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Even if a slot machine offers 96% payback, it wouldn’t be uncommon for you to win back anywhere from 40% to 150% in one session. Slot machines are by far one of the most-volatile casino games, meaning short-term results can vary greatly from the mean average (RTP in this case). Pay table distribution is the main reason for the high volatility. Best Way to Pick A Winning Slot Machine. When looking for casino slots machines, you need to look at the following aspects of the games to choose the best slots title: Return to Player (RTP) percentage – the return to play percentage represents the total number of players that have won playing slots games compared to the amount of money used. Below is information supplied by Nevada’s State Gaming Control Board, it shows the slot machine payback percentages for all of the south shore casinos for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2019 and ending June 30, 2020.

Payback Percentage Slot Machine Casino For Free

Payback is considered one of the most important aspects when choosing slots. The reason why is that payback, or return to player (a.k.a. RTP), determines your long-term chances of winning.

The given payout percentage refers to how much money a slot machine is set to pay back on average. Here’s an example:

• You’re playing a slot with 95% RTP
• If you bet $200 on the game
• 200 x 0.95 = $190
• You should theoretically win back $190 on this machine

Gamblers are always interested in finding ways to improve their odds. Payback is the perfect way to do this when considering that it directly relates to how much slots money you can win.

But you might be surprised to know that RTP isn’t as important as the gaming world makes it appear. I’m going to cover 5 reasons why you should ignore payback when selecting slot machines.

1 – RTP Has Little Impact on Your Short Term Winnings

Many slots players consider payback to be indicative of their chances of winning in any given session. But RTP usually has little bearing on your short-term gains.

Payout percentages are merely long-term indicators on how much you stand to win. Most players don’t come anywhere close to reaching the given payout percentage on the game they’re playing.

Even if a slot machine offers 96% payback, it wouldn’t be uncommon for you to win back anywhere from 40% to 150% in one session.

Slot machines are by far one of the most-volatile casino games, meaning short-term results can vary greatly from the mean average (RTP in this case).

Pay table distribution is the main reason for the high volatility. Every slot has a wide variation between the lowest and highest prize.

Here’s an example of a simplified pay table:

• 5 vampires = 10,000 coins
• 5 mummies = 1,000 coins
• 5 bats = 500 coins
• 5 holy waters = 100 coins
• 5 vampire hunters = 50 coins
• 5 pieces of garlic = 10 coins
• 5 castles = 5 coins

This pay table has a jackpot that’s worth 2,000x the lowest prize. Considering the large payouts offered at the top, the slot machine must calibrate by offering less frequent wins.

Compare this to baccarat, blackjack, craps, and roulette, where players win over 45% of their bets on average.

High slots volatility comes from how these games are programmed to reach their stated payout percentage after hundreds of thousands if not millions of spins. It’s very unlikely that you’ll sit down to a slot with 96% RTP and win back $96 on every $100 wagered.

Of course, this is also part of the fun when playing slots. Nobody wants to be guaranteed losses when they start spinning the reels.

In any case, you should be aware that slot machines are very volatile and unlikely to pay anywhere near their stated payback in the short run.

2 – Understanding Units Lost Is More Important Than Payback

Bankroll management is crucial for anybody who wants to stretch their slots funds further. Many players often use a game’s payback as their primary tool for bankroll management.

Here’s an example using a run-of-the-mill bankroll plan:

• You have $100
• Your average bet size is $1
• You make 500 wagers per hour
• You’re playing a slot machine with 94% payback (6% house edge)
• 500 bets x 0.06 house edge = $30 in hourly theoretical losses
• $100 / $30 = 3.33 hours

The RTP model shows that your bankroll stands to last over three hours under these conditions. But it’s hard to gauge how long your bankroll will last using payback alone.

As covered above, slot machines’ volatility makes for some unpredictable sessions. Therefore, a bankroll management plan that uses payback as the key measure can go either way.

This is especially true when dealing with small sample sizes, like the $100 bankroll and 3-hour time frame in the example. Smaller bankrolls make you more susceptible to volatility.

A better way to measure how long your bankroll will last involves using units lost per hour. A unit refers to the average bet that you make on each spin.

Breaking your bankroll down into units makes it easier to manage funds. Here’s an example:

• You have $1,500
• You bet $0.50 per spin on average
• 1,500 / 0.50 = 3,000 units in your bankroll

Many players appreciate viewing their bankroll in terms of total bets instead of a monetary value. Furthermore, this practice makes the rest of bankroll management easier.

Of course, units still don’t solve the problem of using something other than payback to perform bankroll management. The best tool to use is an estimation of the average losses per hour.

Low-volatility slots (i.e. small jackpots) usually see players lose around 250 units an hour. High-volatility slots (i.e. big jackpots) normally see gamblers lose around 350 units.

You can use these loss estimations to get a more-accurate idea on how much short-term money you stand to lose.

Here’s an example:

• You have 3,000 units
• You’re playing a low-volatility slot (250 units lost per hour)
• 3,000 / 250 = 12 hours

Nothing guarantees that your bankroll won’t last longer than 12 hours. In fact, you might even hit a big payout and walk out of the casino much wealthier.

Instead, lost units are just better short-term estimates on how long your bankroll will last when compared to payback.

3 – Progressive Slots Payback Is Hard to Pinpoint

You’d be especially wise to ignore payback when it comes to progressive slots. These games feature growing jackpots that make it difficult to figure out RTP.

Progressive slot machines usually take between 1% and 3% of every wager to seed the jackpot. Popular progressive games can offer top payouts worth millions of dollars.

This setup is attractive to players who dream of getting rich through slot machines. But it also makes deciphering payback nearly impossible.

Every progressive slots jackpot starts with good base value. This is also the point when you can define base RTP.

Here’s an example:

• NetEnt’s Mega Fortune starts with a €250,000 jackpot
• The base payback is 96.4%
• The RTP increases as the jackpot grows larger than €250k

The only time that you truly know Mega Fortune’s payback is when NetEnt first seeds the jackpot at €250,000. Other than this, you’re left guessing the RTP.

Being in the dark on payback isn’t so bad when dealing with a high-paying game like Mega Fortune. But it becomes a problem when the base payback is low.

Microgaming’s Mega Moolah is a perfect example, because it only offers 88.1% base RTP. This is awful considering that Mega Moolah is an online slot.

It’s worth noting that Mega Moolah offers some of online gaming’s largest jackpots and can theoretically deliver high payback. But you’re dealing with a low-paying slots assuming you don’t win the jackpot.

Compounding matters is that it’s impossible to calculate the exact RTP for progressive slots. You’re missing key variables, meaning you have to make an educated guess on the payback.

Mega Moolah’s jackpot is seeded at $1 million. Therefore, you can assume that the RTP is worth over 90% when the jackpot reaches $5 million.

Nevertheless, you still can’t pinpoint payback for Mega Moolah or other progressive games.

4 – Most Slot Machines Pay Around the Same Amount

You don’t have to think hard about slots payback in many cases. Most games are roughly the same in terms of RTP.

The only factor that you really have to consider is whether you’re in a land-based or online casino.

Online slots have steadily increased in payback ever since they were first launched in the mid-1990s. Most internet slot machines released today deliver anywhere from 95% to 97% RTP.

Obviously it’s still nice to know the exact payback. This information can be found by googling individual game developers (e.g. Rival Gaming or Thunderkick) followed by the word “RTP” or “payback.”

But you can roughly assume that most internet slots offer anywhere from 95-97% RTP.

Land-based slots developers don’t publish payout percentages. But they often group payback based on coin denominations.

Here’s an example based on the Nevada Gaming Control Board’s 2017 report for average payback among coin denominations:

• Penny Slots = 90.17% payback
• Nickel Slots = 94.54% payback
• Quarter Slots = 93.06% payback
• Dollar Slots = 93.94% payback
• $5 Slots = 94.16% payback
• $25 Slots = 95.03% payback
• $100 Slots = 93.21% payback

You can see that land-based RTP isn’t as impressive as what’s seen with internet slots. After all, online games still offer over 95% payback when you bet a penny per line (a.k.a. penny slots).

The general rule of thumb, though, is that land-based RTP increases as you move up in coin denominations. Nevada slot machines, for example, offer between 93% and 95% payback from nickel games and beyond.

5 – Land Based Casinos Can Trick You

Some brick-and-mortar casinos put signs above a bank of slot machines to advertise generous RTP. For example, you might see a sign that reads “Up to 98% payback.”

These signs are enticing when considering that most land-based slots don’t even offer 95% payback. But you should always be careful when seeing anything like this.

Casinos are only required to offer the stated payback on one machine. Therefore, just one game in slot machine bank must deliver the advertised 98% payback.

Many players don’t realize this, though, and will hop on any slot in the area under the assumption that they’re spinning for 98% RTP.

The best way to handle these situations is by never paying attention to these signs. You have no idea of knowing which game(s) is offering high payback among the surrounding machines.

As I covered before, coin denominations are the best way to determine RTP for land-based games. Don’t, however, rely on any sign that promises a specific amount of payback.

Should You Still Worry About Slots Payback?

Based on everything covered in this post, you might wonder if it’s even worth bothering with RTP.

My personal opinion is that payback isn’t the Holy Grail that slots players make it out to be. But you also shouldn’t completely discount slot machines’ payback.

The main thing to consider is your personal goals. Are you looking for big wins in the short run, or are you going to be a long-time slots player?

If you’re mainly looking to win in a single session, then you should choose slot machines with low volatility. These are typically games that don’t have a big jackpot nor many (if any) bonus features.

If you’re a long-term slots player who’s the dreaming of winning big, then RTP becomes a more important factor. You should choose jackpot slots that offer good base payback to replenish losses.

Earlier I covered how NetEnt has such a game in Mega Fortune, which offers 96.4% RTP and a jackpot that’s normally worth seven figures.

Chances are that you’re not going to hit a seven-figure jackpot any time soon. But the 96.4% base payback at least ensures that you can net smaller wins in the meantime.

High payback comes in handy even if you’re not chasing life-changing money. Games that combine low volatility with good RTP offer an excellent chance to win in any given session.

Conclusion

The good news is that you don’t have to be a slave to slots payback. Instead, you can choose the games and themes that you want without being too affected by this factor.

If you want to play a certain fall-themed slot with 92% payback, then it won’t kill your bankroll to do so for a few sessions. But this isn’t to say that RTP doesn’t have its place in the slots world.

Long-term players will benefit from high payback because they’re more likely to reach the stated payout percentage. In these cases, it pays to know how to look for slots with high RTP.

The best place to begin with online slot machines is by looking at the game’s help screen.

Some internet slots developers list RTP on the help screen for each of their games. Others don’t list this info, which is when you need to use alternative means.

You can always google an individual game followed by RTP or payback. For example, you could google NetEnt’s “Arabian Nights RTP.”

Another option involves googling a game developer’s name. For instance, you could look up “Rival slots RTP” to find payback for Rival’s entire collection.

Land-based casinos are a different matter because providers don’t offer payback online or in a game’s help screen. Instead, you need to make generalizations based on the coin denomination.

Normally, penny slot machines offer between 88% and 92% payback. Nickel slots up to $100 machines feature anywhere from 93% to 98% RTP.

Payback Percentage Slot Machine Casino Game

Again, failing to know the payout percentage for a given slot isn’t going to crush your bankroll. But this info can be helpful for serious players.

I went to a party Saturday night, and whenever I go to parties, someone inevitably learns what I do for a living. (I write about gambling.)

This always leads to one of two or three outcomes:

• I hear a gambling anecdote about my new friend or one of their friends
• My new friend asks me how to win money gambling. Sometimes they specifically ask how to choose the winning slot machine
• Both #1 and #2 (this is actually the most common outcome)

I enjoy all these outcomes, by the way, but here’s what happened at this specific party.

A friend of mine started telling me the story of his friend who got fired from Walmart. Later the same day, his newly unemployed friend went to the Choctaw Casino in Durant and won $40,000 playing a slot machine.

My friend’s question to me was, “How do I do that?”

How can *I* choose the winning slot machine?

This post has the answer, but it’s almost certainly not what you’d think.

You Can’t Win by Choosing the Slot Machine With the Highest Payback Percentage.

When I search for this phrase in the most popular search engines, I see pages touting this advice repeatedly:

You have to play the slot machines with the highest payback percentage.

What’s a payback percentage?

It’s also called “return to player” or “RTP.”

A slot machine’s return is the amount of money paid out to a slot machine player compared to the amount of money the player wagered. The RTP gets expressed as a percentage.

If you made $100 in wagers on a slot machine and won $125, you’d have a return of 125%. If you won $90, you’d have a return of 90%.

The difference between the return and the amount you wagered, obviously, is the casino’s profit.

The payback percentage, or return to player (RTP), is a statistical prediction of a slot machine’s return over a massive number of spins. The closer you get to infinity, the closer the game’s results should get to the payback percentage that the game is programmed to have.

In the long run, all slot machines have a payback percentage of less than 100%. This means that, in the long run, you’ll always lose at slot machines.

How to Calculate the Payback Percentage of a Slot Machine

This theoretical payback percentage can get easily calculated if you have the probabilities behind the machine. It’s just the probability of each win multiplied by the amount of that win, divided by the amount you’d have to play every probability.

If, for example, a slot machine game had 10,000 possible combinations, and if you hit every combination, you’d win 9,000 coins, and the payback percentage would be 90%.

A slot machine doesn’t have to pay out less after a win to “catch up” to its payback percentage. Every spin of the reels on a slot machine is 100% random. The casino makes its profit because of the discrepancy between the odds of winning and the odds that each payout offers.

The payback percentage is not available to the consumer at most casinos. You have no way of calculating it because you have no way of knowing what the probability of getting a specific symbol on a stop is. You can’t calculate the probability of a combination of symbols without that information.

You have the payouts for the prizes, but you don’t know what your probability of winning those prizes is.

Where Does the Casino Put the Slot Machines With the Highest Payback Percentages?

You could play two identical slot machine games sitting right next to each other. One of them might have a payback percentage of 91%, while the other might have a payback percentage of 96%.

You have NO way of telling which machine is better than the other, even if one of those games is paying out more than the other. After all, the payback percentage is a long-term phenomenon.

In the short run, anything can happen.

But even if you DID know the payback percentage for the game, you couldn’t choose the winning slot machine just by choosing the one with the higher payback percentage.

The probability of winning the big jackpot on most machines is at least 1000 to 1.

If you play for two hours, you might make 1,200 spins. You might even win the big jackpot.

But you’ll (usually) have wagered more money on the machine than you won.

You’ll find advice about how to find the slot machines with the highest payback percentages, but most of it is useless. At one time, sure, the slot machines closest to the aisles might have had higher payback percentages.

However, I’ve seen multiple interviews with multiple casino managers who insist that isn’t true.

What About Playing Higher-Denomination Slot Machine Games?

You’ll also see people explain that the payback percentage on the higher-denomination machines is better. This is true as a general rule, but it might or might not be true at the casino where you’re playing. The penny and nickel machines might average 91% at your casino, while the dollar machines might average 95%, but that’s an AVERAGE.

This doesn’t mean that you’ll automatically have a higher payback percentage just because you played a higher-denomination machine.

Even if you did, you’re still fighting a negative expectation game.

Should I Play Slot Machine Games With Higher Volatility?

• What about volatility?
• Is a slot machine with a higher volatility more likely to be a winner?
• Or should I look for the games with lower volatility?

A slot machine’s volatility is its variance from the predicted results. The higher the volatility is on a game, the wider the swings between the wins and losses tend to be.

A game with high volatility pays out less often but can sometimes offer bigger payouts to compensate.

A game with low volatility pays out more often, but those payouts are still low enough to guarantee the casino a profit.

The slot machines at your local casino aren’t labeled according to their volatility, by the way. There’s not a special section for low volatility slots.

You can, though, get an idea for the volatility of a slot machine game via your observations of how often they pay out.

To make your own estimate, you need to count how many spins you make. You also need to count how many of those spins are winners (as opposed to losers).

Divide the number of winning spins by the number of spins you’ve made, and you’ll have the hit ratio for that sample set.

The more spins you’ve made, the more likely the hit ratio you’re seeing is close to the expected ratio.

If you make 500 spins on a game in an hour, and 150 of those spins are winners, the hit ratio for that game is 30%.

If 200 of them were winners, the hit ratio would be 40%.

The game with the 40% hit ratio is the less volatile game.

But keep in mind that an hour’s worth of spins is not representative of the long run. Those are still short-term results. The longer you play, the more accurate your results will get.

You COULD also estimate the slot machine’s actual return over those 500 spins.

Multiply the amount you wagered per spin by the number of spins you made. Then divide how much the game paid out by that amount to get a percentage.

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If you put $500 into a $1/spin game, and then you make 500 spins, you’ve wagered $500.

Let’s say you have $400 left after all that wagering. This accounts for all your wins and losses, so the payback percentage — the observed return — is 80%.

That doesn’t mean that this is the theoretical return, but it might be close — especially if it’s a low volatility machine.

Does any of this information help you choose the winning slot machine, though?

You Can’t Use the Zig-Zag System to Pick a Winning Slot Machine

You might have already heard of this system, but if not, here’s how it’s supposed to work.

The zig-zag system tries to identify slot machines that are about to pay out by looking at the pattern of the symbols on an inactive machine. You’re supposed to look through the slot machines on the casino floor and find one where the winning symbols are in a zig-zag pattern on the front of the machine.

It doesn’t really matter much what the pattern looks like. As long as three winning symbols are present somewhere on the front of the machine, that machine is supposedly “ready” to pay off.

Proponents of the system even suggest that games with two winning symbols showing are getting close to paying off, too.

The idea is that the symbols are coming up more often because the game is getting ready to pay off. Therefore, you’re supposed to sit down and play until those symbols actually do line up on one of the pay lines, and you win.

You can picture these zig-zag symbols in your mind as diagonal lines connecting the symbols on the front of the machine. They might make a V or upside-down V, for example. This is also called a diamond, and it’s supposed to be the best pattern you could ask for.

I can only think of one problem with the zig-zag system.

It doesn’t work.

Understanding why involves understanding something about how a slot machine works. Those spinning reels on the inside of the machine aren’t actually physical reels. They’re controlled by a random number generator. This is especially obvious with video slots, where all the action is entirely animated.

The random number generator (RNG) is a computer program that cycles through thousands of numbers per second. When you click the “spin” button or pull the lever, the computer program stops on a number. That number corresponds to a combination of reel symbols.

Before the reels stop spinning, the RNG has determined the outcome, win or lose.

Every spin of the reels is an independent trial. What’s happened on the previous spin has no effect on your subsequent spins.

What About John Patrick’s Slots Strategies?

My favorite strategies for playing slots come from a book by John Patrick. In it, he outlines several money management techniques which are supposed to help you win at slot machines. All of his strategies are more or less worthless.

Below are some of the concepts he suggests.

The first is the concept of a “naked pull.”

• A naked pull is a spin of the slot machine reels that results in no winnings at all.
• He suggests choosing an arbitrary number between 7 and 14 as your “naked pull limit.”

For example, you might choose 7 as your naked pull limit. If you play a slot machine game and get 7 losing spins in a row, you would quit playing that machine and move on to another machine.

This MIGHT help you avoid a low volatility slot machine game, but it doesn’t do much for your probability of winning in the long run. In fact, it does nothing in aid of that.

Having a naked pull limit, though, can be an interesting way to get in some action at multiple slot machines. In that case, you might have a more interesting and fun time playing, which is a type of winning in itself.

Another concept that he suggests is having a session bankroll.

• In other words, you have a bankroll of how much money you’re willing to gamble with.
• Let’s say you’re going to Las Vegas for three days and two nights, and you have $600 to gamble with.
• You might decide to have two slot machine sessions per day — one in the morning and another in the evening.
• You would then have six sessions planned, and you would divide your bankroll into six-session bankrolls of $100 each.

He combines the idea of a session bankroll with the idea of a loss limit and a win goal. These are just percentages of your bankroll that are going to serve as the end of your session.

For example, you might set a win goal of $50 and a loss limit of $20. If your bankroll slips to $80, you quit for the session. If your bankroll grows to $150, you quit for the session.

This, by the way, does nothing to increase your probability of finding a winning machine. It just means you won’t gamble an entire session bankroll.

It also means that sometimes you’ll grind out a winning session.

In the long run, though, you’ll wind up with a loss similar to what you’d expected based on the theoretical payback percentage of the machine. The longer you play, the more likely you are to wind up with those kinds of results.

All his systems combine these concepts to create cleverly named systems, but none of them do anything to get you an advantage at slot machines.

In Fact, No One Can Tell You How to Choose the Winning Slot Machine

You can’t choose a winning slot machine because you can’t predict the future. Slot machines are random. They’re also an example of negative expectation games.

If you play slot machines long enough, you’ll surely lose.

But Here’s the Good News

The expected return on these games is a long-term expectation. This means that not only CAN you win in the short run, but you’re almost guaranteed to have an occasional win in the short run.

In fact, the casino is counting on it.

If you never won, you’d never play.

The trick is to have some idea of what kind of win will satisfy you. When you know what that is, you can play until you hit it and call it a day.

As long as you understand that if you keep playing negative expectation games, you’ll eventually lose all your money, you’ll be okay.

• Treat slot machine gambling as entertainment.
• Quit if you get ahead by a significant amount.

And NEVER spend money on any kind of lame slot machine system that guarantees you the secret to choosing a slot machine that’s ready to pay out.

Conclusion

Slot machines are fun, and choosing a winning slot machine seems like a worthy goal.

Luckily for us, it’s a skill that everyone has in equal amounts. Everyone has a 0% probability of accurately predicting which slot machine is going to be the winning machine.

It’s not like the World Series of Poker, where the players’ skill levels have a huge effect on the outcome.

Sure, you can win at slots.

People do it every day.

It just takes luck and a willingness to lose some money trying to win.