I have worked as a slot mechanic so I can answer some of the questions that have come here with the following limitations:
I’ve done so only in Nevada. Other jurisdictions may vary.
I’ve worked only in two relatively small clubs (300-500 machines) so they weren’t large/sophisticated enough to have their machines networked together.
Chances of winning: The machines are random. There’s no such thing as “after so many games, give out a big winner,” any more than there would be for a roulette wheel. The last thing a club wants is predictability. As on the table games, the house relies on getting its percentage from jillions of games played on hundreds of machines. The number of games played on a machine, the amounts paid out, the amount in the “drop” (profit for the house) and the amounts the game’s hopper was refilled manually are all kept track of and taken into account in calculating the “hold” – the percentage the house keeps vs. the number of coins through the game. If that hold is too high or too low for a couple weeks, the state requires the machine be examined to see if something is amiss. This would happen much more often with the older mechanical slots than today’s electronic ones.
Pee breaks: If the club was not jammed with people we were always willing to shut a machine down for up to an hour so someone could get a meal. Most folks who are that addicted are back in less than a half-hour anyway. Even if the club is crowded, we would always hold a machine for the five or ten minutes it would take someone to hit the bathroom. Exactly once, a little ol’ lady peed on her seat rather than take a break. Luckily, after she tottered off, one of the cleaners was over right away to get rid of all the coin wrappers that had accumulated and saw the wet spot. I whipped a spare seat in its place and hauled the soiled one into the shop where it was thoroughly cleaned with detergent and bleach (and the appropriate amount of grumbling) before being put in the spare seat stack.
As long as we’re on casino myths . . .
Neither club I worked for “made the machines tighter” on the weekend, then loosened them during the week. For the reel slots this could be done – it only necessitates swapping out one ROM, but it would have been too time consuming. We had a bank of eight slots that were used for slot tournaments three or four times a year. The Friday before the tourney the other day mechanic and I would swap out the gaming ROM and put in the tournament ROM (It allowed free play but jackpots only incremented the digital display, not drop coins). To open a machine, shut the power off, pull the card cage, carefully pull the game ROM, equally carefully insert the tourney ROM (don’t want to bend pins), plug the cage back in the machine, power it up, and button it up took close to four hours for the bank of eight. Now, we were doing that only a few times a year; presumably if it was every week, cut the time from a half hour to ten minutes per machine. That still means the 350 machines in the club would be over 50 hours to do. Since there were five mechanics (two day, two swing, one grave) all of us would have been all day Friday putting the “tight” ROM in, and all day Monday putting the “loose” ROM back. And nothing else.
Now, we did get a new bank of dollar slots in, and hung a sign over them saying “98% Payback!” for six months. Then the sign came down, the 2% ROMs were removed, and 5% ROMs put in their place. That was a one time deal, though.
DD
