

And while having more paylines does have the potential to increase you winnings in an online slots game, if you are only winning amounts that are less than the cost of a spin, you are still losing. And you had better be hoping for some free spins or a bonus game.

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So earlier I discussed what the payout percentage of an online slots game actually means. In short, it is just the amount of the total wagers made by all of players of that particular online slots game that is paid back to the players.

Note that I said ‘players’ and not ‘player.’ Just because you put money in does not mean that you will get money out. An online slots game’s payout percentage applies to all the players who are playing; it is not how much you are going to receive back.

So what does this mean for you and how does payout percentage factor into slots strategy?

Wait! There is no slots strategy!

True, there is no actual strategy for an online slots game. Strategy is something used to affect the outcome of the game, and there is nothing that can do that for an online slots game. However, you can take an online slots game’s payout percentage and be a smarter player.

While payout percentage does not in any way dictate the amount of money you could win or lose to a slots game, it can help reduce your chances somewhat of losing money.

Here is the situation: you have the choice of playing one of two online slots games; one has a payout percentage of 92% and the other has a payout percentage of 96%. Which one do you play?

You would play the one with the 96% payout percentage. It does not mean that you are going to receive 96% of that game’s payouts. However, it does return 4% more of the total amount of wagers made on it.

Game One, for example, would only return $92,000 of $100,000 while Game Two would return $96,000 of $100,000. That means that Game Two is paying back $4,000 more than Game One. And that $4,000 has to be received by someone. It might go to one player in a jackpot or it might be paid out in little payouts here and there.

The point is that it is paying back more than the other game. So the smart online slots player would play the online slots game that is paying back the most on the grounds that he might be paid more money. The key word there is ‘might.’

A higher payout percentage does not guarantee that an online slots player will receive more, only that there is more money being paid back. And it just makes more sense to play the game that is paying back more.

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I have discussed payout percentages and slots games in a handful of times in my blog. Really how payout percentages and slots games work seems easy enough to understand. However, it would seem that to some online slots game players the concept is still not clear.

I say ‘concept’ because payout percentage is not an exact thing. Let’s say that an online slots game has a payout percentage of 97%. Here is what it means to an online slots player:

First, it means that this online slots game has been set to payout 97% of the total wagers that it takes in. So, to make the math easily understood, if a particular online slots game takes in $100,000 in total wagers from all of the players who spin the reels, it means that $97,000 of those wagers will be paid back.

That is all the payout percentage means.

It does not mean that you will be the recipient of that $97,000. The $100,000 taken in comes from all of the wagers made by all of the players. So that $97,000 in total is randomly paid out to players. It does not mean that one online slots player is going to receive a $97,000 payout. There is no way to determine how the $97,000 is going to be paid out, only that it will so that the online slots game in question is operating within its programmed operations.

So what good is payout percentage?

It gives you an idea of what your expected loss per dollar is. In the above example it means that you can expect to lose $0.97 for every $1 wagered. It does not mean that you will lose $0.97 per $1—you might lose more or you might even win more.

The point of payout percentage is so that online slots players know that the slots game must have a targeted performance value. If an online slots game is said to have a 97% payout percentage and it does not meet that percentage, the online casino or the software developer must answer for it.

Keep a look out for a post later today on how you can use payout percentage.

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