(Slots continued)

Slot Strategy

     

My personal slot strategy is to play slots as little as possible. Strategy wise, the only advice I can offer slot players is to use a player's club card. There is nothing you can do (regardless of what some claim) to create an advantage on the slots, short of cheating. Here are a few common things that people try and/or believe concerning slot "strategy".

(1) Watch someone lose a lot of money in a machine and when they leave, play the machine thinking a win is just around the corner. This is the gambler's fallacy at work. Slot machines are created so that each spin is an independent event. Previous spins have no bearing whatsoever on future spins. Slot machines do not "know" what happened a spin ago or two spins ago. Slot machines use random number generators to randomly determine what combination to produce next.

(2) Watch for machines that are "hot" and play them. You would think that the people that use (1) would have a low opinion of the misinformed individuals who use (2), the strategies seemingly opposite. But I have learned from conversations with slot players over the years that a lot of the same people believe both (1) and (2). What we may see as related events (several wins in a row- hot machine) are really unrelated. Several wins in a row will grab our attention while an occasional scattered winning combination over an hour does not register as well.

(3) Look for coins or credits others leave behind and play them. People, for whatever reason, will abandon coins and credits in a machine. First of all, if you are looking for these coins, you have probably lost all your money. Go home (or to your room). Secondly, even if you are not trying to steal, someone may think you are. Thieves hang around the slots all the time waiting for an opportunity to steal someone's  coins. If you do happen to find a coin purely by chance, do yourself a favor; put it in your pocket and not in the machine. 

(4) Play lesser credits and keep up with how many times in a row you lose. Once you lose 'x' number of times, play the max credits. Doesn't work for reasons that I have already explained in parts (1) and (2).

(5) Play blackjack and ask someone playing the $5 slots (and not using a card) to build up points on your player's club card. Is this ethical? On the one hand, points that would go to waste are being saved. On the other, someone is getting points that they did not earn.