Breaking the Slot Code – How would you use the information?

Quick background on how I got into advantage slot play after reading Gambling 102. My wife and I found a nice little edge on 8/5 Bonus Poker at Ameristar in Black Hawk. The mix of bounce-back offers, a Sunday kiosk free-play promo, and a Sportsbook app bonus made it a consistently positive play for us.

We'd also make a loop through town, walking from Monarch Casino on the east end up to Z Casino on the west end, vulturing machines at every casino along the way. It usually took about an hour, and honestly, it doubled as a pleasant morning walk.

In the short three years we did this, things changed. We went from finding a handful of playable machines on each walk to, more recently, not finding anything worth sitting down at.

Yesterday, Breaking the Slot Code arrived in the mail. After flipping through it, learning about games I didn't know, and getting deeper insight into the ones I already knew, I started thinking about how to actually use the information. For me, spending hours strictly vulturing machines isn't worth the effort, so trying to memorize every game in the book doesn't feel like a good use of time.

I think the best approach is simpler; bring the book on casino trips. Walk the floor, note which games from the book are actually there, and put notes on your phone about each one. Then, as you go about your normal routine, check those machines whenever you pass by. It keeps things easy and still gives you a shot at catching good plays when they appear.

The author advises not to do this, taking the book into the casino etc.  Page 5.

Candy

I would reference the book in my hotel room and put notes in my phone to refresh my memory when I find a potentially good play. 

I still would like to know exactly how one is supposed to evaaluate a machine as positive just by looking at it. Neither the base payback nor the frequency of the bonuses are stated anywhere, so how could you do better than hope that the game would confer an advantage?

The base payback, if you knew it, could be combined with the average bonus frquency to calculate how much you'd need to bleed before hitting the bonus, and that number could in turn be compared to the bonus amount to determine if the play is worth doing. But how would you determine those two numbers? What does the book say?

From a legal point of view, you're not using the book to cheat, and it's not an electronic device, so...it should be comparable to using a Basic Strategy card at the blackjack table: perfectly OK.

But because casinos are a law unto themselves, they could tackle you, knock you unconscious, tie you up, drag you outside, drive you to a cliff edge, and hurl you off. And really...casinos don't like vultures. They make the games less attractive by depleting the bonuses, and unlike when some idiot slot goober wins the bonus, the money doesn't go right back into some other machine--it gets taken away from the casino, never to return. They really don't like that.

He said that possibly they might ask you to leave, not much more.  But if that would bother you, don't do it.

Thanks for the clarification Max.

So far I've found a very basic nugget I wasn't aware of.  Nothing new to most I'm sure.

I often order their books, enjoy reading about anything Vegas and gambling.  Not an advantage player, can't answer Kevin's question about a machine being positive.

Candy

The machine gives off an easily decernible aura and when you rub the side of it, it purrs like a kitten.  This tells you it's ready to pay big.  Give it a try, you won't be disappointed. 

But what if the casinos know this and program the machine to purr when you're going to lose the next one hundred spins in a row? Maybe the machine is evil, and that's why it's purring!

Probably after we're all gone, the machines will read your chip implant and send a dose of dopamine directly to your brain as you walk by. Talk about targeted marketing!

Well, I want to know what the book says about that. That's pretty much the core of the whole premise, that there is a way to determine when a machine is +EV or not, and that must vary from one machine to another, from Dragon Doofus to Mad Cow Disease to Fat Chinese Guy Sitting on a Kettle. So there must be a trigger point, when the bonus in a given game reaches X.

Pretty much. Jackpot values, free spin values, potential wilds ect.

Spend $30 and buy the book, or spend $17 and buy Shackleford's book, then you'll get the gist of it; it's not like VP.