I wrote a blogpost a few weeks ago saying that playing Ten Play has less variance than Five Play which has less variance than Triple Play which has less variance than single-line play, assuming you’re playing the same total bet. A comment was posted, unanswered by others, which asked: “Would this apply to all games of chance, including slots?”

My answer is that slots generally do not have the same structure as the Triple Play family of games. And by the Triple Play structure, I mean all lines have the same starting position after the deal. I certainly haven’t studied all varieties of slot machines, so maybe . . .

In the accumulative type of slots that I play, every combination of denomination and number of coins bet is in a different position except immediately after the machine is installed or the machine is reset. In a hypothetical Yellow Bob machine, let’s say they have a Mini meter, a Minor meter, and a Major meter. 

At any given point, the meters from bottom to top, might be 7-10-8 for 1¢ 100 coins; 12-19-9 for 1¢ 200 coins; and 15-10-12 for 1¢ 500 coins, etc. Each of these have a different EV. Playing the 100-coin version in this case would be a worse bet than the others simply because the meters are lower, not because you’re betting fewer coins. Depending on how frequently the jackpots come about, and how much each spin is worth on average when it does hit, either the $2 or the $5 game could be the better play. It’s possible that none of these have an EV exceeding 100%.

Let’s say the same machine also has games for 2¢, 5¢, and 10¢ — each having three different “number of coins.” That’s 12 separate games you have to check. Any of them might be the best play right now. Or, most often, none of them.

Some manufacturers give you a higher return for higher denominations. That is, maybe the 1¢ and 2¢ games, in all three “number of coins” variations, have an overall return of 90% and the 5¢ and 10¢ versions have an overall return of 92%. You either have to have inside information on the RTPs (return to players), or capture a lot of data to know if this is true.

This would seem to imply that the higher denominations are a better bet, but that’s not necessarily the case. Assume “average” meter readings, betting $5 at a 90% rate means you’re losing 50¢ per pull on average. Betting $50 at a 92% rate (still assuming average meter readings), means you’re losing $4 per pull.

One older game, called Clover Link Xtreme, has games in the four denominations we’ve discussed. You can have penny games with 500 coins (for a $5 bet), a nickel game with 100 coins bet (for the same $5 bet) and a dime game with 50 coins (again for the same $5 bet). These three separate games will all become positive at the same time. In this case, you want to be playing the dime game because hitting the Mini on the penny game is worth $10 while hitting the Mini on the dime game is worth $100. This is the only game I know that’s like this, but, again, I certainly don’t know all the games.

On slots that don’t accumulate, playing the higher denominations may have a better percentage return. So, if you’re playing until you reach a specific goal, say 1,000 tier credits, you may lose less on average if you play it on higher denominations — if this is a machine where the larger denominations yield a higher percentage. This will be a higher EV, but also higher variance. The amount you bet each hand is a key part of the variance calculation.

Keep in mind, though, that these slots rarely return any percentage close to what you can get playing video poker. Even bad video poker games return more than most slot machines. If you have the knowledge to know which video poker machines to play, and know how to play them reasonably well, that’s a much better bet than most slot machines. If you know how to identify advantage slots and can find them in a positive state, slots can certainly be more lucrative than video poker. But slot knowledge is hard to come by, and you’ll have lots of competition. There is some information in Michael Shackleford’s latest version of Gambling 102, and a more comprehensive book about slots is in the works at Huntington Press. I don’t know when it will be released.