The Casino Floor was my home for the best part of 10 years. I lived in Las Vegas and worked for a Slot Machine manufacture as a Casino Systems Engineer. This work required me to work in a variety of casinos in Las Vegas and around the United States. Eventually I moved to Europe where I also worked in Casinos around Europe and the World. But the questions from every player (punter) remained the same.

• Best Slot Machines To Play
• Mr Lucky Slots

• Which machine is lucky?
• What's the secret to winning?
• Did you program a secret code into a machine?
• How do I win?

My answer was and still is Luck has nothing to do with it!. Slot machines are programmed computers that are designed to seperate you from your money as quickly as possible without it appearing like you lost. Slot machines are programmed with a PAR or Hold percentage checkout Wikipedia's defintion on exactly how it works. This means a mathmatical algorithm determines the outcome of the slot machine. Over the lifetime of the machine the casino know's approximately how much money this machine should make for the casino. So the casino already knows what the machine is supposed to do. That's not luck!

1. Carry a horseshoe, rabbit's foot or four-leafed clover. Keep a genuine badger’s tooth in your left-hand trouser pocket. Wearing something red. Crossing your legs while gambling. The Norse believed that acorns brought good luck. Real acorns or those made of gold, silver or wood are all good.
2. Read on to determine if $25 slots are the way to go, and if not just how to use that $25-a-spin money to milk the excess wealth the casino has stored in its high limit repositories. Playing $25 Slot Machines Equals More Wins. $25 slot machines generally tend to pay out more often than any other type of machine.
3. There are two important things to keep in mind about slot machines in general: first, you won’t know what the odds of winning at any given machine are, but you can determine the various payout levels for each machine. Secondly, you can’t do anything (legally) to change the odds of winning once you start playing.

History of the Slot Machine

Slot tip #4: Bet maximum credits. Although you are not able to influence the outcome of the spin, one slot machine trick is to max your wagers. Betting maximum credits is the best slot machine strategy, because you do hit that winning payline combination you’ll receive the maximum amount of reward.

This is not a history lesson on the evolution of the slot machine itself from mechanical to today's network connected computer. This is the history of how Slot Machines evolved to separate you from your money faster and more effeciently.

• Tokens/Coins - The first step in gambling is inserting money into the slot machine. The first method that was used on Slot Machines were the coin/token acceptors. The introduction of these acceptors revolutionized the Slot Machine and helped create what they are today. However as time went on it was quickly realized that players cannot insert money very quickly which slows down game play as well as profits for the casinos.

• Bill Acceptors - Bill acceptors also doubled, tripled, and even blew the tops off casinos with profit gains. Now players can insert a currency note into a slot machine and play off the credits. This not only increased the amount of games played per minute but also the Casino's bottom line. This led to yet another shortfall. If a customer wished to change machines or cashout they had to wait for the slot machine to spit out your winnings in coins which depending on the amount, lasted sometime or worse yet the machine was empty or didn't have enough coins and was locked waiting for someone to come pay the winnings. This reduced games played per minute and effected casino profits while the players were waiting instead of playing.

• Tickets - Tickets were introduced circa 2002. Ticket-in/Ticket-out allowed players to easily cashout their winnings move to another machine and continue playing quickly & easily. This not only reduced casino staff but increased casino revenues once again and increase the amount of games played per minute that players could play. Ticketing is still used around the world today and is considered a necessity for today's slot machines.

• Smart Cards - Although Smart Cards were introduced before Tickets it was not as widely accepted as tickets. The early Smart Card systems were slow, unreliable, and customers didn't trust their money on cards. Smart Cards are still being used but not nearly widely accepted as ticketing.

• Loyalty Cards/Bonusing - Now the boom of loyalty cards have somewhat replaced Smart Cards. Players accumulate points with a players card which can then be converted to credits on a machine. Better yet the loyalty card also allow you to win seperate winnings that are stored on your account and can easily transfer to other machines.

The Psychology of a slot machine

Slot machines have been designed to make the player as comfortable as possible. The seating positon, graphics, and even the sound of the machine is tuned to appeal to the player. I've even experienced some machines that emitted an aroma to attract players(this didn't work).

As I've traveled the world it came to my attention that certain cultures gravatate to certain slot machine themed games. Like Cleopatra/Egyptian themed games are a huge hit in southern Europe, Gold Mining & TV Shows themes in the United States, and dragon and Asian themed games obviously are big in Asia. Not only the design of the machine is taken into consideration but also the location of the casino. All of these stastics are recorded and used to develop new games and features to better attrack more players.

Present Day Casinos

Today casinos can change every aspect of a casino floor in a moments notice. Server Based Gaming was introduced a few years ago and has been spreading like wild fire across the world. This enables a casino to change par/hold percentages, game themes, and even machine configurations on the fly.

A casino can change their games and configuration of the casino floor for an upcoming weekend tighter (less winning) then loosen them back up during the week (more winning) to adapt to the clientele and attrack customers during off peak hours all from the click of a mouse button. As more data is collected by casino's they create better marketing campaigns, analyze slot machine performance, and player tendacies all to tune the casino floor better for the best revenue optimization. This is all done every time you spin the wheels of a machine.

How to win playing slot machines

So back to one of the original question of how do I win? Well that's easy. Keep your money in your pocket and head home. But if you ignore this advice here are some tips on winning at the slots. Remember one thing, Las Vegas was built by a bunch of losers not by a bunch of winners.

• Play Video Poker - Video Poker has the best odds on the casino floor. However Poker also requires the players input. So you may throw away a Royal Flush (Seen it happen) because you never knew you had one.

• Always play Max Bet / Cover all Lines - I cannot say this one loud enough. If you don't play Max Bet and cover all the lines you will never hit the big payouts. It is also very common that Bets other than Max Bet have worse odds.

• The End Game - Many times casinos will configure a bank of machines with the ends as the highest paying and the middle less so. It is also possible that machines in the back of the casino have better payouts than those at the front. However this tip is set on a per casino basis.

• Become friends with slot attendants - Although they cannot tell you which machine to play. They can tell you which machines they visit more often than others. If they don't tell you then pull a seat up at the bar and watch which machines they visit. If you see a pattern develop you may want to head over to those machines.

Sorry about the delay since my last posting. I’ve been hard at work reading slot machine manufacturer specification sheets, and also playing the slots in my local casino – so that I can now bring you a list of slot machine payout cycles / volatility. I don’t believe you’ll find this information elsewhere! I researched it, I’ve prepared it (as I do with ALL content on this site) – so if by chance it ends up appearing somewhere else on the Internet going forward, remember where you saw it FIRST. Here!

To my mind there are three main types of slot machines. Those that have Frequent Hits and Modest Wins, those with Mid-range Hits and Medium Wins, and those with Less Frequent Hits and Larger Wins. I’ve arranged my list / tables with this in mind. I’ve considered slot machines from multiple slot machine manufacturers: IGT, Aristocrat, WMS, Bally, etc to try and provide a comprehensive listing. That said, I’m only featuring about 100 slot machines here – and there are many many thousands of slot machine varieties out there… still, it’s a start right?

Best Slot Machines To Play

If you’re a small recreational slot player, sticking with Frequent Hits and Modest Wins machines will lower your risk of going broke early. Middle of the road slot players with a few hundred dollars of bankroll might enjoy the Mid-range Hits and Medium Wins machines. Only serious / well bankrolled players should ideally play the Less Frequent Hits and Larger Wins slot machines – these are VERY volatile!

Enjoy the listing, and feel free to send me your comments or an email.

Slot machines with FREQUENT HITS and MODEST WINS
50 Lions
Black Rhino
Canary Riches
Heart of Gold
Incan Pyramid
Love Birds
Macaw Magic
Money Storm
Money Tree
Outback Jack
Ramses Prox
Where’s The Gold
Wild Cougar
Wild Goose
Wild Jungle

Mr Lucky Slots

Slot machines with MID-RANGE HITS and MEDIUM WINS
Adonis
Aloha Magic
Arabian Jewels
Buccaneer
Corrida De Toros
Desert Gold
Dolphin Treasure
Geisha
Get Eggcited
Golden Canaries
Golden Gong
Golden Pyramids
Good Fortune
Grizzly
Helen Of Troy
Hollywood Dreams
House of Hearts
Jungle Jive
King of Neptune
King of The Nile
Koala Mint
LA Gator
Lucky Jack
Miss Kitty
Money Beans
Money Bears
Monkey In The Middle
Moon Festival
Moulin Nights
Musketeer
Mystic Mermaid
Nerds Gone Wild
Orchid Mist
Owl Capone
Oz Great Chase
Oz Jungle
Oz Lost City
Oz Safari
Panther Magic
Pelican Pete
Penguin Pays
Pot of Gold
Queen of The Nile
Rapid Riches
Return of the Samurai
Roll Up Roll Up
Seal The Deal
Show Me The Money
Spring Carnival
Super Stars
Superbucks 2
Superbucks 3
Superbucks 4
Sweet Hearts II
Triple Tigers
Venetian Nights
Viking Warrior
White Russia
Wicked Winnings
Wild Hearts
Wild Thing
Winning Streak

Slot machines with LESS FREQUENT HITS and LARGER WINS
5 Dragons
Anthony & Cleopatra
Big Ben
Brazil
Centurion
Choy Sun Doa
Crystal Springs
Dragon Lord
Dream Catcher
Fire Dancer
Fox On The Run
Genghis Khan
Golden Incas
Inca Chief
Inca Sun
Indian Dreaming
Island Delight
Kakadu Dreaming
Line King
Magician
Ms Foxy Fortune
Mystic Chief
Mystic Power
Peacock Magic
Phoneix Fantasy
Pompeii
Pride Of Africa
Queen Of Sheba
Red Baron
Star Drifter
Sun Queen
Temple Of Zeus
Tiki Torch
Water Margin
Whales Of Cash
Wild Africa
Wild Ways
Wings Over Olympus
Zorro

The return of a slot machine is the percentage of money actually paid out vs. The amount of money paid in.If you put $100 into a machine and get $92 back, your return was 92%. If all players put $1,000,000 into a casino's machines in one week, and they collectively won $967,000, then the return was 96.7%. Las vegas slot machine returns.