PLAY SLOTS FOR PROFIT, NOT AS A JOB

Continue…

4. Knowing when to quit. No slot machine will continually pay out. They will “take” and “give,” usually in cycles. Sometimes a machine will shower you with coins, while at other times you may get one of the better-paying slots machines but one which is in the “take” cycle. To know when to quit is to protect your investment. That’s where strategy comes into play. (See “The Big Secret,” which follows.)

5. When is enough enough? Well, that’s a toss-up. It depends on what the value of the money happens to be for you. Generally, I’d say that any win over and above

your initial starting investment is profit, and therefore something you should pocket and keep.

6. How often to play? That depends on your available time. Generally, I’d say about once a month, and in dedicated periods for profitable play. But that depends, to a large extent, on your time, access to a casino, and available capital. Find slot games the best for your situation.

7. How long to play? On a $1 machine that takes 2 coins as maximum, about two hours should be enough to run the machine through its paces. However, you should monitor your pay and
adapt your playing time according to the relevant requirements listed earlier. For $1 machines that take 3 coins as maximum, this time period will be determined by your bankroll. So is the case for $5 classic slots machines and higher.

Some ways of playing slot machines are better than others, but slots are still machines, whose preprogrammed house hold percentage is a constant average. Therefore, if your machine is set to pay back, say, 98 percent, this means that if you play it all the time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year, in the end, on average, you will lose 2 percent of all your money. That’s the way it sits.

Of course, this applies to the majority of reel and video reel classic slots
, and not video poker. The reason is that on some video poker machines, skillful perfect play will result in your being able to eke out about 1.1 percent in your favor (for machines which have the programming potential to pay back over 100 percent). Many such machines do exist, but the reality of the small slices of play time for which most players will play them, and the fact that even expert play can often be corrupted by mistakes, unintentional as they may be, means that even these machines are not as good payers as they initially may be touted.