Question of the Day - 12 December 2022

Actually, we didn't mention a book, but a new chapter in the upcoming new edition of our best-selling Gambling 102 by Michael "Wizard of Odds" Shackleford.

The slot chapter in Gambling 102 is being updated as we write this to include nine games that, at some point in the play, turn positive for the player. These are known as “variable-state” or “accumulation” slots. Common among them is that bonus features "accumulate" during play.

These games have been around for at least a decade; S&H Green Stamps is the most famous of them, especially with advantage players. But they've been proliferating at a rapid rate recently and many APs, according to Shackleford, "focus a considerable part of their time and energy on playing such games." Indeed, in a comment about a recent QoD, Bob Dancer wrote, "I play more hours on slots these days than I do on video poker. And I'm not losing!"

The new chapter covers such games as Cashman Bingo, Rich Little Piggies, and Scarab, but there are many beatable slots out there these days and this chapter covers just a handful, enough to get you started. Michael explains how the games work, with bonuses, wild cards, feature spins, and the like, and serves up strategies for optimizing play when the machines creep into positive territory for the player. 

We can tell you that in Las Vegas, at least, there's a ton of competition among APs for these machines; Michael ranks accumulation slots right up there with card counting, video poker, and Internet bonuses as the four main eras of advantage play. It's possible, even probable, however, that the competition is less intense in smaller casino jurisdictions around the country.

The book should be available in the next few months. We'll let you know.