A friend of mine, “Sam,” plays advantage slots. He was describing a recent experience on a Buffalo game. There are literally dozens of varieties of Buffalo games — some beatable by knowledgeable players — some not. It’s not my purpose today to discuss which ones are beatable — and how. I understand that this upsets some of my readers who want me to tell them more about beating slots, but that’s not what I want to write about.
One feature of most of these games is that, in addition to the “regular” way of winning, if you’re dealt three gold coins, you get eight free spins. While those spins are being played, you can earn an additional five or eight free spins by being dealt two or three gold coins, respectively. Sometimes you can accumulate 40 or more free spins during this process.
During these free spins, the wild card symbols get multipliers. Your biggest scores come when you get one or more buffalos in the first column, wild cards with multipliers in the second, third, and fourth columns — and if you’re really lucky, more buffalos in the fifth column. The wild card multipliers work on other symbols in addition to buffalos, but usually it’s the multiplied buffalo symbols that provide the biggest wins.
It was one of these free spin situations that prompted Sam to talk to me. He was playing less than $1.50 per hand and after 56 free spins that started with three gold coins, ended up with an $1,800 jackpot. While other numbers in the game screamed “Play!” to the knowledgeable player, Sam decided to quit. After all, he argued, a jackpot this size is rare on games played for stakes this size. Hitting two or more such jackpots close together is rarer still. So, he decided to lock up his win and quit.
He asked my opinion on his decision.
I told him I would have continued to play. While these machines return a certain amount over time, “time” is measured in the hundreds of thousands (or more) hands. His recent jackpot has nothing to do with the short-term expectation on the machine. Since the indicators said to play, I would play. I walk all over casinos looking for such opportunities.
Sam also plays video poker. On several occasions, he has hit a royal flush, four aces, or other sizeable jackpot and continued to play. He accepts that in video poker one hand doesn’t influence what is coming next, but somehow, he thinks it’s different in slots.
Video poker is a game of skill, he correctly argues. There is skill in identifying the pay schedule and in playing every single hand. Slots, argues Sam correctly, are largely luck. Although there is skill in determining if various progressives on a slot machine make the game worth playing, and leaving the game after certain things happen, the basic playing of the game requires no skill at all. You hit the button and take what you get.
While most slot pros quit playing a slot machine when one or more progressives on the game are reset, hitting one of these free spin bonus rounds doesn’t count as a progressive being reset. These free play bonus rounds simply give you ammunition to continue playing.
Sometimes a jackpot is hit during the free spins, and in those cases, you usually should quit playing after the free plays are finished. At a minimum, you should re-evaluate and see if conditions remain ripe for continuing.
I never thought of this as a particularly subtle point, but Sam is a knowledgeable, winning player and he had it wrong. So, I decided that some of my readers could benefit from a discussion.
I would just comment that the notion is true that if you’ve just hit an $1,800 jackpot, the odds of hitting another one if you play some more (some limited amount of time) are small. But that notion being true is not because you just hit a big jackpot; it’s true whether you’ve just hit a big jackpot or not. (As we know, prior results don’t determine or even affect future results.) Your expectations should not be that you will hit another big jackpot if you play some more; rather, if you expect anything (and it’s doubtful as to whether you should expect any particular thing), it should be that you WON’T hit another big jackpot. That’s a very different situation than thinking about whether you will hit a bare-bones 4-of-a-kind in video poker if you play some more. Depending on the speed of the machine, the average time that it takes to hit a quad is well under 1 hour, so if you were to play for another hour, you’d be a slight favorite to get one, and if you played another 2 hours, you’d be a bigger favorite to get one. But going back to $1,800 jackpots: If you were to sit and play some more (1 hour? 2 hours?), the odds would be that you WON’T hit that big jackpot again in that limited time, so that’s enough to make the decision to stop playing a valid one.
I play advantage slots until the conditions aren’t favorable anymore, regardless of what I hit waiting for the payoff from the advantage situations.
I was playing the same game that Bob is talking about, hit the three coins, retriggered a few times, and was up a few hundred dollars, the game was still in a good state so I kept playing. Eventually spending all that I had won finally triggering the bonus that I sat down for. After the bonus was complete I was about $30 above the “high water mark” that I set during the three coins.
You never know what will happen with an advantage play, just hope for a profit and move on.
Hi Bob, I was wondering if there are any updates on the $150K losses from video poker. Have you managed to recover any of it yet?
I asked in last week’s post and crickets.
It has been my personal observation that when I hit a large payout and continued to play the same machine I have never increased my winnings by this continuation of play. After 35+ years of playing video poker I can only think of two occasions of observing others (and my own play) where another jackpot of any large amount occurred when one continued to play the same machine. My advice, thank the Lord and take the money and leave.