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$100 Slots = 96.76% payback (3.24% house take) You can see here that payback progressively increases when moving from penny to $100 slots. The biggest separation is seen when moving from the $5 slots (94.08% RTP) to $100 games (96.76%). Making generalizations about slots payback percentages based on games’ coin size isn’t a guaranteed plan. When a casino orders a slot machine the manufacturer will offer them a choice of chips to put in the machine and that chip is what controls the long-term payback percentage in that machine. Generally, there are about six to eight different chips to choose from and the payback percentages can be as high as 98 percent to as low as 82 percent.

Some people might want to know how to find the payout percentage on a slot machine. Sadly, it’s not something that’s printed on most games — at least not here in the United States.

This post is for them.

Understanding this topic involves some rudimentary understanding of probability as it relates to casino gambling. You’ll need to understand three separate concepts thoroughly:

1. Payback percentage
2. House edge
3. Return to player

This post explains each of those in enough detail that even a beginner should understand what they mean.

Some Basic Facts Related to Probability, the House Edge, Payback Percentage, and Return to Player

Probability is the branch of mathematics that deals with how likely an event is to happen. If you want to measure how likely you are to win a jackpot on a slot machine, probability is the way to figure that out.

But the word also refers directly to that likelihood.

In other words, if I say the probability of getting heads when I flip a coin is 50%, I’m not talking about that branch of mathematics. I’m talking about the actual statistical likelihood of that event.

You should understand a few things about probability in general.

Probability is always a number between 0 and 1. An event with a probability of 0 will never happen, and an event with a probability of 1 will always happen. The closer to 1 the probability is, the more likely the event is to happen.

Probability can be expressed multiple ways. It can be expressed as a fraction, a decimal, a percentage, or as odds. The probability of getting heads on a coin flip can be expressed as 1/2, 0.5, 50%, or 1 to 1.

An event’s probability is the number of ways it can happen divided by the total number of possible outcomes. When you’re discussing a coin toss, you have two possible outcomes. Only one of those is heads. That makes the probability 1/2.

The probability that an event will occur added to the probability that an event won’t occur always equals 1. Therefore, if you know the probability that something will happen, you also automatically know the probability that it won’t happen, and vice versa.

The house edge is a statistical measure of how much the house expects to win (on average, over the long run) from every bet you make on a game. The house edge is a theoretical number that accounts for the probability of winning versus the probability of losing AND the payout if you win.

All casino games carry a house edge. In the short run, it doesn’t matter much, but in the long run, it’s the most important thing.

If I say a game has a house edge of 4%, this means that over time, you should average a loss of $4 for every $100 you bet on the game. This is a long run statistical average, though. In the short run, you’re unlikely to see results that mirror the house edge.

The return to player and the payback percentage are the same thing. Some writers use one to refer to the statistical expectation and the other to refer to the actual results, but most writers use these terms interchangeably.

The payback percentage added to the house edge always equals 100%. The payback percentage is the amount of each bet that you get back, and the house edge is the amount of each bet that the casino wins. Again, these numbers are on average over the long run.

A game with a 4% house edge has a 96% payback percentage.

In the United States, slot machine payback percentages are impossible to calculate and not posted on gambling machines. To calculate the house edge or the payback percentage for a casino game, you need two pieces of data:

1. The probability of winning
2. The amount of money you’ll win (the payoff)

Slot machines include their payouts on their pay tables, but they don’t include the probability of achieving any of the winning outcomes.

In some countries, the payback percentage is posted on the machines, but not in the United States.

To make things even worse for a slot machine player, the random number generator program can be set differently even if the slot machine is identical to the one next to it. You could be playing The Big Lebowski slots at Choctaw Casino in Durant, Oklahoma, and your buddy could be playing the identical machine right next to you.

The payback percentage on his machine might be 94%, and the payback percentage on your machine might only be 88%.

The difference comes from how the probabilities are weighted for each symbol. On one game, the bars might show up 1/4 of the time, but on the next, they might only come up 1/8 of the time.

This has an obvious effect on the payback percentage.

The payback percentage would be easy to calculate if you knew the probabilities. The payback percentage is just the total expected value of all the possible outcomes on the machine.

Let’s assume you have 1000 possible reel combinations. Let’s also assume that if you got each of those in order, from 1 to 1000, you’d win 900 coins.

The payback percentage for that game would be 90%.

You’d put 1000 coins in, and you’d have 900 coins left after a statistically perfect sampling of 1000 spins.

If you knew the payback percentage and house edge for a slot machine game, you could predict your theoretical cost of playing that game per hour in the long run. You’d only need to multiply the numbers of bets you made per hour by the size of those bets. Then you’d multiply that by the house edge to get your predicted loss.

Most slots players make 600 spins per hour. Let’s assume you’re playing on a dollar machine and betting three coins on every spin, or $3 per spin. You’re putting $1,800 per hour into action.

If the slot machine had a 90% payback percentage, you’d lose $180 per hour on that machine. You’d have $1,800 at the start of the hour and $1,620 at the end of the hour — assuming you saw statistically predicted results.

In the real world, though, where you’d be seeing short-term results, you’d see some hours where you won and some hours where you lost. If you played long enough, the Law of Large Numbers would ensure that you’d eventually see the statistically predicted results.

But in the long run, the math will ensure that the casino will win a net profit.

How You Could Calculate a Payback Percentage Based on Actual Results

Of course, you have some data that you can directly observe when you’re playing slot machines.

But tracking this data and calculating the payback percentage on a specific session can add to your enjoyment of any slot machine game. It can make you more mindful because you’ll be paying more attention to what’s happening.

Here’s how to do it.

Start by tracking how many spins you’re making per hour. This is easy to do, but it takes more effort than you might think. It might help to get one of those clicky things people use to count stuff with. You will probably also need a stopwatch of some kind. I just use the timer function on my phone.

Make a note (mental is fine) of how much you’re betting per spin. It helps to bet the same amount.

Also note how much money you started with so that you can calculate how much you’ve won or lost. The slot machine will convert your money into credits. The easiest thing to do is to keep up with how many credits you had at the beginning of the session and again at the end of the session.

Now, let’s do the math using a hypothetical 45-minute session.

I made 300 spins in 45 minutes. I was betting $3 per spin, and I started with $600.

After my playing session, I had $500 left. At times I was up, and at times I was down.

But my net loss was $100. (My starting bankroll was $600, and I finished with $500.)

Over 300 spins, that means I lost an average per spin of 33 cents. $100 in losses divided by 300 spins is 33.33 cents per spin.

How much was I betting per spin?

Since I was playing a $1 machine, and my max bet was three coins, I was risking $3 per spin.

33 cents is 11% of $3, which means my actual loss was 11%. The machine paid back 89% for the session.

Does this mean that the payback percentage for the machine is 89%?

Probably not.

In the scheme of things, 450 spins is a small sample size. To have any confidence in your statistics, you really need to have at least 5,000 spins under your belt.

Even then, depending on how volatile the game is, your actual results might be wildly different from the mathematically expected payback percentage.

Here’s another example that will prove that point.

My friend Leo went to the Winstar last weekend and played the $5 slots. He started with $3,000, and when he left, he had $4,800, which means he had an $1,800 profit for the day.

He played for seven hours.

I’ve watched Leo play. He’s slow, but not much slower than average. He makes about 500 spins per hour.

This means that he made about 3,500 spins.

$1,800 in winnings divided by 3,500 spins is an average win of 51 cents per spin.

Since he was betting $5 per spin, his return was 10.3%.

His actual return for the trip on that slot machine was 110.3%.

I have friends who design slot machines for a living — more than one, in fact. They’ll be happy to tell anyone who asks that the algorithm is never set up to have a payback percentage of more than 100%.

What About the Casinos That Advertise a Specific Payback Percentage?

Some casinos advertise a specific payback percentage. This is almost always stated as an “up to” number.

So you might see an ad for a casino that says, “Payback percentages up to 98%!”

They’re almost certainly telling the truth, too. They probably have one slot machine in their casino that has a payback percentage of 98%. Of course, it isn’t labeled, so you don’t know which one it is.

And in the short run, which is what you’re going to be playing in as an individual gambler, there’s not much difference between a 98% payback percentage and a 92% payback percentage. You could walk away a winner or a loser at either setting.

Also, keep in mind that the games aren’t designed to tighten up after a win and loosen up after a lot of losing spins. That’s not how it works at all.

The machines are designed to allow you to win a certain specific percentage of the time because of the probability. Then there’s an average amount that you’ll win based on the payout for the specific combination of symbols that you hit.

But every spin of the reels on a slot machine is an independent event. You can hit a jackpot on a spin, and your probability of hitting the jackpot on the next spin hasn’t changed at all.

What About the Denominations and Location Reports I See Advertised on the Internet?

You’ll find websites like Strictly Slots and American Casino Guide which post payback percentages for specific denominations and specific casinos. These are AVERAGES.

These averages have little bearing on the machine that you’re sitting in front of.

For example,
you might be looking at a casino that reports an average payback percentage of 94% on its dollar slot machines. That casino might have half their machines paying off at 90% and the other half paying off at 98%.

And you won’t be able to differentiate between the two because the hit ratio might be the same from one of those machines to another.

What Do Hit Ratio and Volatility Have to Do With It?

The hit ratio is the percentage of time that you can expect to hit a winning combination on a slot machine. Something like 30% isn’t unusual, but it can vary 10% or more in either direction. The casinos want you to a hit a winning combination often enough that you won’t lose interest in playing the game.

But hit ratio is only part of the equation. The average size of the prize amounts is also important. Volatility takes this into account. A game that hits less often but has higher average prize amounts might have the same payback percentage as a game that hits more often but with lower payouts.

Either way, in the short run, it will be all but impossible to discover this number, too.

If you wanted to, you could track how many spins resulted in wins for you and calculate the percentage, but you’re facing the same obstacle you are with the overall payback percentage of the machine.

You just don’t know what it’s programmed to accomplish in the long run.

Online Slot Machines

Some online casinos post the payback percentages for their slot machine games. I think this information is of limited use, but I also think it’s fairer to the gambler than not providing them with that information.

After all, table games are transparent. You can calculate the house edge for any casino table game there is because they all use random number generators with known quantities — cards, dice, and wheels.

There’s been a push to label food, both at the grocery store and at restaurants, with nutritional information that includes caloric amounts.

Requiring casinos to provide similar information about their gambling machines only makes sense.

We’ll see if it ever happens, though.

Conclusion

You can’t find the payout percentage on a slot machine — at least not in the United States.
I’ve heard that you can get this information on slot machines in Europe, but I’ve never seen an actual photograph of this kind of labeling.
You can, though, have some fun calculating actual payback percentages in the short run. This at least gives you something to keep track of while you’re playing slots, which is honestly one of the more mindless activities in the casino.

American Casino Guide Slot Payback Info Online

By John Grochowski

American Casino Guide Slot Payback Info

Maggie is a friend of a friend of my wife’s, someone I met at as holiday party when someone told her I was just the person she needed to talk to about slotmachines.
“Tell me how to win,” she said, and I laughed. That’s the most common request I get about slot machines, and it’s one I can’t fulfill. There’s nothing you can do to change the resultsdetermined by a machine’s random number generator.
“All right then. Tell me something. I was in a casino last week, and they had a sign up that said ‘Our slots pay back 93 percent.’ Does that mean every machine pays 93 percent?”
No, it doesn’t, I told her. Each casino has a wide range of payback percentages within its game mix. By and large, higher denominations givemore money back to players --- dollar machines pay more than quarters which pay more than nickels which pay more than pennies.
Even within the same denomination, there’s room for a range of paybacks. In a casino whose nickel games return 89 percent of money wagered to players, there’s likely to be games that pay inexcess of 90 percent, and games that pay 85 or 86 percent.
For that matter, it’s possible for games of the same denomination and theme to have different payback percentages. A quarter Red, White and Blue machine that returns 93 percent could sit rightnext to one that returns 89 percent. That’s not as common as it once was, but the game chips to make that possible are available to casinos.
“So if there are all those different paybacks, how can they say, ‘Our slots pay back 93 percent’? Where does that come from?”
That depends. Was it a plaque on a wall somewhere? Was it a sign over a particular bank of machines?
“It was on a wall, not really next to any particular games.”
OK, I’ve seen that in a few casinos, but not everywhere. It’s a casino-wide average. The total of all money won by the casino at all electronic gaming devices --- including video poker, videokeno and video blackjack as well as slot machines --- is divided by the total number of wagers at those games. Multiplied by 100, that gives us a casino hold percentage. Subtract that from 100,and you have the payback percentage to players.
For example, if $1 million is wagered on a casino’s electronic gaming devices, and the casino keeps $70,000, dividing that $70,000 by $1 million give you .07, which multiplied by 100 tells usthe casino kept 7 percent of all wagers. Subtract that from 100, and we find that 93 percent of money wagered has been returned to players. That’s the payback percentage.
“But not every machine is paying 93 percent?”
Right. Some payback percentages will be in the 80s. Some will be in the high 90s. Most will be in between. Most of the low-denomination slots will pay less than 93 percent. Most of thehigh-denomination games will pay more. But the casino-wide average in the casino where Maggie plays will come to 93 percent. Other casinos will have their own averages.
“I don’t suppose you could tell me how to tell which games have the better paybacks.”
I’m afraid not. Two slot machines that look identical on the outside can have different payback percentages.
She sighed.
“Oh well. Trial and error it is. At least keep your fingers crossed for a jackpot for me, will you?”
Will do.

American Casino Guide Slot Payback Information

Maggie was asking about a sign that listed a casino-wide average, but sometimes you’ll see a sign over a bank of machines that says, “95 percent payback,” or “Up to 98 percent payback.”
Such signs refer specifically to that bank of machines. If it’s specific, with no qualifiers, such as “95 percent payback,” most states require that all machines in the bank be programmed for95-percent return. There’s room for some short-term variation. If you sit down at a 95-percent machine and have a cold streak, running through a hundred bucks with zero return, there is norequirement that the next player get back 190 percent to even things out. Over time, with enough play, your cold streak will simply fade into statistical insignificance, overwhelmed by theresults of hundreds of thousands of reel spins.
Conversely, if you hit a big jackpot, there is no requirement that the machine then go ice cold to get down to the 95 percent target. The machine will keep operating as normal, and over timeyour jackpot will be overwhelmed by hundreds of thousands of plays and fade into statistical insignificance.
When the sign does have a qualifier, such as “Up to 98 percent payback,” then let the player beware. At least one machine in the bank is likely to be a 98-percenter, but others can be lower.Not all states permit such fudging, and this ploy isn’t as common as it was a decade ago, but when you see it, be wary.

American Casino Guide Slot Payback Info Login

John Grochowski writes a syndicated newspaper column on gambling,
and is author of the 'Casino Answer Book' series from Bonus Books.