Three-reel progressives are this type of game, amped up with a growing jackpot. You have to bet the max to be eligible for the jackpot.

To see how the effect this has on payback percentages, let’s imagine the above pay table on a $1 game that returns 95 percent when you bet the max and in which the odds lead to the top jackpot hitting about once per 20,000 plays.

If you bet the max, then per 20,000 plays, you’re betting $60,000.

A 95-percent payback means that on average, you’re getting $57,000 back.
Of the $57,000 in returns, you get $5,000 from the jackpot and $52,000 from the smaller pays.
If you bet only one coin, then per 20,000 plays, you’re betting $20,000. The smaller pays are proportionate, so you get one-third of $52,000, or $17,333. The one-coin bet brings a jackpot of only $1,000 on your one 7-7-7 hit. That brings your total payback to $18,333.

To calculate payback percentage, divide your $18,333 in returns by $20,000 in wagers, then multiply by 100 to convert to percent.
That shows a payback percentage of 91.7 percent.

Bottom line: If you bet the max, this machine returns 95 percent. If you don’t, it returns 91.7 percent.
Betting the max doesn’t make the jackpot come up any more or less often than if you bet fewer coins.

However, the normal odds of the game, coupled with the disproportionate pay table, make the payback percentage higher if you bet maximum coins.

• The machine detailed under multipliers with modified jackpots returns 91.7 percent to players who bet one coin.
• Per 1,000 plays, one-coin wagers bring a 917-coin return. The house keeps 83 coins.
• If you bet three coins per play, the payback percentage increases to 95 percent.
• Per 1,000 three-coin bets, you get back 2,850 coins. The house keeps 150.

Even though you’re getting a higher payback percentage, your average losses are higher because you’re risking a lot more money.

Just how big the difference in percentages and average losses differ from game to game, but you need to weigh the larger risk when weighing whether to bet more to get a higher payback percentage.

Since the winning combination is on the third line, you would get the three 7s winner only if you bet maximum coins.
Other buy-a-pays unlock paying symbols with each coin wagered.

Here’s a sample pay table:

• The first coin wagered unlocks the fruit symbols, the second coin unlocks the bars and the third coin unlocks the 7s
• If you line up three bars but have wagered only one coin, you do not win. Likewise, if you line up three 7s and have bet only one or two coins, you get back nothing.
• Do not play a buy-a-pay if you are not willing to wager enough to unlock all the symbols.

The last thing you want is to see the three jackpot symbols line up when you haven’t bet enough to unlock them.

I’ve seen it happen. A woman playing across the aisle from me saw the jackpot symbols line up. She started screaming and her friends surrounded her, offering hugs and congratulations.

And then … nothing. No lights, no music, no money. It was just a losing spin.

You don’t want to be that player. On a buy-a-pay, you either bet the max or don’t play.

There are a few notable things about that pay table:

In order to give easy examples and streamline the math, this game is simplified from the pay tables you actually see in casinos. Casino games often use more character symbols and also often use generic symbols such as A-K-Q-J-10. Many video slots also include more than one bonus event. Despite the simplification, there are many more possible winning combinations than on the three-reel slot. Even two in a row of the top-paying symbol brings some payoff.

As set up, this game with 20 paylines and a five-coin maximum bet per line would have a maximum total bet of 100 coins.

Games you’ll find in casinos often have much higher maximum bets, such as 20 coins per line on a 20-line game, or 10 coins per line on a 40-line game, for a total of 400 coins. The pay table is proportional from to bottom, so betting maximum coins does not increase payback percentage. That is typical on video slots.

An example:

• You decide to bet a single coin. That activates only the center payline.
• You go to the bonus event if three bonus symbols land on the center line, since that line is active.
• However, if the reels land on any line you have not activated, you do not go to the bonus.

Time spent in bonus events is time you spend building credits without making extra wagers, so you want to maximize your chances of going to the bonuses. To maximize slot machines payouts, make sure you’re eligible for the bonuses offered. Some newer games avoid the issue by eliminating the option to play fewer paylines than available. A 40-line game might have buttons labeled “Bet 40,” “Bet 80,” “Bet 120,” “Bet 160,” and “Bet 200,” giving you options to bet one, two, three, four or five credits per line, but no chance to play only one line.

In the slot industry, these are called “forced bet” machines.

One method is by scouting progressives, which can be broken into two major areas:

• Scouting top jackpots, especially on three-reel games, to find those that are larger than usual.
• Scouting “must hit by” slots, which advertise that jackpots must hit by a certain amount. These are not fool-proof methods, for several reasons.
• Scouting is a time-consuming business, especially live slots.
• Players don’t have the necessary information to know if a jackpot is big enough to give players an edge.
• On most games, results remain random and you are no more likely to win than if the jackpot is small.
• When you play linked progressives, there’s always the possibility that another player on a linked machine will win the jackpot you scouted.

However, if you play progressives only when the jackpot is high, your payback percentage rises.

You may not be able to overcome the house edge, but skipping low jackpot times means you’re always playing for a higher than average pay table.

Let’s look at how all this works.

A player who scouts progressives will not play when the jackpot is at that minimum level.
Instead, the jackpot hunter does some scouting and charting in an attempt to determine an average payoff when the jackpot hits. The jackpot hunter keeps a record, whether in a computer file, a diary or on scraps of paper.

A diary entry might look like this.

You can’t count on being at the casino every time a jackpot hits. So the entries in the jackpot column carry several provisos:

• The player who is serious about scouting must make frequent visits to check jackpot levels.
• If a jackpot has hit since the last visit, the serious scout asks a slot attendant or supervisor if they know the payoff size.
• Some casinos put photos of recent winners and their jackpot amounts on a wall.
• Sometimes, the jackpot entry will have to be an estimate based on the last previous known level.
• More data collected over a longer time is better.

In this case, the jackpot scout would regard the low jackpot of $5,981 as an outlier.
He’d see that all other jackpots were at least $7,888, with most over $8,000.
Therefore, he wouldn’t start playing until the jackpot reached at least $8,000.
That doesn’t guarantee profit, but does mean he’s playing games with a higher payback percentage than if he played when the jackpot was $5,000.

On this machine, the payback percentage rises 1 percent for each $1,000 added to the jackpot. It reaches a break-even point where there is 100 percent payback, or no house edge, at a $13,000 jackpot. That $13,000 jackpot is higher than the largest payoff in our jackpot scout’s diary, meaning he’d never be playing a game with 100 percent return and a profit opportunity. This hypothetical was set up to yield easy arithmetic. Real-world examples would be more complex, but the message here is realistic:

• You do play for higher payback percentages if you reserve your play for times when the jackpot is high.
• Even at seemingly high jackpot levels, that payback percentage rarely reaches 100 percent.

There’s one more factor to consider: Higher jackpot levels don’t make the jackpot occur more often. If the odds of the game are set so the top jackpot will hit once per 20,000 plays, the odds of it hitting ALWAYS are 1 in 20,000. It doesn’t matter if the jackpot is $5,000, or $15,000, something higher or something in between. The odds are the same on every play.

It doesn’t matter if someone hit the jackpot on the last play, or if it’s been 100,000 plays since the last jackpot. If the odds were 1 in 20,000 on the first play, they’re still 1 in 20,000 on the next one. And to underscore a point made earlier, the casino doesn’t post a machine’s payback percentage. On any specific game, we don’t know the odds that go into determining how often a jackpot hits.

Bottom line: If you want to use jackpot scouting as a way to play for higher payback percentages, great.

These are mystery jackpots, of the type detailed in Chapter 6.2: Minimum Bettors Can Play for Maximum Jackpots. The jackpots are separate from the main game. You still spin the video reels, collect on winning combinations and launch bonus events. If you want your scouting to give you an edge over the casino, that’s not likely at all.

You collect a jackpot when your wager pushes the total to an amount selected by a random number generator. Let’s say the base jackpot on a hypothetical game is $200 and must be awarded by $500. The RNG selects an amount between those two values. If the percentage of your bet that’s added to the jackpot pushes it to that total, you win. The payoff isn’t driven by symbols, and the outcome of your spin doesn’t matter. The machine will just tell you you’ve won the jackpot.

All amounts have an equal chance of being selected by the random number generator. However, the closer the jackpot is to the “must win by” amount, the better your chance of winning on the next play. The reason is that the possibilities narrow as possible jackpot amounts are left behind. The possibilities are in 1-cent increments so between $200 and $201 there are 100 possibilities -- $200.01, $200.02 and so on. With a $300 difference between the base and the maximum, that means the RNG has 30,000 possible jackpot totals to choose from.

If your bet increases the jackpot to $200.01, there is a 1 in 30,000 chance that is the jackpot amount. However, if your bet increases the pot to $201.01, then 100 amounts already have been eliminated, and the chance of your bet triggering the jackpot improves to 1 in 29,000.

Let’s take a sample of possible jackpots and your chances of winning if your bet pushes it to that level:

The closer the total is to “must win by” amount, the better your chances of winning the jackpot. About half the jackpots will hit for less than $350, and about half will hit for more than $350. However, there are so many possible jackpot totals that you almost always are a sizable underdog. Keep that in mind if you decide to scout the “must win by” slots.

Look for the machine with the most coins to be awarded, and play only until you win that award.

In addition to three video reels, Fort Knox included a 10-digit code. During play on the reels, you could collect code digits. There was no skill in collecting the digits, nor were there choices to make. You’d just collect digits at random times. With each digit collected you would be one step closer to cracking the code. When you had all 10 digits, the screen would change to animation of the door to the vault at Fort Knox. The door would swing open to reveal all the gold, and a credit amount for your bonus payoff.

Before long, players learned to scout for machines where the code had been partially solved by other players. If a game was available with five or more digits already solved, players had an edge. At that point, those playing for profit would play the game until they opened the vault, then leave and let someone else solve the early digits. Silicon Gaming produced a number of such banked bonus games. Another was called Buccaneer Gold. In the pirate-themed Buccaneer Gold, instead of collecting code digits, you collected daggers. Each time a dagger appeared on the reels, a dagger would be stuck into a pirate ship’s rail. When you collected five daggers, you won a bonus award. This time, the magic number was three. If you found a machine with three daggers already in the rail, you had a profit-making opportunity.

Other gamemakers also produced banked bonus collecting games. International Game Technology went that route with its Vision Series, which put a bonus screen in the top box of mechanical-reel slots. One Vision Series game was called Racing 7s. Three 7s – one red, one white and one blue – were on a track divided into segments. Each 7 had a credit amount associated with winning the race. In the highest-paying version, the red 7 could win 100 credits, the blue could win 25 and the white could win 10. Each time a 7 landed on the payline of the main game, the 7 of the same color would move up one notch on the track. When your spin took a 7 to the finish line, you won the prize for the 7 of the indicted color. The trick was to look for machines with 7s within two notches of the finish. If you could find a higher-paying red 7 near the finish, so much the better.

Bally Technologies had S&H Green Stamps, which still occasionally is spotted in casinos. The object is to fill a book with the trademarked Green Stamps. It takes 1,200 stamps to fill a book. When stamp symbols appear on your video reel spins, stamps are transferred to the book. Some symbols put one stamp in the book, some two, and on up to 50-stamp symbols. In the onscreen book, you see spaces for 12 stamps. Each represents 100 stamps collected. That’s an easy visual shortcut, but the actual number of stamps also is displayed on the screen. If you spot four stamps in the book, you know immediately at least 400 stamps are collected. Then if you look for the number you might find the actual total is anywhere from 400 to 499. If you spot a game with at least 600 stamps already collected, you have an edge. That’s when to start playing. When you fill the book by reaching 1,200 stamps, you’re given the option of taking free spins or starting another book. Always take the free spins. Leave the early stages of filling a book to someone else.

BOTTOM LINE
You’re rarely going to encounter banked bonus collecting games today. When you do, choose machines where other players have taken you at least halfway toward completing the collection.