NATURAL BORN SPINNERS
A look at the psychological profile of slots players and myths
perpetuated by casinos and modern slot machine manufacturers

by jessica hughes
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Slot machines are fun and addictive. Statistics citing slot machines as the most popular form of casino gambling bear out this fact unequivocally again and again. Slot machines - originally called nickel-in-the-slot machines, soon to be abbreviated - have enjoyed a long and successful history stretching back to the 1880's, and have had a long list of names, including Liberty Bells, Fruit Machines, and one-armed bandits.

Slots players are certainly a superstitious bunch caught up in myth and hearsay more than any other gambling group. Table players can often be heard voicing disparaging comments on the subject of slot machine players (leg-pulling the arm-pullers) - in somewhat similar fashion to chess players looking down on backgammon. I myself am a table player - blackjack, mainly, - although I do enjoy the odd session of arm-pulling from time to time to mix things up. However, although in this article we are looking at slot machine players - and here I'm really only referring to the hardcore type of slots player - as an extreme case, many of these observations can equally be applied to other types of gambler.

To be fair, research evidence on the subject of slot machine players is patchy at best for a number of reasons, which I won't go into in depth at this point (click here for a detailed introduction to the subject of gambling research). Slot machine players do not exactly make the ideal research subject. For one thing, they are not there to talk about playing slot machines, they are there to play slot machines and don't like to be disturbed. There have even been reports of slot machine players using catheters in order to not have to leave their machine. Also, slot machine players are well known to be paranoid about snipers. This strongly held but entirely unfounded fear is based on the erroneous concept generally held by slots players that the more money you put into a given machine and the longer you play, the closer you are to getting the jackpot. As a player gets deeper into his session with a given machine, the hotter and hotter that machine becomes - he believes. This is absolute nonsense, but it is nonsense which in the mind of the slot machine player is at least half the fun. The truth about this has been discussed in depth in our previous article about RNG, so no need to go into the subject here.

It seems that the profile of a typical hardcore slot machine player is a person with an extremely vibrant imagination and an absolute refusal to face facts. Now, I'm not knocking it. It's just a game, escapism, and I'm not saying that person takes that attitude into his or her daily life. But when it comes to playing the slots, a slot machine player's ability to ignore widely known truths about how slot machines work is frankly admirable. Like it matters how you pull the arm? Or if the coins you win are warm? Or how long it's been since a machine spat out winnings? Or how many coins you put in each time? Or any number of other myths which slot machine players cling to? Of course, you might argue that a craps player blows on his dice and does his special dice-throwing thing, but it's much more of a laugh, much more "hey, why not for luck?" For a slot machine player, however, he really, really believes that it makes a difference. That techinically, in hardware reality, it makes a difference how you pull the lever.

This has got a lot to do with the fact that a slot machine is a machine, and nothing breeds ignorance quite like a machine. Whatever the undeniable facts, a lay person still doesn't fully understand the engineering of the slot machine and therefore all sorts of opinions and misconceptions are possible. Hell, look at the problems people have with computers and the wizard status of those who can fix them. Moreover, as with computer engineers, casinos and slot machine manufacturers perpetuate this misunderstanding as much as they can. Why? Because they are fully aware that it is the mythological nature of slot machines which is the key to their success. Slot machine designs are constantly trying to play on the misconceptions of the slots player. The first major design change in slot machines came in the early 20th century by a man named Herbert Mills. The change was small technically but huge mythologically. What he did was increase the width of the payout window so that the player could see the symbol just above and just below the payoff line. This gave the player the impression that he had just missed winning the jackpot. This is nonsense for two reasons. A, because the output is determined in advance - it's not like the Wheel of Fortune or a roulette wheel. B, the physical wheel does not represent the virtual wheel. The virtual wheel has many more symbols than the physical wheel, with winning symbols represented far fewer times than non-winning symbols. In a stroke of genius as part of the widening payout window, the incidence of the symbols adjacent to the winning symbols was increased to maximum on the virtual wheel. In short, the most likely symbol a slots player will get is the one just above or just below the winning symbol. Does this stop the player watching the spinning and going "Oooooooh" when he just misses? No. Modern slots manufacturing continues to play on the slots player's vivid imagination, introducing more visually exciting designs, with more slots, more reels and more bonuses all of which, for the player's point of view, add up to nothing new in terms of what actually goes on inside the machine and the odds of winning.

Casinos are also in on the act. They have intelligently placed slot machines - where they are most easily seen - with RNG programmed to be loose. This means that they give out lots of winnings but no big jackpots. The house may make a loss on that machine, but it encourages players to play other machines and help perpetuate the myth of a machine being hot. Casinos also offer slots players the option of capping the machine they are on, which means the player can take a toilet break or whatever and come back to his machine without anyone else being able to get in on his action and cash-in on all the hard work he did to get the machine hot. This of course is absolute fantasy, the attendant knows it, but if you ask him to cap your machine he will take your request very seriously indeed.

This all said, slot machines remain a fun and popular form of casino gambling and nothing I or anybody will ever say is going to change that. If suspending your disbelief means you have fun, I say go for it! Also, there are proven and widely accepted ways in which you CAN increase your chances of winning. Bigger casinos generally offer better slot machine odds, because less of more is still more than more of less. By the same token, slot machines which take higher coin denominations (such as the silver dollar slots) also usually offer better odds. Some people believe that machines can be influenced by the human mind and who's to say it's not true. The photo-copier breaks down more for some people than others, or it always breaks down when you're in a hurry. I know people who always have problems with their computer and these people hate their computers. They think they hate them because they don't work, but I sometimes wonder if perhaps they don't work because they are hated. Am I helping to perpertuate the myth having spent 1300 words trying to dispell it? Mmmm, maybe.