If a machine had four reels, the odds of hitting the jackpot would be 20*20*20=160,000:1. For five reels the odds would be 3,200,000:1.
Are the odds really that bad? Yes. But does that mean you would need to put 8,000 into a three-reel machine to win 4,000? No. The reasons are two fold:
1) When you play a three-reel slot machine you don’t know if your coin is the 1st to be inserted into that machine or the 7,999th.
2) If the machine is set to pay back 80% of the money put into it, you should receive many small pay-offs before hitting the jackpot. You still might have to pull the handle 8,000 times, but it wouldn’t cost you 8,000 coins.
Let’s explore this further. Assume you’re playing a three-reel dollar machine. The reason you’re playing that particular machine is because you saw a sign in front of the casino which stated, “Our ¡ç1 Slots Pay 97%.” You interpret the sign to mean that if you put in ¡ç100 you’ll get back at least ¡ç97. Well, you could be right, you could be wrong. Your first coin could win the jackpot, your tenth coin could win the jackpot, any of your coins could win smaller payoffs, or perhaps none of your coins will win anything.
If this dollar machine really pays back 97%, it will return ¡ç7,760 for every ¡ç8,000 put into it. In other words, the machine will only retain $240, which doesn’t sound like much profit for the casino. But you don’t care about whether the casino makes profits, so your question is : Whose $240 will it retain? Yours? The next player’s? Who knows? It may very well take $100 of your money and only give to play the machine, it may give back $30 for $1. There is no way to tell who the machine will pay. The machine may experience periods when it returns $3,000 before returning any money. Or, conversely, the machine may experience periods when it generates several jackpots in a matter of minutes or even seconds.
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