Gaming Machines are the most common and most played game in any casino or pub, but a lot of people don’t have a clear grasp of how they work. In fact, some folks have complete confusion regarding how they work.
Gaming machines use a random number generator
Early gaming machines were mechanical (with slots for coins) but they still made use of a random number generator, in the same way that a roulette wheel, or a pair of dice are also a similar thing. Modern gaming machines use a CPU to produce random numbers, and these govern the results of the game.
The key thing to remember is that the outcomes are truly random. The game doesn’t operate on any kind of recurrent basis. It’s not something you can predict, any more than you can guess with any degree of inevitability what the next card will be when dealing out cards.
Gaming Machines typically have three reels but occasionally it can be up to five reels
The reel is the image that rotates in the front of the machine. It has numerous symbols on it, and if you line up certain mixtures of symbols, you win the cash. The less likely it is to line up a particular group of symbols, the greater the pay out on that particular mixture.
For years, these reels were just big metal hoops, but now that these gaming slot machines are operated by computers, they’re often just images on a video screen instead. We still sell the authentic thing though, as we believe the virtual ones are no comparison. The guts of the machines are essentially the same though.
The weighting is what regulates how likely a specific stop is to be selected. As an example, imagine you have a game with 10 symbols, but one of those symbols is unique and only appears once every 200 spins. The chances of getting 3 of that symbol are 1/200 X 1/200 X 1/200, or 1/2,000,000. You could hypothetically offer a pay out of up to £2,000,000 on that grouping and the machine would still break even over the machines life time.
Another symbol might be planned to appear half of the time, so your odds of hitting that symbol may be as low as ½ X ½ X ½, or 1/6. If that gives you 2 to 1 odds, the proprietor still makes a profit from the machine, but the player still feels like their winning on a fairly frequent basis.