Free slot play - complete novice
Poker regular at my local card room/charity casino.
Somehow someway I was notified yesterday that I had won 750 dollars worth of slot free play at their establishment.
I have never played a slot machine before in my life. Any suggestions or strategies I should be looking for in order to maximize my potential winnings?
What should I expect to get back based on that amount of free play?
4 Replies
from my understanding most machines in retail casinos are at around 80% rtp.
So they should on average return 80 cent for every dollar you wager.
That being said most slots are so volatile that you wont ever play enough spins to get anywhere close to your theoretical return.
I would just gamble it up in some high volatility slot.
To get as near as possible to the theoretical RTP, you should play a machine that gives you as many spins as possible while still paying full jackpot payouts. A fairly significant chunk of the expected return comes from the jackpot payout, and on many machines playing less than full credits will give a proportionately smaller return. For example a machine that has a three credit max bet might have a jackpot payout of say 2000 credits for a 1 credit bet, 4000 for a 2 credit bet, but rather than 6000 for the max bet, it has a higher payout, like 10000 instead. You want to take advantage of this by making max bets when possible.
Don’t be fooled by the denomination of the machine. I have seen penny slots where there are like 50 pay lines and a 9 credit per pay line max bet. To win the top jackpot, you must bet 50x9=450 credits, or $4.50 per spin. I have seen dollar machines with 2 credit max bets, so that costs $2 per spin. Quarter machines often are available with 3 credit max bets; these are probably your best option as you can play for $0.75 per spin.
Also, I’m not sure how your free play works regarding cashing out winnings, but make sure to cash out as soon as you are eligible to do so. Obviously you don’t want to be playing slots with money you could cash out instead.
Don’t expect huge wins right away, but you might get some small payouts.
Gamblers’ fallacy at work here. Actually the probability of a jackpot payout early followed by a bunch of non-jackpot payouts is exactly the same as that of a bunch of non-jackpot payouts followed by a big win. Of course, you shouldn’t expect a jackpot payout on ANY spin. Jackpot payouts are large because hitting them has a very low probability.
