Slot Machine Easy Tutorial

Do you want a slot machines tutorial that will teach you to win big money in 2020?

I have news for you:

Today in C#, i will teach you how to create a program called Slot Machine Game. Now, let's start this tutorial! Let's start with creating a Windows Form Application in C# for this tutorial by following the following steps in Microsoft Visual Studio: Go to File, click New Project, and choose Windows Application.

No one can teach you to be a consistent winner at the slot machines. In fact, the only gamblers who win consistently at slot machines are the ones who own casinos.

That’s because the slots have a built-in mathematical advantage in the long run. If you play slot machines long enough, you’ll eventually lose all your money. That’s the reality of the game.

You need to know that before you ever put a quarter in a machine or pull a lever to spin the reels.

That being said, knowing how to play slot machines is fine for a lot of people. In fact, most of the slot machine players I know enjoy their time at the casino. They understand that casino gambling is an entertainment expense. They budget their money accordingly.

I submit that this is the trick to winning at slot machines:

Understanding that your goal is to get the most fun for your money is how you win at slot machines.

Big Easy Slot

The rest of this post explains in some detail how slot machines work, how to play slot machines, and what you can do to at least improve your odds of going home a winner.

1- First, Join the Slots Club at the Casino

No one should play slot machines without joining the slots club first. They call it something different at some casinos, but it’s always the same thing. You get a plastic card to insert into the slot machine when you play.

The card tracks how much money you’re running through the machine. It does NOT track wins or losses, by the way. The casino wants to reward players for the time they spend on the machine.

Here’s why:

The math behind slot machines works like this. The game has payouts for various combinations. Those payouts are tilted in such a way that they give the casino advantage.

For example, if a combination of 3 cherries happens once in 100 spins, but the prize is 95 coins, the casino winds up the winner.

But only if you play long enough.

Slot Machine Easy Win

And since this math applies to the long term, it’s in the casino’s interest to get you playing in the long run.

They incentivize your play by giving you rewards based on how much you’ve wagered. These rewards come in the form of cash rebates, free play on the machines, free rooms, food, and beverage. You can also get tickets for entertainment events and even free airline tickets.

They use a formula that calculates how much you’re expected mathematically to lose to assign those rewards. They’re not concerned with your actual win rate or loss rate. They let the math take care of that.

It’s also a myth that the slots payout less when you play with the card inserted. The casinos have no incentive to do that.

So the first trick in learning how to play slot machines is to join the slots club. Then use your slots club card every time you play.

2- Learn How to Read a Pay Table

All modern slot machines have pay tables. That’s just a list of the combinations of symbols you might get along with how much those combinations payout.

But modern slot machines, especially video slots, have more complicated pay-lines than traditional 3-reel slots.

In fact, on modern video slots, the full pay table–including the diagrams that show where the pay lines are–are only accessible via an extra screen on the computerized video monitor.

On traditional 3-reel slots, the paytable is easy to figure out. It’s just a horizontal line through the center of the reels. When 3 symbols line up there, you win the corresponding prize amount.

On newer 5-reel slots, that middle pay line is still there. But most of these games have several pay lines in various shapes.

And here’s the thing about the extra pay lines:

You have to pay extra to activate them.

Suppose you’re playing a penny slot machine with 25 pay lines and a 5 coin max bet. You’re suddenly wagering $1.25 per spin just to activate all the pay lines and maximize the potential prizes.

My advice is to stick with the basic 3-reel slots as much as possible. They tend to have the highest payback percentages.

Most slot machine gamblers ignore that advice, though. They just can’t turn down all the bells, whistles, and bonus features available on modern slot machine games.

3- Understand that There’s No Strategy to Slot Machine Games

You’ll find plenty of people willing to share the secrets of winning at slot machines with you. Some of them even claim to have been programmers or technicians for the companies that manufacture these games. None of them have a clue how to actually improve your chance of winning.

A computer program called a random number generator (RNG) powers modern slot machine games. This program is tiny but powerful. It cycles through thousands of numbers per microsecond.

When you hit the spin button or pull the lever, the program stops on whatever number it’s at. Each of those numbers corresponds to a specific outcome on the machine. Before the reels even stop spinning, the game has determined your outcome.

Each spin is completely independent of the previous spin, by the way. And the symbols on the reels are just for show. They don’t indicate that a machine is ready to pay out or anything like that. You’ll see people selling a “zig-zag system”, for example. The theory is that when you find symbols arranged a particular zig-zag pattern on a game’s screen, it’s getting ready to payout.

4- Use Appropriate Bankroll Management Techniques, but Don’t Think that They’ll Help You Get an Edge, Either

The first and most important principle behind managing a slot machine bankroll is to only use money you don’t need. If you haven’t paid the rent, if you’re behind on some of your bills, or if you’re deep in debt, you’re better off not playing slot machines at all.

A gambling bankroll is an amount of money you’ve set aside specifically for purposes of gambling. Since slot machine gamblers are always playing a game where the math is against them, they should always be prepared to lose all their money. That’s why you don’t play with money you can’t afford to lose.

Other bankroll management techniques include win goals and stop-loss limits. Proponents of bankroll management techniques usually think these strategies can improve your chances of winning. That’s not true.

They can, however, improve your chances of occasionally walking away a winner.

Let me explain.

A win goal is an amount that you’d like to win. The agreement you make with yourself is to quit once you’ve won that amount. Most bankroll management proponents suggest setting your win goal as a percentage of your bankroll.

If you have $1000 to gamble with, and you have a win goal of 40%, then you’ll quit playing when you’re up $400.

A stop-loss limit, on the other hand, is another arbitrary amount. It’s also usually a percentage of your bankroll–less than 100%, though. If you have $1000 and a stop loss limit of 40%, you’ll quit when your bankroll drops to $600.

Neither of these strategies help improve your chances of winning. Those stay the same no matter what.

The win goal, though, does increase your chances of walking away a winner.

Most gamblers without win goals keep playing until they inevitably lose all the money they’ve won–plus their starting bankroll for good measure.

It’s a subtle–but important–difference.

5- Avoid the Progressive Jackpot Games

A progressive jackpot slot machine is one with a constantly increasing jackpot. You’ll recognize such a game because of the jackpot ticker at the top of the machine. The amount listed there should be increasing gradually while you watch.

These games can afford to offer such huge jackpots because they take a tiny percentage of each bet and apply it toward the jackpot. This reduces the payback percentage for the machine until the jackpot gets hit.

You’ll find 3 different kinds of progressive jackpot slots in casinos:

Individual games
Local area network games
Wide area progressives

An individual game’s jackpot increases only when you put money in the machine yourself. Players on other nearby machines don’t affect the jackpot. If you stop playing, the jackpot ticker stops increasing until another player starts spinning the reels.

A local area network game, on the other hand, features several networked machines in the same casino. Play on any of those games feeds the jackpot. The advantage of this type of progressive slot jackpot is that it grows faster than the jackpot of an individual game.

A wide-area progressive has hundreds–maybe even thousands–of games in its network. These games don’t have to be in the same casino, either. When you see the big jackpot games with payouts of $10 million or more, you’re looking at wide area progressive games. The most famous of these is probably Mega Bucks.

But all of these games have one thing in common:

They offer lousy odds to the player.

The payback percentage for a slot machine game is based on the payouts and the probability of winning each of them. If you have a 1 in a million shot at the big jackpot, you’re playing a game with a close to 0 chance of winning the $1 million. You might as well take it out of the calculation.

For practical purposes, your effective payback percentage for that game is at least 1%–probably more than 1%–lower than the real payback percentage for the game. That’s because the real payback percentage accounts for that huge jackpot–which you’ll probably never hit.

Ignore this advice if you’re a progressive jackpot hunter. Some players are, too. They’re not satisfied with average win sizes. They want a life-changing jackpot, even if it’s next to impossible to win.

6- Watch Out for Signs of Addiction

No casino game is more addictive than the slot machine. It is, in fact, designed specifically to be addictive. It’s a behavioral scientist’s dream.

BF Skinner is famous for an experiment he did with something called a “Skinner Box”. This was a box that dispensed food to mice when they pulled a lever.

His first Skinner box dispensed a piece of cheese every time the mouse pulled the lever.

To mix it up, he created a new box that dispensed cheese some of the time when the mouse pulled the lever.

He was surprised to learn that the mice who were getting sporadic awards were more motivated to pull the lever than the mice who were getting consistent rewards.

The brain chemistry of someone who gets a near-win at a slot machine game is almost exactly the same as the brain chemistry of someone who gets a win.

And that’s how they get you!

Avoid spending an excessive amount of time at the slot machines. Try to find other activities at the casino to entertain yourself with. Slots can be a fun hobby, but they’re a lousy master.

The rooms of Gamblers Anonymous are filled with people who’ve lost their entire lives to slot machine addiction. Your best move is to be mindful of how much control you have over your desire to play these games.

Finally

Learning how to play slot machines is easy enough. After all, it’s just a matter of putting money in the machine and pushing a button or pulling a lever. Learning how to play slot machines and winning occasionally is a whole other matter.

I have a friend who’s a pretty good poker player. We visit the Winstar in Oklahoma occasionally. He’ll play solid poker for hours on end.

But when we walk back to our cars at the end of the evening, he wants to stop and put his money into the slot machines. He almost always loses everything he’d won at the Texas holdem tables.

Don’t be like my friend. The key to winning at slot machines is knowing when to and being able to quit.

Introduction to How to Play Slot Machines

Do you remember the first time you entered a casino as a beginner slots player? I know I do. What I remember most is being extremely confused. It was so dark, yet with so many lights. And the smoke was everywhere! Perhaps you remember something similar.

My intent is to be genuinely helpful to slots players. While I think I still have a long way yet to go, I also believe I have been somewhat of service so far.

But, perhaps you are only just beginning your slots journey. What have I done for you to ease your way into becoming a healthy, happy slots enthusiast? So, this blog is for you, the beginner slots player, to, well, help.

Throughout this blog article, I’ll be referencing other articles I’ve written on various aspects of slot machine casino gambling. These articles are freely available to all.

This article has the following sections:

Introduction to Learn How to Play Slot Machines
Entering a Casino for the First Time
My Initial Gambling Rules
The Changing State of Gambling, in Brief
Beginning Your Slots Journey
The Golden Rule
Journey into the Unknown
Summary of Learn How to Play Slot Machines

Keep Reading … or Listen Instead!

Entering a Casino for the First Time

My first experience at slot machine gambling was in 2003 at a small tribal casino (Kewadin Casino) in the upper peninsula of Michigan. I was taking a long drive back to graduate school in Iowa after visiting family in the lower peninsula and had found a hotel at which to spend the night.

A casino was located just down the highway from that hotel. I wasn’t aware of the casino being there until the hotel provided $20 worth of tokens to play at it.

I remember feeling a little nervous about entering a casino for the first time in my life. I mean, what would my family of non-gamblers think? But, I gathered up my courage and went on in.

I found it to be a highly distracting place: loud, lots of flashing lights, and smoke. This was a time when smoking was more fashionable than it is today, so there was a great deal of cigarette and cigar smoke in the air. This is still true today in some states, such as Nevada, although ventilation has gotten a whole lot better.

I distinctly remember rapidly spending the $20 worth of tokens on slots. Plus, another $50 besides which I could ill afford to lose. At the time I was a poor graduate student on a research stipend working a side job as a temporary instructor of college physics. I’d just spent my food money for the trip home.

Did I win anything that first time at a casino? No, I don’t think so. Why don’t I know if I had won or not? Frankly, how would I have known if I had? If I did, it wasn’t enough to grab my attention.

Maybe a few numbers changed on the player’s console, and the slot machine made an unusual sound. So? What of it? From my perspective, it was doing that every time I made a bet anyway.

I left the casino after having spent $50 I could barely afford to lose. As I continued home on that long road trip, I started thinking about gambling with slot machines. Since then, I’ve more-or-less never really stopped doing so.

After a few months of dwelling on that first experience, I happened to be visiting the Omaha Zoo just over the western border of Iowa in Nebraska. There, I saw a casino on the river. Hint: it was a riverboat casino.

With those months of thinking figuratively behind me, I’d concluded from my first visit that I needed a rule for how much I should allow myself to spend whenever, or if ever, I entered another casino.

The careful rule I came up with was this: “Take a fixed amount into the casino, say $25, and spend only that plus whatever you make from it.”

With this simple rule and $25 in hand, I entered this second casino at about 2 o’clock in the afternoon on a Saturday … and left almost 12 hours later at 1 a.m. Yes, that’s right, 12 hours. Why? Because I’d carefully followed my rule.

My error was that I hadn’t been prepared for success. This has continued to plague me, by the way. The error which my simple rule didn’t account for was this: Almost immediately after entering this second casino, I won $500 on a 25-cent slot machine.

Doing so left me feeling quite emotional, which inclined me to try to stick firmly to the rule – which I proceeded to do. As the afternoon and evening passed into the early morning, I continued to win additional small, nontaxable jackpots.

Eventually, I spent my $25 along with what I’d won with it. And so, this was my second experience at a casino. I’d gone from slots gambling for 10 minutes to a marathon 12-hour session.

I did try to find a hotel that morning, instead of driving home at such a late hour (and coming as close as I’ve ever gotten to hitting a deer on the highway), but the nearby hotel wouldn’t accept a credit card – only cash.

The hotel staff insinuated that people would provide a credit card to the hotel upon arrival, but afterward max out their credit limit at the casino. At check-out, they wouldn’t be able to pay their hotel bill the following morning. That shocked me.

My point here isn’t about my not being able to get a hotel room, but that this was my first real clue that gambling was … complicated. It consisted of more than just the act of making a bet by pushing a button.

It exists in a unique environment where loud sounds, flashing lights, second-hand smoke, and even gambling abuses can occur. How fascinating!

My Initial Gambling Rules

After these first two casino gambling experiences, I spent more and more time thinking about them without much progress in learning how to win. I wasn’t yet thinking about how to win, however. Rather, I was mostly thinking about the potential dangers of what I was getting myself into.

Eventually, I made a decision to keep trying to figure out this whole slots gambling thing. I wasn’t expecting to win any significant amount of money, not ever. But, I was hoping not to lose a significant amount of money.

At the time, for me, my primary motivation was wanting to develop better control over my emotions while gambling at a casino. When there, I was feeling overwhelmed by my strong emotions. I didn’t like feeling ruled, at times almost controlled, by my emotions.

If my reaction to these strong emotions was a personal weakness, I knew I wouldn’t just find myself exposing this behavior at a casino. I could potentially be surprised by it at any other time. For example, while living my life or when working professionally. I felt I needed to understand and, if I could, address it.

So, with this reasoning in mind for proceeding with gaining additional slot machine gambling experiences, I took a long look around where I lived for any nearby casinos within driving distance. As it happened, there was a nice casino relatively nearby.

This local casino (Prairie Meadows in Altoona, Iowa) had table games, floors of slot machines, a high limit slot room, and horse racing. And, oh, the splendor of the buffet!

To all my senses, it was simply delightful. So, with that limited assessment of a gambling establishment, about every month or more I’d take about $25 from my monthly stipend to go there with the full expectation of gambling it all away on slot machines.

But, would I…? For what happened next, you’ll need to take a look at another article called How to Win at Slots at Older Casinos Built Before 2012. But, that’s my story. Instead, let’s talk about your story.

The Changing State of Gambling, in Brief

Legal large-scale gambling in the U.S. started in Nevada in 1931. There was Las Vegas, of course, but also Reno, Lake Tahoe, and others. It basically stayed there until legalized in Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1978.

Legalized gambling in Atlantic City provided casinos convenient to gamblers on the east coast. And, this balance of gambling between Nevada and Atlantic City continued until around the end of the 1980s. At that point, everything started changing more and more rapidly.

Basically, in 1988 tribal casinos became permitted by federal law. Although, tribes did need to negotiate state-tribal compacts with the state their reservations were located within. These negotiations typically took years.

Another substantial change happened in the early 1990s when riverboat casinos became legal in several midwestern states. Originally, state law required these casinos to travel on water, or at least unmoor from a dock, before any gambling could occur.

In the mid-90s, online gambling started up outside of the U.S. This got out of control fast, until various legal restrictions began protecting players. For a while, this protection was to block online gambling in the continental U.S.

By doing so, the U.S. Senate was not just protecting players, but also land-based casinos hurt by online gambling from outside the U.S. Not long after, Canada did much the same. Besides tribal gaming, this was the limit of federal laws restricting gambling in the U.S. until the banning and recent un-banning of sports betting at the federal level.

What all this means is simple. Gambling has become prevalent in the U.S., especially the most popular type of gambling there is: slot machine casino gambling.

There is another side of the coin, as it were, to all this growth and expansion of gambling. All through these changes to the gaming industry in the U.S. and abroad, the technology of gambling was also growing and expanding.

For example, as you might imagine, the impact of microchips and the internet was profound to slots. For a succinct article capturing these near-constant technological developments of slots machines, see my article on it called The Ultimate Guide to Slot Machine History.

Easy Slots To Win

My point of view is that slot machine casino gambling has changed a lot in the last few decades. Further, I believe that these changes will keep on happening. Knowing what has happened in the past will help us understand the future.

Some of the biggest changes occurring right now are related to slot machines no longer being fully random. Frankly, there are degrees of randomness. In the past, most casinos controlled the odds of winning on a slot machine by having slots mechanics physically adjust the odds on a regular schedule perhaps 2 weeks long.

Nowadays, at casinos built or heavily renovated since 2012, this is automated. Doing so both reduced the casino labor force and provided a near real-time understanding of the performance of the casino for its operator.

And therein lies the secret to winning at slot machine casino gambling. But, all that is a bit much for the beginner slots player. What you need to know is, the randomness of slot machines isn’t always fully random. There are patterns to this randomness and, if you know to look for them, you can find them.

Beginning Your Slots Journey

Maybe you’ve yet to visit a casino. Maybe you have visited a casino and wondered what the heck just happened. You might even have gone many times, but want to restart your slots journey for one of several reasons.

If you’re just started on your slots journey, you may not know how much playing slots has changed so much in the last few years. That’s fine, as more than a few regular slots players haven’t kept up with all the changes of late. Or, rather, what the changes mean.

So, let us begin your journey together. Your first step? Well, it’s probably not visiting a casino. Your first step is getting online. Most people have several casinos near them. In Iowa, for instance, every resident has at least one casino within an hour drive.

So, what about you? How many casinos are near you? Well, I shouldn’t explain how to use Google, but here’s a hint: Type “casinos near me” in Google. Doing so will show a map with all the casinos in your area. Cool, huh?

What you want to do is visit their websites. See what they have to offer that you might like. You’re likely not entirely focused on gambling. For instance, you’ll probably want a nice meal occasionally. So, look at what nearby casinos have to offer which might interest you.

That’s about all the preparation you’ll need to start, other than the Golden Rule.

The Golden Rule

There is a danger to gambling for the first time. I’m not a medical professional, so I cannot explain this danger as well as I would like. But this is the danger: You don’t know how you will involuntarily react to gambling until you do it the first time.

It’s kind of like that first alcoholic drink. With it, some people immediately realize they are an alcoholic. It can ruin lives, and doing something about it successfully will be a life-long endeavor.

I don’t mean to scare you. Not at all. Many people find recreational gambling to be quite entertaining. But, others find out they are compulsive gamblers. This can be hard on everyone. So, I have a few things to share about it.

First, please understand that casino’s reprimand employees, or fire them, if they tell a casino patron they are spending too much money and should go home. That’s just the sad truth. On the other hand, advertisements all over casinos explain how to get help.

Second, I don’t encourage non-gamblers to gamble. I assume anyone who finds me is deliberately looking for information on slots gambling. But, if you decide you want to gamble, then I take it as my responsibility to explain how to do it.

Third, there truly is a Golden Rule. Here it is: Don’t spend any money at a casino which you cannot afford to comfortably lose. That means you’re spending disposable income, which is money left over after all your bills are paid along with an additional amount put into your savings account of choice.

Easy Street Slot Machine

Journey into the Unknown

I suppose we should also discuss how a slot machine operates. Most newcomers sit down at a slot machine, put some money in, and start pushing some buttons. But, what do the buttons do?

There are several physical components to slot machines, including various interfaces with the player. I’ve already written an article about the common elements of a slot machine called How Slot Machines Work from a Player’s Perspective.

That article, or at least the schematic of a slot machine found in it, should go a long way toward taking the mystery out of how all the buttons, etc., work on a slot machine.

Another thing you’ll want to do is get a player’s club card from the casino. At its simplest, this is like your grocery card. In exchange for your contact information, you can earn points by spending money on gambling. They’ll also make some interesting offers.

You’ll get free stuff from the casino, most likely starting when you sign up. Sometimes, in the long term, it’s often the only way gamblers make a profit. Here’s another article with my explanation about these casino rewards clubs called Seven Advantages of Players Clubs for Playing Slots.

So, let’s recap what I’ve pulled together for you to start at slots:

Go to the websites of casinos near you to understand their differences relative to your wants and needs.
Check to make sure you have some amount of disposable income if you want to play slots.
Visit your casino of choice and get a player’s club card at the front counter or kiosk.
Pick a slot machine, make a bet, and see what happens next.

So, what does happen next? One example would be what happened to me, as explained. Or, something similar. If I had one wish for you, it would be this. I hope you don’t win.

That’s probably shocking, but it really is for the best. If you win big at your first visit to a casino, it sets an unrealistic expectation you might take years to recover from … if ever. I hope you win big on your second visit to a casino. That’s what happened to me.

Once you’ve visited the casino a few times, maybe you’ll want to know more about why casinos are the way they are. If so, I have plenty of articles about them. But, they may be too soon. When you’re ready, they’ll be waiting here for you.

I hope you have a good time at the casino playing slots. As I’m always saying: Have fun, be safe, and make good choices.

Summary of Learn How to Play Slot Machines

Too often a beginner slots player gets lost. So much is happening at once in a casino! Lights! Sounds! Smoke! There really is a lot going on for beginners. And, unfortunately, a casino doesn’t help. After all, it isn’t in their best interest to help.

Savvy slots enthusiasts understand what they are doing. They are all self-taught. Well, it’s time to fix that. With this primer, a beginner slots player doesn’t start from zero.

Why? Because I’ve explained the basics. When you’re ready for more information on playing and winning at slots, it’ll be here for you. Best of luck and let me know if you have any questions!

Golken