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Introduction to Controls Slot Machine Odds

Who controls slot machine odds is a popular question from slots enthusiasts. It’s quite an interesting question, which I thought my audience would appreciate an answer to.

Casinos manipulate players into thinking they have a real shot at winning. The machines tease players with near wins and small payouts to keep them going. Every game manipulates the player to.

My most recent encounter with this general question was during the Q&A segment of another gambling podcast, episode #634 from Five Hundy By Midnight. They had a question from David which was, “When a new themed penny slot debuts, what is the typical hold percentage? Does it vary by machine, casino, or both?”

ALL slot machines are programmed to have a mathematical edge over the player. The casinos don’t need to cheat to make a healthy profit. The slot machine designers and manufacturers don’t need to cheat to make a healthy profit. In fact, in well-regulated jurisdictions (like Nevada), games are thoroughly audited for fairness.
Someone hit a jackpot on the machine you just left - so you would have won that jackpot if you kept.

Tim and Michelle, co-hosts of the long-lasting Five Hundy By Midnight, a gambling podcast that’s all about Las Vegas, answered the question well, if somewhat briefly.

I’m sure my own audience would like the answer too, so I’m providing a few more details as well as a more general answer with a bit of the why of it all.

This segment has the following sections:

Introduction
A Bit of Background on Legal Requirements
A Bit of History on Physically Setting Odds
Slot Machine Types Based on How Odds are Set
Identifying Who Controls Slot Machine Odds
Does It Really Matter Who Controls Slot Machine Odds? Yes!!
Summary

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A Bit of Background on Legal Requirements

To answer this question, I’ll need to delve into a bit of recent history to explain how odds are set in older-style standalone slot machines using a random number generator (RNG). This way is how many people incorrectly believe the odds are currently set on ALL slot machines.

However, starting around 2008, a lot changed with setting slot machine odds. These changes are due to the emergence of new gaming technologies, not only in slot machines but also with the development of casino operating software. Both provide casinos with an increased operating efficiency and therefore low operating costs.

With so many more people visiting casinos in the last decade, and with their profit margins getting smaller every year, casino operators find they cannot afford to ignore the savings opportunities of new technologies.

The second driver for this change to how slot machines are controlled is due to ongoing developments in statutory regulations for gaming jurisdictions. In the U.S., these gaming jurisdictions are the states, territories, or federal district that legally allow gaming.

In essence, casino operators have to follow the gaming regulations for the jurisdiction wherein they are located. In part, these gaming jurisdictions often include laws which place an upper and lower limit on the pay back return for slot machines.

To not lose their gaming license, or to otherwise get in trouble with gaming control authorities, casino operators must remain in compliance with these legal gaming requirements.

Note that commercial casinos have to be comply to gaming regulations as set by the U.S. state, territory, or federal district they are located in. Native American tribal casinos also have to comply with their own set of gaming requirements, which are usually not based on state law.

Rather, these are defined by negotiation between a federally-recognized tribe and the state within which they are located by carefully crafting a state-tribal compact ultimately approved by the U.S. Department of the Interior.

So, within this overall context, who controls slot machine odds? At a high level, gaming regulators determine the legal limits, if any, for payout returns on slot machines. This is accomplished via state law or negotiated compacts, and usually not changed for a decade, if that often.

Casinos operators are, often but not always, required to provide weekly or monthly reports on actual payout returns to show their gaming authority they are compliant. Sometimes, depending on each gaming jurisdiction, these statistical reports are then provided to the public by the state gaming commission.

Going further, these regular reports can break down these actual payout returns by casino, table games, slot machines, gaming machines, by the denomination of slot machines within a specific casino, or even if the machine has a progressive jackpot. What is done is very specific to the gaming jurisdiction where the casino is located.

Given all these variability of what is or is not done within a U.S. gaming jurisdiction, I’ve created an online series of posts for my audience of slots enthusiasts. It’s meant to help them navigate this dynamic environment of state-specific gaming regulations.

For more information on your specific state, territory, or federal district of interest, see Slot Machine Casino Gambling, State-By-State: A Weekly Blog.

So, at its high level, slot machines are controlled by gaming regulators by the placement of legal requirements for payout return percentages. Sometimes, however, these state-specific gaming regulators do not set limits on payout returns. Put another way, they have deliberately chosen to not set legal limits.

When this happens, somewhat obviously, casino operators do not have a legal requirement for setting payout returns. However, to remain open and not close due to lack of customers, they still have to be careful to not set their payout returns too low.

It’s worth noting that most gaming regulations set a low limit on payout returns to which casino operators deliberately stay well above. To do so is just good business.

A Bit of History on Physically Setting Odds

The random number generator (RNG) was developed for slot machines by Bally Technologies in 1984. About a decade later, most slot machines had this RNG, which allowed for easily adjustable odds of winning.

Beforehand, the odds of winning were set in an entirely mechanical manner. This worked well for decades, until the technical development of slot machines began to cause difficulties. Basically, as credits to bet and number of pay lines increased, the physical mechanisms for determining odds began to reach certain physical limits.

Slot enthusiasts loved having a choice of how many credits to bet, as well as playing a slot machine with more than one pay line. Increased credits and pay lines also led to much higher jackpots.

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All of these developments led to odds of winning being needed for many more possible outcomes, which mechanical devices for determining the odds of winning began to not be able to handle. In fact, these mechanical devices began to fall behind and actually became less and less random in nature.

As an aside, the topic of randomness is actually quite interesting. True randomness is very difficult, if not literally impossible, to generate. Often, when randomness is needed in either an mechanical or electronic device, various methods are used which are “random enough.”

Technically speaking, there is no such thing as an existing perfectly random number generator. At best, there are only pseudo random number generators, one variant of which was patented by Bally Technologies in 1984.

Moving away from our brief sortie into the philosophy of randomness, the invention of the RNG solved for slot machine manufacturers this limitation of mechanical devices for determining randomness in slot machines. But, it created another problem: With adjustable odds of winning via electronic RNGs, casinos would need to have a large workforce to do that adjusting.

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And so, that is what casinos did. They built and trained a workforce of slot m

Casinos Manipulate Slot Machines