The number of pay lines available in a game is among the most important features of any slot machine. A payline, in simple terms, is the line on which a payout will be awarded based on winning combinations.
Slot Machine Depot are a UK based Vintage Mechanical Slot Machine Repair, Restoration and Servicing outfit. Dealing with all things mechanical such as One Ar. Bally Manufacturing, later renamed Bally Entertainment, was an American company that began as a pinball and slot machine manufacturer, and later expanded into casinos, video games, health clubs, and theme parks. It was acquired by Hilton Hotels in 1996.
There are X amount of paylines in any given slot, whether that number be 1 or 100. It is only on these paylines that winning payouts can be earned for winning combos.
It is important to understand that you will only win payouts on lines that you bet on. If you only bet on 10 of 25 paylines and the winning combination falls on a line that you didn’t in fact bet on (or activate), you get nothing for that combination. Thus as a general rule of thumb, it is in the players’ best interests to activate all paylines on every spin. Not doing so could result in missing out on progressives or other big wins!
Mechanical slot machines vs. modern slot machines
The earliest slots and pub fruit machines, which were also mechanical, were quite simple and mostly offered one, solitary payline. These machines are still around, and you will more often than not come across them. In fact many of the most popular Vegas slots and online games are classic 3 reel machines.
However, modern slots, which are run by computer systems and random number generators, feature more than one payline and can actually have up to 100 or more paylines, offering up many more ways to win, albeit for an increased wager per spin.
How they work
Paylines are generally pretty straightforward. They can be simple and straight and at other times then can take a zig-zag shape and run across reels. Paylines can also be horizontal, vertical, or diagonal. Whichever the case, a winning payline will always pay if and only if you’ve bet on it.
Some slot games feature adjustable paylines, while others only offer fixed paylines. Adjustable games will typically allow you to select a specific number of paylines to bet on, while fixed paylines offer bets on all or nothing. Fixed payline slots require you to bet on all paylines - there is no way to adjust it.
Slot paylines vary greatly from game to game. The Book of Ra pictured above features 10 different paylines.
Important points to remember
When you want to check whether you have a winning combination on a payline, it is important to remember that most slot machine paylines will pay for winning combinations that pay from left to right.
However, there are certain slots that will pay a winning combination regardless of its direction. In this case, if you have a winning combination but you are not paid for it then the simple reason is generally that the symbols are not lined up along a pay line.
To be sure of all possible wins and payouts, always view the paytable, usually located within the main gaming screen. Here you will find pay lines, payout odds, winning combos, and more, including info on how to play the bonus events.
Understanding the RNG for slots is one of the first steps in becoming an educated gambler.
For the first 80 years or so of their existence, slot machines were mechanical devices. They had spinning reels that stopped at random, and the results were determined by where those reels stopped. In a sense, this machine was a random number generator, or RNG, but we don’t think of simple machines when we think of RNGs. We think of tiny computer that generate thousands of numbers per second as RNGs.
The reality is that any mechanical device that generates random numbers is a “random number generator”. That includes roulette wheels and dice. But in modern slot machine games, random number generators are limited to those tiny computers generating those thousands of numbers per second. When you hit the spin button (or pull the lever) the number that the computer is processing at that second determines the outcome of your spinning reels before they even stop spinning.
In fact, the spinning reels and everything else you see on a slot machine are just there for show. The random number generator determines all of the outcomes.
Casinos love this device, because it increases the flexibility they have with their games. When you’re using huge metal reels inside of a box, you’re limited to the number of symbols you can use just because of size limitations. Computers have no real size limitations, so a modern day slot machine can have five reels with fifty different symbols (or more) on each. They can also feature bonus games and paylines that would be impossible to determine using an old school slot machine game.
Mechanical Slot Machines
Inge Telnaes and the “Electronic Device Utilizing a Random Number Generator for Selecting the Reel Stop Positions”
Inge Telnaes worked for Bally in the 1970s, and his job was to come up with a way to create larger jackpots for slot machines while still making a profit. When you’re dealing with mechanical reels with a limited number of symbols, the amounts of your jackpots are limited by the odds you’re capable of generating, and a machine with reels big enough to hold that many symbols was just too big to be practical.
Telnaus’ solution was to use imaginary reel strips with lots of symbols on them. Each symbol had numbers attached to them. The symbols that needed to come up more often had more numbers attached to them, and vice versa. This enabled a machine to have twenty or thirty different symbols, some of which might come up once in every five spins, and others which might only come up once in every twenty or thirty spins.
Telnaus was clearly better at programming and brainstorming than he was at coming up with catchy names for his inventions. He named this new way of managing slot machine results the “Electronic Device Utilizing a Random Number Generator for Selecting the Reel Stop Positions.”
This invention revolutionized the slot machine industry, and all modern slot machine games use some type of random number generator (RNG) to determine results.
Par Sheets and How They Work
When a modern game designer creates a slots game, they create something called a “par sheet” to set the rules and payouts for that particular game. One might think that “par” is an acronym, but it’s impossible to find an authoritative source that states what this acronym means. Gambling expert (and occasional slot machine designer) Michael Shackleford theorizes that “par” might stand for “pay table and reel strips”, or it might stand for “probability accounting report”, or it might just use the word’s meaning of expected result. (Like “par” in golf, or “par for the course”.)
Mechanical Slot Machine Repair
The par sheet for a slot machine game includes several pieces of information. One of the most important is the amount of money that the machine takes. Some slots are designed to be played for a penny a spin, some for a nickel, some for a quarter, and so on. The payout percentages chance with the denomination size, usually offering a higher payout percentage for larger wagers.
The par sheet also includes the number of symbols on each reel. Some games might have as few as 35 symbols per reel, while others might have as many as 256 symbols per reel.
What Happened To Mechanical Slot Machines Near Me
Of course, the payback percentage is also listed on the par sheet, and it varies from machine to machine. The sheet also includes how often the machine hits a win of some kind. This might vary from 5% to 20% of the time, but it’s not limited to those percentages. This is called “hit frequency”. A game with a high hit frequency has frequent small wins, which keeps players interested.
The par sheet also includes how many plays per jackpot, the jackpot amount, and how many plays per bonus, and the bonus amounts. For example, a game might be set to hit a jackpot once out of every 46,000 spins. On the other hand, it might be set to hit a jackpot once out of every 8,000,000 spins.
The important thing to remember amount these numbers is that they don’t cycle through. In other words, you might think that a game that’s set to hit a jackpot once out of every 46,000 spins would hit a jackpot immediately after the 45,999th spin, but that’s not how it works. Every spin is an independent event with a 1 in 46,000 chance of winning, regardless of what happened on the previous spin.
You’re just as likely (and just as unlikely) to hit a jackpot on the 46,001st spin as you are on the 46,000th. Confusion about the idea of “independent events” has resulted in a lot of bogus winning systems being sold to a lot of suckers. The only people making money from that deal are the systems-sellers.