8 Slot Machine Secrets You Need to Know

Even before the digital age, slot machines were a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

Only the Morlocks—excuse me—the mechanics who labored in unknown rooms located no doubt in dungeons beneath the gaming floor understood what purpose or agenda these machines were designed to support.

But even with the advent of the world’s greatest reference library (the Internet), mystery still envelopes the slot machine.

So as something of public service, what follows are eight of the most pernicious slot machine secrets exposed for your entertainment and edification.

This is the first trade secret on our list of slot secrets exposed.

Casinos don’t pay huge licensing fees to incorporate the characters from Willie Wonka or hit music from the 70s into their slot machines.

For every Blazing 7s slot hiding in the corners of the gaming floor, there are many flashy slots based on everything from Sharknado! to Little Shop of Horrors, with audio clips from the movies as animated bonus rounds that feature the most popular characters.

Aristocrat’s Buffalo! Series of slots is a perfect example. There are slots with higher Return to Player (RTP) than Buffalo! Machines.

They’re just not right there in the center of the gaming floor, with spotlights shining on them and neon arches flashing above.

And Buffalo is not popular because the casino dedicates premium locations and lighting on the gaming floor. No, Buffalo is front and center in a premium location because it is popular.

The Buffalo games have so-so RTPs in the 90-96% range. Not horrible, but not wonderful. They are player magnets, however.

If you want to dabble with these types of slots, then be sure to check out these many buffalo slots available on the web.

For more traditional slots that maybe aren’t so fancy, but could lead to more winning, check out our guide to some of the classics.

This is one of those top slots secret that casinos do not attempt to hide, they just don’t talk about it much.

Sure, some casinos have local progressive jackpots based on playing at a single machine or row of machines in that casino. But the largest progressive jackpots—the multi-million-dollar jackpots—are nationwide or even worldwide.

If you think of each spin on one of these life-changing progressive slots as a lottery ticket, then your chances of winning that jackpot should become clear: somewhere between DHYB (don’t hold your breath) and NIYLT (not in your lifetime).

Still, people do win the lottery. And people do win those multi-million-dollar progressive jackpots, as well.

I’ll let you in on another little slot secret: if you must play progressive slot games, always play the amount required to win the progressive jackpot (usually max coins in). Otherwise, you’re wasting your money.

If you want to learn more about how progressive jackpot slots work, then our page is a great place as it will explain how they differ from other slot machines, where to find them, and much more.

Well, this is one of those secrets to slot machines that cries out for a lurid headline ripped right out of National Enquirer: “Slot Machine Secrets Exposed.”

Remember when slot machines were called one-armed bandits? Yeah, me neither, fellow kids. See, those arms were taken away years ago because you and I weren’t pulling on them fast enough.

The sad truth behind this sordid little slot secret: a spin button can be pressed much more often than a mechanical arm can be levered down 20 or more inches.

The number of games we can play on a slot machine is now only limited by the amount of time the machine itself can complete a game.

If you’re curious on what the biggest slot wins to ever happen using slot buttons, then check out the blog below for our 10 big rankings.

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This shouldn’t even be considered a slot secret, and yet people continue to debate its veracity. Random Number Generation (RNG) is real, and it cares not a fig that you need this win. I mean, I need this win.

RNG is the engine of the slot world, but the variance is the accelerator pedal—an accelerator controlled by chance. Flip a coin 100 times, and you will likely have 50 heads and 50 tails. But you might also have 67 heads and 33 tails. That’s variance.

And at the slot machine, you and I are hoping for positive variance—that moment in time when a slot machine is more generous than the odds predict it should be.

Incidentally, a slot host who can point you to a slot “ready to pay out” is one of the persistent slot machine myths still circulating.

The reality is simple: slot hosts don’t know that for the simple reason that nobody knows that. They could point at a random machine and have the same chance of identifying a profitable machine as you could.

This is one of the more important slot secrets I can give you.

It used to be that pay tables were based on multiples of the amount wagered—and in many cases, that’s still true.

But the latest rage among slot developers is the game that pays “micro-wins”—payouts less than the amount you wagered.

You put your 88 cents into a slot machine, hit the spin button, and “win” a payout of 44 cents.

You won. You lost—the circle of life, Simba, and all in one spin.

Game developers, casinos, and even your Aunt Harriet know that a loss that returns some portion of your wager (particularly if that payout is accompanied by all the audio and visual cues of a win) will keep you playing.

Okay, don’t panic. Neither is a check.

Like checks, payout tickets are promises of money. Sure, the casino will make good on its promise, but think about that slip of paper for a moment.

The slot machine areas of every gaming floor used to feature roaming “change girls” who would exchange your fives, tens, twenties, and even hundreds for rolls of quarters.

Besides rendering slot machines less prone to mechanical failure, payout tickets did one more thing: they replaced real cash with a slip of paper, like chips used at the blackjack and craps tables, payout tickets because of the currency of the slot machine. But casino chips are not perceived as cash, nor is a slip of paper.

Slips of paper don’t provide the emotional impact of actual cash. And once you’ve been separated from that visceral connection, it’s easier for the slot machines to get you to keep hitting that spin button.

Coming in at number 7 when exposing slot secrets. There’s nothing wrong with joining a casino’s slot club. If you gamble there anyway, you might as well get some tangible rewards for it.

But don’t fool yourself that the casino is slipping you a logo tee-shirt or a bottle of wine every month because they want to reward your loyalty.

What I mean by that is a ridiculous amount of personal information goes to the casino about how you play, what you play, and how regularly you play.

Remember that you had to give the casino information about yourself to get that slot club card. The slot club knows your name, address, phone number, social security number, email address, age, military status, and marital status.

Throw in your specific playing and wagering habits, and the casino could probably gamble for you. That’d be convenient, no doubt, but not quite rewarding, eh?

We all know this, yet, there’s always that chance the house won’t win, not this time. The local grocery store wouldn’t be unable to keep its door open if it sold products for less than it paid.

Casinos have a built-in casino house edge on every game they host within their walls.

Some house edges are slender indeed, such as the 1.5% of blackjack. Slot machines, on the other hand, offer the house between a 5% and 10% edge.

One of the best kept casino slot machine secrets is that games requiring skill tend to have slimmer house edges than games of pure chance (like slot machines).

If you want to avoid this, play at home. Just follow the steps below to create an account at a reputable online casino and start earning real money.

So, there you have it—all the slot secrets exposed! But will we heed the dire warnings? Of course not.

Humans take risks because we enjoy them. Whether it’s excitement, thrill, fear of failure, or anticipation of success, we continue to try our luck. If you want to try some of that luck, then consider playing these luckiest slot machines.

Somebody wiser than me once said, “Failure is not falling; it is not getting up again.”

I won’t warn you never to risk because that would be pointless. So instead, I recommend you find some online slots that pay real money and go hog-wild.

Once you find those slots, then apply the slot machine strategies you learned at the casino.

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Footnotes:

• Barriere provided a little history on one armed bandits.