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These machines are a lot like a legal brief: You'd better push the help button
on these machines and read all the information available. These machines want
you to know that each coin played to get in on the biggest jackpot. For example,
you can collect the winning by playing one or two coins - small amounts. If
you hit the jackpot playing one of these machines with only one or two coins,
you don't win a thing. Play these machines only with maximum coins. Again, read
the slot machine, all of it.
A system-wide progressive
slotmachine. As with other PlayTech progressive jackpots this
slots game has a fixed coin size of $1. You can play up to
five coins. A 5 coin bet is necessary to be eligible to win
the progressive jackpot. The Diamond Valley slotmachine has 5
reels and 5 paylines. Five Diamonds symbols will win 5,000
coins. If you bet 5 coins and you hit 5 Diamonds symbols on
the 5th payline.the progressive jackpot is yours!.
Jurassic Jackpot. is a three reel, one
payline, and two coin slot machine.
It has a wild, multiplier symbol and the maximum payout
is 1,600 coins.
The Jurassic Jackpot. symbol is wild and substitutes
for any other symbol to complete winning combinations.
A single Jurassic Jackpot symbol doubles the payout of any
combination it completes.
Two Jurassic Jackpot .symbols quadruple the payout
of any combination they complete.
In a modern slot machine,
the odds of hitting a particular symbol or combination of symbols
depends on how the virtual reel is set up. As we saw in the last
section, each stop on the actual reel may correspond to more than one
stop on the virtual reel. Simply put, the odds of hitting a particular
image on the actual reel depend on how many virtual stops correspond to
the actual stop.
In a typical weighted slot machine, the top jackpot stop (the one with
the highest-paying jackpot image) for each reel corresponds to only one
virtual stop. This means that the chance of hitting the jackpot image on
one reel is 1 in 64. If all of the reels are set up the same way, the
chances of hitting the jackpot image on all three reels is 1 in 643, or
262,144. For machines with a bigger jackpot, the virtual reel may have
many more stops. This decreases the odds of winning that jackpot
considerably.
The losing blank stops above
and below the jackpot image may correspond to more virtual stops than
other images. Consequently, a player is most likely to hit the blank
stops right next to the winning stop. This creates the impression that
they "just missed" the jackpot, which encourages them to keep gambling,
even though the proximity of the actual stops is inconsequential.
A machine's program is
carefully designed and tested to achieve a certain payback percentage.
The payback percentage is the percentage of the money that is put in
that is eventually paid out to the player. With a payback percentage of
90, for example, the casino would take about 10 percent of all money put
into the slot machine and give away the other 90 percent. With any
payback percentage under a 100 (and they're all under 100), the casino
wins over time.
In most gambling
jurisdictions, the law requires that payback percentages be above a
certain level (usually somewhere around 75 percent). The payback
percentage in most casino machines is much higher than the minimum --
often in the 90- to 97-percent range. Casinos don't want their machines
to be a lot tighter than their competitors' machines or the players will
take their business elsewhere.
The odds for a particular
slot machine are built into the program on the machine's computer chip.
In most cases, the casino cannot change the odds on a machine without
replacing this chip. Despite popular opinion, there is no way for the
casino to instantly "tighten up" a machine.
Machines don't loosen up on
their own either. That is, they aren't more likely to pay the longer you
play. Since the computer always pulls up new random numbers, you have
exactly the same chance of hitting the jackpot every single time you
pull the handle. The idea that a machine can be "ready to pay" is all in
the player's head, at least in the standard system.
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