Slot AP

I play slots on occasion, but have no real idea as to what "slot advantage play" is, and / or how to achieve it.

It would be great if someone could lay it all out.

Thanks.

Quote: MrV

I play slots on occasion, but have no real idea as to what "slot advantage play" is, and / or how to achieve it.

It would be great if someone could lay it all out.

Thanks.

I really don't see anybody "laying it all out" here, though several people have said things here and there in the last week or two that seem to me to be credible, and therefore probably threatening to the AP's on here.

Quote: MrV

I play slots on occasion, but have no real idea as to what "slot advantage play" is, and / or how to achieve it.

It would be great if someone could lay it all out.

Thanks.

Good luck!

Quote: MrV

I play slots on occasion, but have no real idea as to what "slot advantage play" is, and / or how to achieve it.

It would be great if someone could lay it all out.

Thanks.

Cash your ticket out, and then put it back in every 50 spins or so, I hear this works wonders. Also, make sure to rub and touch the screen a lot, spread those germs all over!

Quote: Exoter175

Cash your ticket out, and then put it back in every 50 spins or so, I hear this works wonders. Also, make sure to rub and touch the screen a lot, spread those germs all over!

Wave the cashout ticket in the air to warm it up & bring good luck. Kiss it.

Draw half-circles on the screen to bring good luck.

Touch the spot where you want an Ace or bonus symbol to appear.

Pull players card out, spin it in the air, rub it, put it back in.

I use lots of "methods"....
Makes life fun. :-)

Quote: mamat

Wave the cashout ticket in the air to warm it up & bring good luck. Kiss it.

Draw half-circles on the screen to bring good luck.

Touch the spot where you want an Ace or bonus symbol to appear.

Pull players card out, spin it in the air, rub it, put it back in.

I use lots of "methods"....
Makes life fun. :-)

You can't forget the ever-powerful trick of removing your players card from the machine when things start going badly.

Quote: MrV

I play slots on occasion, but have no real idea as to what "slot advantage play" is, and / or how to achieve it.

It would be great if someone could lay it all out.

Thanks.

MRV Do you really not believe people can make money playing slots? And you do realize that no every slot (very few actually) have the potential to be beaten?

I'll give you a possible exaggerated scenario(I have seen crazy stuff like this). Casino X has a drawing, top prize: 3k or 100x points for 24 hours on slots on the following day, or 5x on video poker. 2nd prize: 2k or 50x points. 3rd is 10x or 1k.

Tickets are earned only if you hit 25 blackjacks on tables, earn 50k points on machines , hit a Royal flush bottom line only. 7 out of 7 on keno. 4 of a kind in live poker, top line jackpot win on slots.
Must be present to win

Slots are a generous 1% cash back

Lets assume the have good video poker but its only .2%. cash back

BJ rules are fair with $10 minimums

It's obvious not to many ploppies will have that many tickets.
It's almost certain a determined AP would win this drawing by stuffing the drum.

What would YOU play to earn the most tickets? PLEASE APs and knowledge players let him answer.
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Do you realize how strong 100x points would be? Even a machine set at the state minimum payback one would have a 75% edge on a slot machines you are almost certain to win thousands per hour. It would be very difficult to lose.

Quote: AxelWolf

MRV Do you really not believe people can make money playing slots? And you do realize that no every slot (very few actually) have the potential to be beaten?

I'll give you a possible exaggerated scenario(I have seen crazy stuff like this). Casino X has a drawing, top prize: 3k or 100x points for 24 hours on slots on the following day, or 5x on video poker. 2nd prize: 2k or 50x points. 3rd is 10x or 1k.

Tickets are earned only if you hit 25 blackjacks on tables, earn 50k points on machines , hit a Royal flush bottom line only. 7 out of 7 on keno. 4 of a kind in live poker, top line jackpot win on slots.
Must be present to win

Slots are a generous 1% cash back

Lets assume the have good video poker but its only .2%. cash back

BJ rules are fair with $10 minimums

It's obvious not to many ploppies will have that many tickets.
It's almost certain a determined AP would win this drawing by stuffing the drum.

What would YOU play to earn the most tickets? PLEASE APs and knowledge players let him answer.
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Do you realize how strong 100x points would be? Even a machine set at the state minimum payback one would have a 75% edge on a slot machines you are almost certain to win thousands per hour. It would be very difficult to lose.

I'll actually go further on that Axel, to back up your post a bit more. In another thread I had mentioned playing a specific "gimmick" promotion for nearly an entire month and making good money on it, here's how it broke down, and I'll adjust a little bit of it to "mask" where it truly was.


From January 1st-January 30th, the casino would run a promotion where a player who was dealt a suited blackjack would win $21 in slotplay, and get a ticket to get dropped into the barrel which would later be spun and drawn from. The rules went in such a way, that 5 winners would be drawn every 15 minutes 7PM, 7:15, 7:30, 7:45, 8PM, 8:15, 8:30, 8:45, 9PM, for $100-$1,000 in slot play (a bag you picked up from their table and looked inside for your slot play) and then the last 5 at 10PM would pick from larger cash prizes $1,500-$10,000. The rules also stipulated that your name could get drawn more than once and you could win more than once.

It was a smaller "indian casino" with some very fair rules for their game in 6D format, so I'll let you imagine what I did, and how I fared :P.

Quote: MrV

I play slots on occasion, but have no real idea as to what "slot advantage play" is, and / or how to achieve it.

It would be great if someone could lay it all out.

Thanks.

Wasn't all that long ago that AP at slots was revealed to me - I was astonished that an area of gambling universally derided as being for suckers only could actually have player advantage.

Guys are being coy here, but one method is well known enough for the Wizard to have a page on it - probably been there for decades, see below. In this case it's a matter of finding slots that have a "must hit by" a certain amount Progressive Jackpot. Turns out players will abandon machines that are about to hit, not knowing what they are doing, running out of money, or whatever. So look for these, Mr. V, bone up with Wizard's info, and turn yourself into an AP! LOL.

I'm revealing this since it is no secret [I don't live close enough to a casino to be doing this myself]

https://wizardofodds.com/games/slots/mystery-jackpot/

Quote: odiousgambit

Wasn't all that long ago that AP at slots was revealed to me - I was astonished that an area of gambling universally derided as being for suckers only could actually have player advantage.

Guys are being coy here, but one method is well known enough for the Wizard to have a page on it - probably been there for decades, see below. In this case it's a matter of finding slots that have a "must hit by" a certain amount Progressive Jackpot. Turns out players will abandon machines that are about to hit, not knowing what they are doing, running out of money, or whatever. So look for these, Mr. V, bone up with Wizard's info, and turn yourself into an AP! LOL.

I'm revealing this since it is no secret [I don't live close enough to a casino to be doing this myself]

https://wizardofodds.com/games/slots/mystery-jackpot/

Only problem with that link, aside from the fact that it has been out for a while, is that the information provided has a lot of "bad advice" attached to it.

If you take a $445.49 King and the Sword with a $47 minor on it at 10%, and you play it, you will lose over the long term. Sure, you could kick its ass once and get it to drop early, but if you took that advice every time and ran with it, you'll end up selling your house to cover your debts.

In fact, that very link has been a laughing stock in the "Machine AP Community" for quite some time, and we actually theorize that we've seen a small %increase in profits since that article was posted, because of all of these people without a sizeable bankroll putting their entire life savings into a $450 Unicorn machine, only to have to abandon it at $491.xx, with $2,000 in the machine, a maxed out bank card, and no way to access any money to continue playing it.

Quote: MrV

I play slots on occasion, but have no real idea as to what "slot advantage play" is, and / or how to achieve it.

It would be great if someone could lay it all out.

Thanks.

The person to talk to for a very good answer is mickeycrimm.

Like any advantage play, machine advantage plays mean that you expect to win more than you bet.

They often rely on a progressive jackpot being above a certain threshold.

There's an obvious learning curve: I don't understand what the term "vulturing Ultimate X" means.

Quote: MrV

There's an obvious learning curve: I don't understand what the term "vulturing Ultimate X" means.

Just look at the pictures in that thread. But it's nothing more than finding "next hand ?x" and playing all the lines at 5 per line. Wins on those certain lines are multiplied by that number next to it.

Quote: MrV

There's an obvious learning curve: I don't understand what the term "vulturing Ultimate X" means.

If you couldn't use widely available tools to figure out what "vulturing ultimate x" means, then you'll never figure out how to play machines profitably. Sorry to be harsh, but nobody is going to just give you a blueprint to win free monies.

Quote: MrV

I play slots on occasion, but have no real idea as to what "slot advantage play" is, and / or how to achieve it.

It would be great if someone could lay it all out.

Thanks.

At the highest level of generality, most slot machines have a constant RTP, like 92% or 95%. The probability of winning each award on each spin is fixed and independent, and so are the payoffs for each award. The only way you can realize a theoretical edge is if the casino gives away money on top of the RTP (usually with marketing promotions). If the casino says "play $100 in handle through this 95% RTP machine and we'll give you a $25 toaster" then you're technically getting a $25 toaster for $5 in theoretical cost. But otherwise machines with unvarying RTP are unbeatable.

Most slot machines are like that, but not all. Examples of slot machines where the RTP varies from spin to spin include:
a) banking or accumulator slots, where tokens or badges accumulate as a condition of triggering a game feature like a bonus round
b) progressive jackpots, including must-hit-by progressives
c) multi-state machines where some other game feature means the RTP of the next play is not constant. Ultimate X's multipliers are a good example of this: the RTP of the game with no multipliers is obviously different than the RTP of the game when every hand has a multiplier on it.

The point is this: if you can find a variable-RTP slot game where the instantaneous RTP is greater than 100%, and all you ever do is play those games, then you have the edge. It's essentially equivalent to card counting and betting 0 on negative counts, except you move from machine to machine instead of sitting at one table. The premise of slot machine AP is to play a 100%+ RTP game until it is no longer 100%+ RTP and the move on to the next positive game. What you leave behind is a series of games that are significantly below their average RTP (as stated in the par sheet for the game).

Over the years, various categories of exploitable machines have come and gone. In the late 1990s, accumulator slots were a very popular feature until the machine APs began really hammering them. I designed many machines that had bonus rounds triggered with 10 accumulated symbols, and what would happen is a machine AP would lurk around a bank until a little old lady got 8 or 9 symbols, then sit down next to them and act rude, smoke obnoxiously, etc. She'd leave, he'd slide over, play until he got the 1 or 2 remaining trigger symbols, play the bonus, and cash out. We called them "bonus vultures." The AP had a strong positive edge and the little old lady -- who the casino wanted there -- had a terrible return like 60% or 70%. As a result, she stopped playing, those games underperformed and were largely removed from the market.

In the 1990s, multi-progressive games were far less prevalent than they are today; if there was a jackpot on a game, it was usually the top award. Now there are lots of games with 5-level progressives and some of them are, per the game rules, required to pay out when they reach a certain level. This is what the phrase "must-hit-by" means. If you know that a progressive is a must-hit-by, and you know how much each meter accumulates per dollar in coin-in, then you can calculate the maximum cost it would take to trigger a given jackpot based on its current value. There are simpler examples too, like a dollar 9/6 video poker game with a royal-flush jackpot at $5000. When you see a jackpot like that, usually the bank is full of VP APs who are racing to be the one to hit it. When one person hits the royal, everyone else grumbles and leaves.

Quote: MathExtremist

The premise of slot machine AP is to play a 100%+ RTP game until it is no longer 100%+ RTP and the move on to the next positive game.

Some people play AP games to "lose less" than playing random slot machines.
They don't mind losing $X/visit (whether that's $20, $100, $5,000...), but they'd like to play for a few hours on their money.

So there are a huge group of people who play machines while they are 96-99%...
"I'm only here for 5 hrs today, and I'd like to play something. I can't wait for a 105% machine. They are hard to get."

Perhaps they are happy to get card status, so they can
(1) skip the 1-2 hrs buffet line
(2) get some hotel rooms & food.
(3) with card status you may be able to get rooms even when the general public is told the hotel is "sold out"

APs (both "break-even" APs, and profitable APs) often
(a) like these people if they leave bonus machines in good states
(b) dislike these people if they play-to-the-death, and wipe everything out before they are 100+%

Due to FP, points, food, hotel, etc... there may be +EV on a sub-100% machine.

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Some cruises banned players who played BJ without counting, but knew "basic strategy" too well.
The loss rate was so low, that the value of a cruise was higher than their losses.

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Many people like chasing bonus machines, but play mostly regular machines.

Occasionally they will be profitable for a short time (say 2-6 months on a lucky run),
and they will copy some APs, but usually if they don't understand the math behind bonus slots,
they will play "earlier" than everyone else who is waiting, so they get to play.

After they get whomped a few times, they get more conservative.
...the trial & error, "learn by fire" method of playing.

(which is still true of most machine APs - they copy others or are guided by mentors or play by "word of mouth" advice,
maybe only 3-5% of machine APs actually do the math to analyze games)

Then a few of them become "break-even" APs, and may even become profitable in the long run.

Quote: MathExtremist

In the late 1990s, accumulator slots were a very popular feature until the machine APs began really hammering them. I designed many machines that had bonus rounds triggered with 10 accumulated symbols, and what would happen is a machine AP would lurk around a bank until a little old lady got 8 or 9 symbols, then sit down next to them and act rude, smoke obnoxiously, etc.

Not everyone used such tactics, ill say it was actually a low percentage. No one I associated with engaged in this type of behavior. There were enough good machines to search. There was more valuable plays around especially when all the hustlers found out. Granted there were a few locations with higher denominations with little competition.

Quote: Exoter175

You can't forget the ever-powerful trick of removing your players card from the machine when things start going badly.

I do that too. :) I take out my player's club card and cash out, and put them both back a minute later. Superstition says that the machine will assume that you are a new player and pay you better versus knowing you are the same person spinning for say an hour on the same machine)(I've actually read this advice on gambling websites). It is a silly, but removing the card and cashing out and outting both back a minute later can't hurt.

If you are non-Caucasian, I would suggest wearing white gloves when playing. You can trick the machine into thinking you are white and everybody knows white people get paid more.

I think that is slightly funny if not for the overtones I won't mention