Superstitions and Slots Play Rarely Realistically Mix
Although some people don’t believe in superstitions, there are those who do. In particular when playing slots some people will fall back on the most primitive notions. One that comes up all the time is the following scenario:
You are sitting at a slot machine that is not particularly treating you well. You are frustrated, but convince yourself that the next reel spin “has to be” the lucky one. So you sit there longer and keep playing. And playing. And playing. Finally, you get tired and pack up your things to move to another game. No sooner have you situated yourself at another slot machine when you hear “KA-CHING!” coming from the game you just left. Some one moved in on your game the second you left and ended up capitalizing on it. You think- “What the heck?? Why does this always seem to happen to me??”
Has this ever happened? You are not alone if it has. It seems like the game was just “waiting” to payout… but not to you. Is there any reality to the superstition that the game “just didn’t like” you? Probably not.
Slots games are built on random number generators, or RNGs. These are the inner mechanisms that dictate where the reels are going to fall. They are just what their name suggests- random. You can’t dictate when they make a win or when they pull up another loss. The RNG is constantly coming up with numbers. The only way you would have won, instead of the lucky guy to follow you, is if you managed to push the spin button at exactly the same millisecond as the player who took your seat. Since you can’t go back in time, reality tells us that you just didn’t win.
Although it’s difficult to take sometimes, the only real stationary thing in slots play is the percentage payout. It may be 95%. That means that over a long LONG period of time the game needs to payout that much. That doesn’t mean that if you play for an hour, you’ll win 95% of the time or 95% of your money back! It just means that over the course of a year, for example, the slot machine will have paid out 95% back to players as a whole.
Tags: RNG, slots, superstition
