Myth: When top jackpot symbols start showing up in the window, but off the payline, a big jackpot is on the way.

John G. Says: False. Having jackpot symbols turn up off the payline decidedly does not mean a big hit’s on the way. It is just another losing spin. Smart players take it that way. No matter how pretty they look in the window, losing spins have no effect on upcoming plays. A while back a television report accused slot manufactures of programming machines so that winning symbols turned up frequently in the slot window but off the payline in order to sucker players into thinking a winner was coming. Now, it is possible that some programs do result in jackpot symbols showing up more frequently just above and just below the payline than the player would expect, but that can be a natural outgrowth of programming that allows bigger jackpots than the physical reels would support. But, regardless of how or why it is done, it does not matter how often jackpot symbols turn up off the payline. I repeat: it does not matter. The TV report was much ado about very little. The only symbols that matter are those that land on the payline. If they land anywhere else, in or out of the player’s view, it’s just another losing spin. Ignore the losers and move on.

Myth: Casinos rig machines to pay a higher percentage on the weekends rather than on weekdays and at night rather than during the day.

John G. Says: I once had a reader write to me to complain that casinos loosen the machines in the daytime so the idle rich get all the jackpots, then tighten them at night so that the good stuff isn’t available to working people. It just isn’t so. The flip side is a complaint I once received from a senior citizen, claiming that machines were tight in the daytime when retirees make up a large percentage of customers, and looser at night for the younger folk after work. Casinos do not rig machines to pay a higher percentage in the daytime than at night or higher at night than in the daytime. Nor is the operation simple enough to routinely do such a thing if the operator wanted to. In many gaming states, the computer chip holding the random number generator must be sealed by evidence tape. If the casino decides to change the payback percentage by changing the chip, a gaming board agent must be present to watch the evidence tape being broken and the chip sealed with new evidence tape. Just as casinos do not change the payback percentages from day to night, they do not change them from weekdays to weekends. If it seems you see more jackpots hit on the weekends, just remember that more people are playing, meaning there are more random chances for a jackpot to turn up.

Myth: Look for machines not in use in which cherries on the middle reel sit on the payline. They will pay off within the next few pulls.

John G. Says: False. This is an oddball myth I read in a financial newsletter that is actually a pretty good newsletter, with some excellent tips. This however was not one of them. It is not true that cherries sitting on the payline of the middle reel mean that a win is coming up. The random number generator runs continuously, even when nobody is playing the machine. One pull has no influence on the next. And the combination that shows on the reels as you approach the screen has absolutely no effect on what is to come.

Myth: Each slot machine has a sequence of results that can be worked out if the customer plays long enough.

John G. Says: False. There is no discernable pattern to slot machine results. Results are as random as humans can program a computer to be. Even if there was, no one can observe long enough to map out a pattern. How long would you have to play, for instance, to find a pattern for megabuck, with its multimillion dollar jackpots? Any non-random sequence would have to be billions of numbers long, given that the Nevada Megabucks system sometimes goes years at a time without paying off the top jackpot, even with its dozens of casinos throughout the state participating. A slot player brought this up at a seminar I once gave. She said that, for several spins in a row, she and the player next to her had the exact same reel combinations. She’d wondered if just for a few spins they were in sync, that they had reached the same place in the machine’s pattern. What was at work here was simply random chance, one of the oddball things that happens when you’re dealing with such impossible large numbers as the number of times handles are pulled or buttons pushed on slot machines. Players send the reel spinning more than a trillion times a month, and given enough trials, anything that is possible to happen eventually will. That includes two people on adjacent machines having the same results for several spins. If the question is, “Will this happen to me today,†it’s an extreme long shot. If the question is, “Will this happen to someone at sometime,†it’s a certainty.

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This is an excerpt out of The Slot Machine Answer Book by John Grochowski. The book reveals the answers to questions that every slot enthusiast is seeking such as “Is a machine ever “due†to hit?â€, “Can the casinos decide who wins?†and “Is there any way to gain an advantage over the slots?†The book can be found on Amazon.com, major bookstores and bonusbooks.com. Grochowski is a regular columnist for Southern Gaming and also has weekly columns on casino games in newspapers and on web-sites world wide. For more information, visit his web-site at CasinoAnswerMan.com.

Posted November 4th, 2009 under In this Issue, Slots & Video Poker Tips, Winning Tips. Tags: Free Slot Tips, John Grochowski
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