How slot machines actually work?

What happens when you put your coins into the machine, press the Spin button or pull down on the lever. How do those reels start turning, what makes them stop and how does it determine that you win?

Many people might have the impression that pulling down on that lever or pushing the button causes the wheel so start spinning and it’s up to sort of random fate where it stops. You wait those 6 seconds and based on similar to the Price is Right you’re just waiting for the wheel to stop, and where it stops the computer then latter determines oh three cherries have come up, therefore, you must have won. The same principle works for online slots.

Actually, that is not how it works. The key to understanding how a slot machine works is to know that inside the slot machine there is a chip called the Random Number Generator or simply RNG. This RNG is constantly spinning out the random numbers. Hundreds and perhaps a thousand times per second it’s just generating a random number and spinning it out and this number has no relationship to the previous number generated. At the very moment that you push the button to spin or pull the lever that millisecond that your finger touches the button and it presses it actually pulls the next three random numbers from that number generator chip. The reels of the slot machine have a lot of symbols on them. There might be 26 different symbols some of them repeat. Each random number that’s picked maps to one of the symbols.

The reason why it doesn’t hit the jackpot that often is there may be a few random numbers that map to the jackpot symbol or there maybe hundred or even thousand of random numbers that map yo any other symbol. So, it takes this large number that it generates maps it to one spot on the reel and essentially machine knows instantly as soon as you’ve pressed the button before your finger has even lifted off the button — the machine knows whether you won or lost. The rest of it is just for show. And machine continues to spin five or six seconds go by, one, two, three and you’ve won or you haven’t.

It’s important to know that at the heart of this Random Number Generator these numbers have no relationship to each other. It’s a completely different outcome. So it’s not like if you see that this slot machine has just almost given the jackpot and you do it a couple more times it’s definitely gonna give. That sort of a myth. The numbers rally don’t have any relationship to each other. Basically, it’s how a slot machine works.