Ask the Slot Expert: Advantage slot play for everyone

In my unpublished book on video poker, which may never get to the printed page, I wrote that the casino will let you get the edge over it, but it won't make it easy.

Card counters at the Blackjack table can determine when the odds have shifted in their favor and thus raise their bets.

(A quick aside: One of the gaming writers I know was an accomplished card counter, but he was too married to the numbers. He would bounce between table minimum and table maximum bets depending on the count. It didn't take long for him to get 86ed from the Blackjack tables. Other writers told him that he had to vary his bets more and occasionally make bets contrary to the count, but he had to follow the numbers.)

Across the pit at the Craps table, dice controllers can shift the odds in their favor by setting the dice a certain way and throwing them the same way consistently. Many people are skeptical that this technique works, but it's just an exercise in ballistics. Is it really any different from a firing solution for a projectile?

Finding a biased Roulette wheel is highly unlikely. Thomas Bass in The Eudaemonic Pie describes how a group of physicists and computer geeks in the late 1970s used a wearable (and I use the term very loosely) computer to determine where a roulette ball will land.

Using electronic means to beat a casino game is illegal. Remember the scene in Casino where Ace takes the law into his own hands and persuades the team using a wearable computer at his Blackjack tables to not try that in his casino again.

Dice control and card counting are physical and mental feats, respectively, and the casino can't really prevent you from using your muscles or your mind. It can however put some countermeasures in the rules or bar you from playing the game.

Moving on to the slot floor, some casinos still have positive expectation video poker paytables. The casinos limit how much you can earn from these machines by making them low denomination, deal slowly, or earn no points -- or some combination thereof.

High-paying video poker paytables can sometimes give the player the edge on point-multiplier days. Whether positive outright or due to points, players have to learn the strategy to have a long-term positive expectation.

There are no slot machines that you can sit down at and consistently have the edge. As I said before, casinos don't make getting the edge over them that easy. There are some slot situations, however, in which players can shift the odds in a bit in their favor.

Some slots have must-hit-by progressives. If you can find a machine on which the progressive is very close to the must-hit-by value, you can benefit from all of the players who played the machine before you and snag that progressive.

Some slot machines are variable-state machines. The probability of certain events happening can change from spin to spin. On these machines, the Bonus Meter is not a Bogus Meter. The meter does actually indicate how close the machine is to triggering a bonus. You can look for machines on which a bonus is close to hitting.

The obelisks on my old fave Magic of the Nile, for example, really did indicate how many symbols you still needed to land before it would start a bonus. Look for machines that need just one more bonus symbol to trigger the bonus.

On Scarab, another Egyptian-themed old fave, reel positions in which a scarab landed on spins one through nine turn into wild symbols on spin 10. The positions that will turn wild have golden ovals around them. The advantage play technique is to look for a machine that has a number of golden positions and is in the middle of the 10-spin cycle.

The Ocean Magic series of games have wild bubbles that move up the screen. The advantage play is to look for machines that other players have left with a lot of bubbles still on the screen.

All of the advantage play techniques I've described require brain power, physical dexterity, or persistence in searching the slot floor for a unicorn, a machine in a particular state.

I have an advantage play technique that anyone can do at any time on almost any machine. I hesitate to share it because I don't want to kill the goose that's laying the golden eggs, but here goes.

My advantage play technique that anyone can do is this: Play machines near the exit.

On more than one occasion, I've had players leaving the casino give me their tickets because they didn't want to bother redeeming them for a buck or two. I've experienced an uptick in ticket gifts since my casino stopped dispensing coins at the redemption machines. One machine on which I've been given tickets is between a group of redemption machines and the exit.

Everyone can use my technique. You don't have to learn a new skill or strategy. You don't have check machine after machine looking for that rare unicorn. Just sit and play.

I'll see you at the exits.

If you would like to see more non-smoking areas on slot floors in Las Vegas, please sign my petition on change.org.

Send your slot and video poker questions to John Robison, Slot Expert™, at slotexpert@slotexpert.com.

Copyright © John Robison. Slot Expert and Ask the Slot Expert are trademarks of John Robison.

Send your slot and video poker questions to John Robison, Slot Expert™, at slotexpert@slotexpert.com. Because of the volume of mail I receive, I regret that I can't reply to every question.

Copyright © John Robison. Slot Expert and Ask the Slot Expert are trademarks of John Robison.