Slot machines are ubiquitous in casinos. You can’t walk at least 100 feet without seeing one of them, and many people play them for hours on end. But how did these machines get to be so popular? And why do they seem like such an excellent way to make money?
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The first slot machine appeared in 1891 when Charles Fey developed a 3-reel mechanical device designed to play games of chance. It was called the ‘Liberty Bell,’ now on display at a Nevada County casino.
This first model had three drums with different combinations of symbols, each with five positions covered by a hinged or sliding door. When a player inserted a coin, one door would open at random. If the revealed combination included the ‘bell,’ the player would win a payout according to how much they betted. By comparison, most of the modern day casino platforms allow you to play the latest video slot titles for free, allowing you to sit back and enjoy the visual spectacle that modern computer graphics provide. People are no longer clutching onto their quarters stood in a busy casino trying to get a big win, that’s not to say that modern day casino games don’t pay homage to the history of the slot machine however.
The three-reel quarter slot machine became famous in 1907 after Charles Fey introduced the ‘Liberty Belle’ machine. This model became so popular that it changed its name to ‘Liberty Bell.’ If this machine sounds familiar, it inspired later slot machines.
Fey’s Liberty Belle was one of the earliest machines players could control their odds by adjusting the bet size.
The early slot machines were effortless, not just in appearance but also in how they functioned. The reels spun at top speed, and there were no adjustments for payout odds because the machine didn’t determine wins or losses – it just displayed symbols.
Modern slots are much different from early machines. For one thing, they no longer use any physical reels or symbols; instead, they display computer-generated images on a video screen. Not quite up to modern day video game standards, but still a lot better than the early slot machines. But how did these devices get to be so complex? And what makes them difficult (if not impossible) to beat?
How Slot Machines Work: Random Number Generators and Randomness
Every modern gaming machine’s heart is a special chip designed to produce random numbers. Like other computerized games of chance, most slot machines use a random number generator (RNG). The idea behind this technology is based on the long-standing principle of entropy, or disorder.
Let’s assume for a moment that we have a die with 100 sides. We can use this die to generate a number between 1 and 100 by rolling it 101 times and writing down how often each number appears. A histogram would look like this:
If we did this experiment 100 times, the graph’s shape would be no more than an approximation of what randomness looks like. But if we repeated this process repeatedly (1001, 1002… ad infinitum), then after a while, it might begin to look like the graph below.
The shape is what’s referred to as a ‘bell curve‘. This curve shows the most frequently occurring numbers in the distribution center. The area under each part of this bell curve equals 1/100 because every number has a 1/100 chance of rolling when we use our die.
Now let’s imagine a different die with only four sides: 1, 2, 3, and 4. If we rolled it 100 times and wrote down the results in a histogram, we would get something like this:
Here we see that all of the numbers are clustered together in the center of the distribution (which makes sense, given that there are only four possible outcomes when we roll this die). If we kept rolling our 4-sided die over and over again, the distribution would eventually begin to look like a bell curve.
The exciting thing about a 4-sided die is that it doesn’t have a uniform probability distribution. Remember that all numbers had an equal 1/100 chance of coming up in the previous example. But with our 4-sided die, there are only four equally likely outcomes. This means that each number has a 1/4 or 25% chance of being rolled.
If we keep rolling this die over and over again, eventually, all numbers will be rolled an equal number of times, and the bell curve will be perfectly symmetrical.
The point of this example is to demonstrate how a random number generator works. For a machine to produce unexpected results, it needs an algorithm that has just the right amount of entropy – enough so that its numbers have no discernable patterns or predictability, but not so much that the results are impossible to reproduce.
Algorithms That Determine Win/Loss
Modern slot machines use one of two algorithms to determine wins and losses: the ‘pseudo-random’ system or the ‘progressive jackpot’ system. Let’s look at how these systems work and other standard slot machine algorithms.
The most common are the ‘pseudo-random’ and the ‘progressive jackpot’ systems. Other algorithms include the ‘weighted random number generator’ and the ‘variable payout percentage’.
While it’s impossible to know for sure which algorithm a machine is using, there are ways to hack the system and increase your chances of winning.
