Pokies and Slot Machine Information

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It can be a bit of a yawn wandering around casinos looking for your favourite game to play. Odds are that if its your favourite, others like it too. You could always find an occupied machine and inform its player that they left their headlights on, but thats only good for about five minutes of play. When they return they might just belt you with an ashtray or nearby chair.

Casinos want you to always be able to find your favourite game - its more likely you’ll donate more money, faster. New technology exists to allow you to play your favourite game on any available machine - simply sit down, navigate the touch screen and voilà, your wallet or purse will be lighter in no time.

Where is this timesaving technology? Its coming soon to a venue near you:

“that the roll-out …. should be complete by 2007″

News.com Article

As noted in the article, there are security concerns. The games are being downloaded from a remote computer to your slot machine - you really don’t know what might happen to the game whilst its in transit. The tongue in cheek response from one of the manufacturers:

“…we’re going to have bi-weekly gatherings of all the nerds”

Well that makes me feel better about security already.

There are other advantages and cost savings for casinos. They can easily change individual or groups of machines to other game types or payout levels via remote control. They keep a very close eye on which games perform and will soon weed out the weaker ones.

Are all these changes good for you, the player? Its certainly going to be more convenient to be always be able to play your favourite slot machine game, but as usual the real advantage belongs to the casino. They get more of your money.

Simulation of slot machine play

Posted below is a chart showing a sample of what you might find if you were to invest $1,000 into three slot machine games of the same game type (imagine your favourite game is the subject of this chart), but with different payouts, and played until you had lost the entire $1,000.

Three different return to player (RTP) amounts are shown - from 85% up to 93%. The RTP number is simply a way of determining how much of every dollar you gamble in a slot machine you can expect to keep. So if the RTP is 85%, you can expect to keep around 85% of each dollar you play with. Each time you re-invest the funds, you can expect to lose more.

The most difficult part is determining the RTP a given machine is set to. Gaming venues are usually able to change these at their discretion (subject to regulatory limits) and may not wish to tell you what their payouts are. Ask anyway!

Using the scenario from the chart above, we can see that playing the same slot game but with different RTP settings, and betting the same $2 amount every spin on each game, you could reasonably expect to play for almost twice as long on the ‘loose’ (93% RTP) machine as on the ‘tight’ (85% RTP) machine. If you are going to play the pokies, find a venue with the highest payouts.

As always, please note these figures are based on very long term averages - the chart above is simplying returns to make them readily understandable. All charts and data are estimates and approximations only.

Ticket slots and slot machines as ATM’s

Most pokies in Australia are coin and bank note operated - insert your funds, win or lose for a while, then cash out to the tinkle of coins in the tray (or a manual payout over a certain amount).

The trend in the USA is towards ticket operated slots. You insert your funds as bank notes, win or lose, and when you cash out the machine will print a special ticket for your remaining balance. You can then wander over to a new machine and insert the ticket to transfer your balance to that machine, or you can simply redeem the ticket for cash.

There are huge advantages for casinos using the ticket method:
-> If patrons don’t need to wait for payouts, they can move from machine to machine more quickly - increasing the amount the venue can win.
-> No coins to worry about for customers. If you’d seen some of the places I have seen patrons store coins, you’d be rather less happy to handle them. Some folks are very creative with their storage plans.
-> No coins to count. If you have 18,000 gaming machines each holding a few hundred dollars in coins, it becomes a real timetaker to balance/count/empty all machines.

More than 90 percent of MGM Mirage’s 18,000 slot machines soon will be coinless, says Yvette Monet, public affairs manager for the company.

Wired Magazine Online

Its likely the changeover to new technology will cost casinos initially - but they will soon make it back by not having to handle millions of coins. You can safely bet that the savings won’t be passed on to players.

As player acceptance spreads, its likely ticket slots will turn up in your favourite venue.

The next logical step is the installation of magnetic card readers into slot machines, so you can withdraw funds directly from your bank account and into the game. The technology already exists, and according to Wired may be implemented:

some Indian casinos in California — where there are more than 60 autonomous gaming boards — soon may allow ATM payments.

Indian casinos operate under rules quite different to casinos in other parts of the world. It would be considerably more difficult to introduce combination slot machine/ATM’s in countries like Australia, where there is already a backlash against the widespread installation of pokies.

Can you win more by betting more?

We’ve received a question asking whether by betting higher amounts playing pokies you will win more overall. The general answer is no - the higher your bet, the more you will lose.

If you were to play two identical machines side by side at the same time, starting with $100 in each and investing $1 a spin on one, $5 a spin on the second your cash balance might look something like this:

The above data is highly theoretical, and based on an exact Return to Player (RTP) of 92.00% over a short period - which is unlikely to occur as RTP settings are based over very long terms. It does show in principle though that you will lose money much faster as you bet higher, all other things being equal.

Once again these figures do not take into account doubling up or jackpot game participation and represent only a rough guide as to what you might expect. You should not rely on this data.

Victorians lose over $200m per month

Unlucky punters in Victoria, Australia are losing over two hundred million Australian dollars per month on pokies. On an annualised basis, this works out to almost 2.5 billion Aussie dollars.

To be losing $200m per month, total annual turnover in gaming machines in Victoria is probably around 27.5 billion dollars.

The huge windfall is shared by government ($840 million), venue operators ($620 million), Tattersall’s and Tabcorp ($840 million) and the Community Support Fund ($200 million).

Herald Sun Article

As with the previous article, we’ll estimate what else 2.5 billion dollars could buy:

-> Buy 100,000 average size cars.
-> Buy 1,700,000 average computers.
-> Buy 1,250,625 plasma televisions.
-> Buy 675,000,000 cups of coffee.
-> Buy 839,000,000 250 gram bars of chocolate.

Instead, the funds and the employment the above spending could create are being lost.

New Zealand breaks the billion mark

New Zealand punters have the ignominious distinction of losing over one billion New Zealand dollars on pokies in one year for the first time:

In particular, pokie machines in pubs and bars outside casinos are still raking in the lion’s share of gambling losses, with $1.027 billion of punters’ money down the drain (in the year to June 30, 2004);

Scoop Article

Other things you could do with $1.027 billion dollars:
-> Buy 41,080 average size cars.
-> Buy 684,000 average computers (a new computer for 1 in 7 New Zealanders).
-> Buy 79 million movie tickets.
-> Buy 4,108 nice homes.
-> Buy 342,333 plasma televisions.

New Zealand is still behind Australia though, Aussies lose a fair bit more per capita.

Does playing two slot machines at once increase your wins?

You’ll often see folks in casinos playing more than one slot machine at a time, possibly thinking this is a sure fire route to increase their wins.

Its not. You will just lose your money at around twice the rate as if you were playing one machine.

Playing two machines at once benefits casinos in another way - play speed is increased. Remember that the faster you play slot games, the faster you will lose your money and the faster that the next player can line up to lose their money.

Keep at the back of your mind at all times that you are effectively paying a fee to use the machine. Its common to lose 8 to 15 cents of every single dollar you play. Its probably bad form to plug an alternative, but if you play simulated slots you just cannot lose any money. The best simulated slots can be found here:

Link to the Pokie Magic Slots

If you enjoy playing real slots - take it slowly. Let your wins count up slowly rather than pressing the spin button immediately the prior spin completes. If you’re with a friend, have a chat between spins - or even better, pool your funds and play one machine between you. Two players operating one machine will lose their money more slowly than two players operating two machines.

How to make pokies play fair

There is a way to make pokies at least reasonably fair, but governments won’t like it. Governments tend to take an enormous amount of the profit made by pokies without regard for the consequences.

A five point plan might reduce losses:

1. Reduce maximum bet amounts to $1/spin.
2. The removal of note acceptors from gaming machines.
3. Legalise private ownership of gaming machines in all States. Such machines to have all coin/note/payment mechanisms removed and internal return to player percentage setting to be no less than 100% - this protects jobs in the gaming machine manufacturing industry.
4. Reduce the government tax take on gaming profits to 1% of annual turnover - sufficient to cover costs and make a little on the side.
5. Reduce the venue gaming profits to 1% of annual turnover.

If the government take on pokies is reduced, the overall payout rate for pokies could increase and players would lose less. Two examples are provided from the pokies simulator:

Link to the Pokies Simulator

Playing a $1 bet over 20 paylines for 900 spins on a 1 cent game with return to player (RTP) setting of 85.06%.
Results: Your estimated win/loss: $134.82 Loss per hour of play

85% is the current minimum return to player percentage in New South Wales, Australia.

If this minimum percentage was raised to 98%, the same player would have the following experience:

Playing a $1 bet over 20 paylines for 900 spins on a 1 cent game with return to player (RTP) setting of 98.00%.
Results: Your estimated win/loss: $18.00 Loss per hour of play

The above scenario is overly simplified and uses only approximate figures, but it does show that it is at least possible for pokies to be playable without most players generating out of control losses.

Aussie gamblers put 90 billion dollars through slots

Its well known that pokies are popular in Australia - we have more gaming machines per capita than just about anywhere.

According to an article in The Age in 2004, punters bet 90 billion dollars in the preceding year - up 6 percent on the year before. This equates to around $AUD4500 for every single person in the country.

Link to the Age article

The 90 billion dollar figure refers to the funds turned over in gaming machines - actual losses are much less - somewhere around 10% of this figure. Still, turnover of almost 250 million dollars a day across the country is a sign of the strong hold gaming machines hold over players.

Pokies and slot machines win simulator

We’ve put together a slot machine win simulator - to give you an estimate of how much you might reasonably expect to lose on a night out playing the pokies.

Link to Pokies win simulator

Feel free to link directly to the simulator from your website.

Every time you feel like going out for a night on the town to gamble on slots, fire up the Pokies Simulator and it might just change your mind.

How does it work? You simply enter:

-> The game you are going to play. The dropdown box doesn’t show game names, but it does show common payout percentages from real slot machines. The only way to tell for sure what percentage the machines in your favourite venue are paying out is to ask someone who works there for details.

-> The denomination of the machine - the most common denominations are listed - choose from 1 cent, 2 cent, 5 cent, 10 cent or 20 cent amounts. This number represents the cost of playing 1 payline at minimum credits per line.

-> The number of paylines being played - this represents the number of game paylines you will be playing. Some games have as low as 1 paylines, others as many as 25 or more. Each additional payline you play will cost you more.

-> How many credits per line you will be playing - this represents how many cents per line you are going to bet. For example, on a game with 20 paylines, you might invest 1 cent per payline - for a total of 20 cents per spin.

-> How long will you be playing for - the simulator makes an assumption that you will be playing 15 spins per minute.

Please note that all figures are estimates and approximations only and are based on long term % return to players. You should not rely on these figures.