I’ve had an amazing experience that is new to me as a gambler.
I’ve been learning a bit about advantage slots — and playing them with moderate success. I’m not going to go into detail, but some games are the type that if one particular number is above 40 and another particular number is above 30, the player has the advantage for some length of time.
I know of no specific game where 40 and 30 are the key numbers. I’m just giving an example so you know in general what I’m talking about. The lady who taught me most about these slots made me agree before we started that I would not be teaching the world how to do it.
Sometimes I play for 75¢ a hand. Sometimes for more than $30. But even the $30 game is on a machine based in pennies. You usually have a choice of having the game display credit and wins in coins or pennies. So winning $500 on one hand, you can decide whether you want to see that as $500 or 5,000 coins.
You can play this particular game in denominations of 1¢, 2¢, 5¢, and 10¢ all on the same machine, and different situations determine whether you bet 75 coins, 150, 225, or 300 base coins. With those four denominations and four possible numbers of coins to wager, that’s sixteen different situations you need to evaluate per machine — looking for one number being at least 40 and another number being at least 30. (And 80¢ and 88¢ are also popular smallest bets — there are others.)
Once you find such a situation, you sit down and start to play. Some conditions you only find once in a blue moon, and when you do, it’s frequently over in five hands. There are other games that when they finally get into a positive state, you need to plan to be there for somewhere between two and nine hours until you play the game to the completion of the positive state.
The first time the following amazing situation happened to me, I was on a machine, hitting a button for a little more than $1.50 every spin, knowing I would be there for a while. I knew what condition had to happen before I was done, but I didn’t know whether it would come about in 30 minutes or in four hours. So, I was just hitting the button, in a similar manner to how players play slot tournaments (only not so aggressively. I need to pace myself. Preparing to play long hours is different than competing in a five-minute tournament, but the action itself is similar.)
In two separate incidents, a person came up and gave me money! This has NEVER happened to me playing video poker. But in slots, apparently it isn’t so rare. On the first day this happened, the money was given to me in the form of slot cash out tickets worth 24¢ and 32¢.
The tickets came from being the “too small to bet” residuals that these players ended up with at the end of their play. On most machines there is a minimum amount you can bet — perhaps 50¢ or 88¢. If you have less than that, you can cash it out, but can’t play the game until you submit more money.
It’s not easy at some casinos to cash these tickets. At some places, you need to go to the cashier cage to get the change. Even if it’s easier to get, some players don’t want a pocket full of loose change. So they give the tickets away.
I said thank you and immediately slid these tickets into my machine. At the end of the play, my ticket might well have been $1,234.29, or any other amount. The 24¢ and 32¢ were some small parts of that.
In perhaps 50 hours of playing slots, this has happened to me about 20 times. Maybe totaling $4 or $5 dollars. I’m not sure. Certainly an unremarkable amount. But one that never happened to me while playing video poker.
In video poker, it’s almost always possible to bet one coin. If you’re playing a nickel machine and you have one nickel left, you can bet it. You get worse odds than usual for betting one coin, but you can bet it. Players with small amounts of change can keep betting fewer and fewer coins until the money is eventually gone. In slots, you can’t always do that.
I sometimes wonder why I’m the recipient of this largesse. Certainly part of it is totally random. I’m playing on a machine between them and the door, and they would have given the money away to anybody sitting there.
Part of it might be pity. After all, I’m a 75-year-old man who they might have seen playing these games for hours. It’s easy for most people to deduce that I must be losing. I therefore must need the money to feed my habit!
But whatever the reason is, I accept it, say thank you, and slip it into the machine, and go back to hitting the button.
Correction….$500 on a penny machine is 50,000 coins, not 5,000.
I cash small, abandoned tickets on every trip. People generally leave the tickets on top of machines. Sometimes they just leave the money on the machine and it is often VP at less than max play. Money is money.
If it ain’t your ticket, I wouldn’t mess with it if I were you. It’s going to bite you in the ass some day. Even if it’s only 16 cents, if it ain’t yours, don’t mess with it. I’m just sayin.
I have mixed feelings about the phenomenon of being told that there’s something gainful and enticing that can be achieved via playing some slot machines, but then being told that the method can’t be shared with me. That boils down to tantalizing somebody but then not following through with the “goods”. After reading the opening, I was curious of what the method was, and desirous of knowing it, so that I could play a slot machine (and thus give my brain a rest from the mental work required by video poker) and be playing at an advantage instead of giving up 10% of my coin-in. Then I learn that the method won’t be shared with me, so it’s a “bummer”.
—– Just a little side note about the concept of “hitting the button, in a similar manner to how players play slot tournaments (only not so aggressively . . .)”. We all know how most people act in slot tournaments, but you should be aware of the fact that a few of us do not do the “fast-tapping” [my terminology], not only because it’s mindless behavior like a woodpecker pummeling a tree with its beak, but it actually tends to result in a lower score. Once you hit SPIN and it registers on the machine and the reels start spinning, nothing you do (i.e., hitting the SPIN button) will have any effect on the machine until the reels come to a halt and any score earned has been added to your total. So the most efficient thing is to do nothing until the reels have stopped spinning. If you get no points, then you should immediately hit SPIN one time. If you do earn some points from the spin, then wait until they have been added, then immediately hit SPIN one time. Most people can hit the SPIN button 5 times per second, meaning each press takes 2/10 of a second. But if you wait until the previous spin (and any points addition) has finished and then you hit SPIN immediately, the amount of “dead” time will be more like 1/10 of second, or less.
—– I’m 70 but probably in worse shape physically than Bob D., and I can’t even imagine playing for 9 hours. My current limit is about 3 hours.
I’ve had people give me their left over small change many times. Usually it’s from the person on a neighboring machine and they just don’t want to keep it or go through the hassle of standing in line to cash it.
Typo? Or am I missing something?
In the third paragraph…..”you can decide whether you want to see that as $500 or 5,000 coins.”
Wouldn’t that be $500 or 50,000 coins? since you’re talking about a penny slot?
thnx
ND
Neil, it may be a penny machine, but if you are playing the dime denomination, it shows the number of coins. 5000 dimes is $500. If your playing at a penny denomination, it would show 50,000 coins.
I think that ATM machines do not know who put the ticket in their slot.
“If it ain’t your ticket, I wouldn’t mess with it if I were you. It’s going to bite you in the ass some day. Even if it’s only 16 cents, if it ain’t yours, don’t mess with it. I’m just sayin.”
I agree with this when I see abandoned money or tickets. Some casinos are looking for any excuse to restrict me. Why give them one for 16 cents?
But when a ticket is given to me by it’s rightful owner, that’s different. Now I have received it in a way that shouldn’t tick off the casinos. It’s still 16 cents, but I think it’s different.
So some random lady has figured out how to take “advantage” of casino slot machines, and it’s a big secret… These machines are made by very smart people using math, seemingly and from the clue it sounds like a progressive, but I could be wrong… I root against the casino because they have huge built in advantage, especially in slot machines, and I wouldn’t rule out that they fudge and take a greater advantage when they can. Playing a slot machine is what the casino wants you to do, much as placing a future book wager on the Super Bowl is what the sports book wants you to do, it’s not how I roll, I play games with at least a modest amount of skill. If you are playing slots the casino won’t care about how you got your 37 cent ticket, they will lavish you with comps and fly you in and give you a bed to sleep in. I enjoy your writing Bob, but this is a very strange one you put out this week…
MIchael
I can confirm that there are machines around there that you can beat. It’s mostly the machines that have different multi level progressives and numerous different denominations. In particularly it’s the single slot progressive machines that you can play and win money. I am not going too much into detail but I know exactly what Mr Bob Dancer is talking about. It’s not about these mini extra cents that you can grab up once in a while. It’s about serious cash that you can win on certain slot machines.
From Switzerland
Boris
There’s advantage play thatswell-known ocean magic goldenEgypt the clocks ultimate x many of them But you still have to know what to playthem and most casinos they don’t even have them so if that lady told you the secret chances are there wouldn’t even be those games available and they’re slowly disappearing And whenever I go to Las Vegas to check these games they’re either somebody checking them or after I leave somebody’s coming and checking them there’s a lot of competition and some of those people are verymean allot of walking also
I have had people offer me money to stop playing a machine. There’s golden Egypt ocean magic the clock ultimate x etc well known ap play to name a few you still need to know how to play them even if you find them and they’re getting scarce all the time and then when you find them either somebody’s already checked it or if you check it they’re coming behind you mostly foreigners and some of them are mean
I believe the details about how to play this are on the Internet.
I totally get why they would not want the information out there. The more players that know about these opportunities the less they will be for everyone