There are 36 possible combinations of two six-sided dice, but only one of them yields a total of 12 – 6s on both dice. Roulette is random in that every number can turn up on every spin, but long-term results also will lead to an expected payback percentage. All give the house an edge by paying less than true odds on winning bets.Ĭraps is random in that any two-dice total can come on any roll, but has the equivalent of programmed payback percentages in the house edge. In that respect, slots are the same as nearly every other casino game. The result of every spin of the slot reels is random on every spin, but over hundreds of thousands or millions of plays, the odds of the slot will lead toward an expected payback percentage. SLOTS ARE BOTH RANDOM AND HAVE A PROGRAMMED PAYBACK PERCENTAGE Let’s take each of those issues on at a time. The short answers are that slots can both be random and have a programmed payback percentage, that their doesn’t have to be any makeup time after big hits for slots to reach their target percentage in the long haul, and that variable – and random – bonus results can be part of the calculations without any need to short-circuit randomness. Doesn’t a programmed payback percentage imply that slots must have cold streaks to make up for hot streaks or big jackpots? How else can slots hit their programmed percentage?Īnd what about bonus rounds? Can they really be random if they have to be part of the programmed payback? Don’t your results have to be predetermined so they can be included in the payback percentage calculations?

How can a slot machine be random if it has a programmed payback percentage?

Players sometimes have a difficulty reconciling those two statements. Slot machines also are programmed with specified payback percentages to give the house an edge. Slot machines are designed to yield random results, or at least results as random has humans can program a computer to be.

How are slot machines programmed