How to Play Dirty in Vegas & Win: Naughty Slot Machine Tips & Tricks to Beat the House

Walking into a casino with an intent to walk out with more than you walked in with provides a thrill experienced by mountaineers, skydivers, and other daredevils. Instinctively, you know that you face incredible odds and a competitor that, quite frankly, holds all the cards. That the house has an advantage isn't only a fact of the game, it amps up the thrill.

Developing this type of mentality helps to contextualize the incredible odds of winning big at slots. When it comes to slot machine tips, knowing how to pierce the veil and see the mechanics behind the screen is everything.

After all, it takes a certain kind of chutzpah to face a game of pure chance and hope to gain an edge. It's possible, though, because no chance is ever pure when variation exists.

Read on to learn how to corner advantages, play smart, and increase your chances (and fun) at these iconic games.

Slot Machine Tips

Slots are not games of skill. No amount of pressing the button in a specific fashion, flicking your wrist just so, or keeping your face steady matters to the internal mechanisms. The only things that matter are how the machine is programmed and your approach to playing.

The following tips break down the how of a slot machine to expose the subtle weaknesses that improve your strikes. It's not about winning every time (which is impossible) but winning more often than you otherwise would.

Understand RTP

First, you need to understand the way that the house advantage is calculated. Every game of chance has what is known as a Return to Player (RTP) rate. This is how much of the money put into a game comes back out to players. 

No game has a perfect, 100% RTP, if it did, the casino wouldn't make any money and would stop existing. If it is too low, no player would bother playing and things would fall apart again.

The house advantage is important for casinos to succeed financially and for you to have a fair understanding of the chance incorporated into a game. Han Solo may not be big on knowing the odds, but gaming commissions are adamant that they be verifiable.

Slots list their RTP either on the machine or within the scrolling text of attract screens. Even within the same machine family, machines of the same type and branding, RTP varies. This is done to allow the casino to strategically place machines with better odds for winning in places of their choosing.

Look Out for Volatility

While the RTP provides an insight into the overall payouts of a machine, volatility presents you with a sense of how often, and how much, it pays out on a given play. Volatility is something of an open slot machine secret. 

A low volatility slot machine hits a pay more often but each pay is lower. A high-volatility machine pays less often but can pay far more. The gap between the potential for a pay and the range of a pay contribute to the concept.

The math plays out in models. The closer a game is to even money, the less volatile it is. Incorporating multilevel prizes and taking into account concepts such as multiple pay lines makes understanding volatility crucial to gaining an edge.

The more complex a machine, the higher the range of volatility. A single line pay machine has fewer possible combinations than a multiline machine. Studies suggest that prior learning is the best predictor of volatility. 

Embrace RNG

With some grasp of volatility and RTP, the only factor remaining is RNG. Computers, and almost all slot machines are computers now, don't have true randomness. They use random number generators (RNG) to determine outcomes. 

Programers power-weight RNG through a variety of means. This gives the gaming companies control of the numbers reflected both in the volatility and the RTP of a given machine. 

Machines are neither programmed to pay out at a specific time nor are they made to not payout at any given moment. The way the systems work is to leverage the odds of hitting a specific combination of symbols.

There are more lower-paying combinations than there are higher paying. The symbols needed for a jackpot may only appear once per wheel in comparison to dozens of blank spaces or a handful of low-tier pays. 

Winning at slots isn't about a single spin but the average of spins over a period of time.

Play for Fun

So the way to play slots and win is to enjoy every spin. The numbers don't come out to you winning money every spin but they do come out to you walking away with most of your money on a long enough timeline. 

While any given machine will pay out 80+ percent of what is put in, that doesn't mean you will be the one collecting each time. 

If you're having fun playing, you get something out of the experience. 

Pick a Budget

When it comes to winning money and walking out with more, you need to set a limit on what you are willing to walk in with. This keeps you in the fun mindset and avoids the game becoming a job, or a hole. 

Mix it Up

Since all the random factors affect every machine differently, and no machine is programmed to hit some pre-determined number of spins before a pay, moving around is your best option.

You want to play the machines with the highest RTP that covers the volatility you prefer. 

Think like a floor manager and pick machines you think offer the best and thickest traffic and residual glow when they pay. Those are the machines that are kept looser to draw in more players. 

Make It Yours

Notice that these are slot machine tips, not tricks. There are no tricks because the machines aren't swayed by outside influence. To corner the odds and improve your chances of winning, you have to find the better machines.

The more you learn about odds, and how large probabilities play out in discrete moments, the better you will understand the flow fo play and enjoy being a participant. 

For more information about casino games and playing tips, keep coming here.