Good and Bad Strategies for Winning at Slot Machines

If I had a perfect formula for winning at slot machines, I wouldn’t have to write blog posts for a living.

That doesn’t mean people don’t have strategies for winning at slots.


Some of these strategies are better than others, but it’s important to be realistic about your chance of playing slot machines and then coming home a winner.

Honestly, the odds aren’t good.

You probably knew that, though. Casinos didn’t fill their floors with those machines because they were moneymakers for the players.

Understanding Return to Player (RTP) in Slot Machine Games

Slot machines make money for the casinos because the payouts aren’t commensurate with the odds of winning.

If you’ve read some of my other posts, you’re probably familiar with the concept of the house edge.

The return to player is the opposite of the house edge.

When you add the house edge to the return to player percentage, you always get a total of 100%.

So, a slot machine game with an RTP of 83.33% has a house edge of 16.67%.


Since I recommend avoiding games with a house edge of more than 1.5%, this is a slot machine you’d clearly want to skip.

With Slot Machines It’s Almost Impossible to Calculate the RTP

To calculate the RTP, you need to know the probability of getting the various combinations of symbols. The probability of each combination multiplied by the payout for that combination adds to the RTP. When you add them all up, you get the overall RTP for the game.

Calculating the return to player is simple. You multiply the likelihood of each winning combination by the amount you’ll win. Then you add all those numbers up to get the total return to player for the game.

For example, if you have a combination that comes up 20% of the time and pays off at 1 for 1, that’s worth 20% toward the overall payback for the machine. If you have another combination that comes up 13% of the time and pays off at 2 for 1, that adds another 26% to your payback percentage.

Combination #3 has a probability of 7%, but it pays off at 3 for 1. This adds another 21% to your payback percentage.

Finally, let’s assume you have 2 more combinations, each of which only comes up 1% of the time. One of those pays off at 6 for 1, and the other at 10 for 1.


This adds 0.6% and 0.1% to your overall payback percentage.

Add them all together, and you get an overall payback percentage, or return to player, of 67.7%.

That sounds terrible, but you’ll find slot machines in places like airports, bars, and convenience stores that are almost that bad.

The Bigger Problem with Opaque Payout Percentages

Here’s the bigger problem, though:

You don’t have any way to determine the probability of getting a specific combination.

The game has it in its programming, but it’s not something you can figure out just by looking at the number of possible symbols.

That’s because different symbols are weighted differently. Some symbols might be programmed to come up once every 10 spins, but others might only come up once every 12 spins.

You could clock the actual results for each symbol on each spin over hundreds of spins and estimate it, but you would only be accurate if you kept up with a considerable number of trials.

To make things even worse, 2 identical slot machines could have different programming. One game might have a return to player of 85%, and the identical game next to it might have an RTP of 92%.

This is a problem because slot machines are the only game in the casino where you can’t compare the games’ house edge when deciding which one to play.

Avoiding the Gambler’s Fallacy Is a Good Slot Machine Strategy

Avoiding folly is always a good gambling strategy. You should be realistic about what you’re up against in the casino, and you can’t do that if you don’t have the actual numbers to deal with.

But the most prominent slot machine strategy I see touted is to play a game that’s gotten hot or a game that’s due.

The idea behind a game getting hot is that it’s been paying out a lot of coins over the last few spins, so, since it’s “hot,” you should play it because you’re more likely to win money from it.

The other idea, that a game is due, is just the opposite. The idea is that a game that hasn’t paid out in a while is due for a payout, so you should play it.

If you notice, the 2 ideas are mutually exclusive.

Because of the random nature of gambling games, you will see losing and winning streaks. You just can’t predict when they’ll begin and/or end. It’s impossible.

The idea that previous results affect the probability of subsequent results is called The Gambler’s Fallacy. It’s a common mistake gamblers make when thinking about their probabilities.

The truth is that with most gambling games, every bet is an independent event.


If the probability of hitting the jackpot on a slot machine game is 1/1000, it remains 1/1000 on the next spin regardless of whether you hit on the previous spin.

What Kind of Strategy Should You Employ When Playing the Slots?

I can’t give you a strategy for beating the slots that would work on any kind of consistent basis. Stuff you read about the so-called zig-zag system is just nonsense. No amount of money management strategies like having win goals or stop-loss limits will turn the odds in your favor, either.

As near as I can tell, the best strategy for playing slots is to skip them in favor of a better game.

If you’re going to play slots anyway, figure out an approach to the game that will make it fun for you.

I read an entertaining piece one time where the author tried to put a single coin into every machine on the floor during his gambling session. That’s a fun way to play slots.

Also, it limits the amount you lose by artificially slowing down your play. The average slot machine player makes 500 spins per hour. If you’re betting $3 per spin, you’re putting $1500 per hour into action. If the game has a house edge of 6%, you’re looking at losing $90/hour.

If you can cut the number of spins per hour in half, though, your cost for playing slots drops to $45/hour.

That’s still unacceptable to me, but if you like playing slots, you should try to make it as inexpensive as possible.

There Are Some Things You Can Do to Find Higher Payback Percentages

You can’t tell one slot machine from another from a math perspective. Still, we CAN categorize slot machines according to how likely they are to offer a better-than-average payback percentage.

The difference in types of slot machine games matters, too.

A progressive slot machine – one of those games with the jackpot ticker that’s showing how big the jackpot has gotten – almost always has a lower payback percentage than other slot machine games.

The reasons why should be obvious:

For one thing, a huge progressive jackpot is one you’ll probably never hit. It’s along the lines of playing the lottery. You’re as likely to be struck by lightning.

Since the size of that jackpot is a factor in the payback percentage, if you’re practically guaranteed to never hit that jackpot, you can’t (for practical purposes) consider it part of the payback percentage.

Also, the machine has to “fuel” that jackpot by taking a small percentage of each bet and using it to grow the size of the progressive jackpot.

Where does that fuel come from?

Directly from the payback percentage.

So, one effective strategy for winning at slots is to just avoid the progressive games as much as possible.

Conclusion

I could write an entire book about slot machine strategy, but I can also sum up what that book would have to say in a single sentence:

You can’t win at slot machines, and you should probably play a different game.

Also, if you like machine gambling because you can avoid socializing with other players, try real money video poker. It offers the same kind of ambiance and solo gambling opportunity, but the payback percentage is almost certainly better.

It has the additional advantage of being more engaging. You have actual decisions on every hand that matter.

On a slot machine, all you do is press the button and hope.