Myths vs. Reality Slot Tutorials

How Slot Machines Work, Featuring Ainsworth and the American Casino Guide Book

Paris Las Vegas slot floor
Written by Joshua

The team at the American Casino Guide Book have been on a great roll with their YouTube content, and one of their latest videos is no exception.

This is effectively a sequel, of sorts, to a previous video Steve Bourie did with Mike Trask. He is VP of Marketing and Communications at Ainsworth, and someone I’ve spoken to over the years around the site, including a site visit to see new games at their headquarters during the height of the pandemic back in 2020, along with a visit to their G2E booth in 2021.

In a 40-minute video they manage to cover a lot of ground, including common questions their readers have had about slot machine, and areas we have covered here (although it’s always nice to have someone from a slot company on the record about these things!). Topics covered include:

As you can see it’s a very, very information-filled video with someone who’s been working in the industry for a long time. You can’t do much better than that in terms of official answers from an official source!

And of course, the American Casino Guide Book team is always working on new content, with lots of useful information for players, both on their website and on YouTube.

About the author

Joshua

My name is Joshua, and I’m a slot enthusiast who works in tech as a marketer by day, and dabbles in casinos periodically during off-times. Know Your Slots will reflect my interests in understanding the various ways you can play slots, travel, casino promotions and how you can get the most out of your casino visits.

2 Comments

  • I don’t believe him when he says the must hit by progressive jackpots pick a random number between the starting and end point to trigger. I thought it was well known that these jackpots are biased toward the upper end, presumably to save the casino money in having to reseed the jackpot with their own money and instead have more of it funded by the players.

    • I think it’s fair to presume he can speak with knowledge to his own company. But for a third party correlation, the Wizard of Odds notes on his own write-up of Ainsworth Must Hit Bys that it’s believed that AGS does what you’re describing, but not Ainsworth. I trust someone like him, who gets deep into the mathematics of all this, to have a reasonable third-party opinion that concurs.

      As far as the point of saving the casino money: If a machine is designed to pay back some percentage, that progressive is factored in. They don’t need them to hit less often to save the casino money, or build longer to “collect” money first. If they’re designed to pay more often, that money will just come from somewhere else in the game, like line hits or bonuses or whatnot, to balance it out, or the progressive increments will go up slower, etc. It all gets worked out in the design of the machine and the payback percentage the casino selects for it. The entire progressive is always covered by the players, because the machine is designed to make money for the casino, and the progressive is generally a small percentage of the game’s overall payout anyway.

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