Playing Multiple Machines Simultaneously

It’s never a surprise to see the reel-spinning Wheel of Fortune slot machines being played heavily. Ever since they were first introduced by IGT in the late 1990s, they’ve been popular. Such a long run is unusual in the fast-changing world of casinos and slot machines.

So when I walked through the slots area on a recent visit to a casino, I wasn’t surprised to see that 10 of the 12 slot machines in the Wheel of Fortune bank were busy. What did surprise me was that one woman was playing three machines at the same time. This too is not an unusual sight although it’s not something I recommend.

The woman was playing like a sort of Superwoman, racing from one machine to the next, hitting the “Max Bet” button on each machine and keeping all the reels spinning at once. A passer-by saw me staring and said, “She usually only plays two at a time, and not always the Wheel of Fortunes. Sometimes she plays the Double Diamonds over there without the Wheel. But she always plays two at a time. She says she wins more that way.”

“She loses more too,” I told him. He laughed.

“I’ve often played next to her. She has a theory about the slot machines. She believes that the casinos put ‘cold’ machines next to ‘hot’ ones and that by playing two at a time, she’s bound to be playing on at least one hot one. Do you think there’s anything in her idea?”

“Not much,” I said. “At the pace she is playing she’ll hit more jackpots by playing more than one machine at a time, but that’s just because she is betting on more spins of the reels. She is also risking more money. Overall, she’ll lose more money faster than if she sticks with one machine.”

“So do you think one machine is pretty much the same as another?”

“Not necessarily. Casinos are known to mix slot machines with different payback percentages in the slots areas, and it may be that two identical-looking machines will yield different returns. It’s quite possible that the slot director put a machine that returns 89 percent in the long run right next to a 97 percent machine. That’s an extreme example. Usually adjacent machines of the same type are much closer in payback percentages.”

“Say that she has a good streak on a hot slot machine that she otherwise might miss. She would be better off then, right?”

“All the machines, including the ‘hot’ ones are programmed to give the house an advantage. In most of the newer gaming jurisdictions, it’s illegal for a machine to return more than 100 percent over a long run. But even where such returns are legal, 100-percent-plus machines are uncommon and are reserved for special circumstances.”

“What are special circumstances?”
“I was once standing in a Las Vegas casino and I saw a player winning on pull after pull. His tokens filled trays and buckets all around him and security men were keeping watch. When the player left, the machines were immediately shut down. He was a ‘shill’, a man employed by the house to entice others to play machines with tighter programming. You and I are not likely to stumble onto a 100-percent-plus machine.”

“Let’s just suppose that the lady stumbled on, say, a 97-percent machine in addition to an 89-percent machine and played both at the same time. Wouldn’t she be better off?”

“Not if she plays at that speed. She’s playing both machines almost as fast as she could play one. And every machine has a house edge. She plays two machines, not three, most of the time, so let’s simplify the exercise and do a little arithmetic for a two-machine player. Let’s also use our extreme example of an 89-percent game next to a 97-percenter. Our player sits down at the 89-percenter and plays at a steady but easy pace of 500 spins per hour, betting three quarters on each spin. So she’s risking $375 per hour and on the average will lose $41.25. But if she had sat at the 97-percenter instead, her risk of $375 per hour would have yielded average hourly losses of only $11.25.”
“So she really wants to get the higher paying machine?”
“Yes, but only if she plays it instead of the low-payer, not both.”
“Look at how fast she’s playing, hitting the button to start the reels on one machine while they’re still spinning on the next. On two machines, it’d be easy for her to get 500 spins an hour on each machine. On the average, she’d not only lose the $41.25 per hour on the low-payer, but also lose the $11.25 per hour on the high-paying machine. Her losses total $52.50 per hour. She’s worse off, not better, playing two games at once, even if she should stumble onto one high-paying game. Let’s say she waits for the reels to stop spinning on one machine before she starts the other, this would give her a total of 500 spins per hour split between two machines, and her average losses in our extreme example would become $26.25. That’s better than playing only the 89-percenter, but worse than if luck took her to the 97-percent machine.”

“So she shouldn’t play more than one machine?”

“That’s strictly between her and her bankroll and of course the entertainment value she’s getting. In hard dollars and cents terms there is no advantage to playing two slot machines at once.”

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