Slot players don’t interact with dealers on every play, as table games players do. There are far fewer situations in which tipping casino personnel is common behavior. On slots, the main tipping situation comes with hand-paid jackpots. Most slot machine payoffs just add credits to the meter. Slot Machine Question - Does using a slot club or rewards card decrease my chances of winning? These are just to track your play so the casino can reward you with comps to make you enjoy your stay and return in the future.
The first time I saw people use member cards for slot games, I didn’t know what they were. I asked the man sitting next to me and he explained a few details about the rewards club. But he wasn’t using a card himself.
When I asked him why, he said he once had a card but stopped winning when he played with the card. He thought the casino was monitoring his playing and adjusting the slot game results.
This rumor has circulated both online and offline for many years. It’s normal for people to hear something repeatedly and wonder if there is truth to it. But I’ve never found any proof that casinos can change the way slot games play by flipping a switch.
What makes it difficult to combat this idea and other rumors about slot machines is the many different markets where you find them. Slot machine games are regulated by each country. Complying with different regulations may mean that a slot maker must change how its games work.
The clearest example I can give is how slot games are decided in the United States. Class II slot games decide the outcome on the basis of one random number then configure the display to match that result. Class III games use several random numbers to control the reels.
How Modern Slot Machine Games Work
There aren’t many physical slot games left. They’re all electronic now, and the electronic machines use random number generator chips to decide results.
But there is more involved than just generating a random number. The “slots” in the slot games are spaces on reels. The computers now simulate these reels.
Former and current slot machine manufacturing employees answer questions about game design on several websites including Quora. This answer was posted in September 2014, and it explains how the simulated reels are managed by software.
The programs to simulate the reels and assign the random numbers are etched into ROMs, Read-Only Memory chips. These ROMs must be physically changed by a technician to change how the game payout percentages work.
Legitimate Online Casino Operators Lease Games From Service Providers
There are over 2,000 online casinos. It’s impossible to be sure about how they all manage their slot games. But what is known about the most popular casinos is that they don’t run their slot games from their own servers.
Instead the online casinos lease game services from secure data centers. These gaming platforms are run by companies like Blue Ocean and EveryMatrix. Some of the game design companies also run their own servers, leasing resources to online casinos.
Although it would be simple for online gaming companies to switch things up, they would risk losing independent certifications if they allowed the games to be rigged.
There’s no need for casinos to adjust the percentages. They can order the percentage breakouts for house edge and return to player that they want to offer. This way, they maintain competitiveness and support long-term profitability.
Many Games Publish the Theoretical Return to Player
Some slot games include the theoretical return to player in their help screens.
If the players see that RTP has been adjusted downward, they can play elsewhere. If players only suspect that the RTP has been adjusted without proper notification, they might still leave.
Casinos need players. The best strategy to grow their customer base is to keep game rewards high enough to make the risk worthwhile.
Some Governments Regulate Return to Player Percentages
Licensed gaming casinos must comply with local laws governing their businesses. Some countries provide more regulation than others.
In the United States, commercial land-based casinos are regulated by their states. However, Native American casinos are mostly regulated by the tribal governments that own them. Each jurisdiction has the authority to set minimal RTP percentages to ensure the casinos don’t make too much money.
The 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act creates the legal framework used by tribes to protect their traditional gaming activities from state regulatory laws. The act also defines the three classes of gaming and how they are to be regulated.
Class II games are regulated by the tribes but only in states that allow any kind of gaming. Only Class III games are subject solely to state regulation.
True slot machine games are Class III games. Native American casinos offer Class II bingo games that are made to look like slot games. The game cabinets must display the casino bingo games that are used to determine wins.
Class II slot machines may have reels and bonus games but they’re not really slot machine games as defined by federal law.
How Do You Determine the Odds That a Slot Game Pays?
Casinos may or may not be required to declare the return to player for their slot games. Some casinos place a plate or sticker on their slot games with a notice. Other casinos leave it to the game help screens (thus, the manufacturers) to inform players.
The games’ odds may be reported as a theoretical RTP percentage, but they could also be reported as a ratio, similar to the way lottery games declare chances of winning a prize. Either way, these games don’t have to tell you how often to expect to win a prize of any amount.
Some players merely judge the looseness of slot games by how much money they win or how often they win as they play the games.
Some players judge the looseness of slot games by how popular they appear to be. This observational strategy assumes that the crowd knows more than the individual.
One of my friends tells me he only plays slot games with low jackpots. His reasoning is that players need to lose less money for someone to win $10,000 than for someone to win $20,000.
Slot Machines May Have Programmed Payout Limits
In another post on Quora from 2016, someone claimed to have industry experience in the Caribbean.
In his post, he said that a machine won’t pay more than it has accumulated after the first month of operation. That first month establishes the limit based on the profit the machine made.
The system is designed to be random within a range of percentages. The software decides when and how much to pay but won’t go over the monthly limit.
It should be obvious that this limit could be reset.
The Games Are Designed to Be as Random as Possible
People who design and repair slot machine games express much trust in the random number generator chips these games use. The RNGs, as they are called, use the latest available algorithms at the time they are manufactured.
Math has not yet progressed to the point where truly random numbers can be generated. Mechanical devices require input from an outside source to be truly random.
The way slot game designers handle this limitation is they design the chips to generate thousands of random numbers every second. The random numbers each take a turn at being available for use by the game.
Because of the percentage payouts and internal limits they use, slot machine games don’t have to be reprogrammed to improve casino profits. Everything is designed to run with as little intervention as possible.
And that is better for the casino because the more they can intervene in a game’s function, the more likely they’ll face regulation over that intervention.
Casino game techs often say that replacing chips in slot machines must follow a special procedure (in the United States). They are closely monitored and every part must be accounted for. So, it’s less expensive for casinos if they don’t tweak the games.
Conclusion
An honest casino doesn’t need to control who wins at a slot game. They already control who can play a slot game. They can ask anyone to leave for any reason.
Naturally, casinos don’t do that. Instead. they purchase gaming systems that are designed to create an entertaining experience for patrons while legally retaining a profitable percentage of wagers.
No matter how much one’s frustration tempts a player into wondering about Big Brother Casino tweaking the game, it’s more profitable for the casino to let nature take its course.
Many gambling enthusiasts in the United States are at least vaguely familiar with the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, US law Pub.L. 100–497, 25 U.S.C. § 2701.
Passed in 1988, this federal law established how Indian (Native American) gaming would be managed and regulated. The act included definitions for 3 types or classes of gambling games. They are usually referred to as:
- Class I games
- Class II games
- Class III games
Congress passed the law to help Native American tribes and nations improve their economic status after more than a century of oppression and exclusion in mainstream US society. Many Native American groups wanted to build land-based casinos, which would not only attract tourists but create jobs.
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There was considerable resistance to this movement in many states, most of which did not allow gambling of any kind. To help resolve the conflicts and provide some clarity between treaties, state law, and federal law, the US government established a framework that eliminated some barriers to Native American investment in gambling industries. The law also provided some regulatory limits to respect state laws.
The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act introduced some confusion into the worldwide lexicon of gambling games because the distinctions are only observed within US jurisdictions. Other nations regulate gambling with different definitions.
But as the internet became a worldwide communications network in the 1990s and 2000s, most of the content published about gambling dealt with US law and casinos. Although non-US casinos have to observe their own laws and regulations, players who research gambling law on the internet must be careful to distinguish between USA gambling definitions and other gambling definitions.
What Are the 3 Classes of Gambling Games?
Class I gambling includes all traditional Native American gambling games, most of which are only used for ceremonial purposes or in the contexts of cultural-specific celebrations and ceremonies. These games, which are only available at small stakes, are completely regulated by the Native American tribes and nations.
Class II gambling includes all variations of bingo games, player-vs-player card games like poker (where the house does not play a hand in the game), tip jars, pull-tab games, punch card games, and anything similar. Some people mistakenly include lottery games in this category, but the law clearly excludes state-run lotteries and similar games from Class II.
Class III gambling consists of everything that is not included under Class I gambling or Class II gambling. That means the lottery games you play are Class III gambling games. Slot games, roulette, dice games, and card games like blackjack where the house is also a player all fall under the Class III gambling games category.
So How Can There Be Class II Slot Machine Games?
If you’ve ever visited a Native American casino–like the Winstar Casino in Oklahoma, you’ve almost certainly played some Class II slot machine games. They look much like traditional slot machine games. They have 3 to 5reels with symbols on them, they pay jackpots, and they do everything else you expect of a slot game.
And yet, they are not slot machine games.
A clever company in Franklin, TN, known as Video Gaming Technologies, or VGT, developed electronic bingo games for Native American casinos that use the results of those bingo games to emulate slot game action.
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In other words, the slot machine cabinets contain two screens, one that displays the results of the bingo game and one that displays the results of the simulated slot game. This dual visualization of the gambling game takes advantage of the fact that at the core of all gambling games is a simple principle:
You’re making a wager on an unknown outcome. What the Class II slot games do is take the result of the bingo game to determine what happens in the slot game.
What’s cool about this approach is that VGT was able to add bonus games to the bingo games that work like slot machine bonus games. They’ve developed a huge selection of bingo games that play like slot games. VGT is so successful they were acquired by Aristocrat Leisure Limited in 2014, although the former VGT still operates as an independent subsidiary company of Aristocrat.
How Do Class III Slot Machine Games Work?
The key to the hybridization of bingo and slot machine games is the Random Number Generator. Mathematicians have been developing algorithms to calculate unpredictable numbers for hundreds of years. For a detailed look at the concept, read “How Do Random Number Generators Work?” on Jackpots Online. Although the RNG does not produce a truly random number, in typical circumstances the number is random enough. Even so, slot game designers use random numbers in multiple ways.
Before I continue, I should mention that US law requires slot game designers to work by different rules from other countries’ slot games. In the United Kingdom, for example, the outcome of a slot game is determined by a single random number. In the United States, the outcome of the Class III slot game is determined by several random numbers.
To begin with, an electronic slot machine or online slot game uses a software concept called an array to represent each reel. Computer arrays work like rows of boxes, where each box holds one piece of information. The arrays for slot reels may have anywhere from 22 to 256 slots. Each slot in the array holds a symbol marker that tells the slot machine game what to display on the screen.
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Slot game designers use special algorithms to decide how often each type of symbol should appear in each slot array. The frequency of the symbol’s use in the array and the size of the array determine how likely or unlikely it is for any single spin of the slot game reels to create one or more winning combinations. The game’s software may award prizes for one or more winning combinations at a time, depending on how many pay lines the game offers.
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The random number generator produces a new number every few milliseconds. The number is placed in a temporary memory location called a register. The slot game software grabs the latest random number from the register and uses that to determine what happens next. For example, a 5 reel slot game needs 5 random numbers to pick how many slot positions will be spun on each reel before the reels stop in new locations. If the slot game awards random prizes like progressive jackpots, these are determined by additional random numbers.
How Class II Slot Machine Games Differ from Class III Slot Machine Games
What VGT did was create bingo game software that determines the actual prizes awarded to players.
But to make the bingo games look like slot games, they used the bingo game’s random results as if they are the random numbers that Class III slot games use.
To ensure that the slot game winning combinations match the bingo game prize values the VGT games work more like slot games in the United Kingdom. The game determines what prize was won and then creates a short video simulation of the slots landing on that winning combination.
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Conclusion
How do class II slot machines work?
Either way, the slot games award prizes on a random basis. You could say that US gaming laws are paranoid in that Class III slot game software is required to closely emulate the physical spinning of slot reels. In fact, physical slot reel games have been displaying results of these virtual, in-memory array games for more than 20 years. So even when you see physical reels spinning, their stop positions have already been determined within microseconds of your pressing SPIN.
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The Class II slot gaming experience is a fun gaming experience.
But the bingo game is displayed on a small screen, because VGT’s designers have found that players don’t enjoy looking at bingo patterns as much as they enjoy looking at 3 to 5 reels spinning and stopping on various symbols.
For the player, what matters is that they’re gambling for real money on an unpredictable outcome–and they can enjoy an entertaining evening with friends or loved ones.