“My new article is titled ‘Slot Machines: the Power and the Glory.’ How do you like that?” I said to my wife, the Beautiful AP.
She said, “That’s kind of a religious quote. I think that might offend some people.”
I said, “Please, please, this is a site where intelligent people enjoy playing and reading about casino games. My article really tells the story of the rise and conquest by the slot machines, from those one-armed-bandits of the late 1800s in the saloons and bars to today’s amazing machines that dominate the casino industry; the land based, the ocean based, and Internet based just like the 888casino. Slot machines are the true power of the casinos. How the slot machines run, why people love playing them.”
She said, “They are the power, correct, but I’m not so sure, maybe your editor is squeamish.”
I said, “Now 888 isn’t going to hire a drooling dope to be editor of this site. Come on the power of the machines has made casino playing a world-wide phenomenon. It is all over most of the world. The casino culture has spread throughout almost everywhere. That is solely based on those slot machines. Maybe 70 to 90 percent of any casino’s revenue will come from those machines. Worldwide! I’m talking worldwide.”
She said, “Okay, okay, I like the idea. What the heck!”
Now, if my wife the Beautiful AP likes an idea I know it is a good idea because of the fact that I have written 35 books, over 6,000 articles, appeared on some television shows, consulted on movies, and wrote a couple of plays all with her encouragement. She is one smart woman. With her support, here comes “Slot Machines: the Power and the Glory.”
The Glory
There is a delicious feeling of accomplishment when you hit a decent jackpot on a slot machine. Even small wins can make players feel good about themselves. The machines are always there, in the casino, on the Internet, in some saloons and stores, just waiting for you to play them.
They beckon to the players. They call to them. They entice them. They seduce them. “Play me. Play me. Oh, please, play with me.”
Unlike table games, where you have to deal with the other players and the dealers – and people can be, well you know this, people can be people – slots are not judgmental; they accept you for the person you are. They are willing to give you a chance at money flowing into your purse or pocket. They don’t care if you win. (They also don’t care if you lose.)
A Short History of Slot Machines
Slot machines arrived on the scene sometime in the late 1800s. The first named one was the Liberty Bell created by Charles Fey.
San Francisco became the center of this slot surge in machine gaming at this time.
The first slot machines were simple contraptions. They were just mechanical devices, with three reels, that showed players they had won pieces of candy, cigars, and other things that could be then bought back by the owners of the bar for money that they gave you for the candy, cigars, and other things you had won and this was not considered illegal. Very clever! Of course, players could win nothing as well.
Yes, in the past gambling was considered bad, a serious sin, and something that had to be shunned and something a good person should stay away from. You never had Las Vegas gambling nights at churches as you do today (yes, today’s version of a Las Vegas night didn’t really exist way back when but you get the idea).
Those slot machines spread throughout the country – from San Francisco to New York. Politicians and other decent people (politicians? oh, come on now) went on the attack. There are some great photos of our moralizing politicians smashing slot machines wherever they cropped up in the country. There’s a great video of New York City’s Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia smashing a bunch of these evil machines before having them thrown into the river.
In several decades the machines became electro-mechanical slots run by (obviously) electricity. These machines were able to give out higher pays because they had more stops and they paid mostly in cold, hard cash. There were a lot a fruits and vegetables on the faces of the reels, too. I guess you could say they were vegan slot machines You obviously didn’t want to get lemons but some of the other fruits were real treats.
In World War II and beyond, the slot machines had a rightful place in any place that called itself or was called by others a casino – or saloon.
When Vegas started to become world famous, slot machines were the province of women. (“Honey, I’m gonna play some craps. Here’s a few bucks. Go play the slots.”)
The post-war slots were all able to play different denominations of money and however many coins that they could handle and return. Most were able to play one, two or three coins at a time. More and more players started to play these games, even men, those early few men who were being lured away from the table games.
And these machines were pretty fast too. Casinos could make much more money from them.
New types of machines entered the fray as well; most notably video poker machines in the 1970s that simulated a poker game – well, kind of simulated a poker game. These still have a small segment of the machine-play market.
The biggest advancement in slot machines was the arrival of the computer-generated slots. Today these are the market for slots. They almost seem magical. (For more on the history of slots, click here.)
Today’s Machines
Our modern world is a world run by computers. We all know that fact. Even the computers may know that.
Indeed, the talk in knowledgeable circles is that computers are actually starting to think on their own and will (or now have actually achieved) some kind of consciousness. There is even talk that our computers might attempt to destroy us in a few years. Great, that’s surely not what we need; human life is hard enough as it is for many people. What we don’t need is to be characters in a real-life Terminator movie, although there are Terminator-themed machines.
Slot machines run by computers come in all types and varieties. There can be three-reel machines (a few) and machines that can give the player dozens of reels and images and types of games. Players have a forest of machines they can prance through.
You can play games based on cartoons, movies, television shows, science fiction, comics of all types and books of most types. You like vampires? Fine. Suck on these machines. Mummies? Go back to ancient Egypt with our pyramid machines. You want to fight a movie star boxer? Come and challenge him or her. You can even take a trip on the Titanic. (Seriously, can anyone expect to win on the Titanic?)
You have video slot machines that range from penny machines to hundreds-of-dollars machines. There are mega-slot-players who need a casino employee to be with them at all times to record these players’ wins that are over the $10,000 mark which must be reported to the government. Yikes, we’re talking big bets here.
[Please note: Words sometimes don’t tell the full tale of the slot-machine stories of today. A slot machine that is often called a “penny machine” or “nickel machine” can have so many options that players are actually playing a machine that is almost costing them a dollar or more a decision. This is something of which to be aware; the machines can be more expensive than you realize. “Nothing is but what is not,” as Shakespeare’s Macbeth said, applies to many of today’s slot machines. Macbeth’s statement certainly applies to the slots so keep that in mind as you choose which machines you wish to play.]
The Computer Rules the Machine-scape
Today’s slots are nothing like the good old days. The machines are ruled totally by a computer chip that decides everything that will happen. The outside of the machine and the displays the players see are just there to look like something the player can relate to since very few players can relate to algorithms, which are the true nature of the slots.All symbols you see on the machines – be they people, cartoon characters, the outrageous symbols, and even the “whatevers” – are merely what you see. They merely tell the player what fate had in store for him or her.
The outside reality of the machine actually means nothing. The winning and losing spins or decisions are created within the computer mind and that mind tells what symbols to appear, disappear, and announce whatever the inner mind decides what the player should experience by such an announcement.
The RNG Ain’t Just All
Many slot players know about the RNG (the Random Number Generator) which is the mind within the machine that dictates what’s coming up next and next and next after that. This brain within the machine has no feelings, it just picks number sequences that relate to the things a player will see on the machine’s outside.
The RNG is supposed to be random but, in fact, the real term for the RNG is not actually the random number generator but the pseudo-random number generator (PRNG). We cannot actually program randomness but we can get close; so close that humans can’t really tell what’s happening inside a slot machine.
And that little bugger (I hope the RNG doesn’t mind me calling it a bugger) is working 24 hours a day. Yes, every second of every hour of every day, those “random” sequences are occurring even if the machine isn’t being played. Correct. Just look at that forlorn machine in the dusty corner and it is actively processing and processing and processing those number sequences. These flash by in split seconds and they are not predictable by any outside means.
There is no way for a player to guess with accuracy what’s coming down the pike. All of our guesses are just that – out of the blue guesses. We must hope that our good luck wins out over the machine because we do not have the math on our side of slot-machine play.
Slot Machine Systems
Most casino players have preferred ways to wager their money. Systems galore dominate the world of the casinos. Every player seems to have one or some or many ways to play their preferred games.
Most of these systems are a waste of time and have no influence on whether you become an ultimate and ecstatic winner or a forlorn and sorrowful loser. Nothing really works in the long run and usually nothing works in the short and medium run either. (Okay, some few exceptions to that.)
Casino players are vying with the ancient gods for good luck in order to come out ahead. The gods on Mount Olympus generally win and in the long run – well, you know the answer to that. The casinos’ math lasts but luck is ephemeral. But we all hope for such good luck.
[Please note: I do know a story of one player, way back maybe 20-30 years ago – maybe more – who was able to duplicate the algorithm on a certain machine and he won a fortune before he was imprisoned for cheating. This may have occurred in Canada. Is the story true? I don’t know but we can always hope. After all, hope springs eternal as hope was the only good thing that came out of Pandora’s opening of the box.]
The Glory of Winning on the Slots
I am going to share a little secret with you – people who have winning trips, even winning days on the slot machines, think it is something special that they did to make them win. They are not only happy that they won money, which they obviously are, but they are convinced that their luck had something to do with their inner being, their inner state, their inner self.
Winning players often feel glorified. They experience such glory and are delighted by it.
The slots have that ability to make us feel such glory and that might be one reason inveterate slot players love to play them. That is their real power.
All the best in and out of the casinos!
