SlotoCash online casino slots is one of the most popular gaming events around the world. Slots enthusiasts are generally content to search for the best, most interactive and most interesting machine to meet their gaming requirements. There are dozens of game developers and thousands of slots options with new releases coming out every month.
Slots has always been an easy game to play – you spin the reels, line up matching symbols and collect rewards. You don’t have to master or memorize strategies or rules. Playing a slot machine means selecting the coin level at which you want to play, betting on the paylines that you want to activate, hitting the spin button and watching as the symbols fall into place.
You don’t NEED to know any more than that, but you can enhance your gaming adventure by exploring some interesting and unique aspects about slots.
Some of the most fascinating facts include:
Origination
Slots, which is highly popular around the world, originated in the United States. The first slot machine was a three-reel coin-operated gambling machine that had an automatic cash payout. It was activated when the gamer dropped coins or tokens into a slot on the machine and pulled a handle or pushed a button. That would active the reels that were marked into horizontal segments by the symbols
The machine delivered payouts by dropping coins into a cup or trough. The payout was based on the number of symbols that lined up when the rotating wheels came to a rest.
Fruit Machine
In the early years the machines were often called “fruit machines” because some of the symbols were fruit – cherries, lemons, watermelons, plums and oranges. The word “jackpot” and bar” also appeared.
In addition, since the machines were oftentimes housed in drug stores or other venues where food was sold, the payouts were sometimes fruit! Fruit came to be strongly associated with these early slots and in the UK they are still known today as “fruit machines.”
Strategy
You may read articles where the author tries to tell you “how to win at slots” or “things that you can do to increase your slots combinations” but there is actually no sure strategy or trick to win a slot game. There are recommendations – play jackpot games/don’t play jackpot games, look for slots with a lot of free spins, look for a slot machine that has multipliers, etc. But when push comes to shove, there is no strategy or trick that makes a big difference in the outcome of a game.
That’s because there’s a Random Number Generator that dictates what symbols will come up on the reels after each spin. Meaning, it’s all random. So on the one hand, you can be sure that the machine is not rigged and that the spins are unsystematic. On the other hand, there’s nothing that you can do to skew the results of a spin. Your decisions revolve around which game you play, what lines your enable with a bet and how much you bet on each line.
Names
As mentioned, in the UK slot machines are still called ‘fruit machines’. In New Zealand and Australia they are referred to as the ‘Pokies’. In Vegas, even though they are not fully automated, some people still call slot machines a “one-armed bandit” which refers to the “one arm” lever that used to be featured on these machines.
Scams
Spoiler alert - these scams ONLY work on land-based, on-site, physical, slot machines.
Over the years, many people have tried to scam physical, Vegas style slot machines. It was easier to scam slot machines before the automatic hopper and the random number generator were introduced but it’s never been easy and today, modern technology makes it harder than ever. However, there have been some successes over the years, the most recent occurring just a few years ago using mobile technology.
Some notable scams included:
- The Yo-Yo – yo-yoing is a primitive slot machine scam technique but it’s been successful. To yo-yo a slot machine you tie a string around a coin and drop the coins into the machine. The machine registers the credit and then the person holding the string can yanks out the coin and play the machine. Winning payouts are given even though no deposit was, in fact, given.
- Fake Coins – using fake coins to activate the machine
- Coin Shaving – shaving a coin around the edges so that the slot machine’s optic verification sensors will register it as a normal coin.
- Monkey’s Paw – triggering the switch in the slot machine that releases the coin hopper.
- Key – a key would be made of the slot machine’s cabinet key and at some point the scammer would use the key to open the machine and rig it so that it would be set on a winning jackpot combination.
- Hacking – a modern hack that electronically replaced the machine’s RNG with a pseudorandom number generator. Through reverse engineering the hackers obtained the secret algorithms that a slot machine uses to create random results. After analyzing the gameplay and discerning the machine’s pattern, mobile technology would be used to create timed spins that result in higher output.
Calculating Odds
It’s fairly easy to calculate the probability odds of winning at a slot machine. You need to calculate the number of possible combinations. Multiply the number of symbols that the machine features. For example for a three reel slot with six symbols the number of possible combinations is 6 × 6 × 6 = 216.
Then, to calculate the probability of getting a certain combination you calculate the number of winning combinations by the number of possible combinations.
Don’t forget that different winning combinations offer different payoffs. The harder a combination is to get, the bigger the reward. This is called the “payout percent.”
This scam is, evidently, still operating, though now at an even more technologically-advanced level. Game developers can thwart this scam using encryption that protects the PRNG’s mathematical secrets but that doesn’t protect the older, compromised machines that still populate many casinos.
