We’ll be honest from the start – this article is not going to give away secrets that mean you can win at slots every single time just by doing some maths. If that were the case, casinos would go out of business and slots would pretty much cease to exist, and no one wants that. The thing to remember is, in order to be able to continue to play slots, people have to keep losing. However, a win once in a while is a good thing, and that’s part of the attraction; people want to play at WizardSlots because they have a chance of winning.
It’s impossible to win every time at slots. They are based on an RNG (random number generator) system that means, as the name suggests, the symbols fall completely randomly. They can’t be predicted and they can’t be manipulated, and that’s the entire point of the RNG. However, we can use a statistics based strategy to try to better our chances of winning. Here is how it can be done.
Calculating Probabilities
As we’ve said, it’s just not possible to know where the symbols are going to be when the reels stop spinning in slots. And that’s part of the fun and the thrill of the game, after all. Yet if you can work out what the probability of hitting a winning combination might be, you can at least determine whether the slot you are thinking of playing is worth putting your money into.
The first thing you’ll need to know is what the probability of winning on the slot you want to play is. And you’ll need to know how much you’ll receive (this should be found in the pay table which is a legal requirement). So the second number is easily found, but the first is more difficult. It can be done, though.
Start with the number of reels the game has, and then multiply that number by the number of symbols on each reel, and also by the number of stops on each reel. If you have three reels and they contain five symbols each, the sum would be 5x5x5, which is 125. That means that there are 125 different ways to win. After this, you will want to know how likely it is that you are going to win – that is, what the probability of you winning will be. To do this, you need to know what a winning combination looks like, and go from there. So on a three reel game, if you will win if three specific symbols are lined up, and there is only one of these symbols on each reel, you would do 1/5x1/5x1/5 which is 0.008 and that is your percentage chance of winning.
Can It Really Be Done?
We have to be honest – knowing how to do this and being able to do this are two different things, and it can really only be executed on older games. They have fewer reels and therefore there are fewer winning combinations. In some newer games there are thousands, and the time it would take to work out the probability of anything being won would just not be worth it.
In the end, the best thing you can do when it comes to slots is to pick one with a good RTP and a theme you enjoy. That way, whether you win or lose, you’re still going to have a lot of fun.