How Slot Machine Payback Percentage Works

Slots and Public Opinion

You either love slots or you hate them. Serious gamblers pride themselves in fleeing slots like the Bubonic Plague, but the masses of players who make up some 80% of a casino's customer base love slots to death. Why this stark disagreement between the two types of gamblers?

Gamblers who play only for fun like slots because no extraordinary skills are needed to play them. Slots were first used in Bugsy Siegel's casino to entertain the wives and girlfriends of male gamblers. These machines let non-gamblers be gamblers.

But professional players avoid slots because they understand how casino games work. Specifically, they know that the payback percentage of slots is not that good compared with other games like craps and blackjack.

Payback Percentage of Slots

Every slot machine in the casino is preset to award a fixed amount of its revenue back to players. Some slots are programmed to give back 90% of the coins put into it; others may be set at 85%, and still others at 92%, 94% and so on. Each slot machine is different, and eve two machines that have the same game - say, Wheel of Fortune - may have different payback percentages.

Payback percentage comes to players in the form of winning spins. Most of the payback occurs when the jackpot is hit, since the jackpot is usually disproportionately larger compared with the lesser payoffs. The bigger the jackpot prize is, the less the slot machine gives smaller payouts, otherwise the casino would lose too much revenue from that machine.

How Payback Percentage is Determined

In modern slots, payback percentage is set partly by the visible pay schedule. This is shown on the surface of the machine itself. However the real work is done inside where no one can see. Within the slot machine is a computer program known as a random number generator. This random number generator picks sets of symbols for spins every moment, even when the slot isn't in use. When it is spun, the slot machine freezes whatever symbol set has been picked at that moment and that becomes the final spin of the reels for that particular spin.

Now if you play slots, you no doubt have noticed that the most prized symbols appear the rarest, while the least valuable symbols appear all the time. Why is that?

It is because of the way the slot machine is programmed. The symbols are "weighted" in such a way that some symbols will be picked more often (at random) by the random number generator. There is no cheating involved; that is, the RNG does not knowingly pick losing numbers. However there are more stops for some symbols than others; the more stops a symbol has, the more chances it has of being picked by the RNG. If a bar has 6 stops on a reel and a dollar sign has only 2 stops, it's obvious which will land on the payline more often.

Average Slot Machine Payback Percentages

A casino can have a slot machine set up to pay the payback percentage that they want. Here are average payback rates around the Las Vegas area for nickel machines.

Location Average Payback

On the Strip 91.47% Downtown Las Vegas 91.66% Off the Strip 92.07% Total 91.74%

To find slots with better returns, play higher coin denomination slots as the tend to be looser. But the best choice is to play slots online. You can find 97% payback percentages online for slots.