Silverthorne Catalog - Dr. Robbins Power Slots...Slot players usually grab whatever money they have and then continue to play on a machine, or several machines, until this money plus

H. E. Robbins

Dr. Robbins

Power Slots

Silverthorne Publications, Inc.

Dr Robbins Power Slots © 2010 All Rights Reserved

2

Dr. Robbins Power Slots © 2010 Dr. H. E. Robbins. All Rights Reserved All rights reserved. Except for brief passages used in legitimate reviews, no parts of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the written permission of the publisher. Address all inquiries to the publisher: Silverthorne Publications, Inc. 848 N. Rainbow Blvd., Suite 601 Las Vegas, Nevada 89107 United States of America The material contained in this book is intended to inform and educate the reader and in no way represents an inducement to gamble legally or illegally. This publication is designed to provide an independent viewpoint and analysis of the subject matter. The publisher and the author disclaim all legal responsibility for any personal loss or liability caused by the use of any of the information contained herein. Questions about this publication may be addressed to: [email protected] Published in the United States of America


3

Gambling and Slots

1

Should You Play Slots? This book is about slot machines. We'll take an in depth look at what slot machines are all about, about where they come from, how they work, where the best ones are found and some other basic knowledge. Then we'll get into the real meat of playing, and hopefully beating, the aptly named one-armed bandits. It's called money management. Most of you have never heard the term money management. But in gambling money management is absolutely critical. It makes the whole difference between whether you lose or win. It separates the winners from the losers. We will talk a lot about money management in this book. By the time you finish reading this, you will know enough to play intelligently and successfully on any slot machines you choose. There is no doubt about the attractiveness of slot machines. Probably 90% of the people who enter a casino at least try the slot machines. And about 90% of these people end up losing money. It is no joke that the slot machines pay for the new towers the casinos are constantly adding. Slot winnings are now over 60% of the total casino winnings and may hit 80% in the next four or five years. When I first entered the world of casino gambling, playing slot machines was considered kind of disgraceful. A slot player was usually either a degenerate gambler, who didn't have enough money to play the table games, or the wife or girl friend of a table game player sent off to play the slots to keep the "little lady" out of trouble.


4

Boy, have the times changed! The majority of casino ads seem to feature slot machines. Smiling people look like they are almost delirious from their slot play. Beautiful women pose on the arms of stylish, suave men, confidently yanking on the machine handles. Now you can get rich playing slots (or haven't you heard). You can win at Black Gold! Or how about Neptune's Treasure! Or plan your retirement from your phenominal winnings from The Fabulous Fifties! You can walk out millions richer from the huge payoffs of the Megabucks game. Or buy your next mansion from the hundreds of thousands showered on you by Nevada Nickels. Or plan your next round the world cruise on your yearly earnings from Quartermania. There is no doubt that the lowly slot machine has become the glamour child of the casino industry. The slot player is now the preferred casino player. Slot clubs are mandatory for any casino that wants to compete. Prizes (we used to call 'em comps, as in complimentary) are offered to slot players as rewards for their slots play, now tracked to the penney by slot machines linked to central casino computers. There is no question that the casinos have learned to milk the slot machine trade for all it is worth. But has the average slot player gotten any smarter? I doubt it. Slot players usually grab whatever money they have and then continue to play on a machine, or several machines, until this money plus a $500 credit card advance, plus $50 mooched from their spouse and the three bucks they got for their shirt are all spent. I admit that I like to play slots. But I hate to lose money. Most people do; they just don't admit it. You are going to hear a lot more about managing your money as we go through this book. I am going to do my best to show you how to turn from a slot loser into a slots winner. To do this, you are going to learn about managing your money. We will talk about setting loss limits. This concept is very simple. No matter how badly your play on a slot machine goes, you will never lose all of your money. Guaranteed. Read on, and I'll show you what I mean. You will learn how to set and reach Win Goals. Can you imagine actually planning on a daily profit from playing slots? I do it. And I'll show you exactly how I do it. Do you know anything about the machines themselves? Some machines are great and others are just awful. Do you know how to find the good ones? I'll show you in a few chapters down the road. And finally, I want to ask you the million dollar question. Should you play slots?


5

I admit I don't have an answer for this one. Play slots if you want to; you sure don't need my permission. But I ask one thing of you. Set your sights on playing to win. I want you to start thinking about how good it will feel to walk into a casino and in a couple of hours walking out with casino money stuffing your pockets. Is this possible? Sure it is. And you can do it playing the slot machines. But I want to plant one more concept in your mind. Gambling is not about winning millions. It is about grabbing smaller wins, locking them up and walking out a winner. And doing this over and over. Gambling is not about getting lucky. It is about controlling your losses so that you are never wiped out. And successful gamblers learn how to accept smaller wins and cut their losses to the bone. There is no way that you are going to win on every slot machine or even on every slot session. You are going to have days where machine after machine takes your money. But I am going to share with you several tricks. You will never walk out broke and beaten by the slots. You will always have enough money to hit the casinos again and hopefully do better. And when you do win. I'll tell you exactly when to run, not walk for the door. Should you play slots? Yeah, play all you want. But listen to what I have to say first. Learn how to manage your money, and you'll start walking out a winner!


6

2

Bankroll If you want to play the game, you've gotta have bread. Mullah. Bucks. Your bankroll is the amount of money you bring with you for gambling. Notice I said the amount of money for gambling. It is not the total amount of money in your kitty. You've got to have some money for cabfares, tips and so on. Your gambling bankroll is only the amount brought especially for gambling. And, you will never lose all of this bankroll no matter how badly your excursion into casinoland goes. The size of your bankroll governs how you will play. If you have a $100 bankroll, you are not going to play on $1 or $5 slots. With this bankroll, you are limited to nickel and quarter slots. With a $500 bankroll, you may want to play some dollar slots, but you are better off sticking with the quarter slots. But you won't need to play nickel slots. With a $1,000 bankroll, you can play quarter or dollar slots, but you may be pushing it to play five dollar slots. If you are willing to bring a $2,000 bankroll, you may want to play only dollar and five dollar slots. The amount of money you bring with you strictly for gambling is your bankroll. Now I am going to share some hard facts with you. If you have only fifty bucks, you are less likely to win $500. If you have $1,000, you have a better chance of winning $500. But you knew that, didn't you? Another one of life's little injustices just reared its ugly head.


7

It takes money to make money. The rich get richer and the poor get children. This statement has been made a hundred ways (I'll only recite two of them so you'll get the idea). The size of your bankroll determines which machines you can play on. If you have a midget bankroll of say $100, you would be foolish to play on dollar machines. If you do, and thirty minutes after arriving you have lost $50, you will be sweating bullets wondering what you are going to do with the remaining six hours you planned on staying. The gambler who plays on dollar machines with only a hundred dollar poke is just asking for trouble. So your bankroll is going to determine which machines you can play on. It will also determine the size of your winnings. If you want to win big, you've got to bring more bucks. If you want to play the dollar machines, you've got to bring more bucks. If you want to take a shot at more machines, you've got to bring more bucks. I mentioned earlier that if you learn my methods of gambling, you will never go home broke. And, you will have one heck of a shot at winning some of the casino's cash hoard. The first thing you are going to do before you hit the slot machines is to divide your gambling bankroll into smaller bankrolls. These are called Session Bankrolls. The idea behind a session bankroll is similar to dividing an army into various components with some divisions always held in reserve. You want to hit the enemy as effectively as possible, but you can't afford to risk losing all of your men and materials in one massive strike where something goes wrong. Being a prudent commander means always considering all the things that can go wrong before ever beginning to envision the fruits of victory. Casino gambling is very similar. The more I think about this comparison, the more I like it. A casino gambler is a lot like an army commander going into battle. He must decide exactly how to position his troops and always be prepared for the mishap, the upset, the plan gone awry. Likewise, you must never assume that Dame Luck is on your side and plunge in with all your army. You must always keep adequate reserves. You must be prepared to lose skirmishes with the casino with the larger goal in mind of emerging a victor. The casino has many advantages over you the player. It has an almost unlimited amount of money compared to the amount you bring. It has infinite patience. And it has probability on its side because every casino game favors the casino is some way.


8

You have to muster your advantages in your battle to take the casino's money. And one of your most important weapons is to divide your bankroll into smaller stakes, and only offer the casino a shot at one of your smaller stakes in any given session. Here's the logic behind this. When you are playing slot machines you will be looking for a hot trend. You will be looking for that time when a machine starts spitting coins out at you at such a furious rate that your heart is pumping ninety miles an hour, and your adrenaline level is off the chart. But you know that this doesn't happen all the time. It happens once in a while and doesn't last forever. When it does, you temporarily have the advantage over the casino. But you have got to last long enough to be there when the coins start rushing out. Dividing your gambling bankroll into five or ten or even twenty, little bankrolls gives you more shots at the casino's stash. And more important, it limits your downsize in any single contest against the casino. If you have a bankroll of $1,000, and you divide it into twenty session bankrolls of $50 each, there is simply no way that the casino can beat you in a single session. But you have twenty shots at the casino's bankroll. And like the wise general who keeps reserves, you will always have your reserves of cash.


9

3

Win Goals We're going to talk about Win Goals. What the heck is a Win Goal you ask? Maybe something like a football goal post. Naw, it must have something to do with hockey. Or that fancy English game played on horses, what-cha-callit. Nope, wrong on all counts. It's about gambling. It's about figuring out a reasonable amount of winnings for a gambling trip. Oh, now you see. Since we're just dreaming here, you decide that a million bucks is your win goal. I see a smile starting to appear. You just got the joke. Now you suppose I will tell you which psychic line to call to find out when you will win. Except I am dead serious. I am talking about setting up a goal that you can reasonably expect to win, then bringing out this amount of money in your very own pocket or purse or stuffed in your boot or where ever you keep your casino winnings. Casino winnings? You never had that problem did you? Well, I don't intend to create problems for you, if winnings are a problem. "No problema" you say. You can handle winnings. Just show me how to win that million bucks. I am going to start out disappointing you with some bad news. Neither I, nor the psychic, nor slot mechanics, nor slot attendants, nor your lucky charm will help you win a million bucks. Winning a million bucks, or even a ten thousand dollar jackpot, is mostly a matter of being in the right place at the right time. When we discuss playing jackpot machines a few chapters down the road, I will lay out exactly how to play the jackpot machines. But I can't guarantee your million or even your ten grand.


10

Most slot players tend to think about the huge payoffs possible and then blow their bankrolls and walk out broke. If you are in this camp, I am going to try to change your attitude. I am going to share with you a great secret of how to win at gambling. (You might want to pull the shades so that your deadbeat brother-in-law doesn't find out too and become even more intolerable than he is.) Are you ready? The secret of winning is to set lower win goals and then learn to accept them. Another way of saying this is that the amount you are likely to win is directly related to the amount you bring with you for gambling, your gambling bankroll. If you bring $1,000 as your bankroll, you may easily win $100 or even $300. If you bring $5,000 to play slots, you might want to shoot for a $500 or even a $1,000 win. If you are like most slots players and bring $300 to $500, you can't expect to win the same amounts as someone who puts more money into play. Notice I didn't say won't win the same amount. Anything can happen once in a while. These long shot wins are the stories the casinos like to play up. We have all read about the player who put three bucks in a jackpot machine and won two million smackers. These things do happen. People win lotteries. Or find oil in their backyards. Or are left millions by long forgotten rich uncles. When you look at millions of people and then focus on the events that happen to a mere handful, the improbable seems probable. But we want to deal with the probable. The methods I am going to show you will not prevent you from becoming one of the fortunate handful who win millions. In fact, I am going to show you how to play slot machines in such a way that you will have a chance at making more pulls, on more machines than you have before. And that may increase your chance of hitting a jackpot, simply because you will be in the game longer. But I am getting ahead of myself. We want to deal with the probable. With what is likely to happen nearly every time you play. And you know that you are not going to win a million bucks every time you plunk your lousy three bucks in the nearest slot machine. What you want to do is set a reasonable Win Goal related to the amount of bankroll you bring. A reasonable Win Goal is an amount such as 30%, 40% or 50% of your bankroll. Before you sneer at amounts as low as 30%, I want you to remember that the lower the Win Goal, the easier it is to hit it! A 30% Win Goal is easier to win than a 40% goal or a 50% goal. And we want to deal with the probable, that is, real world stuff.


11

Let's say you decide on a Win Goal of 50%. Fine. Now look at your bankroll, and you can see how your Win Goal of 50% might work out. If you bring a bankroll of $500, then you will be looking for a win of $250. If your bankroll is $1,000, your Win Goal is $500. And, if you bring only $100, and your Win Goal is 50%, then you have to be satisfied with a win of $50. What, a lousy fifty bucks? What about ten thousand, or at least a grand? Patience my friend, patience. A Win Goal of a lesser amount will not deprive you of the chance to win larger amounts. Wait a little longer, and I will show you how you can still win much, much more even with a 50% Win Goal. Your Win Goal is not an absolute upper limit on your winnings. Instead, it acts as a special signal telling you that it is time to start locking up profits. Here's one way you can use this Win Goal. You have just finished a round of play on a slot machine. A round of play consists simply of inserting all of the coins you have set aside for insertion into the machine for only one set of plays. You count your coins and discover that you are now up 50%. Now what do you do. Quit? Jump up and down? Do your famous victory dance? No. What I will ask you to do is to set aside all of your original session bankroll and at least half of your winnings. You can continue to play, but only with the Excess Winnings. Let's put some numbers to this approach. You just ran fifty bucks through a dollar slot, and after this round (consisting of inserting the fifty coins one time), you count the coins and come up with 79 coins. Since you always plan ahead, you know that your Win Goal for this fifty coin session was twenty five coins, and you now have 29 coins more than when you started. A light bulb goes off. Son of a gun, you now have met (and exceeded) your Win Goal. Now quickly, what's next? Right, we take half the winning coins — let's see, how much is half of 29 — and place these coins with your original session bankroll of 50. Quick, what's the answer? Okay, I made it tricky with a win of 29. Slot machines don't deal in half coins. Just take 14 coins from your winnings, add the 50 coins you started out with and place all 64 coins in a different slot bucket. You now have two slot buckets. One has 64 coins in it and the other has 15 coins in it. The 64 coin bucket is your Lockup for this round. You will not touch these coins again. You can add more coins to this bucket — more on this later — but you will never take any of these coins out.


12

Your second bucket with 15 coins is your Excess. These coins you will use to continue to play the slot machine. At the worst, if you lose all of the Excess coins, you will have a win of 14 coins, locked up with your original session bankroll. But you might keep on winning. Let's say your next round produces a ten coin win. There are a several moves you can make now. You could place all ten coins in your Lockup bucket, bringing it up to 74 coins. You could place half of your ten coin win with your Lockup. Or, you could call it quits and leave with a total win of 39 coins, representing a win of 39/50 or 78% of your session bankroll. We will discuss several more options after you have mastered all the principles of this style of gambling. My point here is that a Win Goal will do two things. With a Win Goal, you have an automatic trigger to tell you when it is time to start locking up all or part of your win. In addition, your Win Goal will not prevent you from continuing to win. Using a Win Goal gives you the best of all worlds. It will allow you to lock up and ultimately walk out with a win. And, it does not prevent you from staying and winning a ton more. Neat huh? But there is another side to this coin. Every slot machine doesn't just spit out wins. The darned things also take our coins and cause losses. The next section will tell you what to do to keep your losses down.


13

4

Loss Control This section may be the most important in this book. After reading the title, it may also be the one you are most likely to skip. Who wants to hear about losses. I'll bet this is one part of gambling that you've got down cold. Losses are the one thing most slot players have a lot of knowledge about. And what do I mean by Loss Control? Have I got some special way of communicating with the slot machine and telling it to "lay off, you've already done enough damage here." Thought you got me there, didn't you. No, I can't communicate with the machine, but it's not the machine causing the losses. It's the human on the other end. What, moi? Not that nasty old machine the casinos program to take all my money? You got it. It's you who is responsible for the losses. Not the casino. Not the slot machine. Not your bad luck or your nagging wife. Gambling is all about controlling money. It comes under the general heading of "money management." You may recall earlier that I promised you will never lose all of your bankroll playing slots. Do you remember that? Here's how you will accomplish this. Whenever you gamble, you will set a loss limit to any session bankroll you are using. Remember Win Goals from the last section? Well, this is the other side of the coin. With a Loss Limit, you will set the downside to any slots session. Once you hit this limit, the session is over. Kaput. Done.


14

There are a couple of more reasons why you want to set limits on losses. Besides money management, gambling is all about psychology. A lot of gamblers bounce back and forth from greed to despair. Greed comes from expecting too much and never setting reasonable limits. Like the player with the $100 bankroll who won't be satisfied with anything less than ten thousand. With greed in action, there is never a limit or a trigger (remember that word?) to tell the gambler it is time to back off, to start locking up (another key word) a win. Here's how greed works with a lot of slot players. You get ahead while playing. Did I say you? Excuse me. That other fellow over there got ahead. I'll keep from being personal this one time. That other player over there who only brought $100 and has been playing dollar slots just hit a $300 payoff. He's now ahead over 500 bucks. Is he happy? Not exactly. Manic or overbearing or overheated may describe him, but not happy. He's now thinking how good it would feel to win a thousand big ones. We'll take a break from watching our friend over there. Besides, we don't have to stand too close. We can hear him hollering and yelping way over here. We'll just stand here quietly for a few more minutes. Sort of take in the casino ambience and "people watch" for a while. Did you notice something. It's getting kind of quiet over in that corner where our winning friend is. If fact, I just heard a curse. Let's sneak in a little closer and see what's happening. My goodness. What happened to all of his coins? It looks like he's down to less than fifteen or twenty coins now. And look at that expression on his face. I'd sure hate to be standing closer than three feet to this character. I am not an expert in these matters, but he seems to have a look of despair. Maybe this does sound a little bit like you. You get ahead, and feel pretty good. In fact, this may be the day you walk out with the casino keys in your pocket. Your greed makes you completely forget the reality of gambling. That winning ain't automatic. That trends reverse. You don't remember these things until the losses start piling up. Until all your winnings disappear and turn into a loss. Let's check up on our friend. It looks like he just plunked his last coin into the slot machine. He looks around and starts walking toward that credit card advance machine over in the corner. Uh oh. Bet he's going to go for the big loss this time.


15

By bouncing back and forth from greed to despair, our friend has put himself in the corner. When he is winning, he won't stop or at least set aside some winnings. And when he is losing, he will never set a downside limit. You probably have an idea about what a professional gambler is like. This colorful character will risk all on the turn of a card, the roll of the dice, the pull of a lever. Right? Not me or the other pros I have met. This is a game of caution. Most of the time the casinos have some kind of advantage over you. The house vig. Their unlimited bankrolls. The atmosphere they create. The professional gambler has several tools he can use. But betting it all in one desperate bid to win sure ain't one of them. The pros I know are very conservative. They have to be. Maybe you can afford to lose all of your bankroll because to you gambling is just a game. An excursion. Entertainment. For a pro, it's his livelihood. And he (or she) is not about to risk all to chance. The pro knows that trends can run both for and against him and that when things are going bad, it is time to walk. This is what the twin triggers of Win Goals and Loss Limits are all about. They act as signals so that you don't have to rely on your own frazzled nerves to tell you what to do. Before you start to play, you will set up both Win Goals and Loss Limits. To keep it simple, let's say you use 50% for each. Now you've got a trigger for results in either direction. Say your session stake is $20. Your Loss Limit is $10. Your Win Goal is $10. You know what to do when you hit your Win Goal, right? Set aside part of your winnings and all of your session bankroll and only play with the excess. What do you do when you hit your loss limit? You quit playing. Walk to the door. Head to your room. Take a walk. Go for a swim. Drink a cup of coffee. Go shopping. Change games. Let's see if you got this down. With winnings exceeding your goal, you start locking up profits. When losses hit your limit, you walk. Got it? Acting this way serves a couple of purposes. First it counters the human impulses of greed and despair. You don't have to let your highly charged emotions tell you what to do. You follow the guidelines set by Win Goals and Loss Limits. But there's another aspect. Slot machines run in trends. In order to win, you need to bet when the trend is running your way and pull off when the trend goes against you. With Win Goals and Loss Limits, you can do both.


16

And with a Loss Limit, you will never go home broke. After you hit your limit of losses, just take the remaining amount of that session and lock it up. Set it aside. It is not to be used for gambling on this trip. If your session bankroll is twenty bucks and you lose ten, take the remaining ten bucks and lock it up. If you do this after any loss hitting your limit, you will never go home broke. And that is the pros' secret. As Kenny would say, "You've got to know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em."


17

5

Trends Trends are a dominant factor in gambling. Blackjack tables run in streaks. Sometimes the dealer wins every hand; other times the dealer will have long streaks of busting. When a shooter is making point after point, the noise from the craps table fills the whole casino. When shooter after shooter fails to make a point, the silence from the table can be equally deafening. Trends can cut both ways for players. Losing trends can seem to last forever, winning trends make the player feel that he can do no wrong. One of the safest ways to approach casino gambling is to follow the trends. Catching a winning trend, even a short one, can make up for prior losing sessions in a hurry. On the other hand, losing bet after bet in a prolonged losing trend can turn a nice win into a sizable loss in short order. By catching favorable trends and exploiting them, trend following becomes one of the most powerful tools a successful gambler can use. On the other side of the coin, avoiding prolonged losing trends can save bundles of cash and prevent a win from turning into a loss. With blackjack, it is fairly easy to determine a winning or losing streak. At blackjack this can be done without even risking a single bet merely by walking around and observing tables before sitting down to play. When you find a table with a large number of dealer busts, it is time to start playing and hope that the dealer continues to bust. Likewise with craps or roulette or baccarat, it is easy to observe or case tables and begin playing when playable trends are occurring.


18

With slot machines, a different approach must be used. You may observe another player winning play after play, but that player is not likely to step aside and give you the machine so that you can catch a trend. Also with slot play, it is not possible to skip a play and observe the outcome like it is with the table games. If you don't insert a coin and pull the handle (or push the button) nothing happens with a slot machine. And it is a little awkward to ask some stranger, "Hey buddy, will you throw a couple of coins in this machine. I need to sit out a couple of pulls and wait for a trend." But trends happen all the time with slot machines. And catching a winning trend is one of the slot player's chief weapons in overcoming the built-in house advantage enjoyed by all slot machines. The concept of using slot machine trends to your advantage is basic. You have to avoid long losing streaks, and when you get a strong winning trend, you have got to ride it for all it is worth. The easiest way to avoid slot losing trends is to set limits on the amount of losses you will accept from any slot machine and even set the maximum number of pulls without a payoff. You can also vary the number of coins inserted per play. You may want to reduce your play to only one coin when a machine is cold and increase your wager to the maximum number of coins it will accept when the payoffs start coming. A large part of this book deals with how to find and profit from trends and how to avoid large losses. Most players seem to become chained to a particular machine at some point in their play. This may be fine when the machine is a winning one, but could spell disaster when the enviable long losing streak hits. Many slot players fail to recognize a couple of basic principles of slots play. First, any machine can be a winner or a loser for a limited number of plays. If you give a machine a reasonable chance to provide winnings and it doesn't, there is no law saying that you have to keep playing that machine. Perhaps the most treacherous aspect of slot play is knowing when to pull off a machine which has been a good payer, but now has turned stingy. Most slot players will not recognize that a winning trend has come to an end and continue to play too long. Once a win turns into a loss, many players let their emotions take over and continue to play the same machine in some kind of contest between man and machine. The greatest single hurdle to becoming a successful winning slots player is overcoming the emotional aspects (remember greed and despair) of gambling. And,


19

following successful winning trends and leaving unsuccessful losing trends is a powerful tool in the contest with the casinos!


20

6

Money Management Money management is all about control. It's about controlling the amount of money used for gambling. It's about reducing losses. It's about controlling the amount of money used for any single session of play. And ultimately, it's about walking out the door a winner. Slot players are a lot like fishermen. They like to talk about the one that got away. How many times have you been up playing slots and ended up giving it all back? When you left the casino, you had fewer dollars in your stash than when you started. In my book, the amount you leave with is all that matters. Anything else is just another fishing story. It is no great feat to get ahead playing slots. Probably 75% of all slot players get ahead sometime in their play. But do they walk out the door a winner? No. Sadly, probably close to 90% of slot players end up losing money. You probably won't realize that the loss rate is this high talking to other slot players. Most slot players won't admit what their losses really are. Here are some typical statements made by slot players, followed by the correct interpretation. "I am up a little bit." Translation: I lost over $500 in the last two hours, but I just won a twenty dollar payoff. "I am about even." (I really like this one). Translation: I haven't had a single hit in over twenty minutes, but I will stay with this damned machine if it kills me. "I am down a little bit." Translation: I just completed my second cash advance on my credit card, but now I feel lucky. "I lost a little, but I just play for the entertainment." Translation: I just lost the rent money, and now I am working on losing everything else.


21

"I lost some on the machine, but I expect that the slot host will comp my lunch." Translation: I just bought a thousand dollar lunch. Gambling is all about controlling yourself. It is about accepting responsibility for your own actions. You don't win because you are lucky, and you don't lose because you get a string of bad luck. You create your own luck. If you think about the times you were ahead and then ended up giving it all back plus whatever additional cash you scrounged, who is to blame? The casino? The slot machine? Don't get mad at me for pointing this out. What is wrong with setting aside your winnings when you are ahead? And what is wrong with limiting your losses when you hit a losing streak? And what is wrong with leaving a slot machine that doesn't pay? I hope you answered "nothing." Doing these things all require self control. They are easy to do, but like just about everything else in life, they require a little self control and some practice so that they become habits. Trust me, winning is habit forming. Losing nearly always leaves a bad taste in your mouth or a knot in your stomach. Psychologists tell me that many people feel guilty when they win. Like they have some ill begotten gain stuffed in their pocket. I don't understand this completely. I think it might have something to do with the work ethic so many of us grew up with. Some sort of variation of "a penny saved is a penny earned." Except that with gambling winnings, the penny won doesn't seem like it was earned. Or it may just be a variation of the old greed and despair cycle. Whatever causes it, many people, at least subconsciously, don't feel right walking out of a casino with more money than they came in with. My job is to change this thinking. Once you start walking out with winnings, you will like it. Trust me. Money management is all about using crutches to help us leave with more money than we started or at least leaving with some of the money we came in with. It is all about developing a plan for our gambling and then following it. Gamblers never cease to amaze me. Gambling falls into some special category of human behavior that escapes the normal rules we usually live by. People change their behavior dramatically in casinos. Consummate misers can't wait to throw their money away in casinos. People who clip coupons every week to save ten bucks on groceries think nothing of dropping a hundred bucks in fifteen minutes on some miserable tight slot machine.


22

Money management is all about controlling our emotions. It is about developing a plan for slot play and then sticking to it. I am not going to ask you to do anything risque, dangerous, or even slightly off-beat in learning how to correctly play the slot machines. I am just asking you to change your behavior slightly. Once you do, you will learn how good it feels to walk out a winner. And once you try this a few times, you will become just as hooked on winning as you were on losing. Let's recap what we've talked about so far. You have learned to grab smaller wins and then lock them up. This goes against the grain of most slot players who will never be satisfied with any amount of winnings. One of my former business associates always lost at gambling. Every time he played he lost. And most of the time he was up at some point in his play. His playing pattern never varied. When he was up he increased his bets, always trying to win more and more. There was never a stopping point, because he was unwilling to set a reasonable goal for his winning. I have seen this guy win $25,000 in thirty minutes at craps and then lose it all back in the next ten minutes. His loses following wins were especially breath taking. As a winning streak came to an end (they always do), and he started losing, he would increase his bets even more so that he could get back to where he was even more quickly. He never set any goals for how much he wanted to win. If he was up $25,000, he figured he might as well go for fifty grand. If he was up fifty grand, he was rooting for one hundred big ones. Don't get me wrong. The style of play I am advocating will not prevent you from having big wins. I am simply suggesting that you always set aside some of your winnings plus your original session bankroll once you hit a Win Goal. With this strategy, you can win all night. All that you give up with this plan is the opportunity to board the gambler's roller coaster. On this roller coaster every peak is followed by a steep valley. The ride ultimately ends when the whole contraption comes to a dead stop and the passenger is broke. To use my philosophy of gambling, you need to recognize that the amount of money you can expect to win is directly related to your bankroll. Remember your bankroll? It's the amount of money set aside for gambling only. Hopefully, it's money that you can afford to lose. It's not the money needed for the mortgage payment or for the baby's new clothes. Once you have your bankroll put together, it's going to govern everything you do. The size of your bankroll determines whether you play dollar slots or are strictly a quarter slot player.


23

You will divide your bankroll into smaller bankrolls, called session bankrolls. Now you have limited your loss exposure to only a portion of your total bankroll. But you are going to add another layer of protection. You are never going to lose all of a single session bankroll. Not even one. You will use a loss limit with every single session bankroll. If your session bankroll is $50 and your loss limit is 50%, then the most you can lose in any single session is 50% of $50, or $25. When you hit your loss limit, the session is over. And the remainder of your session bankroll is locked up. Think what this means. If your bankroll is $500, divided into ten $50 session bankrolls, and you lose every single session, your total loss will be $250. On a happier note, what if you lose seven session bankrolls, for a total of $175, and then hit a $500 jackpot? You'll be ahead, won't you? Using Loss Limits has another big benefit. It will force you to change machines when the machine is a loser. Winning at gambling is all about catching favorable trends. Too many slot players forget this and act like they are chained to a single machine. Once again, human emotions are coming into play. Greed and despair again. If you will learn my style of play, you will never lose all of your bankroll. I haven't mentioned this, but losing all of your money is psychologically devastating for most people. It doesn't matter whether you lose $100 or $1,000,000, whether you can afford the loss, or you just lost your last dollar. Losing every penny you brought with you is just devastating. I have no idea why people will gamble down to their last dollar in a losing session. If you just lost $500, do you really believe that you are going to win it back with three bucks? Yet this is exactly how most people behave when they are gambling. A few years ago, my beautiful wife and I were playing craps at the Golden Nugget in downtown Las Vegas. We were using one of our controlled systems and had just hit our win goal of about $500 for a short session. We had become intrigued with a player at the opposite end of the table from us. This fellow was up about seventy thousand and was playing with thousand dollar chips. I have no idea what he started with, but I bet it wasn't for more than $2,000. When we left the table, he was starting to lose, but continued to make several bets of a thousand bucks a pop with every shooter. We took a break in the casino lounge, counted our chips, recorded our win and relaxed for a few minutes. After finishing our drinks I suggested that we look in on the seventy grand winner.


24

We walked over to the same craps table. The winner was still there, except that he was considerably poorer. He was down to three one-thousand dollar chips, still betting a thousand dollars a wager. We didn't stay to see the sad ending. Think what might have been if he had known about money management. He could have locked up sixty thousand, played with ten grand conservatively, and walked out with at least sixty thousand in winnings. Oh well, another good fishing story about the one that got away. It's time to learn about the slot machines. In the next section we will talk about how the slot machines came about, about their paybacks, the types of slot machines and even where to find the best machines.


25

Slot Machines

1

Early Slots The first slot machines appeared on the East Coast in the 1880s and spread rapidly across the country. By 1890, they had reached the rough and tumble city of San Francisco where they were commonly found in saloons and brothels. The first machines accepted one nickel at a time and were mostly poker machines offering payoffs for receiving various poker hands. As they became more popular, they spread from the saloons and brothels to cigar stores, soda fountains, bowling alleys and social clubs. The individual who invented the modern type of slot machine with its spinning reels and cash payouts was Charles August Fey, a German immigrant who settled in San Francisco. In 1899, he created his Liberty Bell slot machine, which had three reels with various symbols, including liberty bells. His machine was very popular among the slot set and become the "standard" for other slot machine manufacturers of the era. By 1905, bell type machines, including Fey's, had spread throughout the country, appearing not only in saloons and houses of ill-repute, but in cigar stores, bowling alleys and barber shops. The "Bell" type machines had three reels, with each reel containing ten symbols. Like modern slot machines, different payoffs were made when certain combinations of symbols were aligned. The top payoff was for a combination of three liberty bells, hence the name, Liberty Bell machine. Many of the early slots were rigged or gaffed to prevent certain payoffs and generally lived up to the name "one-armed bandits."


26

By 1906, a backlash had developed against loose living. Voices rang out across the land from a myriad of pulpits, railing against the evils of booze, whores, and of course, slot machines. The San Francisco earthquake of 1906, which wiped out all of the San Francisco slot machine manufacturers, was seen an omen from God that the God-fearing were on the right track. Many of the reformers redoubled their efforts to eradicate these particularly loathsome brands of sin. Following the earthquake's devastation, most slot machine manufacturers, including Charles Fey, moved out of San Francisco and headed back East. In 1912, the state of Nevada legalized slot machines so long as they did not pay out cash prizes. Thus the era of the "gum machines" began. Banned from paying out coins, they paid out sticks of chewing gum. As long as a player, oops, I mean a patron, was paid in gum (wink, wink), the machines conformed to the Nevada law. Of course the keepers of the faith were not fooled, and they continued their efforts to have these "machines of the devil" permanently banned. Of particular irritation to the righteous was the fact that women, and even children, who could now be seen chewing gum, had obviously played these evil devices. Where else could they have gotten the gum? Now you know why your third grade teacher was so incensed with your gum chewing. She knew, or at least suspected, what you had been up to. In 1917, the forces aligned against evil triumphed with the passage of the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution. This amendment, outlawing the manufacturing, sale and use of alcohol, became the law of the land in 1920, being ratified by every state except Connecticut and Rhode Island. However, this did not end the spread of the slot machines. With Prohibition of alcohol in place, the speakeasys spread like wildfire, and most of them offered an assortment of slot machines for their thirsty patrons. During this period, mints started being offered instead of gum, as the mints had a longer shelf life. The war against slot machines continued. By the mid 1930s, the slots were illegal almost everywhere except Nevada, which had legalized gambling in 1931. In 1951, Congress passed the Johnson Act, which banned slot machines in all states without legalized gambling. This left Nevada as the only state where slot machines could be legally played. This was the status quo for slot machines for about twenty five years. By the late 1970s, the rest of the country starting awakening to the tremendous growth Nevada had enjoyed, fueled by the legions of persons intent on doing some legal gambling. Atlantic


27

City legalized gambling, followed by Indian reservation gambling, riverboat gambling and land based casinos throughout the country. As it now stands, there are few states that don't offer some form of legalized gambling (Utah and Hawaii come to mind). And slot machines offer casino patrons some serious gambling opportunities. Slot machines now accept not only nickels, but quarters, half dollars, dollars, five dollar, and even hundred dollar tokens. Slot play is not limited to one coin at a time, but may be played in multiples of two, three, five, and in some cases, as many as ten coins at a time. In 1980, Bally Manufacturing introduced its first computer controlled slot using a microprocessor. This machine made possible the multi-million dollar jackpots with hundreds, or even thousands, of machines linked, with each machine's play adding to the jackpot until some lucky player walks up, and plunks three coins in and walks out with two million bucks. International Game Technology became Bally's fiercest competitor, specializing in manufacturing the mega-jackpot machines offering lottery like payoffs. What are you up against playing these computer chip controlled "thinking machines?" Let's find out.


28

2

Computers Disguised as Slot Machines The early slot machines were strictly mechanical devices with levers activating gears which in turn caused reels to spin and ultimately stop, with the symbols displayed in a window visible to the player. They were easily beaten by persons skilled at pulling the handles in certain ways, by persons inserting small wires into the sides of the machines and by other persons of like ilk. In the 1950s, a group using the "rhythm method" drained thousands from the Nevada slot machines using a special technique for the pulling the handle in such a way that the reel spinning could be influenced, and certain combinations of symbols could be manipulated to appear more often than they would have if the reels had been left to spin naturally. The advantages of such techniques in beating the slot machines are enormous. The original slot machine, the Liberty Bell, had three reels with 10 symbols on each reel. The "jackpot" combination consisted of lining up three bells for a payoff of 22 coins. The odds against hitting this combination were 999 to 1. Because only one bell appeared on each reel, the odds of stopping on a bell were one in ten for each reel. Of course, in order to hit the big payoff, all three reels had to show bells. Since there was only one bell on each reel, three bells would line up once every 1,000 pulls, computed by multiplying the odds of hitting one in ten symbols on each reel of 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 or 1/1000. Thus with one jackpot payoff per 1,000 pulls, the odds against hitting the jackpot were 999 to 1. The rhythm players could change these odds by controlling the rate at which one or more reels would stop with a bell showing. Assume that they could manipulate the third


29

reel to show bells half the time. The odds of hitting three bells would become 1/10 x 1/10 x 5/10 or 5/1000, which works out to 199 to 1, considerably better than 999 to 1. The mechanical slots were the only slots on the scene until the 1950s when the electromechanical slots appeared. These slots resemble modern slots with multiple coin play, multiple pay lines, larger jackpots and progressive jackpots. The levers of these machines could not be manipulated to control the spin of the reels as the levers only activated electrical components which caused the reels to spin. However, these electrically controlled slots were only one step up from the old mechanical slots. While they offered flashing lights, and even musical tunes, the mechanical spinning of the reels ultimately determined the payouts to the players. With these machines, not only could the player insert more coins per play, but additional reels were added with some machines sporting five or more reels. The latest generation of slot machines look like the electromechanical slot machines. They have levers or in some cases buttons which seem to activate the reels. They typically offer three, four or five reels which spin around just like the mechanical or electronically controlled machines. Some of these machines display reels as video displays, which is about the only visual clue that these machines are different. The newest slot machines, the ones you will most likely encounter where ever you decide to play slots, are really computers disguised to look like slot machines. These computer controlled slots have brains consisting of microchips and are controlled by sophisticated electronic circuitry. The reels and levers are still there, but they are there for appearance only as the microchips control the payoffs. The only reason slot machines even have levers or reels anymore is to make them appear to be more like the older type slot machines and therefor more familiar to slot players. They could just as easily be activated by insertion of the coins, pressing a button or by installing a small microphone that you could whisper into "Spin you bastard." The reels can be easily replaced by video screens as they are on the video poker machines. They have been left on the computer controlled slots simply because most slot players like to see the reels spin and watch the symbols whirl by. But, I want to let you in on a secret. The reels spinning have nothing to do with the payoffs on these microchip controlled slots. All payoffs are now determined by a specialized computer program which continuously creates random payoffs and then tells the reel when to stop so that the computer determined symbols appear in the window. This program is known in the trade as a random number generator or RNG. The RNG program runs continuously so long as the slot machine is plugged in. It determines thousands of combinations of payoffs every second. When you place your


30

coins in the coin slot and pull the lever, the machine selects one of its randomly determined payoffs and instructs the reels to line up so that the appropriate symbols appear for the payoff selected. Your action in pulling the lever has nothing to do with what shows when the reels come to a stop. Since where the reels stop is computer controlled, two identical slot machines with identical reels can have very different payoffs. Machine One might be programmed to have a lemon on reel one appear once every twenty five spins, while its cousin, Machine Two, might be programmed to show lemons on the first reel once every ten spins. Dependent on how the winning combinations of symbols are computed, this one change might reduce the overall payback from 95% on Machine One to only 90% on Machine Two, with no other apparent differences. With the RNG programs constantly creating new randomly selected payoffs, the old adage that "a slot is due to pay" becomes really ludicrous. Since every play is picked by the RNG program, which has no memory of previous selections, a stingy slot can stay tight for a long time, while a hot slot may just as likely stay hot for a while. The next time you pull off a slot and a new player takes the slot right after you and hits a good payoff, don't think that he or she got your payoff. With the computer selected random payoffs being crunched at the rate of hundreds or even thousands per second, even if you had stayed on the machine but missed the timing of your play by mere nanoseconds (millionths of a second), the same RNG created payoff would not have occurred. The bad news about playing these computers disguised as slots is that the chance of a malfunction favoring a player is just about nonexistent. The darned things are so sophisticated that if the microchip detects a malfunction, it is more likely to shut the whole machine down rather than risk paying a player too much. The good news about these new fangled gadgets is that they may be even streakier than the mechanical or electromechanical slots. A characteristic of randomness is streakiness. If all payoffs are spread out in an orderly and predictable manner, they may not be random. So the RNG may as well be your friend as your enemy. Once a favorable trend starts, it may continue for some time. Let's take a look now at just what we are up against with the slot machines' paybacks.


31

3

Slot Paybacks If you start figuring the number of theoretical combinations of symbols offered by a typical slot machine your head may start to reel. With the RNG controlled slots you may be dealing with probabilities in the billionths. I'll give you just one example. Let's assume that we are playing on a slot with four reels, with 64 symbols or stops per reel. In order to hit a jackpot, we must line up four 7s, only one of which is on each reel. Our chance of winning with four 7s is one in 16,777,216. I can show you worse odds than this, but I want to make a point here. Let's assume that you are playing this slot, going for the jackpot which, for the sake of argument, we'll say is $1,000,000. While $1,000,000 is a large amount of money, we can see that the casino is not going to have to pay this out very often as it is should hit, on the average, only once in 16,777,216 pulls. If you are playing this machine and the big one hits, that's great. Remember the wonderful advice I gave you about slots, and send me any extra you can spare. But what might happen if you keep playing and playing this machine with no jackpot? You might lose your shirt, right? You won't if you use the money management strategies I keep talking about. But, I bring this up because so many players become so enamored with the large payoffs that they forget just how hard they are to hit. The chart below shows the number of combinations offered by three, four and five reel slots with the number of symbols or stops ranging from 10 to 64.


32

I didn't even bother to show a number for RNG controlled payoffs because there is simply no practical way of knowing it unless you have access to the computer program. Remember that with RNG controlled payoffs, the number of reels and the number of stops per reel may have no effect on the payoffs because the computer programming controls every payoff, and the reels are just there for display. I have shown you this stuff because I want you to have a little more understanding about how slots pay off. Now that we've touched on this, I want to move on to the really important information. Far more important than the number of reels and the odds against hitting mega-jackpots is the basic payback rate of a slot machine. You've probably seen some of the casino ads with phrases like "Our Slots Pay Out 98%" or "Our Slots Are the Loosest in Town!" These ads are referring to the amount retained by the casino. There is a promotion going on right now at the Stratosphere in Las Vegas where 100% paybacks are being advertised. I have not played there in a while, so I can't advise you on this one. But I will tell you that as a general principle, casinos pay out as little as they can get away with. Obviously, what is good for the casino is not necessarily good for the slot players. Casinos would probably like to offer zero payback slots, where no payoffs ever tumbled into the tray. They don't do this because no one would ever play these slots, and the casinos would end up making zero from them. Moreover, the competition within the casino industry is getting fierce and the competition for slots players is especially intense. To attract the players, casinos have been forced to offer more and more attractive paybacks, with paybacks of 98% and even 99% not uncommon in Nevada. The difference in payback rates can make or break a player. Most players will not insert their slot play money just one time in a particular machine. They will insert all of their coins into the machine and then start another round of play with the coins returned by the machine. A typical slot player will repeat this process over and over until he or she runs out of money or simply quits from fatigue. Because the same money is played and replayed into the same machine, the house payback rate becomes critical. The following chart shows you the effects of different returns on a player who starts with $100. From a high return of 99% to a low of 83%, lets look at the effect the house edge has on your bankroll.


33

Amounts Left After a Round of Play No of Rounds 99% Return 95% Return 90% Return 83% Return 0 $100.00 $100.00 $100.00 $100.00 1 99.00 95.00 90.00 83.00 2 98.01 90.25 81.00 68.89 3 97.03 85.74 72.90 57.19 4 96.06 81.45 65.61 47.46 5 95.10 77.28 59.05 39.93 6 94.15 73.51 53.14 32.69 7 93.21 69.83 48.84 27.13 8 92.27 66.34 43.05 22.52 9 91.35 63.02 38.74 18.69 10 90.44 59.87 34.87 15.51 15 86.00 46.33 20.59 6.47 20 81.79 35.85 12.16 2.55 25 77.78 27.74 7.18 1.00 30 73.97 21.46 4.24 .39 35 70.34 15.78 2.78 .15 40 66.90 12.21 1.64 .06 With a slot returning 99%, $99 is left after one round of play, that is, after $100 in coins have been played in the slot. After ten rounds, with each round consisting of taking all the coins left from the previous round and replaying them in the machine, we still have over $90 left. After 20 rounds, the 99% return has reduced our funds to about $82. After a full 40 rounds of play, we still have almost $67 left. While the casino is slowly grinding away at our bankroll on the 99% return machine, we are left with most of our money after each round of play and one large payoff can put us in the black. Dropping from a 99% return to a 95% machine, which is about what the average Nevada slot pays, we see that we are down to $95 after a round, less than $60 after ten rounds and only have about $12 after forty rounds. So the 4% increase in casino vig or vigorish, from 99% payback to 95% return cost us about $55 after forty rounds of play.


34

We also compare a 90% return machine, representing typical east coast paybacks, and an 83% return machine, representing the state sanctioned lowest payback for Atlantic City. I'll let you look at the chart for these machines. Suffice it to say, after 40 rounds of play, we are down to zip, nada, zippo after the higher house vig has ground down our bankroll. In a few pages, I'll focus more on how important the slot's return percentage is. I want you to see just how much difference a few percentage points in casino advantage can make when the same coins are played over and over. With a 99% return machine, we can play 40 rounds or more and still have enough bankroll to continue play. This gives us more staying power, more chances at hitting a large payoff, or even a streak of smaller payoffs, and ending up with a net win. With an 83% return machine, we are going to have a lot fewer chances to win because we are not going to have as many plays for the same amount of money. By the end of round 4, we have lost over 50% of our bankroll, and if this is our loss limit, we must abandon the machine. Even with a 90% payback, we will hit our 50% loss limit somewhere in the seventh round of play. With a 95% payback, our odds are improved considerably, and we will not hit our 50% loss limit until the fourteenth round of play. The table below shows how many plays we might have on each machine if our average play is for $2, and we limit our maximum number of plays to 40 rounds. Number of Plays at $2 per Play

Machine Return

Rounds of Play Before Loss Limit

Number of Plays per Round

Total Number of Plays

99% 40 83 3,320

95% 14 38 532

90% 7 38 266

83% 4 38 152


35

The first thing we notice, looking at these figures, is that we can play over 3,300 plays on the 99% machine and still not hit our loss limit. We arbitrarily cut off our play at 40 rounds, but we could still continue to play on this machine if we choose to. With a 95% machine, we get 14 rounds of play and exceed 500 plays, at an average of $2 per play. With a 90% machine, we have only 7 rounds and a total of 266 plays before our loss limit tells us to quit. The 83% machine takes our money so quickly that we are forced to quit after 152 plays. Now, if the name of the game is looking for and exploiting a hot streak, I think you will agree with my logic that the more chances (or plays) you get, the better your chances of hitting a good winning streak. You can also see that if you play on 83% return machines, you are either going to have to play for a lot shorter time period, or bring a lot more money. Assume that you are inserting five plays per minute. On the 99% machine, you get over eleven hours of play, and you still have not hit your loss limit. The 95% machine gives you about an hour and forty five minutes. With the machine paying 90%, you get only 53 minutes of play, and the greedy 83% machine pulls you below your loss limit in just 30 minutes. If you make ten plays per minute, which is not fast for a slots player, you have only fifteen minutes on the 83% slot before half of your session bankroll is gone. What does this tell us about picking a slot machine. First, a difference of as little as four percent in the casino vig can make a big difference in how fast the machine takes our money. We could conceivably play a whole day on one 99% machine, so long as we continued to lock up excess winnings. We'll get a decent shot on a 95% machine, with almost two hours of play on the average which is a reasonable amount of time for a winning streak to develop. The 90% machine doesn't give us much time, with less than an hour of play at the slow rate of five plays per minute. With the 83% machine, we might as well not even sit down, because we are not going to be there long enough to order even one drink. Our first conclusion should be to avoid the low paying machines at all costs. I'll go into this in considerable detail in the pages ahead. Our second conclusion ought to be that we thank our lucky stars that we use loss limits. Setting a loss limit at least pulls us off a losing machine before all our money is gone.


36

Maybe you're scratching your head at this point and thinking that there might be something else you can do when you find yourself on one of the low paying, high vig monsters. There are a bunch of things you can do so that you don't have to wait until half of your session money is gone. We are going to discuss these things, and I hope that you will remember this example and see why I keep talking about protecting your bankroll. You can also see how the casinos' slot clubs, offering various comps, might affect a typical slot player. The comps are based on the casino's profits from your play. Obviously, a casino filled with 83% payback slots can afford to be a lot more generous than one with mostly 95% and 99% machines. You might want to rethink your playing philosophy if higher slot comps are a major reason you play certain casinos. When I play slots, I always join the slot club to take advantage of any freebies. I also agree to be rated at the casino table games. But once I get my membership card, I forget about it, at least while I am playing. I never bet one cent more than my controlled style of play allows me to bet, and I certainly don't always insert the maximum number of coins every play in a slot machine just to improve my rating. With comps, the casinos are never doing any more than returning a portion of your average expected loss, based on your amount of play (and in the case of table games your playing skill). And our game plan is to walk out with some of the casino's money, right? So why worry about freebies? I accept the comps, but I never let them affect my playing style. And you shouldn't either.


37

4

Types of Slot Machines We've already covered some about the types of slot machines. The original slot machines were purely mechanical and usually accepted only one nickel at a time. These machines were replaced by machines accepting multiple coins with a variety of changes, such as additional reels and progressive jackpot type payoffs. The latest generation of slots are microchip controlled and only resemble the older slot machines, as their functions are computer controlled. The odds are strongly against you encountering a mechanical slot machine. If you do, I suggest you play the machine for fun only and limit your losses to an amount you can afford. Modern slot machines will accept multiple coins and will increase the size of the payoffs based on the number of coins inserted. These machines will typically accept two, three or five coins at a time. The easiest to understand of the machines accepting multiple coins are the standard multipliers. With these machines, each payoff is increased proportionately to the number of coins inserted. For example, if any cherry pays off two coins with one coin played, it will pay four coins with two coins played, six coins when three coins are played and so on. Some of these machines increase all of the paybacks proportionate to the number of coins played except for the jackpot which pays a much larger amount when the maximum number of coins are played. These machines are known as progressive multipliers, and include a number of the machines paying large jackpots, such as the million dollar jackpots the casinos like to promote. I prefer to confine my play to standard and progressive multipliers as the only difference in playing one or several coins is the size of the payoff.


38

Another type of slot is the multiple pay line slot machine. With these slots, the insertion of each coin brings another pay line into play. Instead of offering just one pay line, there may be two, three or even five pay lines. Like many of the multipliers, the jackpot or jackpot like bonuses come into play only on the last payline, so that you have to play the maximum number of coins to win the jackpot. The most confusing type of machine is the option play machine, also called the buy-a-pay slot machine. With these machines, each coin inserted brings into play additional symbols offering payoffs. The first thing I do when I walk up to a slot machine is read the payout schedule on the front of the machine so that I know what kind of machine I am playing. What I am typically looking for is a machine that will accept three or more coins and pay out like a standard multiplier. Option play and multiple payline machines are becoming very popular, and I have done very well playing these machines. I am not suggesting that you not play these machines, I just want you to at least take a minute to look at the slot machine before you start playing it. There is a section devoted especially to playing jackpot machines. These machines usually pay off the lower paybacks much less frequently than other multipliers because a portion of every play is "set aside" to increase the size of the jackpot. With jackpot machines, the overall payback may be fairly high, such as 95%, but this payback is reached only when the multi-thousand or multi-million dollar jackpot is hit. In other words, right after a jackpot is hit, the machine's payback will look pretty good, and it will be especially good if you are the lucky person winning the jackpot. But the machine is otherwise stingy, as part of each play is being held back to pay for the jackpot. There are also specialty slots, such as pusher games, which is a variation of an old arcade game. These machines have several shelves of coins which are pushed around by paddles. When a coin is inserted into the machine, the coin is shot up onto the shelves for an instant win if it passes through one of the holes in the wall above the shelves. If your coins misses the hole, it may knock other coins off the shelves and into the payout chute below. This game, and other carnival like games such as horse racing, should be played for amusement only as the chances of winning are very poor. The video slots, such as video poker, video blackjack and video keno are very popular as they give the players a chance to influence the outcome of each play through the exercise of player options, such as the video poker choices of keeping certain cards and discarding others.


39

Of the video slot games, video poker offers the best chance of winning, with some versions paying back over 100% to the skilful player. Silverthorne Publications offers several manuals devoted to beating the video poker machines and I recommend them if you want to learn how to win at this game. We are going to discuss how to play and win on standard slot machines that accept more than one coin per play. Video poker machines are a topic unto themselves, and I will not try to cover them here. I will suggest that you learn to play video poker as it is a nice diversion from the standard slot machines, and if you use an expert strategy, such as those covered in the Silverthorne Publications manuals, you will find the game quite profitable.


40

5

Finding the Best Machines The "best slot machines" are the ones that pay off at the highest rates, on the average. You will recall the tremendous effect the house edge has on your bankroll, as round after round of coins are played. With a machine paying much lower than 95%, the house edge is just devastating. However, I've had good wins from some of the lower paying machines, and I am not suggesting that you avoid these machines. I just want you to know that it is a lot harder to win on a machine returning only 83% than it is on a 98% or even a 99% return machine. The advantage of the higher paying machines is that they have winning streaks more often, and they leave your bankroll intact for a longer period of time. So part of your job will be to find and play the better paying slots. There are specific "tests" you can subject an individual machine to, and we will go over these in detail in a later section. For right now, I want to make sure that you are aware, in a general sense, of how the different denominations of slots pay back. And, I will review for you how the different areas of the country's slot machines pay off. 1. Only play slot machines in legal casinos. You can find slot machines in lots of places besides casinos, especially in the state of Nevada. There are slot machines in airports, laundromats, bars, super markets, gift shops, novelty stores, drug stores, and gas stations, just to name a few. There are also slot machines is clubs, both legal and not so legal. As you may well suspect, there are few statistics published for the paybacks of these machines.


41

Based on my own experiences and those of knowledgeable people I've talked to, the average paybacks for these non casino slots range from 50% to 80%. These paybacks are just too low for any kind of serious play. If you have not experienced it, you need to walk into a grocery store the next time you are in Nevada. On my last trip to Las Vegas, I visited a local super market to pick up a few items. The first thing I encountered after entering was row after row of beeping, ringing slot machines. And there was hardly a seat left. Now the amazing thing was that this particular store was located about five or six miles from the so-called Las Vegas Strip. The folks playing these slots were not tourists, but most likely people who lived in the area and had stopped in to buy some groceries and drop a few bucks in the slot machines. The next time you are waiting to catch a plane out of McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas and the lull of the slot machines becomes too much for you, I suggest that you buy only one ten dollar roll of quarters, play it through a machine one time and then consider your gambling excursion finished. This will give you one last shot at the machines without jeopardizing your bankroll. In general, it is better to play in a regulated casino. By "regulated" I mean a casino that is licensed and regulated by some state authority. This leaves some of the Indian casinos out due to ongoing controversies with state and federal authorities. For example, the legality of the Indian casinos in New Mexico depends strictly on who you talk to. Meanwhile, the state's oversight over slot payoff percentages is nonexistent. When you play slots in a casino embroiled in controversy with little regulatory oversight, you have just added one more level of uncertainty to your play. With all of the casinos which have some level of reporting requirements to a state authority, I believe that it just makes good sense to play in one of these casinos rather than in one with little accountability. 2. The highest paying slot machines are five-dollar or higher machines. Using information gleamed from state gaming and regulatory authorities it is possible to rate the paybacks of different denomination slots. Throughout the country, the five-dollar or higher slots offer the highest returns to the players. The average return for a $5 slot is 96%. The highest paybacks in the country are in Nevada, with $5 slots in the Lake Tahoe area returning 98.3% on the average. Following Nevada, the payouts by area reporting this information are: Mississippi — 96.0%, Illinois — 95.9%, Indiana — 95.3%, Iowa — 95.2%, Atlantic City — 94.9%, Connecticut — 94.7% and Colorado — 94.5%.


42

The highest paying individual casinos (Nevada does not report on individual casinos, but rather on areas, such as Downtown Las Vegas or the Las Vegas Strip) for $5 slots are in Harvey's in Iowa, with an average payback of 97.9%. 3. The next highest paybacks are on dollar machines. Nationwide, the average payback on dollar slot machines is 94.2%, or about 1.8% less than the average paid on the $5 machines. The highest return machines are in Nevada with an average payout of 95.7%. Following Nevada we have: Mississippi — 95.6%, Colorado — 94.7%, Iowa — 94.6%, Illinois — 94.5%, Indiana — 93.7%, Connecticut — 92.3% and last Atlantic City at 91.4%. The best place to play dollar slots in Nevada is Reno, with a 96.1%. Laughlin and Downtown Las Vegas follow closely paying 96.0% on their dollar slots. The best place in Iowa is Bluffs Run, paying 96.6% on its dollar slots. 4. Fifty cent slots are next in payouts. Only a few jurisdictions report information on fifty cent slots so I will not try to rank this category. As a general rule, if the casino you are playing in has fifty cent slots, they will pay somewhat lower than dollar slots and a little better than quarter slots. 5. Quarter slots come in fourth in overall returns. The national average payback for quarter slots is 92.9%. The highest paying state is Nevada, averaging a 94.1% return on quarter slots. Next is Colorado, with a 93.4% return, followed by Iowa, with a 92.8% payback, Mississippi paying 92.3%, Illinois paying 92.2%, Indiana, with a 91.3% payback, then Connecticut at 91.1% and last Atlantic City, paying 90.4% 6. Nickel slots pay out the lowest returns. The average return for the lowly nickel slots is only 90.2% nationally. Not all locales report on nickel slots as a separate category. Of the reporting locations, Colorado pays the highest with a 91.9% return, Nevada is next at 90.3%, followed by Mississippi at 89.7%, Iowa at 88.5%, and Illinois at 86.9%, . 7. Nevada pays the highest on the average, Atlantic City the lowest. While we can generalize and say that Nevada slots pay back more on the average than Atlantic City slots, we can't say that you are always better off playing in Nevada. There are slots in Nevada paying out 75%, or even less, while the lowest paying slots allowed by law in New


43

Jersey pay out at 83%. The latest information published at this time shows the following average paybacks by states, excluding nickel slot machines: Nevada — 95.6%, Mississippi — 94.6%, Missouri — 94.3%, Colorado — 94.2%, Illinois — 94.2%, Iowa — 94.2%, Indiana — 93.1%, Connecticut — 92.5% and Atlantic City at 92.0%. The tribal casinos remain an enigma, because of a lack of published information. My general impression is that you will usually find your better paying machines in Nevada in most categories, and the poorest paying slots on the East Coast. The rest of the country is a mix, which is constantly changing as competition increases. There is no question that the overall trend in slot paybacks is up, and by the time you read this, the slots in your favorite area may be paying out higher returns. 8. The best casinos are those catering to slots players. It makes sense to play where you are wanted. Some casinos cater more to table game players, and others offer more for slots players. When you are playing slots, you should always play where the casino is packed with slot players. This distinction is easiest to see in Las Vegas. The downtown joints may be almost filled with slot players, while some of the posher casinos on the Strip have very few slot machines receiving much play. This is a case where you want to "go with the flow" and join the other slot players. 9. The best machine may be anywhere you play. In the last couple of sections I have tried to give you a clearer picture of the different types of slot machines and how the paybacks differ in different casino locations and by the size of coins the machine accepts. You might want to conclude that you only want to play $5 slots in Lake Tahoe, with its tempting average payback of 98.3%, but this is unrealistic unless you have the bankroll for five dollar play and are willing to travel to Lake Tahoe. I believe that once you get past playing nickel machines and play at least quarter machines you can have a reasonable chance of winning when you use all of the techniques of Power Slot play. It is certainly more important to play within your bankroll than to jump to a machine accepting higher valued coins to gain some small increase in average paybacks. You may find that using money management control techniques and systematic play are all the tools you need to become a successful winning slots player.


44

6

Systematic Play Are you still with me? We've covered a lot of ground. We've talked about the history of slots and the new computer controlled slots. We've identified the different types of slot machines. We've looked at industry data to find out where the best slot machines are located. We've also talked about your bankroll for slot machine play and how this should be handled. You have heard about Win Goals and Loss Limits. And we've touched on finding and exploiting favorable trends on slot machines. Now we are ready to start using these concepts at the same time. We are going to talk about a systematic approach to playing slots. Systematic play involves putting together these concepts into a workable plan for finding and beating slot machines. I just heard several of you quietly put this book down. Systematic play sounds a little too intimidating. Or maybe this is the first page you have actually read because you skipped all of the "introductory stuff" hoping to jump right on top of the magic formula for beating slot machines. A message for the group scared off by "systematic play." Hang in there. What I am going to talk about is not difficult. It's not rocket science as they say. Systematic play is about using what we know about slot machines to put together a simple plan to walk out of the casino with more money than we came in with. I've got some disappointing news for those of you waiting to read about the magic approach for beating slots. There is no magic that can be used to beat slots. I can't tell you


45

about a hidden slot that always pays out more than it takes in. There isn't a single system which always wins. What we do want to do is to develop a plan for finding the best slot machines, playing them, locking up profits while limiting losses and then running for the door with our winnings intact. First we are going to try to play on the best slot machines. You know that quarter machines are going to pay out at a higher rate than nickel machines, that dollar machines will return more than the quarter machines, and that five dollar machines will spit out more than the dollar machines. We also know that Nevada slots pay out the highest returns on the average, that the "middle of the country" offers paybacks ranging from good to poor and that the East Coast is a darn tough place to make a living from slot machines. Putting this information together, we know that it is probably better to play Nevada quarter machines than Atlantic City dollar machines. But you might ask "So what?" If you are an East Coast player, it is just not practical to play in Nevada or even Colorado. You're stuck with what's available, and you don't need me to tell you that the Atlantic City slots are tough to beat. You also don't have a lot of choice in the denomination of slots you play. Your bankroll pretty much determines whether you are a quarter, dollar or five-dollar slot machine player. Your job is to do the best you can with what you've got to work with. If you have to play quarter slots in Atlantic City, you are going to have a harder time winning than if you play dollar slots in Reno. But you can still win. With systematic play, your job becomes to find the best machines among the ones you have available. And part of finding the best machines means avoiding the worst ones. I can't tell you that a particular slot machine brand or configuration pays better than any other one. You can find two identical slot machines in the same casino that have totally different paybacks. This is not only possible, but probable with microprocessor controlled slot machines. I want you to understand that there is no practical way of picking the "best slot" based on looks. I have suggested some slots to avoid, such as the novelty type slots with paddle wheels and flippers and the jackpot machines, unless you are specifically playing the machine using "jackpot play" techniques. But I want you to understand that there is no way that I or anyone else can direct you to a specific machine and assure you that it is a better machine than the one next to it.


46

What we will do is limit our amount of play on any single slot machine. If the machine is profitable, we will stick with the machine so long as it continues to pay back more than it takes. If the machine is unprofitable, we will limit the amount of play we give this machine. There are a number of ways that we can "systematically" limit the amount of play on a particular slot in our quest to find a profitable slot machine. We can limit our investment in the machine by setting aside a certain amount for play in that particular machine before we even make a single play. We may decide to use $10 for play in a quarter machine. By doing this, we have made a decision to limit our "investment" in this machine. But notice that we have not limited what the machine can pay us. We may win $100 or $500 or even $1,000 on this machine, but the maximum we will risk is ten bucks. If we divide our bankroll into ten, or even twenty, of these smaller bankrolls, we increase our chances of finding at least one machine with a strong winning trend, while limiting our risk on any single machine. But we can limit our risk even more by setting loss limits per machine. There is no reason that we should lose ten bucks in a stingy slot machine. If our loss limit is 50%, then we walk after losing five bucks. We can also limit our play on a particular machine by determining how many plays we will make on the machine before changing machines. I will show you several systems based on this concept where you use a "hit and run" style of play. If you will just limit losses and change machines, you will be ahead of 90% of the other slot players. But there are other decisions you need to make when you use systematic slot play. You will control the amount of coins you insert for each play. Some players only play one coin at a time on any slot machine, reasoning that this will prolong their play. Others will always insert the maximum number of coins so that any jackpots will be paid in full. With systematic play, we will vary the number of coins inserted each play based on some variable which we control. We may decide to increase the number of coins played after wins so that when we are in a winning trend, we are playing the maximum number of coins. Or we may decide to increase the coins played after several losing pulls, anticipating that when we have a win, it will be for a larger amount. Or we may decide to use a preset pattern for playing a particular slot.


47

Or we can combine two or more of these techniques. We might want to use a set pattern of play and then change the pattern after a preset number of wins and losses. Finally, besides our plan for finding and playing the best slot machines we need a plan for locking up our winnings and limiting our losses. Picking the "right" real estate investment is said to be dependent on "location, location and location." Beating the slot machines is dependent on "bankroll and money management." In the next chapter we will cover the exact techniques and strategies to control your bankroll at all times and become a true power slots player!


48

Bankroll

1

No-Payback Pulls We are going to add one more weapon to our arsenal for protecting our bankroll. We are going to use No-Payback Pulls to limit our losses even more. Say what? What in the heck is a no-payback pull? A No-Payback Pull is a slot machine play where no coins are returned. It could just as easily be called a zip-pull or a nothing-pull. It is a play where absolutely nothing is returned. Some slot machines have a lot of nothing or no-payback pulls. Others manage to spit back some kind of payoff every few pulls. In general we are looking for a machine which pays out more frequently. There are several reasons we are doing this. First, it is far more interesting to play on a machine which pays off more frequently. I like the sound of coins tinkling into the tray when I play slots. Play after play with only the normal slot sounds and no coins jangling sounds is a bit disconcerting. It makes the machine feel like a one-way street where coins enter never to be seen again. Perhaps more important than the sounds of coins spilling out is the fact that, when a machine is paying frequently, we know that we are getting something for our money. One of our major objectives is to limit our losses, right? I know of no good reason to continue to play a slot pull after pull with no return. So let's set a limit on how many no-return plays we will accept. That's the whole idea of No-Payback Pulls. It is the number of pulls we will accept without a payback. Once we hit our limit, we are done with the machine.


49

Our number of No-Payback Pulls can be anywhere from seven to twelve pulls. Let's say we decide on eight pulls. Now we have an objective way of knowing when a slot is not giving us payoffs often enough. We count the number of pulls from our last payoff. If we hit eight pulls with no additional payoffs, we change slot machines. Setting the number of No-Payback Pulls works hand in hand with setting Loss Limits. You can look at the No-Payback limit as another loss limit. However, we will use it somewhat differently. Say we just started playing a quarter slot. We have $10 worth of quarters (40 quarters) and have set our Loss Limit at 50% and our No-Payback Pulls at eight. We make eight plays on the machine and receive no payoffs. The No-Payback Pulls limit tells us it is time to change slots. We now can take our remaining coins to another slot machine and continue playing. Notice that we do not consider the session a loss and "lock up" our remaining session bankroll when we hit our No-Payback loss limit. If we had hit our absolute loss limit of 50%, our session would have been over, and we would have locked up our remaining session bankroll. When we hit our No-Payback Pulls limit, we can opt to simply change machines and continue to play. This gives us the option of playing more than one slot machine per session. It also keeps us from continuing to feed a tight slot. There are other ways we can use the No-Payback rule. Assume that we have been playing a machine for a while and have locked up a nice win. We have taken half of our winnings and locked them up along with our original session bankroll. We are now impervious to a loss for this session. Let's go a step further. Assume our original No-Payback Pulls limit was ten pulls for this machine. Let's tighten up the No-Payback rule to seven plays now that we have a win locked up. Do you understand our logic in doing this? We have added another safeguard to prevent a loss of our winnings. Our reasoning might be that we will continue to play this machine so long as our winning trend continues. However, just to be extra cautious, we decided to up our performance requirement for the machine. If the slot pays, fine, we play. If it doesn't we walk. And, with a nice win I might add. Learn to use the No-Payback Pulls rule. It is one more power play in your battle with the slots.

2


50

Slot Sessions Remember session bankrolls? They're what we divide our slot machine bankroll into so that we only risk a portion of our bankroll at any one time. It doesn't matter how much we bring for slot play; we are going to divide this into smaller session bankrolls. The idea behind this is to give us several shots at different machines rather than one big shot at only one machine. I can hear you starting to object to this. You like to play only one machine. It's too hard to split your bankroll into all of these little bankrolls. It doesn't matter anyway because as soon as you lose one little bankroll you are just going to pull some more cash out. You haven't been listening to me, have you? First, if you like to play one machine, I hope you will agree with me that you might as well play on a winning machine. And let's stretch this logic some and say that your winning machine may be hiding in there among several losers. Then's what's wrong with eliminating a couple of the impostors until we find the machine that is really right for you? This is what using session bankrolls is all about. Session bankrolls let you accept losses and live to fight another day. They also become an important part of your battle plan to take the casino's money and run. The secret of using session bankrolls is that you will have several shots at the casino's bankroll with limited risk on each try, while the casino will never have a single shot at winning all of your bankroll. Session bankrolls also serve as a way of curbing emotions (read that as knowing when to stop). When you lose the loss limit portion of a session bankroll, it is time to take a break. Winning at gambling is all about controlling emotions. And the hardest part about emotions is that, left to their own devices, they may never tell us when to stop. If we are ahead, we need to play so that we can win more. If we are behind, we can't quit because that would be admitting defeat. If we are up and down, there is no good reason to quit, so we continue to play. Session bankrolls act like guides to tell when to stop and take a break or even take our money and run. Because we are dealing with smaller amounts with session bankrolls,


51

it is easier to give a round to the casino and admit that we have a loss. But with a session bankroll, we are never risking all of our money in a single contest with the casino. If we hit our Win Goal, we know when it is time to pull our session bankroll, plus some winnings out of play. We have a clear signal that we are going to be a winner for this round of play and that there is nothing the casino can do about it. I hope I've convinced you to give session bankrolls a try. Without them, you might as well toss away any chance you might have had of becoming a controlled gambler with consistent winnings. The size of session bankrolls can be any amount. But we want to put some limits on the size of a session bankroll. We want a large enough bankroll to give any machine a fair shot at becoming a winner without losing too much in the process. So the amount of our session bankroll becomes a compromise between too much, which might cost us unnecessary losses, and too little, which might not be enough to give a machine a fair chance of developing a favorable trend. We also need a large enough session bankroll to be able to use preselected playing patterns, which may require inserting a minimum number of coins in order to be effective. For these reasons, the most practical size of slot session bankrolls are between 40 and 60 coins. I may be going about this a little differently than you might. Most people (if they agree to the session concept) will divide whatever bankroll they have into some number of sessions and let that be their session size. Divide $50 into ten sessions and you've got a session size of $5 each. Or divide it into twenty sessions and you've got twenty $2.50 sessions. We want to go about this a little more scientifically. We will use a sort of hierarchy in determining our session size. Table 1 shows the session size in dollars for 40-coin sessions. The table also shows the amount of total slots bankroll that you will need to play 10, 20 or 30 sessions of 40 coins per session. You can use this table in several different ways. You might want to pick the number of sessions based on how long you intend to gamble. Ten sessions will probably be adequate for a one day gambling excursion. Using our 40-coin session size, we can look down the column for 10 sessions and see the size of the total bankroll we need to have for play on each denomination machine. If we have only $20, then we will play only nickel slot machines. With a $100 bankroll, we move into the ranks of quarter machines. With a minimum slots bankroll of $200, we qualify for ten sessions on a fifty cent machine.


52

If we are able to bring a $400 slots bankroll, and are willing to limit our play to ten sessions, we can play dollar slots. We will need a $2,000 bankroll for play on the five-dollar slot machines.

Table 1. 40-Coin Slot Session Bankrolls Coins Accepted

Session Size 40 Coins

10 Sessions 20 Sessions 30 Sessions

5¢ $ 2 $ 20 $ 40 $ 60

25¢ 10 100 200 300

50¢ 20 200 400 600

$1 40 400 800 1,200

$5 200 2,000 4,000 6,000

These amounts may seem a little large to you, especially if you normally bring $100 and play on dollar slots. Please note that if you plan on playing two or more days, you should consider bringing a bankroll for 20 or even 30 sessions. You will also note that once you decide on a session size, in this case 40 coins, and the number of sessions, the size of your bankroll dictates the type of slot you will play. If you've got $40, there is no way that you should be playing quarter machines. The exception here applies only to the very casual slot player who plans on only one or two slot sessions. If you want to only play two sessions and have a $40 bankroll, then you could play two sessions on a 50¢ machine. I am not advocating that you play this way. As a general rule, you need to have at least ten sessions planned to have a reasonable chance of making some money. So a two session bankroll is not presented as a winning plan. But it is a way of controlling your gambling, and for this reason, it is recommended that you use the session concept even if you play as few as two sessions. Table 2 presents the same information, except that it is geared to a 60-coin session size. The advantage of using this larger session size is that it offers more playing patterns on a particular slot machine as well as a greater chance of hitting a winning streak.


53

Using a 60-coin session does not increase your risk that much if you use the No-Payback Rule and Loss Limits. In fact, if you are using a 50% loss limit with a 40-coin play for a maximum loss of 20 coins, you may decide to use a lower limit of say 40% with a 60 coin session, so that your loss limit is only 24 coins.

Table 2. 60 Coin Slot Session Bankrolls Coins Accepted

Session Size 60 Coins

5 Sessions

10 Sessions

20 Sessions

30 Sessions

5¢ $ 3 $ 15 $ 30 $ 60 $ 90

25¢ 15 75 150 300 450

50¢ 30 150 300 600 900

$1 60 300 600 1,200 1,800

$5 300 1,500 3,000 6,000 9,000

Table 2 also includes the bankroll requirements for playing five sessions. If you want to use the larger 60-coin session bankroll, then you may want to make five sessions your minimum number of sessions. With a five session minimum, you need only $15 to play nickel slots. With a $75 poke, you move up to quarter slots, and a $300 bankroll puts you in the dollar category. Once again, you have got to bring a lot of dough if you want to play the $5 machines, in this case, a recommended $1,500 for only five sessions of 60 coins each. Let's look at this information in a slightly different way. Table 3 shows the bankroll requirements to play either ten 40-coin sessions or 20 60-coin sessions. I used these coin and session levels to give you a range of your probable play for each level of bankroll. Here's how you can use this table. Say you have a $150 bankroll and you want to know which machines you should be playing. Looking at the Bankroll Size column in the table, we see that with a $150 bankroll, you are smack in the middle of the $100 to $300 bankroll range for quarter play. This tells you that with your bankroll of $150, you are


54

qualified to play either quarter or nickel slots. With a $150 bankroll, playing on quarter machines, you could play fifteen 40-coin sessions or ten 60-coin sessions, or some other session number you devise.

Table 3. Bankroll Size for Different Sessions & Machines

Bankroll Size

Coins Accepted

10 Sessions of 40 Coins

20 Sessions of 60 Coins

$20 - $100 5¢ $ 20 $ 60

$100 - $300 25¢ 100 300

$200 - $600 50¢ 200 600

$400 - $2,000 $1 400 1,200

$2,000 - $6,000 $5 2,000 6,000

What if you have a $1,000 bankroll and want to play $5 slots? The table tells you that you are qualified to play dollar slots, but no higher. You need at least $2,000 before moving up to $5 slots. Using slot sessions are a powerful tool in controlling losses and developing a game plan for slot play. But, what if you are really short of bankroll? I'll show you a strategy you can use in the next section.


55

3

What to Do With a Small Bankroll If you are a little short on bankroll, you may be discouraged after the last section. What I told you was if you've got less than $75 to $100, you are pretty much stuck playing nickel slots. And you may remember that the nickel slots don't have exactly generous paybacks, or there may not be any nickel slots where you play. Let's assume that you've got fifty bucks for your slots bankroll. Don't think that you're alone if this is all you've got. Lots of people are short of bankroll. Anyway, you've only got a lousy fifty bucks, and you would at least like to play the quarter slots. Playing quarter slots instead of nickel machines may not be a bad idea, especially if you are playing in the Midwest, Mississippi or in Nevada. You may very well find a quarter slot programmed to return 95% or better, and you may catch a hot streak and pull out several hundred bucks. But all you've got is fifty bucks, and if you believe in my concept of dividing up your bankroll into ten 40 or 60-coin sessions, you just don't have enough to tackle the quarter machines. Before you resign yourself to the nickel slots or just forget about the session concept and plunk your fifty bucks into the nearest quarter slot, let me give you a couple of ideas. First, my suggestions of a session size of at least 40 coins is based on using systematic play where you will vary the size of your wagers on a systematic basis. We haven't talked about this yet, but we will, and you will want to learn how to play systematically.


56

If you are willing to give some on using a betting system, then I'll tell you a trick you can use to get the benefit of using sessions and still play on quarter slots with only a $50 bankroll. Take your bankroll of $50, or whatever, and divide it into ten equal sessions. With $50, you will have ten $5 session bankrolls. Now use each $5 session for a shot at one machine, and play the coins through just once on each machine. You will play only one coin at a time. And you will play only your session bankroll through the machine one time. To protect against losses, set your No-Payback Pulls at seven or eight pulls, and if you hit this limit, pull off the machine. You may want to set your Win Goal a little lower, say at 30%. If one of your machines makes your Win Goal, you can continue to play that machine so long as it keeps paying. But you are going to keep that machine on a mighty short leash. Here's what you will do. When a machine hits your Win Goal, continue playing, but only use the number of coins equal to your number of No-Payback Pulls. If you set eight pulls as your limit, then you will continue to play with eight coins and lock up all of your session bankroll and winnings. Now you will continue to play the machine, one coin at a time. But your loss limit is now one-half of the eight coins or four coins. With this approach, you will quit the machine if your reduced bankroll falls to four coins. With a winning machine, you will risk a total of only four additional coins. For those of you trying to convert this into dollars and cents, I'll make it simple. If, using a $5 session bankroll, you are able to win at least $1.50, then you may continue to play with a loss limit of only four coins or a buck. The beauty of this little system is that you get ten shots at finding a favorable slot. If a machine does not hit or exceed your Win Goal, you just move on to the next slot. If a machine is a winner, you have a way of continuing to play with very little downside. Try it. It beats being stuck on the nickel machines or risking all of your bankroll on just one quarter machine.


57

4

Increasing Bets I've mentioned using betting patterns and raising or lowering bets. Now we want to take at look at the reasoning behind changing the size of your bet when you play slots. Most people pretty much play slot machines on a random basis. When their bankroll is still pretty flush, they are inclined to insert the maximum number of coins per play. As their bankroll dwindles, the number of coins inserted per play also is reduced. Finally, as the last of their bankroll disappears, they are down to one coin per play until that last forlorn coin is eaten by the slot machine. If this doesn't match your playing pattern, it is probably close enough. There are several problems with playing this way. The first is that there is virtually no playing discipline or plan with this style of play. To win on a slot machine we want to catch a favorable trend and ride it for all it is worth. Usually, in order to maximize a favorable trend, we will want to increase the size of our wagers during a series of favorable plays and reduce the amount per play when the machine turns stingy. However, we may want to adopt a different philosophy which can also work if used sparingly. We may decide to increase our wagers following losses, with the idea of having a larger wager whenever a payoff occurs. Table 4 compares three betting strategies in a coin tossing contest. There are three players in this game, and each player bets only tails so that an outcome of tails represents a win for our players, and heads is a loss. Player A wagers a flat $10 per bet, regardless of whether his previous wager has won or lost. In eight coin tosses, consisting of four tails and four heads, Player A breaks even, neither winning nor losing.


58

Table 4. Wagering in Coin Toss Contest

Coin Outcome

t t h h h t t h

Player A

Amount Bet 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10

Won (Lost) +10 +10 -10 -10 -10 +10 +10 -10

Total Won (Lost)

+10 +20 +10 -0- -10 -0- +10 -0-

Player B

Amount Bet 10 10 10 20 40 80 10 10

Won (Lost) +10 +10 -10 -20 -40 +80 +10 -10

Total Won (Lost)

+10 +20 +10 -10 -50 +30 +40 +30

Player C

Amount Bet 10 15 5 10 10 10 15 5

Won (Lost) +10 +15 -5 -10 -10 +10 +15 -5

Total Won (Lost)

+10 +25 +20 +10 -0- +10 +25 +20

Player B doubles his bet after losses and reverts to a $10 bet after any win. This strategy shows a net win of $30 in eight tosses. Player C bets $10 after any losing bet. However, after a winning bet he increases his wager to $15, and if this bet also wins, he reduces his next wager to $5. This betting pattern shows a net win of $20 in eight tosses. We can make some preliminary observations about each strategy. In order for Player A to win, there must be a dominance by the side he is wagering on, in this example, tails. Because tails did not dominate in this example, he breaks even, neither winning nor losing.


59

Player B had the largest win of $30. But his largest bet was $80, and if he had lost this bet, he may have been in too deep to double his wager again. Even though Player B's strategy has the largest win in this example, we can see that the risk incurred in the bet doubling strategy may be too high for our tastes. Nonetheless, if we are willing to raise our bets a moderate amount after loses, we can see that this strategy has merit. Player C's strategy produced a win of $20, and his highest wager was only $15. The idea of reducing his wager back to $5 after winning a $15 bet helped produce his win. This example is better suited to playing table games. There are virtually no slot machines that allow you to raise your bet from 10 coins to 80 coins, (or even from 1 coin to 8 coins) so we can not readily duplicate this strategy on a slot machine. Let's change the players' betting strategies slightly and try this on a slot machine. Table 5 shows eight plays on a slot machine which pays off double the amount wagered on four out of eight plays. Table 5. Wagering on a Slot Machine

Slot Play 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Payoff 2x 2x - - - 2x 2x -

Player A

Amount Bet 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Won (Lost) +1 +1 -1 -1 -1 +1 +1 -1

Total Won (Lost)

+1 +2 +1 -0- -1 -0- +1 -0-

Player B

Amount Bet 1 1 1 2 3 5 3 1

Won (Lost) +1 +1 -1 -2 -3 +5 +3 -1

Total Won (Lost)

+1 +2 +1 -1 -4 +1 +4 +3

Player C

Amount Bet 1 3 2 1 1 1 3 2

Won (Lost) +1 +5 -2 -1 -1 +1 +5 -2

Total Won (Lost)

+1 +6 +4 +3 +2 +3 +8 +6


60

Player A only inserts one coin per play and does not vary this pattern. After eight plays he is exactly even, neither winning nor losing. Player B increases his wagers after a loss. His betting pattern is to bet one coin until there is a loss. Following a loss, he increases his wager to 2 coins. If this bet also loses, he next bets 3 coins. If this wager is also a loss, he raises his wager to 5 coins. Following any winning wager, Player B's next wager is two coins lower than the winning wager. This pattern of betting produced a win of 3 coins playing against the exact decisions which broke even for Player A. Player C increases his wagers after a win. His betting pattern is to bet only one coin until he has a win and then to raise his next bet to 3 coins. If this bet wins, his following wager bet is for 2 coins. After any loss, he wagers only one coin. This betting pattern showed a win of 6 coins. The moral of this story should be clear. Flat betting will show a win only when the player is winning an absolute majority of the decisions. In most gambling contests, the player is fortunate if he wins half of the decisions. In slot machine play, the player will not usually win half of the decisions, but only a fraction of the plays will result in wins. I will show you a number of ways to use both the up-after-a-loss strategy as well as the up-after-a-win approach. Each technique has merits and can be used successfully at different times on slot machine play.


61

5

Locking Up Profits Remember Win Goals? Before we start to play on the slot machines, we set a Win Goal equal to a percentage of our Session Bankroll. We can set a Win Goal of 50% or 40% or even 25%. The lower the Win Goal, the easier it is to hit. I'll give you a brief refresher on how we use Win Goals. Whenever we hit our win goal, we will take one-half of our winnings plus our original session bankroll and lock them up. Then we play only with the excess. This move guarantees a profit for that session. Because we continue to play on the slot machine, we are never cutting off our ability to win more. We are just locking up profits so that no matter what happens, we will not end up giving them back. Most players think of a Win Goal as sort of an afterthought. I am going to suggest that it may make more sense to think of how much you want to win first, and then put together your bankroll. Let's say that you really want to win $50. You could bring a $100 bankroll and set a Win Goal of 50%. Or you could bring $200 and make your Win Goal equal to 25%. Or you might bring $500 and set your Win Goal equal to 10%. Which of these Win Goals do you think is easier to hit? 50%? 25%? Or how about 10%? I hope you said 10%. There is an added advantage of bringing a larger bankroll and playing for a lower Win Goal percentage. Not only is the Win Goal easier to hit, but the larger bankroll may qualify you to play on a machine that accepts higher denomination coins. And the higher the denomination the coin, the higher the slot's programmed return rate is likely to be.


62

Let's consider another example. Assume that you want to win $300. You can bring $600 and set a Win Goal of 50%. Or you could bring $1,200 with a Win Goal of 25%. With a $600 bankroll, you probably should stick with quarter or fifty cent machines. A $1,200 bankroll clearly qualifies you to play dollar slots which offer higher paybacks than quarter or half-dollar slots. By setting a lower Win Goal, you gain two ways. First, it is easier to win 25% of your bankroll than it is to win 50%. Second, you are more likely to win playing on dollar slots than quarter or fifty cent slots. With gambling, we are always forced to deal with probabilities. Think about lowering your Win Goal, and you will increase your chance of becoming a winner. Table 6 shows some different combinations of Win Goals, Win Goals percentages and the Bankroll required. Consider the possibilities.

Table 6. Win Goals and Bankrolls

50% Win Goals 25% Win Goals

Win Goal

Bankroll Needed

Machines Available

Bankroll Needed

Machines Available

$ 50 $ 100 5¢, 25¢ $ 200 25¢

100 200 25¢ 400 50¢

300 600 50¢, $1 1,200 $1

500 1,000 $1 2,000 $1

1,000 2,000 $1, $5 4,000 $5

2,500 5,000 $5 10,000 $5


63

6

Exceeding Profit Goals The profit you can make is never limited to your Win Goal. Win Goals act as triggers and tell us when to start locking up profits. But hitting a Win or Profit Goal is never a signal to quit playing a machine. After hitting a Win Goal, we will use Loss Limits and No-Payback Pulls to determine when to pull off a machine. After hitting our Win Goal, we might continue playing on the same machine for a long time. I want to show you a couple of approaches to locking up profits as you continue to play on a winning slot. Lockup Method One is shown in Table 7. This table shows five rounds of play. (A round consists of playing all the coins in your Session Bankroll.) We will assume that you are using a 50% Win Goal and a Session Bankroll of $100. As shown in Table 7, you hit your Win Goal of 50%, winning $50 in the first round. You lock up $125 (your session bankroll plus one-half of your winnings) and play with the excess of $25.

Table 7. Winnings Locked Up — Method One Round Won Per Round Lockup Excess 1 $50 $125 $25 2 11 136 25 3 12 148 25 4 6 154 25 5 15 139 NA 5 15 139 NA You continue to play this way for each round, locking up any profits in excess of $25. In round two, you win $11 and lock it up, starting round three with $25. Round


64

three's winnings are $12, which are locked up, bringing the total amount locked up to $148. Round four adds another $6 in winnings, which is also locked up, bringing the total amount locked up to $154. As shown in Table 7, we have a loss of $15 in round five which triggers our loss limit. We now quit playing this machine with a total of $139 locked up. Not bad. But I want you to consider another way of doing this.

Table 8. Winnings Locked Up — Method Two Round Won per Round Lockup Excess 1 $50 $125 $25 2 11 141 20 3 8 154 15 4 3 167 10 5 -5 162 NA Table 8 shows the same game, but using Method Two Lockup assumptions. Here we decide to start our second round of play in exactly the same manner as was shown in Table 7. That is, we play with our Excess of $25. However, we add one more power move to our play after round two. We decide to lock up all of the round winnings plus remove an additional $5 from our Excess until our Excess is reduced to $10. At this point we may want to leave our Excess at $10 or add a few dollars each round we have winnings. The logic of these moves is that we know that favorable trends tend to be short lived on slot machines. We want to remove and lock up even more money to reduce the possibility of losing it back. Of course, once we start reducing our Excess, we have fewer coins to play back and our winnings are less on rounds three and four. On the other hand, we lose less on round five, because we are playing with less and have a lower loss limit. Follow the rounds of play shown in Table 8. After round two, we add $11 winnings plus $5 from our Excess to the Lockup, leaving only $20 for round three play. After round three, we add our winnings of $8 plus another $5 to the Lockup, leaving only $15 Excess for round four play. After round four we lock up winnings of $3 plus and additional $5 of our Excess and start round five playing with $10. We lose $5 on this round, hitting our loss limit and quit playing. The amount in our Lockup in now $162. By locking up additional monies each round, Method Two ultimately retained more of our winnings than Method One, even though Method One is more aggressive.


65

I want you to consider the merits of using a Method Two type of approach and locking up even more money when you are on a winning streak. This approach usually pays.


66

7

Changing Bets Following Wins What do you do after you win a bet? Bet the same amount for the next wager? Increase your following wager by some amount? If you decide to increase your wager, how much should the increase be for? Should you double your winning bet? Or, should you only increase it by 50%? Or, is there some other amount you should be considering? These are the common dilemmas facing all gamblers. Let's assume that you are wagering $10 at roulette on one of the even money bets, such as red or black. You have just won $10 betting red, and you decide to bet red again. Consider four options for your next wager on red: a) Wager $10 again. b) Wager $15 (increase bet by 50%). c) Wager $20 (press or double wager). d) Wager $5 (reducing wager by 50%). If you are like 75% of gamblers, you will pursue option a, betting the same amount. If you always wager the same amount (called flat betting), you have to win an absolute majority of your wagers in order to win overall. This is close to the poorest wagering strategy you can use as well as the most common. Nearly all of the rest of the gamblers will pursue either option b or c, reasoning that, with a win, now is the time to get more money on the table to take advantage of a possible winning streak.


67

Option d might be taken by 3% or 4% of the players. If you can be sure that your next wager will win, then you want to use option c and bet $20. This is the logic behind pressing, or doubling a winning bet. However, the odds of winning the second bet are never better than 50% so that consistently pressing wagers can easily result in large losses. Let's consider for a moment what happens with each of our strategies if the second wager loses. a) Betting $10 again, we lose $10 and break even on the two bets. b) Betting $15, we lose $15 and have a net loss of $5 on two wagers. c) Betting $20, we lose $20 and have a net loss of $10 on two wagers. d) Betting $5, we lose $5 and have a net win of $5 on two wagers. I am sure that you noticed that only option d resulted in a net win for the two bets. By reducing the size of our wager after a win, we were able to still have a profit, even with a loss following a winning bet. Reducing the size of a wager following a win is a powerful way of locking up some profits as we go. Playing slots, we can develop a strategy for reducing our wagers following wins, and then gradually allowing our bets to increase if our winning streak continues. Table 9 shows two betting series where we reduce our wager following the first win and gradually increase our wagers if a winning streak continues. For simplicity, it is assumed that the wagers are paid off at even money. In each of these betting series, we have reduced the wager following the first win and gradually increased each wager as the wins continued, with a reduction in the seventh wager. Each of these betting series or patterns were predetermined, and we simply followed them when the winning streak began.

Table 9. Reducing Bets Following Wins

Decision Outcome

Win Win Win Win Win Win Loss

Series A Bet 2 1 2 2 3 4 2 Total Won

+2 +3 +5 +7 +10 +14 +12

Series B Bet 3 1 2 3 4 5 3 Total Won

+3 +4 +6 +9 +13 +18 +15


68

If you notice that we would have kept most of our winnings if we had lost any of the wagers in either betting series, then you have understood the point of this illustration. Reducing our wager following a winning bet and then gradually increasing our wagers as our winning streak continues is a powerful way of locking up profits while still participating in a winning streak.


69

8

Control Pulls Control Pulls consist of three to five pulls with no payoffs. They are different from No-Payback Pulls, which are from seven to twelve plays with no payoffs. No-Payback Pulls are used to absolutely limit the amount of play we give a tight slot machine. If your No-Payback Pulls are set at nine, and you have nine plays where the machine returns zip, then you are done with that slot machine, right? (I hope you said "right," and not "say what?" We covered this a few sections back.) Control Pulls signal a change in our betting strategy, but do not signal that it is time to quit playing a particular slot machine. You might think of your number of No-Payback Pulls as a stop sign. When you hit this limit, you stop play on that machine. Control Pulls are more like a caution. You will change speed, but not necessarily stop. Control Pulls are not used in place of No-Payback Pulls, they are used in addition to No-Payback Pulls as a in slot play. Let's say you are using the Series B betting procession illustrated in the last section. With this betting series, you will wager 3 coins until you have a win and then reduce the wager following the win to only 1 coin. However, you are concerned with continuing to bet three coins at a time up to your number of No-Payback Pulls, which are set at eight. So you add an additional rule: Any time you have three no-payback plays in a row, you will reduce your wager to two coins until you have a win. You have set the number of Control Pulls at three pulls with absolutely no payoffs.


70

Using Control Pulls in this way reduces the amount you might lose if you continue to wager three coins per play until you hit your number of No-Payback Pulls. Control Pulls are a way of protecting your bankroll by reducing the amount you might lose on a tight machine. However, there are other ways you may use Control Pulls. Let's say that you decide to increase your wager from three coins to five coins following any wager which pays off ten or more times the amount wagered. This strategy may make a lot of sense if you can catch a couple of higher payoffs bunched up. However, you are concerned about increasing the size of your wager from three coins to five coins. You are willing to do this, but only for a few plays. So you limit the number of five-coin wagers to your number of Control Pulls. Let's say you have a ten times payoff when you are wagering three coins. Thirty coins tinkle into your slot tray. You have noticed that this particular machine often pays off higher amounts in bunches and then tightens up again. You decide to increase your wager to five coins, but only for a maximum of three plays with no payoffs. Following the thirty coin win, you wager five coins for two plays with no payoffs. Nothing happens. With a limit of three no-payoff plays, you wager five coins one more time. Bingo! You have a twenty five times payoff (125 coins are added to your hoard). You decide to extend the five-coin play for up to an additional three plays. This time your number of three Control Pulls are hit with no payoffs and you reduce your wagers to three coins. The first example of using Control Pulls was purely defensive, as we reduced the size of our basic bet if we had no hits for the number of our Control Pulls. This strategy makes sense to reduce a possible loss on a losing slot machine. In our second example of using Control Pulls, we increased the size of our wagers. By using Control Pulls as a cutoff point, we played more aggressively, but still limited our possibility of losses. We can also use the concept of Control Pulls as a signal when to increase our wagers if we are following a strategy of increasing wagers after losses. More on this follows.


71

9

Increasing Wagers After Losses Increasing a wager after a loss, or a series of losing bets, may make sense when playing slot machines. However, we want to make sure that this procedure does not become a prescription for disaster. Many losing gamblers follow this procedure and end up broke. So it is with a great deal of caution that I even discuss raising a wager after a loss. The advantages of increasing the size of a wager following a loss are great. For one thing, if we eventually have a win, we will be paid off at a higher amount. The idea behind the Martingale type of betting series, where the amount wagered is doubled after each loss, is based on the concept of eventually winning a bet and therefor recouping all previous losses, plus winning the amount of the basic wager. A typical Martingale type of betting series would be: 5, 10, 20, 40, 80, 160, 320, 640, consisting of eight bets. In order to lose the series, one would have to lose eight consecutive bets, an event occurring infrequently. Playing slots, such a series is not practical, nor advisable. For one thing, slot machines are not set up to accept the kinds of multiples needed to play a Martingale type of series. Most slots accept from one to three coins, or one to five coins, or in some cases only one or two coins. The doublings required for a Martingale series are thus not possible on a slot machine. Secondly, Martingale types of betting progressions are designed for even money bets, such as blackjack wagers, red or black or odd or even wagers in roulette, baccarat wagering or line wagers in craps. Slots offer payoffs in higher multiples and also tend to pay off less frequently. A series of eight consecutive losing wagers is going to be a lot more common on a slot machine than on a craps table. Because series of eight losing bets are more common on slot machines, we also need to take more precautions in deciding to increase wagers following loses. The


72

following guidelines are the ones I use before increasing my wagers after a loss on a slot machine: 1. The slot machine must be a frequent payer. This will have been determined by previous play on a slot machine. By a frequent payer, I mean a machine which tends to have some payoff every four to six plays. 2. I will not increase my wagers following a single loss, which occurs all to frequently on slots. I will use the number of Control Pulls to determine when to increase my wager. For example, if my number of Control Pulls is three, then I will only increase the size of my wager following three losing bets. 3. I will not double my wager, but increase it gradually using a predetermined pattern. I will also set a limit on the number of increased wagers I will make without a payoff, usually at no more than five or six wagers. Using these guidelines, we might use a two coin wager as our basic slot machine wager. With our Control Pulls set at three, we will use the following betting series following three plays with no payoffs: 3 3 4 4 5 5, where each number represents the number of coins played. If we are using this series on a frequently paying slot, then we would have to have nine consecutive pulls with no payoff in order to lose our series (three pulls without payoffs to trigger the series, plus the six bets in the series). If we are careful in picking our slot, the loss should not happen too often. We might also decide to combine the concept of increasing our wager after a win with this series. If our basic wager is for two coins, then we might want to use the following series following a win: 1 2 3 4. Table 10 shows how these two concepts can be combined.

Table 10. Combined Betting Series Wager # 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Payoff 3x 5x Series Bet 2 1 2 2 2 3 3 4 4 Amount Won

+6 -1 -2 -2 -2 -3 -3 -4 +20

Total Win +6 +5 +3 +1 -1 -4 -7 -11 +9 Flat Bet 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 Amount Won

+6 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 +10

Total Won

+6 +4 +2 0 -2 -4 -6 -8 +2


73

Table shows two wagers with payoffs, Wager #1, with a win 3 times (3x)our wager, and Wager #9, with a win 5x our wager. The row Series Bet shows the amount of our wagers using the combined system of increasing wagers following both wins and losses. The row Amount Won under Series Bet tracks our winning for each wager, followed by the row labeled Total Win showing our cumulative winnings. With a win on the first wager, we launch into our series following a win and bet 1 for the next wager. Since wager #2 loses, we revert to our basic bet of 2 coins. The 2-coin wager loses on the next three bets. On wager #6 we start increasing our wagers following three consecutive losses. Please note that we did not start counting until wager #3 as wagers #1 and #2 were part of a winning progression. Wager #9 rewards us with a payoff of 20 coins. We end the series with a net win of 9 coins. For comparison, I have played the same series using a flat wager of two coins. The results of this play is shown on the bottom three rows of the table, labeled Flat Bet, Amount Won and Total Won. Please note that with flat betting we won only 2 coins, giving a 7 coin edge to the system using both of the concepts of increasing wagers following losses and using a progressive series following a win.


74

Slot Systems

1

Pattern Play Pattern play is another part of our plan to beat the slot machines. We have divided our bankroll into session bankrolls. Let's say that our session bankroll is $10, and we are going to play a quarter slot machine. We have set our number of No-Payback Pulls at ten pulls. Our Loss Limit is set at 40% of our session bankroll, which is $4.00. Our Win Goal is also set at 40% of the session bankroll, for $4.00. With this slot machine, the maximum loss we will accept is $4.00, which is our loss limit. We may leave the machine with a loss of $2.50 if our first ten pulls have no payoffs, and we are playing a quarter a play (10 x $0.25 = $2.50). We have no maximum win. We may win $3.00, $10.00 or $1,000. Our Win Goal never limits our upside potential. Now we have a final decision to make. How are we going to play this slot machine? We could play our $10 session through one coin at a time, which will give us 40 pulls on a quarter machine. We could play the maximum number of coins, which could be two, three or five coins, dependent on the machine.


75

Or, perhaps the simplest way to play the machine is to simply use a pattern of betting for the machine. You have seen some examples of patterns in the previous sections of this book. We have discussed raising and lowering bets in response to the machine paying or not paying. But you can use an even simpler system. You can determine how to insert the coins for the number of plays you plan on a machine and then just follow this pattern. Pattern play can be aggressive, where the maximum number of coins are often played. Pattern play can be conservative, where the minimum number of coins are more often played. Or, pattern play can vary from the maximum to the minimum number of coins. Probably the most important aspect of using a playing pattern is to eliminate one more variable in deciding how to play a machine. Most players start out inserting the maximum number of coins and then taper off as their bankroll declines. Here the machine's payoff is determining how to play. This approach to play is a poor one. By always starting play with the maximum number of coins, losses will come more quickly on tight slot machines as inserting a higher amount per play will increase the size of a loss in a given number of plays. Pattern play takes the guesswork out of how to play a particular machine. Just set up your number of No-Payback Pulls, your Loss Limit, your Win Goal and start playing using the pattern you select. There is nothing magical about patterns. At any time, a particular pattern may be better or worse than another one. I suggest that you familiarize yourself with several playing patterns. As you practice the patterns, you will become adept at recognizing which pattern may be better for a particular slot machine. Here are several playing patterns for two, three and five coin machines: Two Coin Pattern: 1-1-2-2-1-1-2 Three Coin Pattern: 2-2-3-3-2-2-1-1 Five Coin Pattern: 2-3-4-5-5-4-3-2 When you use one of these patterns, you will not vary the number of coins inserted based on the machine's pattern of payoffs. Just follow your own betting pattern. When a pattern is finished, you can repeat the same pattern, or try a different one. Try pattern betting. You'll like it.


76

2

Neutral Patterns Neutral patterns are the easiest kinds of patterns to play. I like them because they take all of the guesswork out of how to bet on a slot machine. When you use a neutral playing pattern, you have only to watch your number of No-Payback Pulls, your Loss Limit and your Win Goal. And remember to lock up wins or change machines as needed. Oh yeah, and remember how to insert a pattern of coins into the machine. Many of the other patterns I am going to show you require that you adjust your betting based on how the machine is paying. Is it paying off frequently? You may want to increase your wagers. Is the machine showing a lot of No-Payback Pulls followed by some higher paybacks? You may want to start increasing bets after losses. I am going to show you how to adjust your betting to try to match the payoff patterns of a particular slot machine. You may want to try one or more of these methods. If you do, hopefully you'll be able to win more. But you will no longer be a passive slot player. This section is for players who are willing to use slot sessions, Loss Limits, Win Goals, No-Payback Pulls and lock up profits, but don't want to adjust their bets based on a machine's behavior.


77

A neutral betting pattern is one you can use regardless of what the slot machine is doing. You use No-Payback Pulls and Loss Limits as your signals to leave a machine. But your betting will be strictly neutral — the machines's payoffs will not affect how much you wager. I have already demonstrated that you will get more bang for your buck if you avoid flat betting — making the same size wager over and over. Pattern betting will give you some variety in wagering, and you won't have to bet either the maximum or minimum amounts on every play. The tables below show different neutral betting patterns for two, three and five coin machines. Table 11 shows patterns using a total of five coins. These patterns are so limited that no pattern is shown for a five coin slot. These patterns can be used with any size session bankroll, but are especially well suited for small session bankrolls of 10 to 20 coins. Table 12 shows patterns using a total of ten coins. These patterns work well for session bankrolls from 20 to 40 coins. Table 13 shows patterns using a total of fifteen coins. These patterns should be used with larger session bankrolls, of from 30 to 60 coins. You can have fun developing your own patterns. You may want to have two or three "favorites" and consider switching from one to another to add a little spice to your play.

Table 11. Five Coin Neutral Patterns Machine Accepts Patterns in Coins 2-Coins 1-1-2-1 1-2-2 1-1-1-2 3-Coins 1-3-1 2-1-2


78

Table 12. Ten Coin Neutral Patterns

Machine Accepts Patterns in Coins 2-Coins 1-1-1-2-1-1-2-1 1-2-1-2-1-2-1 2-1-1-1-2-1-1-1 3-Coins 1-1-3-3-1-1 1-2-2-3-1-1 2-3-2-3 5-Coins 1-3-5-1 1-2-4-3 1-1-1-3-4

Table 13. Fifteen Coin Neutral Patterns Machine Accepts Patterns in Coins 2-Coins 1-1-1-1-1-2-2-2-2-1-1 1-2-2-1-1-1-2-2-2-1 1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2 3-Coins 1-1-2-2-3-3-2-1 3-1-2-1-3-2-2-1 2-3-1-2-3-2-2 1-1-1-3-1-1-1-1-2-2-1 5-Coins 1-2-3-4-5 1-1-1-2-2-3-4-1 1-2-1-3-1-4-3 2-2-2-3-5-1


79

3

Up-As-You-Win Patterns Up-As-You-Win Patterns are a bit more aggressive than passive or Neutral Patterns. With an up-as-you-win type of approach to playing slots, your philosophy is that you will change the amount of your bets with an emphasis on increasing wagers after wins. The idea of increasing the size of your wager after a winning bet is to catch a series of winning bets and to get more down during a period of winning bets while reducing the amount wagered when more bets are losing. Because no one can ever forecast what a slot machine is going to do, you must use a number of safeguards when increasing bets to insure that if no winning trend occurs, you don't lose so much money so quickly that it hampers your overall efforts to win. The easiest pattern to use for increasing wagers is the Basic Step-up, Step-down approach. With this system, you start wagering with a lower bet, say one coin, and increase it by some amount after a win and decrease it by the same amount after a loss. The theory here is that if you have a series of back-to-back winning wagers, you will be increasing your wagers constantly to take advantage of the streak. On the other side of the coin, during a losing streak, you will be reducing your wagers so that the amount lost will be less than if you bet a fixed amount. Table 14 shows this system applied to ten slot plays. We started with a 1-coin wager on the first pull, which lost. Because this was a losing pull, we bet only one coin again on the second play. Here we had a two coin win. Because it was a win, we increased our wager to 2-coins for the third play, which returned eight coins. Following this win, we bet three coins and lost. On our fifth wager, we dropped our bet back to two coins,


80

following a loss and had an eight coin win. Bet six was increased to 3-coins and won 12 coins. Increasing wager #7 by one more coin, we wagered 4-coins and had 8 coins returned. Wager #8 was for 5-coins and lost. For wager #9, we dropped our wager by one coin and bet 4-coins, which also lost. Wager #10 was dropped one more coin, and we wagered 3-coins with six coins returned.

Table 14. Step-Up, Step-Down, 1 Play, 1 Coin Play Coins Played Payoff in Coins Comments 1 1 -0- Same bet 2 1 +2 Increase bet 3 2 +8 Increase bet 4 3 -0- Decrease bet 5 2 +8 Increase bet 6 3 +12 Increase bet 7 4 +8 Increase bet 8 5 -0- Decrease bet 9 4 -0- Decrease bet 10 3 +6 Increase bet Total 28 +44 Net Win = 16 Coins In this series of plays, we wagered 28 coins and had 44 coins returned for a net win of 16 coins. Our win was 57% of the amount played (16/28 = 57%), a nice return. Let's try a slightly different approach. We'll start with a 3-coin wager this time. We will still increase or decrease our wagers by one coin, following wins and loses, but this time we will keep any increase or decrease at the same level for two wagers, rather than jumping it up or down after every play. Table 15 shows the results of using this Step-Up, Step-Down, 2 Plays, 1 Coin approach. Our first wager was for 3-coins, which lost. We reduced this wager by one coin and wagered 2-coins for wager #2. This wager returned 4 coins, and we increased our wager to 3-coins for wagers #3 and #4 (2 plays). Since we lost wager #4, we reduced our wager to 2-coins for wagers #5 and #6. With an eight coin win on wager #6, our system called for us to increase our next two wagers to 3-coin bets, which we did. Losing wager #8, we reduced our bet to 2-coins for wagers #9 and #10, losing #9 and winning four coins on #10. We wagered 25 coins in this series and had 42 coins returned, for a net win of 17


81

coins. This win was 68% of the amount wagered (17/25 = 68%), for an even higher return than the 57% return using our original method of betting.

Table 15. Step-Up, Step-Down, 2 Plays, 1 Coin Play Coins Played Payoff in Coins Comments 1 3 -0- Reduce by 1 coin 2 2 +4 Increase bet for two plays 3 3 +12 Same bet 4 3 -0- Decrease bet for two plays 5 2 +8 Same bet 6 2 +8 Increase bet for two plays 7 3 +6 Same bet 8 3 -0- Decrease bet for two plays 9 2 -0- Same bet 10 2 +4 Increase bet for two plays Total 25 +42 Net Win = 17 Coins There is nothing that says you have to limit the number of coins you start with to 1 or 3-coin bets. Your first wager can be for 1, 2 or 3-coins. The amount you increase or decrease your wager following wins or losses is not limited to increases in one-coin increments. You can use 1, 2 or even 3 coin increments. You can also vary the length of the step used for an increase or decrease of a wager. You can increase a wager for one, two or three plays. You can also reduce a wager for one, two or three plays. There is no rule that says that the same number of plays need to be used for increases and decreases. You can increase a bet for three plays following a win and only reduce it for two plays after a loss. Table 16 shows some of the combinations you can use for increasing wagers following wins and reducing wagers after losses. Pattern #1 is the same one used for Table 14 and Pattern #10 was used in Table 15.


82

Table 16. Combinations of Step-Up, Step-Down Patterns

Pattern #

First Bet in Coins

# of Plays Increased After Win

Number of Coins Increased or Decreased

# of Plays Decreased After Loss

1 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 1 2 3 1 3 1 3 4 2 1 1 1 5 2 2 1 2 6 2 2 2 2 7 2 3 1 2 8 2 3 2 3 9 3 1 1 1 10 3 2 1 2 11 3 2 2 2 12 3 3 2 3 13 3 3 3 2


83

4

Up-As-You-Lose Patterns Up-As-You-Lose Patterns are the most aggressive patterns you can use. They are more aggressive than Neutral Patterns or Up-As-You-Win Patterns. They generally require larger bankrolls than the other patterns. The theory behind increasing the size of your wagers following losses is that the eventual win will be on a wager of a higher amount, thus recouping previous losses. The greatest downside to increasing wagers after losses is that if no win occurs before you run out of bets, you will be out a larger amount of money with no way of immediately recouping it. Because of the risk to your bankroll, I recommend using these types of systems sparingly. If you have a larger bankroll and can stand occasional losses of larger amounts, you may want to consider using these systems. After giving you all of these warnings, you may question why I am even discussing these systems. You may have heard that the worst thing you can do in gambling is to increase the size of your bets after losses. So why am I even discussing such a thing? The reason you will want to learn to use the Up-As-You-Lose Pattern of wagering is that when it works, it usually produces the highest win within a limited number of wagers. The easiest pattern to use for increasing wagers after losses is the Basic Step-down, Step-up approach. With this system, you will start wagering with a lower bet, one coin for example, and will increase it by one coin following a losing wager and reduce it by one coin after a winning one. The logic here is that with choppy wins, say every third or fourth


84

pull, you will have your largest wager down. On the other hand, during a winning streak, you will be reducing your wagers and miss out on advantages of increasing the amount wagered during a winning streak. Table 17 shows this system applied to ten slot plays. Here we started with a 1-coin wager and increased our wagers by one coin after a loss and reduced them by one coin after a win. By starting with a 1-coin bet, we ended up wagering only a total amount of 15 coins during this series of bets and had a win of 13 coins. Our win was 87% of the amount wagered (13/15 = 87%), an excellent return.

Table 17. Step-Down, Step-Up, 1 play, 1 Coin, First Bet = 1-Coin

Play Coins Played Payoff in Coins Comments 1 1 -0- Increase by 1 coin 2 2 +4 Decrease by 1 coin 3 1 +4 Same bet 4 1 -0- Increase by 1 coin 5 2 +8 Decrease by 1 coin 6 1 +4 Same bet 7 1 +2 Same bet 8 1 -0- Increase by 1 coin 9 2 -0- Increase by 1 coin 10 3 +6 Decrease by 1 coin Total 15 +28 Net Win = 13 Coins Table 18 shows how the same approach fared when we started with a 3-coin wager. Here, we also increased our wagers by one coin after losses and reduced them by one coin following wins. With this method, we ended up wagering a total of 24 coins and won 16 coins. Our win rate was 100% (24/24 = 100%), which is just outstanding. Starting with a higher bet, we were able to win 11 more coins during the same series of wagers, but had to wager 9 more coins to do so. While this example produced an excellent return, I urge you to be cautious in starting these series with higher wagers and to confine most of your attempts to series beginning with one or two coin wagers.


85

Table 18. Step-Down, Step-Up, 1 play, 1 Coin, First Bet = 3-Coins Play Coins Played Payoff in Coins Comments 1 3 -0- Increase by 1 coin 2 4 +8 Decrease by 1 coin 3 3 +12 Decrease by 1 coin 4 2 -0- Increase by 1 coin 5 3 +12 Decrease by 1 coin 6 2 +8 Decrease by 1 coin 7 1 +2 Same bet 8 1 -0- Increase by 1 coin 9 2 -0- Increase by 1 coin 10 3 +6 Decrease by 1 coin Total 24 +48 Net Win = 24 Coins There are a number of variations you can use in developing betting series. You can start with one coin and increase the wager following a losing one by one coin and reduce the wager following a winning one by one coin. You can start with a higher number of coins. Or you may want to increase the number of coins wagered by more than one coin, for example, two coins. Another variation to consider is the number of bets you will make at each level of progression. If you increase your wager from 1-coin to 2-coins, you may want to continue to make 2-coin wagers for a predetermined number of wagers. You can chose to do this for one or two or even three wagers. You can also have considerable variety in what you do after a winning wager. Do you want to drop your wager by one coin, or by some other amount? Should you continue to bet at the same level following a winning bet, or immediately reduce your bet? Table 19 outlines some of these options for you. The First Bet in Series column shows how many coins you may want to use to start a series. Only one and two coin starting points are shown. The Amount of Progression in Coins column shows some of the options for how much you increase your wagers following losses. Here the amounts shown range from one to two coins. The fourth column, Number of Bets at Each Level, shows how many times you may want to repeat a bet at a certain level before increasing it or reducing it. The final column, Coins to Drop After a Win, explores some different combinations to consider on how much you should drop the level of your wager after a


86

win. Here, one, two and all coin options are considered. The All coin option is the one you will use if you want to drop your wager all the way back to your starting bet after a win. For example, if you start with a 1-coin wager and eventually win a 5-coin wager, you can drop the wager following the win all the way back to a 1-coin wager, hence the all option. Obviously, this listing of Step-Down, Step-Up Patterns is not exhaustive. You can think of many more patterns very easily. I recommend the most conservative of these patterns, such as #1, #2, #4 and #5 which call for lower starting bets in a series and which do not keep you at a higher bet level too long.

Table 19. Step-Down, Step-Up Patterns Pattern # First Bet in

Series Amount of Progression in Coins

Number of Bets at Each Level

Coins to Drop After a Win

Example of bets following a loss

1 1 1 1 1 1-2-3-4-5 2 1 1 2 1 1-2,2-3-3 etc. 3 1 1 3 1 1-2,2,2-3,3,3 etc. 4 2 1 1 2 2-3-4-5 5 2 1 2 2 2-3,3-4,4 etc. 6 2 1 3 2 2-3,3,3-4,4,4 etc 7 1 2 2 1 1-2,2-4,4 etc. 8 1 2 3 all 1-2,2,2-4,4,4 9 1 2 4 all 1-2,2,2,2-4-4-4-4 10 2 2 4 All 2-4,4,4,4


87

5

Regression of Bets In the section Changing Bets After Wins, we talked about the power of reducing a wager following a win. If we alternate wins and losses, it is only by reducing the second wager that we end up with a net win. This concept is part of the strategy of up-as-you-lose betting. Following a win, the next bet will be reduced, so that even if we lose the wager following the win, we will still have a net profit for the two wagers. What if we want some of the power of the up-as-you-lose philosophy of betting, but we don't like increasing our wagers after losses. What we will do is reduce our wager after a win, and then gradually increase the size of our wagers if a winning streak continues. This approach will "capture" some of the power of the up-as-you-lose approach to betting without the downside of increasing wagers after losses. In order to regress on the wager following a win, we will have to make a larger than minimum bet as our base wager. As a practical matter on a slot machine, we will use a two or three coin bet as our base. Let's compare a couple of betting series in which we reduce the size of our second bet following a win and then gradually increase the size of our wagers. Series A consists of wagers of 3, 2, 3, 4, 3, 5, 4, and 5 coins. Here, our base wager is for three coins. When we have a win, our next wager is reduced to two coins. If this wager loses, we go back to our base bet. However, if the second wager also wins, then we progress to our next bet of 3 coins and continue the betting series so long as our wagers win. Table 20 shows how a series of ten slot plays would look, using this series.


88

Table 20. Regression Using 3,2,3,4,3,5,4,5 Series Play Coins Played Payoff in Coins Comments 1 3 -0- Base bet 2 3 +6 Regress 1 3 2 +8 Increase 1 4 3 -0- Base Bet 5 3 +12 Regress 1 6 2 +8 Increase 1 7 3 +6 Increase 1 8 4 -0- Base bet 9 3 -0- Base bet 10 3 +6 Regress 1 Total 29 46 Net Win = 17 coins This series of wagers produced a net win of 17 coins with a win rate of 59% (17/29 = 59%). This is not bad. But, let's see what happens if we bet more aggressively. Table 21 uses the betting series 4,2,3,4 for the same slot plays. Our base bet is 4, and we will regress to 2 coins after a win. Here, our net win was 23 coins with a win rate of 68%. We improved our win by 6 coins and increased our win rate by 9%. I hope you can see the downside of starting with a four coin wager. If you hit a dry spell of no wins, you are going to be plunking a lot more coins into the machine than if you use three coins, or even two coins as your base bet. Once again, I would want to err on the side of conservatism. Or I might use the more aggressive series on a machine making very frequent payoffs and revert back to a three, or even a two, coin series on a tighter machine. You will continue to use No-Payback Pulls and Loss Limits at all times, so you will be protected against losing all of your session bankroll. Following Table 21, I have listed some other examples of regression betting series. You may want to learn one or two of these betting series and add them to the patterns you can use for playing slots. Pattern #4 is conservative, while #10 is a very aggressive pattern. You may want to use #4 on a machine paying off fairly well and switch to #10 on a hot machine. You can switch back and forth between these two or even different betting


89

methods on the same machine. In order not to confuse yourself, you should probably complete a round of play, consisting of inserting all of your session coins, before switching methods.

Table 21. Regression Using 4,2,3,4 Series Play Coins Played Payoff in Coins Comments 1 4 -0- Base bet 2 4 +8 Regress 1 3 2 +8 Increase 1 4 3 -0- Base Bet 5 4 +16 Regress 1 6 2 +8 Increase 1 7 3 +6 Increase 1 8 4 -0- Base bet 9 4 -0- Base bet 10 4 +8 Regress 1 Total 34 57 Net Win = 23 coins Table 22. Other Regression Betting Series

1. 3,2,3,4,3,5,4,5 2. 4,2,3,4 3. 3,1,2,2,1,3 4. 2,1,1,2,2,3,4 5. 2,1,2,1,3,1 6. 3,2,2,3,4,2,4 7. 4,1,2,3,4,5 8. 3,2,1,2,3 9. 3,2,2,3,4 10. 4,3,3,4,5


90

6

Step Patterns Step Patterns can be one of the easiest betting systems to use, and yet one of the most successful betting strategies. The bets are fairly simple. Just like their name, the bets are arranged in steps, where all of the bets are for the same amount on a given step, and the bets change only when we go up or down a step. We can set up patterns to either go up or down the steps. With an Up the Steps Pattern, we will gradually increase the size of our wagers as we go up the steps, much like climbing a set of steps. The patterns shown below are all of the up-the-step type. Up-the-Step Patterns — Fixed numbers 2 Bets per Step 1,1-2,2-3,3-4,4-5,5 3 Bets per Step 1,1,1-2,2,2-3,3,3-4,4,4-5,5,5 4 Bets per Step 1,1,1,1-2,2,2,2-3,3,3,3-4,4,4,4-5,5,5,5 5 Bets per Step 1,1,1,1,1-2,2,2,2,2-3,3,3,3,3-4,4,4,4,4-5,5,5,5,5 Besides being easy to use, these patterns can produce good winnings. The results of ten wagers using a 2-Bet Up-the-Step Pattern are shown in Table 23. Here we wagered


91

30 coins to win a total return of 52, for a net win of 22 coins. This represented a win equal to 73% of the amount wagered (22/30 = 73%, a nice return.

Table 23. Ten Slot Plays Using The Two Bet Up-the-Step Pattern Play Coins Played Payoff in Coins Comments 1 1 -0- First bet in Step 1 2 1 +2 Second bet in Step 1 3 2 +8 First bet in Step 2 4 2 -0- Second bet in Step 2 5 3 +12 First bet in Step 3 6 3 +12 Second bet in Step 3 7 4 +8 First bet in Step 4 8 4 -0- Second bet in Step 4 9 5 -0- First bet in Step 5 10 5 +10 Second bet in Step 5 Total 30 +52 Net Win = 22 coins Besides going up the steps, we can also choose to use patterns gong down the steps. Below are shown several down-the step patterns: Down-the-Step Patterns — Fixed numbers 2 Bets per Step 5,5-4,4-3,3-2,2-1,1 3 Bets per Step 5,5,5-4,4,4-3,3,3-2,2,2-1,1,1 4 Bets per Step 5,5,5,5-4,4,4,4-3,3,3,3-2,2,2,2-1,1,1,1 5 Bets per Step 5,5,5,5,5-4,4,4,4,4-3,3,3,3,3-2,2,2,2,2-1,1,1,1,1 Table 24 shows the results of the same ten slot plays as shown in the previous table, except that this time, we used a Two Bet Down-the-Step Pattern. Here, our investment was for exactly the same at 30 coins. Our net win was 26 coins, which shows that the order of the bets can make a considerable difference. Our net win of 26 coins represented a return of 87% of the amount wagered (26/30 = 87%).


92

Table 24. Ten Slot Plays Using The Two Bet Down-the-Step Pattern Play Coins Played Payoff in Coins Comments 1 5 -0- First bet in Step 1 2 5 +10 Second bet in Step 1 3 4 +16 First bet in Step 2 4 4 -0- Second bet in Step 2 5 3 +12 First bet in Step 3 6 3 +12 Second bet in Step 3 7 2 +4 First bet in Step 4 8 2 -0- Second bet in Step 4 9 1 -0- First bet in Step 5 10 1 +2 Second bet in Step 5 Total 30 +52 Net Win = 22 coins There is no rule that says all of the steps have to have the same number of wagers at each level or step. In addition to these patterns with a fixed number of bets per step, we can also use patterns with a variable number of bets per level. Below are listed several Up-the-Step Patterns where the number of bets at each step vary: 1. 1,1,1,1,1-2,2,2-3,3,-4,4-5,5 2. 1,1,1,1,1-2,2,2,2-3,3,3-4,4-5 3. 1,1-2,2,2-3,3,3-4,4-5 4. 1-2,2-3,3,3-4,4-5 We can also turn a step pattern into an up-as-you-win or up-as-you-lose pattern, depending on how we play it. Take the 3-Bets Up-the-Step Pattern of 1,1,1-2,2,2-3,3,3-4,4,4-5,5,5. If we play this pattern dynamically, that is, change our level of bet dependent on our payoffs, then we can increase or decrease our bets following wins or losses, based on what we are trying to accomplish. Using this pattern, let's add the rules that we will start wagering at the step using 3-coin bets, and we will drop one level if we have a loss on the last bet on any step. If our


93

last bet on a step is a win, we will raise our bets one step. Of course, each time we make a change, we will stay at that level for three wagers. Table 25 shows how this betting pattern fared playing against the same ten slot decisions. Here we played 40 coins and had net winnings of 28 coins for a 70% return (28/40 = 70%).

Table 25. Ten Slot Plays Using Dynamic Playing Pattern

Play Coins Played Payoff in Coins Comments 1 3 -0- Same step 2 3 +6 Same step 3 3 +12 Up one step (win on

last bet) 4 4 -0- Same step 5 4 +16 Same step 6 4 +16 Up one step (win on

last bet) 7 5 +10 Same step 8 5 -0- Same step 9 5 -0- Drop one step (loss

on last bet) 10 4 +8 Same step Total 40 +68 Net Win = 28 coins I urge you to try a couple of the step patterns. After you have become familiar with them, you may even want to try the dynamic step pattern I showed you or devise one yourself. You will find the step pattern method of betting quite rewarding.


94

7

Slot Rotation Method One of my pet peeves is the slot player who won't leave a lousy slot. You see them all the time. They'll gripe, curse and bemoan their bad luck, all the while continuing to feed coins into a slot which does nothing but eat coins, without even an occasional hiccup. I know that this can't be you. But, just in case this might even vaguely resemble someone you know, I want to show you a method that will automatically break you (or someone else) of the habit of playing the same slot till it sucks you dry. The Slot Rotation Method forces you to change slots. It may also be one of the better ways of finding a looser slot for extended play. More on that later. For now, let's use the slot rotation method as it is intended, as a method of hitting at least five slot machines in a rapid round of limited play on each machine. With the Slot Rotation Method, you will take your Session Bankroll, whether it is $10, $15, $25 or some other amount, and divide it into five smaller amounts. Each of these smaller amounts will be used to play a single slot machine, inserting the coins through the machine one time only. Let's say that you have a slot session bankroll of $10 and decide to play quarter slot machines. That $10 breaks down into 40 quarters. If you decide to use the rotation method on five slot machines, then you will insert eight quarters into each slot machine, then move onto the next machine. You may continue to play on a particular machine only if the last play pays off, and you will continue to play only so long as every additional play has a payoff. Other than this rule for extending play, you will hit and run on the five slot machines.


95

This method will give you a good chance of hitting a decent payoff on one or two of the machines. You may even find a machine which rewards you with several consecutive winnings plays and prolongs your play. That's fine. So long as you are winning, you can afford to stay with the machine. But the key to using this method correctly is to plan on rapid-fire play on each of five or more slot machines. The rules for using this method are: 1. Pick out five machines which accept the same number of coins (two, three or five coin machines). 2. Set up your Session Bankroll. 3. Pick out a betting pattern to use on each machine. 4. Do not stop play if the last play has a payoff. Continue playing on that machine until you have a losing play. 5. Use Loss Limits for the Session. You will not use No-Payback Pulls with this method as you will not be playing on a machine long enough to hit your number of No-Payback Pulls. Table 26 shows some betting patterns you may use with different session sizes. All of these combinations were set up for play on quarter slot machines.

Table 26. Rotation Play on Quarter Slot Machines Session Size # of Machines Coins per Machine Patterns $10 (40 coins) 5 8 1,2,2,3 5 8 1,1,2,2,2 5 8 1,2,3,2 $20 (80 coins) 5 16 1,1,2,3,4,5 5 16 1,1,2,2,3,3,3, 5 16 1,1,1,2,1,1,3,1,4,1 $25 (100 coins) 5 20 1,1,2,2,3,3,3,5 5 20 1,2,3,4,5,3,2 5 20 1,1,1,1,2,2,3,4,5 5 20 2,3,2,3,2,3,2,3 5 20 1,1,3,1,4,5,1,1,3


96

8

Rotation Variations The Rotation Method can be one of the more effective ways of finding machines which are trending positively. Let's say that you just played five machines. Here are the results of your play using a $10 bankroll on quarter slots: Machine # Amount Won

or Lost 1 -1.25 2 - .50 3 + .50 4 + .25 5 +3.50 Total +2.50 I would like to think that this is a no-brainer type of decision on which machine to continue to play. Machine #5 looks like a potential winner, at least on a short term basis. So what do you do? A. Grab your session bankroll (which is now up to $12.50) and start shoving coins in machine #5 as fast as you can. B. Play the machine just one coin at a time until your winnings have doubled. C. Leave the casino and start spending your $2.50 in winnings.


97

D. Set aside the $2.50 in winnings and use the $10 remaining to play on machine #5. I hope you picked option D. Option A is your worst choice, B is next, C is third and D is your best option. Here's what you can do now that you have identified machine #5 as a potential winner: 1. Lock up your $2.50 in winning from rotation play and use the original session bankroll of $10.00 for play on machine #5. If you have a large enough bankroll to justify it, you may want to use a larger session bankroll on machine #5. 2. Set your number of No-Payback Pulls. 3. Set your Loss Limit and Win Goal for the machine. 4. Pick a betting system. You can use one of the betting strategies that you have seen. Let's say that machine #5 continues to throw off positive returns and in about ten minutes, you are up another $5. Remember what to do? Lock up all of your session bankroll plus at least one-half of your winnings and continue to play with the remainder. In this case, you will lock up $12.50 and continue to play with $2.50. You may be able to continue to play in this manner for quite a while using some of the variations of lockup strategies. To continue our example, assume that after about thirty minutes you have accumulated a win of $95.00, and the machine hits your number of No-Payback Pulls. Now is the time for your break. You will find that this type of sequence will happen fairly frequently when you use the Rotation Method to identify likely slots and then bring all of the Power Slots techniques to bear on a likely machine. You will also have times when no machine stands out after a round of rotation play. What I usually do in this case is play another round of rotation, using different machines and perhaps even changing casinos. You will not usually be hurt too badly using the Rotation Method, and as we have seen in this example, it can be an excellent method of finding ripe slot machines.


98

9

More Neutral Patterns I am a great believer in Neutral Pattern betting. Not only are neutral patterns easy to use, they are fun and can be very effective. With Neutral Pattern betting, you don't have to guess the pattern of payoffs thrown off by the slot machine. Yet you can win just as well using these patterns as with some of the more elaborate dynamic patterns which require that you constantly adjust the amount bet. One way that you can use Neutral Patterns and add a little more spice to your betting is to change patterns after a round of play on a slot machine. Say, for example, that you have been using a ten coin neutral pattern on a three-coin slot of: 1,2,3,1,1,2. You have been winning on the slot and have noticed that you seem to get a higher payoff every fifth or sixth pull. You might want to wait until the forth pull and then switch to the pattern 2,3,2,3, anticipating that you should catch a higher payoff in the next four pulls when you have more than one coin bet. You could even alternate two patterns as follows: First four pulls: 1,1,1,1 Second four pulls: 2,3,2,3 In this way, you have used neutral patterns to try to catch the payoff or pattern of a particular slot machine. Of course, regardless of how you decide to use Neutral Patterns, you will always safeguard your bankroll by using Slot Sessions, Loss Limits, No-Payback Pulls, Win Goals and our profit Lockup strategy. You could add Control pulls to your strategy. Say you set


99

you number of control pulls at four pulls. You might want to change your betting strategy every time you hit your number of control pulls with no payoffs. Here's how that might work. Playing a five-coin slot, you decide to bet the pattern of: 1,1,2,1,1,3,1,4. Whenever you hit your number of control pulls with no payoffs, you change your pattern to: 3,3,4,4,5,5,4,4. If your timing is good, you should be able to have a larger bet down whenever a slot payoff occurs. I have listed some additional Neutral Betting Patterns you may want to try in Tables 27 and 28.

Table 27. Ten Coin Neutral Patterns Machine Accepts Patterns in Coins 2-Coins 1,1,1,1,2,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,2,2,2 2,1,2,2,1,2 2,2,2,1,1,2 2,1,2,2,1,1,1 3-Coins 1,2,3,1,1,2 3,2,3,2 2,1,3,3,1 1,1,1,3,1,2,1 3,2,1,3,1 2,2,1,3,2 5-Coins 1,5,4 5,3,2 2,1,3,4 3,2,4,1 1,2,3,4 4,1,3,2


100

Table 28. Fifteen Coin Neutral Patterns

Machine Accepts Patterns in Coins 2-Coins 1,1,1,2,2,2,1,1,2,2 2,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,2,1 2,1,1,1,1,1,2,1,1,1,2,2 1,1,2,2,1,1,1,2,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2,2 3-Coins 1,1,1,2,1,1,3,1,2,2 2,3,2,2,1,3,1,1 1,1,2,2,3,1,2 3,3,3,2,2,1,1 1,1,2,2,3,3,2,1 5-Coins 1,2,3,3,2,1,1,1,2 5,1,4,2,3 2,1,3,2,4,3 1,1,1,2,1,1,3,1,4 4,1,3,2,2,2,1


101

10

Big Bounce Pattern A lot of slots vary from ice cold to red hot. It is very difficult to figure out how to play these slots. Most of the Neutral Patterns can't seem to hit the machine's payoff pattern. The dynamic patterns I have shown you might not take advantage of the all important payoff pulls. I am going to show you the perfect strategy for slot machines which go for long periods of almost no payoffs and then have one payoff after another for a few pulls. The way to play these machines is to use the Big Bounce Pattern. With this betting pattern, you will bet only one coin until you have a winning pull. After the winning play, you will jump (bounce) your wager to the maximum number of coins the machine will accept. You will continue to wager the maximum number of coins so long as you have some payoff or until you hit your number of Control Pulls with no payoff. Here's how this would work. You are playing a five-coin slot, inserting one coin at a time. You have gone eight plays without a hit. If you had set your number of No-Payback Pulls at ten, then this machine would have only two more chances to make some kind of payoff. Your number of Control Pulls is set at three pulls. On play number nine there is a payoff. You raise your bet to five coins. If no payoffs occur at this level, you will wager this amount for only three pulls, your number of Control Pulls. However, each time you get another payoff, you will extend the number of five-coin plays to at least the number of Control Pulls. By playing in this way, you can have long periods of no payoffs and still end up winning by making up the difference in just a few winning plays.


102

Table 29 shows how this system works. This table contains the same payoffs as shown earlier in Table 25 in case you are interested in comparing the results of using two different systems. The payoff multiples were adjusted for a different number of coins played in Table 29, using the Big Bounce Pattern. Assume that you had a cumulative loss of 25 coins on the machine prior to the sequence of plays shown in Table 29. On the ten plays shown in Table 29, you won 50 coins, for a net win of 119% (50/42 = 119%). If we assume that the previous fifteen plays produced a loss of 25 coins, with 45 coins invested, then we still have an overall net win of 25 coins and a net win rate of 29% (87 coins played/ 25 coins won).

Table 29. Ten Slot Plays Using the Big Bounce Pattern Play Coins Played Payoff in Coins Comments 1 1 -0- Wager 1 coin 2 1 +2 Wager 5-coins next

3 pulls 3 5 +20 Wager 5-coins next

3 pulls 4 5 -0- Continue with 5-

coin wager 5 5 +20 Wager 5-coins next



3 pulls 8 5 -0- Continue with 5-

coin wager 9 5 -0- At least one more 5-

coin wager 10 5 +20 Wager 5-coins next

3 pulls Total 42 +92 Net Win = 50 coins


103

11

Playing Jackpot Machines Anna W. of Mesa, Arizona, hit $2,293,612 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas playing on the $1 Lion's Share slot machines. Betty M of Longview, Texas, won $1,220,261 on a $5 IGT High Roller machine in Bossier City, Louisiana. Robert B of North Cape May, New Jersey, invested a total of $7.50 in the Fabulous 50's progressive slots at Trump Marina in Atlantic City and was rewarded with a $6,716,646 jackpot. Donald R. of Columbia Heights, Minnesota, was playing at Mystic Lake Casino in Prior Lake, Minnesota, when he hit a $387,357 jackpot after investing a total of two bucks in a $1 Wild Cherry progressive slot machine. George W. of Seattle, Washington, turned a $12 investment into a $3,338,100 Megabucks jackpot playing at the Flamingo Casino in New Orleans. Patrice K., a homemaker from Hackleburg, Alabama, had a hunch that she was going to hit a jackpot while playing at Harrah's in Tunica, Mississippi. Her intuition paid off when she hit a $1,877,286 jackpot on a $1 Wheel of Fortune machine. Jill S. of Auburn, California, tried her luck at the Quartermania slots at John Ascuaga's Nugget in Reno. The first machine wasn't paying off, so she moved to the next one. Five minutes later, the bells started ringing, and Jill was $571,586 richer.


104

These are the typical payoffs being won every month by slot players across the country. Each of these was a real event, announced by the casinos to create more favorable publicity for their slot machines. I took the liberty of using only the winners' initials instead of their last names, figuring that they probably deserve a little more privacy than they got in the casinos' press releases. Kind of sounds like hitting these jackpots is the easiest thing in the world, doesn't it? But you've got to look at it a little differently. When you consider that hundreds of millions of plays are made every month on the jackpot machines, then a relative handful of winners does not seem so unusual. The jackpot machines are typically programmed to pay off at lower than normal rates, except for jackpots. This means that when you, or anyone else, plays a $1 Wild Cherry or a High Roller or a Megabucks or a Quartermania or any other progressive slot machine, you are typically going to lose. That's how the jackpots get to be so high. Thousands of losers feed the jackpots until some lucky winner walks away with the whole caboodle. I am not going to tell you not to play these machines. Someone has to win the jackpot, and it just as well could be you. But I will give you some advice about how to play these babies so that you don't end up flat broke if it's not your day to walk out with the mega-mania-high roller-super-jackpot stuffed in your bulging pockets. When I decide to play on a jackpot or a progressive slot machine, the first thing I do is decide how much I can afford to lose on the machine. This money is set aside strictly for jackpot play, and when it is gone, I am finished playing the progressive slot machines. You might argue with me that you just as well should take all of your slot bankroll and use it on the progressive machines as it will increase your chance of winning a jackpot. Dream on, friend. The odds of winning one of these jackpots are in the tens of millions or the hundreds of millions. If you make five hundred plays instead of only one hundred plays, you are not going to significantly increase your odds of winning. But if five hundred plays takes most of your bankroll, while one hundred plays still leaves you with enough for regular slot play, then I will vote for the reduced action anytime. So here's what you want to do when you play the jackpot machines. Use some of your bankroll that is strictly set aside for jackpot play, and is therefore affordable for a probable loss. I like to use only a portion of my winnings for this purpose. Let's say that I have won $2,300 for a weekend's play on slot machines and playing craps and baccarat. I've got a couple of hours to kill, and I don't want to get involved in some session which might take longer. I'll pull out some amount, say $200, for slot jackpot play. If I lose this


105

amount, my play on the progressive slot machines is over. If I win, well then you may be reading about me in the next casino press release. (On second thought, you won't read about me if I win. Having your name plastered all over the papers is strictly up to you, and if you want to avoid a lot of hassles, I suggest you take your million or two million and tell the casinos that they can refer to you as Mr. or Mrs. X in their press release. But to each his own.) There are several different rules for playing the jackpot machines. Once you decide on the amount you are willing to risk, you can divide this into several sessions, if you want shots at several progressive machines. You probably won't use No-Payback Pulls on a jackpot machine, or you'll get pulled off too often to enjoy much play. You can, however, use Loss Limits. Say you split your $200 into four session of $50 each and set a loss limit of 70% per session. Now you've got at least four shots at four different jackpot machines. If the idea of losing 70% of $200, or $140 irks you, and it does me, I'll show you a reasonably conservative way of playing the jackpot machines. Take your session stake for a machine, let's use $100 for play on a dollar progressive slot and play it through one time. If you are ahead any coins, take these coins and lock them up. Play the remaining coins through again, so long as you haven't hit your loss limit. Once again, lock up any coins in excess of the number you started with. Continue in this manner until you either hit your loss limit, decide to quit, decide to change machines or hit the jackpot. This approach will reduce the amount you can lose because you will manage to lock up some coins while you play. Table 30. illustrates this approach for ten rounds of play on a progressive slot machine. Here we started with 100 coins and set our loss limit at 70 coins. After each round we counted the number of coins left, and if we had more coins than we started the round with, we locked them up. As you can see, after ten rounds of play we had 38 coins available for continued play and 57 coins locked up. Adding the two sums of 38 and 57, we still have 95 coins left even though the 38 coins we are using for play is near our loss limit. If you use this approach, you can enjoy some jackpot play and not risk losing too much of your bankroll set aside for jackpot play.


106

Table 30. Jackpot Play With Excess Coins Locked Up Round Coins Played Coins Returned Coins Locked

Up Coins Left for Next Round

1 100 92 - 92 2 92 95 3 92 3 92 86 - 86 4 86 125 39 86 5 86 83 - 83 6 83 60 - 60 7 60 68 8 60 8 60 48 - 48 9 48 38 - 38 10 38 45 7 38 Total 57


107

Beating the Game 1

More on Loss Control We're going to talk about losses some more. I know, its probably not your favorite subject. You've probably got this part of gambling down without my help, right? I keep talking about losses because they are an integral part of gambling. Everyone has them. I have losses. Professional gamblers have losses. That goofy looking fellow over there pulling the level with his left foot will probably have a loss. And you will have a loss. There is no way to eliminate losses other than not gamble. If you never want to lose money on a slot machine, then don't play them. But that's not why you bought this book is it? You could probably figure that out on your own. I may have said this before, but it bears repeating. The only thing harder to handle than a loss is a big win. We'll save big wins for the next section. A lot of times the only reason a big win (or a little win or any win) happens is because you have controlled losses.


108

Ultimately everything I have written in this book is about controlling losses. Money management. No-Payback Pulls. Win Goals. Control Pulls. Locking up profits. Finding the best slot machine. Walking out the door with more than you came with. You've heard all this. Maybe you agree with some of it. It's pretty easy to sit back and nod your head while you are reading this. But I'll bet anything you want that you have not been thinking about losses while reading this book. You've been thinking about how much you are going to win. You may have been day dreaming about your next casino trip. A couple of my ideas sounded good to you, and you can't wait to try them out and watch the money start rolling your way. Winning is the fun part of gambling. Anyone can have fun while they are winning. But it is losing that separates the men from the boys. Oops, sorry ladies. Maybe I should say the wheat from the chaff, except that no one knows what that means anymore. Losing is the tough part of winning. Did you get what I just said? Handling losses is a part of gambling that you have to become at expert at if you are going to win. I can count on one hand the number of times that I have had straight up wins with no downturns. Both hands and both feet will not supply enough fingers and toes to even begin to count the number of times I had losses and then came back with net winnings. Losses are the great leveler. They can either destroy you, or you can learn to accept them as a part of gambling and deal with them. Probably the most difficult aspect of losing at gambling is that it tends to destroy your confidence in your approach and cause you to want to make immediate and drastic changes in your approach to gambling. Let's say that you have broken your slots bankroll into ten Session Bankrolls and you have now lost five straight sessions. What are your options: a. Take your remaining bankroll and play it all on one $5 slot. b. Continue playing like you were, but add lots of cursing and griping and make sure that everyone around you knows what a bunch of crooks these casinos are. c. Take a five minute break in the coffee shop and spend the whole time talking about how you will clobber the next slot machine. d. Take a break for a couple of hours. Get away from the slots. After you are thoroughly relaxed, review your options. I hope you picked option d. There is no substitute for removing yourself from the casino environment and five minutes in the coffee shop spent chain smoking and gazing out at the slot machines doesn't count, my friend. Take a real break and do something different. But get your mind off of your losses.


109

After a couple of hours, or if it is evening, a whole night off, things will start to look different. Now you can decide what, if anything, you want to change. First, things should not look as bad as they did before. If you have used Loss Limits, you have lost maybe half of your five losing sessions. With your bankroll divided into ten sessions, that works out to about one-fourth of your slots bankroll. If you brought $500 for slots play, you've now lost about $125. And that is not a catastrophe. Now consider some real options: a. You may want to change casinos. Casinos that cater to slots players usually have better paying slots. You may have been playing in the wrong joint. The better one may be across the street or down the block. b. You may want to reassess the machines you have been playing. You may have been playing dollar machines using a $50 Session Bankroll per machine. You should have been playing on the quarter machines. Now is the time to make a change. c. Having decided to drop back to quarter machines, you may want to reassess the size of your Session Bankrolls. If you have got $250 left for play (remember that the $125 left over from your five losing sessions is not to be touched), you may want to divide it into ten sessions of $25 each. d. Consider resetting your loss limits and number of No-Payback Pulls. If you have been using ten No-Payback Pulls, try reducing them to eight. If your loss limit has been set at 50%, try reducing it to 40%. e. Take another look at the betting pattern or strategy you have been using. Have you been betting too much per pull? Try a different strategy. Or consider using the slot rotation method to quickly find a better paying machine. f. Finally, you may want to change games. I strongly suggest that you learn another game such as video poker or roulette. You may have had all the slot play you want for this casino excursion. Now is the perfect time to play another game. I use the game switching strategy extensively. My last casino trip I was down several thousand dollars at baccarat. Nothing I was doing seemed to work. I took my own advice and had a nice break consisting of a nap and a change in casinos as well as games. The next game was craps, and in less than forty five minutes, I made up for all of the baccarat losses and walked away a several thousand dollar winner. Maybe I would have done the same thing at baccarat. I'll never know. But it doesn't really matter, does it? The point is that I was willing to reassess my situation and make some positive changes.


110

I want you to try the same approach when you have losses. Once you are calm, you will be able to make the kind of changes you need to make to improve your chances of walking out a winner.


111

2

Locking Up More Profits What do you do when you hit or exceed your Win Goal? I hope you answered "start locking up profits." Normally you will lock up all of your Session Bankroll plus one-half of your winnings and play with the one-half of your Win Goal remaining. But are there exceptions to this rule? Sure. Let's say that you are playing with a $100 session bankroll and you hit a $2,500 jackpot. At the end of your round of play you now have $2,595. According to the rules I have given you, you would remove $100 (the session bankroll, leaving $2,495. You would split this in half, adding $1,247.50 to your original bankroll and leaving $1,247.50 for continued play. This is not exactly what I had in mind when I gave you the original advice. We need to modify our lock up rule a little bit. Whenever you hit a high payoff which puts you way over your Win Goal, and you want to continue to playing, you need to set a maximum amount of excess you will use. Your upper limit is the amount of your session bankroll. In this case, you would continue to play with $100 and lock up $2,495.00. As you continue to play with the $100, use your same Loss Limits, Win Goal, and No-Payback Pulls limits that you started with. In other words, when you have a large win, set all of your win aside and continue to play the same slot machine using your original Session Bankroll and money management rules. You can use other rules with "intermediate size" wins. Assume that your Win Goal is $50 and you are using a $100 Session Bankroll. At the end of a round of play you have $250. Using the normal lockup formula, you would pull out $175 ($100 bankroll + $75 as


112

one-half of winnings) and continue to play with $75. But you may be risking too much if you continue to play with $75. I would suggest in this case that you lock up $200 and continue to play with no more than $50. So the "lock up one-half of the profits plus session bankroll and play with one-half of the profits rule" should be modified as follows: a. If your win is between your Win Goal and the size of your bankroll, use the standard lock up procedure. b. If your win is greater than your session bankroll, only continue to play with one-half of your session bankroll. c. If your win is five times or more larger than your session bankroll, continue to play with an amount no larger than your original session bankroll. If you use these rules, you will never find yourself giving back all or even most of a large win. Or course, there is nothing to prevent you from quitting while you are ahead. But this goes against the grain for me. If a machine is paying off, I want to continue to play that machine until it signals me that it is tightening up. Then I will quit. You can also use additional techniques to protect your bankroll after locking up profits. Let's say that you have had a win of $275 playing with a $100 Session Bankroll. You decide to lock up everything except for $50, which is the amount you will continue to play with. You have noticed that your machine is a frequent payoff mode, so you decide to use the Big Bounce Pattern, bouncing from one coin to five coins after wins. However, you don't want to lose much and you want a way of locking up even more winnings as you play. Here's what you do. You add a rule that any time more than four coins are returned, you will lock up one-half of them. This is in addition to the normal Win Goal and Lock up rules. If you win 10 coins, half will be locked up and half will be used for play. Table 31 shows how this might work out for ten slot plays. If you are interested in comparisons, I have used the same plays that were used in Table 29 demonstrating how to use the Big Bounce Pattern. Let's review these plays. On play 1, we inserted 1 coin, and got no payback. This left us with 49 coins in our bankroll. On play 2, we inserted 1 coin again and had a 2 coin payback. This left us with 50 coins in our bankroll. However, because we had a win, we decided to play 5 coins on our next play. On play 3, inserting 5 coins, we had a payoff of 20 coins. We locked up 10 coins and added 10 coins to our bankroll leaving us with a bankroll of 55 coins. Play 4 was a 5-coin play with no payoff. On play 5 we also played 5 coins and won 20 coins. After locking up 10 coins, our bankroll was 50 coins.


113

Play 6 was another 5-coin play with a 20 coin win. After locking up another 10 coins, our bankroll was 60 coins. We played 5 coins again on play 7 and we were rewarded with a 10-coin payoff. At this point we had 65 coins. We decided to reduce our bankroll to 25 coins, locking up an additional 40 coins after this pull. This move was not a "hard and fast" rule, but we felt that it was prudent to increase our lock up even more. Play 8 was a 5-coin play with no payoff. Play 9 was another 5-coin play with no payoff. We decided at this point to make only one more play, and if there was no payoff, to quit. On play 10 we inserted 5 more coins and were rewarded with another 20-coin payoff. After locking up 10 more coins we decided to assess our situation. For this round of play we started with a bankroll of 50 coins and ended with 20 coins. However, we locked up 80 coins along the way. Our bankroll fell by 30 coins, but our lockup increased by 80 coins, for a net 50 coin win. At this point, we could continue to play or lock up all of our remaining bankroll. I would elect to continue to play, but I would become more conservative. I would continue to use the Big Bounce Pattern, but I would change the bounce from one coin to three coins, instead of one to five coins. I would also set a minimum bankroll of 10 coins. If my bankroll reached 10 coins, I would be finished for awhile. Table 31. Big Pounce Pattern Play With Immediate Lockup of Profits Play Starting Bankroll Coins Played Payoff in Coins 1 50 1 -0- 2 49 1 +2 3 50 5 +20 4 55 5 -0- 5 50 5 +20 6 55 5 +20 7 60 5 +10 8 25 5 -0- 9 20 5 -0- 10 15 5 +20 Total 42 +92


114

Play Starting

Bankroll Coins Played Payoff in

Coins Coins Locked Up

Ending Bankroll

1 50 1 -0- -0- 49 2 49 1 +2 -0- 50 3 50 5 +20 10 55 4 55 5 -0- -0- 50 5 50 5 +20 10 55 6 55 5 +20 10 60 7 60 5 +10 40 25 8 25 5 -0- -0- 20 9 20 5 -0- -0- 15 10 15 5 +20 10 20 Total 42 +92 80 -30


115

3

Keeping Records Along with all the new habits I am asking you to form, I am going to add one more. I want you to start keeping written records of how you do playing slots. Actually, you want to keep a written record of all of your gambling, but since this book is about slots, we'll just focus on slot play. There are a couple of reasons you want to keep records. One is to honestly measure how well (or how badly) you are doing. Most players wince at this suggestion. They know that they have been long-term losers. They like to remember the occasional jackpots, and they will tell you all about them. But, they know that, overall, slot machines have not been money makers. I am going to ask you to be honest and start writing down how you actually do. You don't have to show this to anyone else. But, aren't you at least a little curious about your gambling wins and losses? Another reason I am suggesting that you start keeping records is that you will eventually need them for income tax reporting. I'll tell you more about this later. I have given you a couple of good reasons to start keeping written records of your gambling. First, to honestly measure how well (or badly) you are doing, and second, to have a record for income tax reporting. How you set up your records is up to you. You may want to purchase a small notebook which fits in your pocket or purse. I like to keep records on individual sheets of standard size 8.5" x 11" accounting paper. I usually carry one sheet with me, neatly folded in my pocket. After each playing session, I will update the information I like to record on the piece of paper. Eventually, after I have returned home, the sheet will be filed in a loose


116

leaf notebook. Whatever system you use is fine with me, just make sure that you start using some kind of recording system. Before I start a gambling excursion, I like to record some basic information about what I plan to do. This information will outline my strategy and would look like this: Location Las Vegas Profit Goal $500 Slots Bankroll $2,500 Days of Play 2 days Number of Sessions 25 Session Size $100 Slot Size $1.00 Win Goal Per Session (Percent & Dollars) 50%, $50 Loss Limit per Session 50% You will notice that my Profit Goal for this trip is $500, while my Win Goal per session is $50. Since I plan on playing for 25 sessions, if I win $50 per session, multiplied by 25 sessions, I would win $1,250, more than my stated Profit Goal of $500. Am I out of whack on my arithmetic? Not at all. I probably won't win every session, I will have some losing sessions to average in. Here's how my actual sessions averaged out on a recent trip: Session # Won (Lost) Total Won (Lost) 1 +24 +24 2 +11 +35 3 + 9 +44 4 -26 +18 5 +137 +155 6 -48 +107 7 +209 +316 8 -50 +266 9 -35 +231 10 +198 +429 11 +37 +466 12 +28 +494


117

On this particular trip, I stopped playing slots after 12 sessions as I had basically hit my profit goal of $500 ($494 is close enough). In reviewing my sessions, you will notice that I did not wait until I lost 50% on all of my losing sessions. A Loss Limit is simply a guideline. Session 4 was terminated with a loss of only $26. This particular session was long, and I never could get anything going. Rather than prolong it more, I terminated the session with a $26 loss. I finished this trip alternating between playing craps and baccarat. These games require using a separate bankroll and different record keeping. I strongly urge you to learn at least one table game. You'll find your gambling experience considerably enriched, and you will have something else to do besides pulling slot machine levers twelve hours a day. Your actual slot records should be more detailed than the summary I gave above. The following information should be recorded: Location: (City, casino, etc.) Date: (I usually use one date per sheet) Machine Type: (describe basic type, $1, 3-coin multiplier) Machine Number: (usually found on side of machine) Session Bankroll: (amount used for play, i.e. $100) System: (System or pattern used for play) Won (Lost): (Amount of winning or loss per session) Total Won (Lost): Cumulative total of wins and losses Your actual record might look like the record shown in Table 32.

Table 32. Slot Record of Daily Play SLOT RECORD Location: Date: Session Number

Machine Type

Machine # Session Bankroll

System Won (Lost)

Total Won (Lost)


118

Earlier I mentioned a second reason for record keeping. You may not like it, but whenever you win $1,200 or more, you pick up a partner. This partner offers only a one-way partnership. If you win $1,200 or more, he expects you to pay him part of your winnings. If you lose, you are mostly stuck. I am, of course, talking about our helpful government as represented by the always friendly, Internal Revenue Service. The basic rules for gambling are that all gambling winning should be reported on your tax returns as other income. Gambling losses are deductible only to the extent that you report gambling winnings and then only as an itemized deduction. Home ownership with the attendant home mortgage interest deduction is usually the deductible expense which allows most people to itemize their deductions. If you don't own a home, you may not have enough expenses to itemize deductions, which could mean that you end up reporting gambling winnings as income and are not allowed to deduct gambling losses. As a practical matter, most folks ignore their gambling activities when filling out their tax returns because all they have are losses, and they couldn't document them if their lives depended on it. Because of the skill you now have using Power Slots techniques, you are more likely than ever to have reportable gambling income, so pay attention! Whenever your win is $1,200 or more, an attendant will have to pay you your jackpot, and the amount of your winnings will be reported to the IRS. You will need to furnish identification to the casino which shows your social security number (most state driver's licenses have this information). If you don't have any identification with you, you will receive a casino receipt instead of a check, pending your furnishing the casino with information required by the IRS. If you are a United States resident, no taxes are normally withheld from your winnings. If you are a Canadian resident, 15% of your winnings will be withheld. If you reside in any other foreign country, 30% of your win will be withheld for U.S. taxes. If you hit a couple of jackpots, with forms W-2G furnished you, you will be glad that you have kept records to substantiate losses. To substantiate losses, you will need not only your slot records, but copies of airline tickets, hotel receipts and so forth to prove you were really there. If you learn the names of casino personnel, you should also record this information as additional proof that you really were doing what you claim. If you belong to a slot club, the casino has a record of your slot play in their computer. Whenever you have an IRS reported win, you can request that the casino verify


119

your total play by furnishing a spread sheet of your play. As an alternative, you can request that a "Statement of Loss" form be furnished by the casino. The easiest way to meet the IRS guidelines for documentation is to keep the daily record of slots play, as well as invoices, receipts and other information from your trip. File this information in an envelope. Then, when you hit a jackpot, you will be prepared to document losses to help offset the win.


120

4

Walking Out a Winner The object of playing slot machines is to walk out of the casino with more money than you came in with. That's what this book has been about. If you want to have fun playing slots, be my guest. It's supposed to be fun. But, if you have consistently been losing to the one-armed bandits, then I question how much fun you have really been having. There is no substitute for winning. Can I guarantee that you will always be a winner? No. But I will guarantee that your play will improve immensely and that you will have a better chance of winning than ever before if you follow the suggestions I have given you. Here is a brief rundown of what we have covered. 1. You have learned where the best slots are located and which denominations of slots pay off the best. The slot machine you will play on is a multiplier, which accepts anywhere from one up to five coins. I prefer either the three or five coin multipliers because they offer a greater variety of systems which can be used to play them. But you can use a number of systems on the two-coin multipliers as well. You know that the higher the coin accepted by the machine, the higher the return is likely to be. In general, the lowly nickel slots don't return much more than about 90%. Quarter machines pay out a higher rate and the dollar and five dollar machines even more. Nevada slots pay out at the highest rate on the average, and Atlantic City machines the lowest. The rest of the country lies in between.


121

But you can find "good" or "bad" machines anywhere. Sometimes, you just have to look and be willing to change machines several times. 2. You now know how to plan your bankroll before you start your gambling. Whether your bankroll is $50 or $5,000, there are slot machines and slot systems you can use. I have tried to cover just about all of them. The key thing to remember is that the size of your bankroll will govern the size of slot machines you will play. You won't play dollar machines with a $50 bankroll, nor will you need to play nickel machines with a $1,000 bankroll. I have given you a number of ways to use your bankroll, I have and even showed you how to use a midget bankroll to get maximum bang for your buck. 3. You will divide your bankroll up into sessions. Each session gives you a shot at one machine, or in some cases, several machines. You should try to use at least ten sessions, and twenty or twenty five sessions is even better. The loss of a session will tell you when it is time to change machines. There are also other rules telling you when to change machines which will prevent you from ever losing all of your session bankroll. 4. The size of your session will govern the size of machine you will play. A $10 session will work for a quarter machine, but not for a slot which only accepts dollars. The size of your session will also help you chose the betting patterns to use. In general, the more coins or tokens you have in a session bankroll, the more flexibility you have in choosing the betting patterns you will use. 5. You will set a Win or Profit Goal before ever starting to play. You can set a goal of 10%, 20%, 25% or 50% of your bankroll. If your goal is much greater than 50%, you are not being realistic. You can't bring $100 and expect to win $1,000. On the other hand, using the power slots moves, this can very well happen. Your Win Goal will never keep you from continuing to rack up the profits. It is not an upper limit or cap on how much you can win. With the power slots strategies, there is no limit on how much you can win. The only limits set are on how much you might lose, which will never be your entire bankroll. Win Goals act as signals, telling you when to start locking up profits and reducing your risk. I prefer to set lower win goals so that I will start locking up profits as soon as possible. In general, the more bankroll I bring for slots, the lower Win Goal I set. Try this approach. You'll like it.


122

6. You will avoid losses like the plague. Every time you begin playing a slot machine you will have your Loss Limit in mind. A Loss Limit is a percentage of your Session Bankroll. It can be as low as 25% or as high as 75%. I prefer limits in the middle area of around 50%. The rules for loss limits are simple. If you hit your loss limit, your session is over, and you will remove all of the remaining session money from play. By doing this, you will never have a complete loss of a session. 7. You will look for favorable trends on slot machines. I have showed you a number of ways to play favorable trends. You must get into the habit of adjusting the size of your bets up and down. You can use Neutral Playing Patterns or increase bets after wins. You can use Step Patterns or increase bets after losses. You can use "hit and run" techniques like the Slot Rotation Method. You can use the exciting Big Bounce Method of playing slots. My point is that the one thing you won't do is stand there and play the same number of coins play after play. Now you have the tools to get involved and adjust your play to match what the slot machine is doing. 8. You will use even more tools to limit losses. There is no reason to continue to play a slot with no payoffs. Using the No-Payback Pulls rule will pull you off a non-paying slot before you hit your loss limit. In this case, you may continue to use the same session bankroll and change slot machines. 9. For certain betting patterns, you will use Control Pulls. Your number of Control Pulls is usually three or four pulls. These are used to tell you when to raise or lower bets, dependent on the betting system you are using. 10. Locking up profits will now be a big part of your slots play. Hitting or exceeding your Win Goal will tell you that it is time to lock up all of your session bankroll and at least one-half of your winnings. Some of you still may not be clear on the concept of locking up winnings. Locked up winnings are locked up until you get home. At that time, you are free to spend them. But so long as you are gambling, this money is not to be touched again. It is not locked up until the next session or the next day. It is not locked up until you have a big loss and need to reach for your reserves. It is not locked up until your husband or wife asks for some more money. Locked up means it is the same as gone. It will not be used for gambling on this trip.


123

11. You can play the jackpot machines using the limited strategies I have shown you. Jackpot machines are not usually frequent payors and tend to eat up your money fairly quickly. That is why I have suggested only limited play on these babies and even showed you techniques to lock up profits as you play the jackpot machines. If you win a million bucks or more it will not be because you spent all of your time and money on one of these machines. With just a little play you will have as good a chance of winning as anyone else, and you won't risk losing your bankroll. 12. You will want to learn several of the slot systems I have showed you. You can combine some of these systems in unique ways. I often use the Slot Rotation Method as a quick way of finding the best machine in a group I have selected to play. But once I have found a machine with decent payoff characteristics, I will switch to another method. Often I will use a Neutral Pattern, picked to match the size of my session bankroll and denomination of slot machine. If I run into a series of winning plays, I may switch to the Big Bounce Method, at least for a few plays. If the machine cools off, but not enough to trigger either my Loss Limit or No-Payback Pulls, I may use one of the Step Patterns. It will pay you to learn several of these betting strategies and then employ them as the situation calls for. If the machine offers no clues as to what system might work best, you can always use a Neutral Pattern or one of the conservative Up-As-You-Win Patterns. I generally limit my use of the Up-As-You-Lose Patterns to proven machines which seem to alternate between several plays with no payoffs followed by larger paybacks. The choices are almost endless, and as you practice using these strategies, your play and your winnings will improve. 13. Start keeping records. If you play on a regular basis you may be facing several W-2G Forms a year, and you will appreciate the ability to document losses to offset gains. I employ record keeping mainly to keep score. If I have a Win Goal in mind I want to know when I have reached it. I know for a fact that most gamblers underestimate the amount of their losses and overestimate how much they are ahead. Record keeping will not only keep you honest, but it will improve your winnings. 14. Finally, I suggest that you learn to play another casino game. If you want to continue to stare at machines all day, learn video poker. If a little human interaction suits your style, try roulette or even craps. If cards are more your cup of tea, try blackjack. A much over looked game is baccarat. Try it. It is a great game. You can try the Mini-Baccarat version


124

on tables with $5 minimum wagers. My point is that your casino experience will be much more enjoyable if you learn another game. I hope you enjoyed this book and picked up some useful pointers. It's tough to win at gambling. But the real trick is not to lose too much. If you keep your losses low, then when the large payoff comes (and it will if you are around long enough to enjoy it), you will end up a net winner. I know how hard it is to use discipline in a casino environment. But once you leave the casino and arrive home with real winnings, you will see the value in the strategies. I wish the very best to you and in your gambling endeavors.


125

Documents

Silverthorne Catalog - Dr. Robbins Power Slots...Slot players usually grab whatever money they have and then continue to play on a machine, or several machines, until this money plus