Determined to beat the slots and land yourself that life-changing jackpot? First off, let’s get back to basics and take a look at how play free slots work and what an RNG is.
All of the modern slot games that you play – be that in land-based casinos, in an online casino or a slot app via your mobile phone or tablet, all function in the same way and are programmed to be governed by a type of software called RNG which stands for “random number generator”. RNG ensures that each spin is both random and independent from one another so that they cannot be predicted to any degree of accuracy. Because of this technology, I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you – means that there isn’t a way to beat the slot RNG as technology has advanced to make it extremely difficult for players to hack the software.
It wasn’t always like that, however, like older versions of slot machines before sophisticated technology ruled supreme were easier for players to hack as they were mechanical machines which could be manipulated in all kinds of ways such as with magnets and fake or shaved coins or coins on a string. These methods don’t work with modern machines of course, as technology has moved on from old fashioned mechanical slot machines which players need to pull the reels and physically spin the reels to play.
However, understanding how slot machines and RNG software actually works can put you at an advantage, even though you won’t be able to beat the slots by hacking the software, it is a very important tool to winning.
One of the first things to learn when playing slots if you want to get yourself the best chance of winning is to know how to calculate the probability of landing a certain outcome. Simplified, you need to take the number of symbols on each reel and then divide them which will give you the probability on a certain reel then take that and multiply it by the other reels. For example, if the slot has eight symbols on each reel this will give you a probability of 1/8 of landing a certain symbol on a reel. Then, the probability of landing that symbol on all three reels is 1/8 x 1/8 x 1/8 giving you the odds of 512 – 1, as there are 512 possible outcomes or 0.2% of landing that winning combination.
The next step is to divide this by payout of the game by the number of possible outcomes to get the payback percentage. For example, if there is a total of 460 potential coins to be won when you add up all the winning combinations, this would give you a payback percentage of 89.9% over a prolonged period of time – which is the important part to remember! While you can work out how much you would win in the long run, it is still impossible to predict the outcome of each individual spin and therefore it cannot be predicted to any degree of accuracy.
