Slot Machines Max Bet Or Not
On these slots max bet can quickly reduce even the biggest bankroll. With this in mind you can easily find a slot machine to suit any budget. With a smaller bankroll look for games where there is a max bet of two coins. I was wondering what slots are best to play and if I should always play max bet when playing these slots? The best machines to play are the ones you enjoy playing. Today's slot directors order roughly the same long-term payback percentage for all of their machines in a particular denomination, so it's not likely that one machine is going to.
One of the most debated topics regarding slot machines is max bet and whether or not your should always hit that bet max button. There is no definite answer to the question as it really depends on the game you are playing. In this article we take a comprehensive look at all of the game types and situations and give you recommendations on what is the best way to play.
What is Max Bet?
Just in case you are new to playing slots Max Bet or Maximum Bet is the highest amount of coins or credits you can play in a single spin. For example most classic slots let you play up to three coins per spin - a max bet of three coins. This gets a bit more complicated with video slots - see below for details.
Classic Slots
While max bet is not always necessary you will often find that there is a good reward for betting max. For example you might have a game that pays 1,000 for one coin, 2,000 for two coins and 5,000 for the max of three coins. In this case you get an additional 3,000 coins for just one extra coin bet.
If you are playing a game where all of the jackpots are in proportion then it is totally up to you whether you bet max. For example a game which has a top jackpot of 3,000 for three coin play (Max Bet), a 2,000 coin win for two coins and a 1,000 coin win for one coin. Each coin can win an additional 1,000 coins.
There is one type of classic slots that require max bet. These games are known as Buy A Pay slots. Quite simply they have two or three different pay tables. Each coin activates an additional pay table. If you play less than max bet you cannot win any of the top prizes even if you hit the right symbols.
Progressive Slots
There is one type of slot machine that makes playing max bet an absolute must - games with a progressive jackpot. Almost all progressives require that you bet the maximum number of coins to qualify for the top jackpot. If you play less than max you cannot win the top jackpot.
We don't recommend playing progressives unless you intend to play max. You are much better off going for a non progressive slots. This is because you can hit the top winning combo and in some cases get nothing because you are a few coins short. In other cases you will get a small consolation prize but this is always just a fraction of the main progressive jackpot.
Bonus Feature Slots
On slots with a bonus game there is no set rule as to what to bet. In some cases you will be required to play max to win the jackpot and in some cases you will not have to. Before playing any bonus game slot be sure to read the pay out table to find out if max bet is required.
Multi-line Slots
If you are playing a three reel game with more that one pay line then it is always a good idea to play max bet. This is because in most cases each additional coin activated an additional pay line. Quite often the highest jackpots are only available on certain lines. If you play less than max you cannot win them.
5 Reel and Video Slots
This is where things get interesting as there are so many variations. In general you do not have to play max bet on video slots unless there is a progressive jackpot involved. We suggest playing max lines but not necessarily max bet. This is because on many games you can bet more than one coin per line.
For example a 20 line slot with the option to bet 10 coins per line has a 200 coin max bet. Even at the penny coin size this turns into $2 a spin. In most cases you will be fine with just one coin per line and can therefore play for as little as 20 a spin. There is a minor catch - your jackpots won't be as big.
The reason for this is that wins are multiplied by your bet per line so a game with a 10,000 coins jackpot and a max bet of 10 coins per line can pay a 100,000 coins win at max bet. Playing just one coin per line will yield a 10,000 coins jackpot only. This is a trade off between low bets and bigger wins.
Conclusions
One of the most important tips we can give you is to always spend a moment reading the pay table of the game you are about to play. All pay tables indicate whether or not max bet is required for any jackpots or features. Another good tip is that if you find a game where playing max is needed and the game is too expensive for you try to find the same game with a lower coin size.
The gaming industry is big business in the U.S., contributing an estimated US$240 billion to the economy each year, while generating $38 billion in tax revenues and supporting 17 million jobs.
What people may not realize is that slot machines, video poker machines and other electronic gaming devices make up the bulk of all that economic activity. At casinos in Iowa and South Dakota, for example, such devices have contributed up to 89 percent of annual gaming revenue.
Spinning-reel slots in particular are profit juggernauts for most casinos, outperforming table games like blackjack, video poker machines and other forms of gambling.
What about slot machines makes them such reliable money makers? In part, it has something to do with casinos’ ability to hide their true price from even the savviest of gamblers.
The price of a slot
An important economic theory holds that when the price of something goes up, demand for it tends to fall.
But that depends on price transparency, which exists for most of the day-to-day purchases we make. That is, other than visits to the doctor’s office and possibly the auto mechanic, we know the price of most products and services before we decide to pay for them.
Slots may be even worse than the doctor’s office, in that most of us will never know the true price of our wagers. Which means the law of supply and demand breaks down.
Casino operators usually think of price in terms of what is known as the average or expected house advantage on each bet placed by players. Basically, it’s the long-term edge that is built into the game. For an individual player, his or her limited interaction with the game will result in a “price” that looks a lot different.
For example, consider a game with a 10 percent house advantage – which is fairly typical. This means that over the long run, the game will return 10 percent of all wagers it accepts to the casino that owns it. So if it accepts $1 million in wagers over 2 million spins, it would be expected to pay out $900,000, resulting in a casino gain of $100,000. Thus from the management’s perspective, the “price” it charges is the 10 percent it expects to collect from gamblers over time.
Individual players, however, will likely define price as the cost of the spin. For example, if a player bets $1, spins the reels and receives no payout, that’ll be the price – not 10 cents.
So who is correct? Both, in a way. While the game has certainly collected $1 from the player, management knows that eventually 90 cents of that will be dispensed to other players.
A player could never know this, however, given he will only be playing for an hour or two, during which he may hope a large payout will make up for his many losses and then some. And at this rate of play it could take years of playing a single slot machine for the casino’s long-term advantage to become evident.
Short-term vs. long-term
This difference in price perspective is rooted in the gap between the short-term view of the players and the long-term view of management. This is one of the lessons I’ve learned in my more than three decades in the gambling industry analyzing the performance of casino games and as a researcher studying them.
Let’s consider George, who just got his paycheck and heads to the casino with $80 to spend over an hour on a Tuesday night. There are basically three outcomes: He loses everything, hits a considerable jackpot and wins big, or makes or loses a little but manages to walk away before the odds turn decidedly against him.
Of course, the first outcome is far more common than the other two – it has to be for the casino to maintain its house advantage. The funds to pay big jackpots come from frequent losers (who get wiped out). Without all these losers, there can be no big winners – which is why so many people play in the first place.
Specifically, the sum of all the individual losses is used to fund the big jackpots. Therefore, to provide enticing jackpots, many players must lose all of their Tuesday night bankroll.
What is less obvious to many is that the long-term experience rarely occurs at the player level. That is, players rarely lose their $80 in a uniform manner (that is, a rate of 10 percent per spin). If this were the typical slot experience, it would be predictably disappointing. But it would make it very easy for a player to identify the price he’s paying.
Raising the price
Ultimately, the casino is selling excitement, which is comprised of hope and variance. Even though a slot may have a modest house advantage from management’s perspective, such as 4 percent, it can and often does win all of George’s Tuesday night bankroll in short order.
This is primarily due to the variance in the slot machine’s pay table – which lists all the winning symbol combinations and the number of credits awarded for each one. While the pay table is visible to the player, the probability of producing each winning symbol combination remains hidden. Of course, these probabilities are a critical determinant of the house advantage – that is, the long-term price of the wager.
This rare ability to hide the price of a good or service offers an opportunity for casino management to raise the price without notifying the players – if they can get away with it.
Casino managers are under tremendous pressure to maximize their all-important slot revenue, but they do not want to kill the golden goose by raising the “price” too much. If players are able to detect these concealed price increases simply by playing the games, then they may choose to play at another casino.
This terrifies casino operators, as it is difficult and expensive to recover from perceptions of a high-priced slot product.
Getting away with it
Consequently, many operators resist increasing the house advantages of their slot machines, believing that players can detect these price shocks.
Our new research, however, has found that increases in the casino advantage have produced significant gains in revenue with no signs of detection even by savvy players. In multiple comparisons of two otherwise identical reel games, the high-priced games produced significantly greater revenue for the casino. These findings were confirmed in a second study.
Slot Machines Max Bet Or Not Play
Further analysis revealed no evidence of play migration from the high-priced games, despite the fact their low-priced counterparts were located a mere 3 feet away.
Importantly, these results occurred in spite of the egregious economic disincentive to play the high-priced games. That is, the visible pay tables were identical on both the high- and low-priced games, within each of the two-game pairings. The only difference was the concealed probabilities of each payout.
Slot Machines Max Bet Or Not Free
Armed with this knowledge, management may be more willing to increase prices. And for price-sensitive gamblers, reel slot machines may become something to avoid.