Readers ask if quick reflexes are the key to winning
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By John Grochowski
I keep a list of questions that I’m most often asked about slot machines. You could probably tick off some of them: “Are games programmed to go cold after a big win?” “Do you get less payback when you use your rewards card?” And the big one, “Can you tell me how to win?”
Those have been standards ever since I started writing about casinos and casino games 20 years ago. But recently, another question has been shooting up the charts. I have it all the way up at No. 2 on the readers’ hit parade:
“I’ve noticed on a lot of video slot games that if I hit the button a second time while the reels are spinning, they stop right away. I was wondering if I could use this to my advantage. If I see the bonus triggers or the jackpot symbols at the top, should I quickly hit the button again and try to stop the reels?”
I had that thought myself the first time I accidentally double-hit a button and saw the reels click to an immediate halt. Could this be an answer to the chart-topping question, “how to win on the slots?”
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. In nearly all slot games that allow you to stop the reels, there is no skill or timing involved on your part. The random number generator has already determined your outcome when you hit the button to spin the reels, and you’re going to get the same result regardless of whether you stop the reels early, or let them halt in their own time.
When you play a slot machine, the game isn’t actually being played out on the reels, whether it uses “real” reels or video reels. It’s being played internally, on the game’s random number generator. The reels are just a player-friendly interface, and are told where to stop by the RNG. If there’s a malfunction and the reel display doesn’t match the numbers generated, it’s the RNG that counts. Large jackpots can be denied—and have been denied—if a check shows the random numbers on the internal computer chip don’t match the winning symbols on the reels.
But this is extremely rare. The engineering is good enough that almost all the time, the RNG and reel display are going to match up. This doesn’t change if you double-hit the bet button. If the RNG has spit out a random number that tells the first reel to stop on a single bar, then you’re going to get a single bar—regardless of whether you hit the button a second time for a “quick stop,” or just let them take their own sweet time.
There are rare exceptions. When I’ve answered similar questions in the past, I’ve mentioned IGT’s Reel Edge games. In their original incarnation, Reel Edge games enabled players to touch and stop the reels one at a time. There was actual skill involved. Your timing in stopping the reels determined the outcome. The reels spun very, very fast, so it was going take a keen eye and sharp reflexes to get better than random results, but it was possible.
I gave it a try, and found my reflexes just weren’t fast enough to generate more than my normal share of winners. In the original three-reel Blood Life game, I identified a green 7 as the easiest symbol to pick out as it whizzed by. I touched each reel individually as I saw a green 7 reach the top of the slot window, and managed to stop 7s on all three reels. Alas, I failed to land them all on the same payline. Some younger folks with quicker reactions may have been able to do better.
I don’t know if any of the first generation of Reel Edge games remain on casino floors. They were never widespread, and I don’t get lists from casinos or manufacturers telling me what games are available in any given casino. The new generation of Reel Edge puts the skill-based portions of the games in the bonus events.
Blood Life’s updated video incarnation, Blood Life Legends, allows you to test your skill with a joystick to guide a bat through the ups, downs, twists and turns of a cave as you try to collect gems for bonuses. There is actual skill involved, but it’s not the reel-stopping experience readers have been asking about.
On most slot games, even in the bonus events you’re getting an illusion of skill rather than actual skill. And when it comes to stopping the reels, it’s the random number generator, not your reflexes, that determines the results.
What about my readers’ other top questions?
To answer another—no, games are not programmed to go cold after big wins. Results remain as random as humans can program a computer to be. As long as the RNG keeps doing its thing, any big jackpot, any hot streak, and any cold streak eventually fade away into statistical insignificance, and the machine comes very close to its expected payback percentage.
No, you don’t get less payback when you use your rewards card. The player rewards system doesn’t interact with the RNG.
And no, with rare exceptions, there is no way to beat the slots except by being in the right place at the right time. There have been opportunities for small profit on games with banked bonuses such as the old WMS game Piggy Bankin’, where the sharpies would start to play only when there were enough coins in the bank to give the player an edge.
Such games are not common. Just as with stopping the reels early, your results are up to chance and the RNG.
People don’t like to blame themselves for their own failures. It’s easier to blame someone else or an act of God than it is to accept responsibility for your own bad decision-making. From politicians losing elections to drivers claiming they did nothing wrong, humans often make excuses in bad situations.
Gamblers do this all the time. Someone else is draining the slot machine of all its wins. Or another player has brought bad mojo to the table.
Gamblers have a strong tendency to be superstitious. They often adopt little rituals without realizing it. Somewhere deep inside your head a little voice says, “If you do this one silly thing, your chances will improve.”
And the same is true after you don’t win. Okay, I’m not saying I hear voices in my head when I gamble, but there’s always a figurative “voice” urging me to think about bad luck. I resist the temptation to blame my losses on other players but the distraction of thinking about other players’ wins may make me lose…
…And that must mean there is a little truth to the rumor, right?
Here’s what I know about how other players might affect your gambling success.
1 – Other Blackjack Players at the Table Don’t Matter
In real money blackjack, the probability that the next card drawn will be an ace or a deuce changes after each card is dealt. This is the fundamental principle underlying card counting.
Where players go wrong with this idea, and I admit I once strongly felt this way too, is they assume that other players’ decisions are changing the distribution of the deck.
That distribution is fixed once the deck is shuffled and until the next time the deck is shuffled or replaced. The percentages should be calculated as a sequence of events. A friend had to explain this to me more than once before I finally got it.
It doesn’t matter how many players are sitting at the table. And what’s more, it doesn’t matter how many cards they do or don’t ask for.
It feels logical to say, “Yes, but if Bob here gets an ace, then I have less chance of being dealt an ace I need.” There is some truth in that but it’s not the whole truth.
Part of the game is random chance and you’re not guaranteed success for any reason. Good blackjack players make decisions on the basis of two factors:
- The cards in their hands
- The dealer’s up card(s)
Nothing else affects the game. You either draw one card too many or one card too few. Your game is decided once you stand or bust.
The dealer’s game is decided by the house rules. You’re not playing against the dealer’s judgment. You’re playing against random chance and how the house handles it.
If Bob over there drew an ace maybe that helped you beat the dealer. Maybe there are three aces sitting in a row and Bob went first but stood. That leaves two aces for you.
What decision will you make when you see that first ace?
2 – Slot Machines Don’t Care About Anything
The slot machine isn’t alive. It isn’t smart. It has no idea about anything.
The slot machine runs through its programming every time the “Spin” button is pressed. That random number generator is cycling through its values at heart-wrenching speed.
Someone else’s success or failure doesn’t matter. They can win a jackpot and someone can come along right behind them and win another jackpot.
In theory, the smaller the jackpot is on a slot machine, the more often it should pay that prize. In reality, it all comes down to what the random number generator is doing when the button is pushed.
3 – Poker Players Have a Little Influence on Your Game
The other players sitting around the table may try to intimidate you. By the same token, you can try to intimidate them.
Who is in or out only affects the game as slightly as in blackjack as far as the cards are concerned. Once the deck is shuffled, the cards’ distribution doesn’t change. The probability that the next card to be dealt is based on what’s in the deck, not what you need.
In blackjack, players get all their cards in one turn. Poker is a multi-round game. Thus, unlike in blackjack, other player decisions can deprive you of opportunities for future good cards, or create them.
But it still comes down to what you decide to do when it’s your turn to play.
4 – Craps Is the Only Standard Game Where Players Bet on Players
Craps is all about betting on the dice and the dice are thrown by the players. The pass/don’t pass and come/don’t come bets are the bets for or against players.
These bets don’t affect how the dice are rolled but how the dice are rolled affects these bets.
So, in craps, it’s correct to say that other players affect the outcome of your wagers. But only one player at a time has that power over your game. It doesn’t matter how many other players are at the table.
Unlike all the games I’ve mentioned so far, roulette, keno, baccarat, and most (if not all) other casino games aren’t affected by player decisions. Their chances of winning are decided by their own choices and random chance.
5 – Other Players Have an Indirect Influence on You
The mere act of thinking about how other players affect your luck draws them into your luck. This isn’t a karma thing. It’s basic psychology.
You can pay attention to your own decisions or worry about what other people are doing. Envy often affects our choices in what games to play, how much to bet, how to play our cards, and so forth.
Letting worry make your decisions for you may not always hurt your chances of winning, especially in random games like slots. But it spoils your mood and ruins your fun.
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It’s even less fair to allow yourself to fall prey to these suspicions. Worrying doesn’t help you make better decisions. It may not affect your judgment, but if it does, then it’s more likely to be for worse than for better.
Conclusion
Gamblers will always believe in luck. In a way, science confirms that luck exists if you define luck as random chance. Randomness is the cornerstone of gambling games.
But gamblers aren’t doing themselves any favors by assuming that other players are sucking all the wins out of a game with their decisions. There may be better card players than you, but they have no more honest control over the cards than you do.
The result of every game is literally out of your hands, even after you’ve thrown the dice.
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