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The slot machines are casinos bread and butter. There are nearly 200,000 of them in Las Vegas alone and the takings from these one-armed bandits constitute about 70 percent of the average US casinos income. So are the slots the most economically viable gaming method?
With low stakes and high pay-outs the slots are very appealing. A £10 investment at a pound a spin can you see you have a chance of walking away with £500 on certain machines here in the UK. So the pay-out ratio could be as high as 500:1 but that would require a huge amount of luck. But as a mean average the pay-out ratio on high-end slot machines is usually better than those available in blackjack and roulette.
The fact that the gambler controls the stake is a hugely appealing factor. It means one, to a certain degree, is in control of their betting and can go at their own pace. You can also play the slots online for free or for money, sites like Bet365 offer all the same machines found in casinos as well as having one of the largest sports betting markets around – you can even bet on futsal and ice hockey.
There are 64 reels in a slot machine, so the odds of getting one jackpot icon on a single spin is 1 in 64, so the chances of getting all three jackpot icons on a spin are an astronomical 262,144 to 1 – these odds are higher in bigger jackpot machines due to them using more reels. While roulette see’s you have a 1 in 38 chance of winning. So the chances of winning the jackpot on the slots are as close to non-existent as you can get.
However, you’d be a fool in believing you would win the jackpot on the slots. The beauty of the machines is that they have plenty of winning combinations and features that you can collect – granted they are not the jackpot but more often than not they are still sizeable sums of money. The slots offer the gambler something that other casino games cannot, numerous different ways to win and that is why slots are the most economically viable game in casinos.