My problem is that once you take away the reels…the physical mechanism that once determined the payouts and odds of getting them…what you have is essentially an elaborate version of keno, where the number of “hits” dictates the payout. So why not make it keno? Island Fruit does something similar, with the different symbols paying different amounts, why not replace all the squiggly lines with simple numbers?
(This reminds me of that wheel above a Wheel of Fortune machine where there was a “90” on four of the slots, more than any other number. I think the wheel stopped on 90 1% of the time, if that. Pretense, pretense.)[/QUOTE]
There are video slot machines with Keno and I play them often. Put in my quarter, pick my numbers, the balls come out, lather rinse repeat. It is a lot more fun than real keno which takes so much time.
Anyone that gambles knows that the probability is that they will lose. It is what makes winning that much more exciting. I happen to be lucky at slots and even though I have never won a big jackpot, I must be thousands of dollars ahead over my lifetime. Last cruise I took I wiped out my sign and sail card with slot winnings. Every time I cashed out, I put the money on account. The $200 dollars I earmarked for gambling paid a $1500 entertainment bill. I agree with the “system” stated above. If you only gamble the money you brought for that purpose and pocket any winnings, you’re only losing what you planned to lose all along and often times have it be a lot less.
1 - on a bay cruise, for a company outing thing. Once we hit international waters, gambling was legal. Unfortunately, before we hit international waters, I became incredibly sea-sick. I chalk it up to the incredible hang-over I was nursing and to the three beers I sucked down before we left the dock … but I digress. I was so queasy that I couldn’t sit down without getting head-spins, so I kept just walking around the boat, and idly pouring quarters in the slot machines. Thirty minutes later I was down $40 and I was still sea-sick.
2 - At a mini-dopefest (really more of a Live Journal fest) at the casino in Niagara Falls, Ont. One of our group was tired and wanted to take a break so we just all congregated in a row of slot machines and took a load off. To pass the time, and because, hell, why not, I threw a $20 into one of the machines. It was like the one mentioned in the OP. I had no idea what I was even looking at, never mind what buttons I should press. I just started smacking buttons left and right and let the chips fall where they may. And the thing hit something and started shitting tokens out at me. Then it stopped and the little red light on top of it went off. I had no idea what was going on until a casino employee showed up and said, “It’s jammed.” He fiddled with it and then … it started shitting more tokens at me. All said and done, I pocketed about $250, which basically paid for the day.
My point is. I need a rubber match to figure out if I’m pro slot machines or anti slot machines.
SWMBO and I just got back from Vegas. We’ll play the penny slots out of boredom if one of us is making a pit stop. She won a couple of bucks. I promptly lost a couple of bucks while she was in the can later.
Blackjack for us, baby. A five dollar table and we are in hog heaven.
One of the things the wife and I like to do is find two identical machines side by side, put the same amount of money in each, and take turns spinning. This serves to slow down play to make our money last longer, and adds competitive and social elements which make the game more fun.
Yes, once upon a time jackpots were delivered from a tube of coins inside the machine, so they would dump all at once into the tray. Twenty years ago in the California Club in Reno (long since closed), they had a couple dozen of them in their nostalgia corner. All in all, Mangetout’s description of UK machines sounds similar but the Nevada ones being strictly mechanical, I doubt they’d switch between loose and tight.
The ones I worked on had what was called a hopper in the middle of the machine. There was a motorized wheel designed to dip into the stash of coins in the hopper and deliver them one at a time for the smaller payouts. The bowls (as they were called) were stamped out of stainless steel sheet and had nothing to damp the vibrations which is why you’d hear the donk-donkdonk-donk of a small jackpot all over the floor. There was a sensor in the hopper that would let it fill with coins if it was low or divert them into a bucket in the base (called the drop) if the hopper was full.
If the machine’d had a hot streak with too many payouts too close together the hopper could run out of coins. Then everything stops and a light flashes to draw the attention of a mechanic or keyman who opens the machine for a quick check that it isn’t a jam instead of being empty, then fills out a bit of paperwork called a fill slip to get measured bag (or two if needed) of coins to replenish the hopper which then finishes the payout. The drop is emptied every night or two and, besides all the casino’s internal bookkeeping, a report is sent to the gaming commission for each machine detailing how much was in the drop, deducting the amounts of the fill slips. Those reports determine what gaming taxes the club owes the state.
Today’s machines, of course, dispense with all that and just print out a receipt instead. When I was in the Las Vegas MGM Grand last year, the only game I saw with hoppers was a Sigma horse race game (Youtube video) that must have been thirty years old at least.