Slot Machine Spins Per Hour

Cash Spin Slot

I realize that decisions per hour in games like blackjack and craps can depend heavily on factors like the number of other players at the table, the hand shuffle vs. machine shuffle, shooter and dealer speed. Still, I was curious if you could give me a rough approximation of how many decisions per hour an individual can expect at a mostly-full craps table and a blackjack table with both a hand shuffle and machine shuffle. This would help me estimate my expected loss per hour and weigh it against the comps I am being offered.

You can spin the Slot Machine five times per hour. This timer resets as soon as it rolls over to the next hour. This means that if you spin at 2:45pm, 2:47pm, 2:49pm, 2:50pm, and 2:55pm Lioden time, you'll be able to spin five times again starting at 3:00pm Lioden time. Even if you take things slow and spin the reels every 10 seconds (the average players spins every 6 seconds) you’ll still be looking at 6 spins per minute – or $360 worth of spins in an hour.

The following tables show the number of hands/tosses per hour in blackjack, craps, and roulette. The source of the tables is Casino Operations Management by Jim Kilby.

Hands per Hour in Blackjack

Rolls per Hour in Craps

In craps 29.6% of total rolls are come out rolls, on average.

Spins per Hour in Roulette

I have reviewed your site and am looking for casinos in Nevada and Mississippi that have the best pay out schedules for each table game (I prefer 3 card poker). Do you have a listing or link that shows the 'loosest table games' casinos?

I have thought about that many times but always shoot down the idea because it would be very high maintenance to keep it up to date. I do know they have full pay 1/4/6/30/40 pay table on the Pairplus in Three Card Poker at the Pioneer in Laughlin. At least they did when I was last there a few months ago. As far as I know every casino in Vegas follows the stingier 1/3/6/30/40 pay table.

The radius of the circle is 1. The triangle is equilateral. Find the area of each colored region.

I don’t want to blow the answer for those who want to solve it for themselves. For the answer and solution visit my other web site mathproblems.info, problem 189.

What are the chances in a heads up game of Texas Hold’em that each player gets KK. Then on the very next hand both players get KK. We can’t even get a close estimate. If you can figure it out please respond, thanks.

The probability for any given hand is (combin(4,2)/combin(52,2))*(1/combin(50,2)) = 1/270725. So, the probability of this happening twice in a row is 1 in 270,725² = 1 in 73,292,025,625.

I have tried to get the exact odds of getting a royal straight flush in a 7-card game. I hit one at Foxwoods the other day.

If you mean a 5-card royal and any two other cards the probability is 4*combin(47,2)/combin(52,7) = 4,324/ 133,784,560 = 1 in 30,940.

Hi, if person A makes 1000 consecutive bets on the pass line without backing up his bet, and person B makes 1000 consecutive bets on the pass line and he takes 100X odds whenever possible, doesn’t each person lose the same amount of money?

Yes. I can just imagine the follow up question to be why I recommend taking the odds if doing so doesn’t help to win more. What I suggest is betting less on the pass so that your need for action is mostly met by a full odds bet. For example if you are comfortable betting about $90 per bet, and the casino allows 5x odds, then I would drop the pass line bet to $15 and bet $75 on the odds. That will lower the overall house edge from 1.414% to 0.326%.

I’ve finally accepted a job in Vegas, and the family will be moving in less than a month. What areas of Vegas are nice to live, what areas are undesirable?

For family living the nicest areas are indeed Henderson and Summerlin. Personally I live in a master planned community called Peccole Ranch, which borders Summerlin. In my opinion the west side, where I live, is better because:

It has an Orange County, California, look and feel to while much of Henderson looks like it was made from a cookie cutter.
The west side is higher in elevation and thus cooler in summer.
Henderson suffers from the noise of landing airplanes.
The west side is right next to the mountains, which offer outstanding hiking and climbing.
The future growth of the west side seems to be better planned.

If you ask someone from Henderson they will claim Henderson has less traffic, but there are two sides to that issue, and I think the west side is better in that area too. I’m sure I will hear from somebody from Henderson over this, and am happy to print a rebuttal in the future, because I believe in presenting both sides.

The worst parts of Vegas are around downtown, gradually getting better as you move further away. For something in the middle there is lots of growth on the south side of town along the I-15 and the north side along the U.S. 95.

In Texas hold em if a player accidentally shows his cards before betting round is complete is that player’s hand dead?

Is Timbuktu a real place and if so what country is it in?

Yes. As I recall it was a great intellectual city in Africa that had a magnificent library. However the library was burned down and not much remains of the once great city. Here’s more information about Timbuktu from MrDowling.com.

When my boyfriend and I first started dating there was this girl that would flirt with him all the time. Well I told him to ignore her or it would be over. He did, or so he said. We drove passed her yesterday and he smiled at her. I got mad at first then I just let it go. He started yelling at me and told me that he could say hi to her whenever he wanted. What I don’t get is that he gets so jealous whenever I talk to one of his friends. Does this mean that he could be talking to this girl behind my back? PLEASE ANSWER ME!!!!!

I’m not big on jealousy. It should be okay for either of you to be friendly with the opposite sex. Even light flirting can be okay if it just in fun and goes no further than that. If you don’t have trust in a relationship then it is bound to fail. My advice is to put your relationship to the test and allow flirting on both sides. If that causes the end of it then it wasn’t meant to be in the first place.

You are playing a three-coin slot machine. You only are playing two coins at the time. The jackpot is hit. If you had been playing one coin, or if you had been playing three coins, would it still have gone off at that point?

Cash Spin Slot

If you had put in one or three coins the outcome would likely have been entirely different. The machine is constantly drawing random numbers and the numbers that were drawn at the moment you spin the reels determine the outcome. So, if you had played fewer or more coins you would have spun the reels at a different moment and thus the outcome would have been different.

Hey Shack I hadn't been to the site in awhile and I just wanted to compliment you on the new sleek look. I know you initially wanted to stay away from the banners but they do help pay the bills eh?
Congratulations also on the new gig with Casino Player, I enjoy it the site and your occasional posts on bj21. As someone who works in the industry, admittedly not slots, I was under the impression that the more recent slots have the RNG stop the moment the first coin drops, so it really doesn't matter if you play 1,2, or 3 coins -- the symbols will line up the same. Have I been misinformed? According to your previous answer I apparently have. Keep up the good work and I'll stay in touch, thanks and best wishes.

Thanks for the kind words Dave. You're right that it was the money that finally made me accept the banners. It is my understanding that when the player presses the button to spin the reels the random numbers are drawn at that instant, which determine where the reels stop, and ultimately what you win. The number of coins bet does not matter.

How many numbers does the RNG (Random Number Generator) pick for each spin in a slot machine? Is it three numbers (1 for each reel) or is it 1 number that's mapped to a unique combination of symbols for all 3 reels?

This is a great website!. FYI - A guy missed the Megabucks jackpot (7.9M) yesterday because he had just two coins in. To the best of your knowledge, when does the RNG stop and determine your outcome? If it stops on the first coin, then he blew it. If it is on the last coin, he could have had an entirely different outcome. My guess that the stop time is set by the individual manufacturer, and there is no regulation telling him when to do so. Just wondering if you knew different.

Thanks for the compliment. The outcome of the game is determined when the player initiates the spin. The game is constantly drawing random numbers, even when not played. The random numbers chosen at the moment the button is pressed to spin the reels determine where the reels stop, which determines what the player wins. So, if the player bet three coins he would have pressed the button at a different moment, causing a different outcome.

Have you noticed when you look sideways past the right reel on IGT games there are 4-5 counters inside the machine labeled 'coins in, coins out, jackpots' or similar wording? I was just wondering what your experience with the counters was. Is there any way to get helpful information from those? Thanks for your time.

No, that information won’t help you at all. Your odds are always the same on every spin, regardless of the counters.

I have heard it is illegal for a slot machine to deliberately have too many near misses. Can you tell me what you know about this?

To answer your question I asked a well connected gaming consultant and he said Nevada regulations state that one stop on a reel can not be weighted more than six times more than either stop next to it. So if a jackpot symbol were weighted by 1 and both bordering blanks were weighted by 6 then there would be 12 near misses for every one time the reel stopped on the jackpot symbol. This would be the maximum allowed near miss effect. My own results detailed in my slot machine appendix 1 back up this theory well. The red double seven was the highest paying symbol and I saw the blanks above and below it about 5 to 6 times as often:

Double Strike Actual Results

Symbol	Reel 1	Reel 2	Reel 3
Blank	250	248	291
Double red 7	52	51	55
Blank	259	292	262

The same source said that New Jersey and Mississippi likely have adopted the Nevada regulations.

This is not a game theory question, but I figured since you answer dating questions you might handle this. I had a dream recently where I sat down at an open slot machine. I was getting my player’s card out of my pocket when a guy came up from behind me and put money in the machine. I told him it was my machine and hit the cash out button and gave him his ticket. He said he had his eye on the machine and since he had his money in first it was his machine. I turned to call a slot attendant and while I was doing that he put his money in again, pushed the button and hit a jackpot. In my dream we then had an argument over who gets the money, the person who clearly had the machine and intended to play it or the person who unsolicited put the money in the machine. I realize this is a bizarre situation but who do you think would win the argument?

My understanding is that the person who is pressing the buttons gets the money. I asked Brian, who helped with the last question, about this. Here is what he wrote, which I agree with.

In the scenario described, the person who put in the money and pressed the buttons would receive the jackpot.

What I find interesting about this question is the paradox that in all likelihood, the jackpot never would have occurred without this chance encounter.

As you know, the random number generator in the slot machine is continuously working even when the machine is not in play. So even though one patron feels cheated, their run-in ultimately led to pressing the spin button at that exact millisecond when the RNG was on the winning combination. So, if one patron had acquiesced, there is never a jackpot to fight over.

I have used your site to knock down myths and betting systems with many friends and your proofs always win the day. On the Pink Panther (and some others) there is a bonus round that presents a screen with pictures from which to pick. Behind some are coin amounts and others have a symbol that ends the bonus round. Once you are presented with the bonus board the placement of the symbols cannot be changed, can they?

Thanks for helping in the fight against betting systems. First let me say that I have never worked for a major slot machine company and don’t have direct knowledge of this. However, I know many people in the industry and those I trust pretty much are in agreement on this topic.

That said, it is my understanding that in all forms of electronic games, including video slots, video poker, and video keno, the outcome is usually determined the moment you make your decision. Meanwhile the possible outcomes are constantly being shuffled, thousands of times a second. I can’t speak for every slot machine but I believe that with the major U.S. slot makers the outcome is not predestined but depends on the exact microsecond you press the button to make your play.

First, love the site, very informative! Background: When using a Random Number Generator (RNG) to determine certain payouts for a finite set, such as 1 million lottery scratch off cards, the RNG can be programmed to drop non-pay or add pay selections so as to keep a more even distribution of winners throughout the finite set of cards created. The goal is to maintain a more even distribution in the cards along with the payout percentage as required. Is this, or can this programming be done in Nevada? The law of averages would indicate no need for this, but is it not theoretically possible for a signed 97% slot machine to payout 95% one year and 99% the next year unless some control on the RNG was made?

Thanks for the kind words. Scratch cards and pull tabs can indeed be printed in batches. These batches will have a specified number for each win, and the return of the overall batch will be exactly as the maker intended. In some jurisdictions, where only pull tabs are legal, the outcome can be displayed to the player on a video monitor, in the form of a slot or video poker machine. However, in Nevada, that is not how slots work. Each play is completely independent of the past. A machine programmed to average a 97% return, could indeed pay under 95% or over 99% over a year, especially if not heavily played.