Until recently all slot machines used revolving mechanical reels to display and determine results. Although the original slot machine used five reels, simpler, and therefore more reliable, three reel machines quickly became the standard.
The problem with three reel machines is that the number of combinations is only cubic – the original slot machine with three physical reels and 10 symbols on each reel had only 103 = 1,000 possible combinations. This limited the manufacturer’s ability to offer large jackpots, since even the rarest event could happen every 1,000 plays. The maximum theoretical payout, assuming 100% return to player would be 1000 times the bet, but that would leave no room for other pays, making the machine very high risk, and also quite boring.
Although the number of symbols eventually increased to about 22, allowing approximately 10,000 combinations, this still limited jackpot sizes as well as the number of possible outcomes.
In the 1980s, however, slot machine manufacturers incorporated electronics into their products and programmed them to weight particular symbols. Thus the odds of losing symbols appearing on the payline became disproportionate to their actual frequency on the physical reel. A symbol would only appear once on the reel displayed to the player, but could in fact occupy several stops on the multiple reel.
In 1984 Inge Telnaes received a patent for a device titled, “Electronic Gaming Device Utilizing a Random Number Generator for Selecting the Reel Stop Positions” (US Patent 4448419),[1] which states: “It is important to make a machine that is perceived to present greater chances of payoff than it actually has within the legal limitations that games of chance must operate.” [2] The patent was later bought by International Game Technology and has since expired.
A virtual reel can have up to 256 virtual stops per reel, allowing 2563 = 16,777,216 final positions. The manufacturer could choose to offer a million dollar jackpot from a $1 bet, confident that it will only happen every 16.7 million plays.
References
- ^ Electronic gaming device utilizing a random number generator for selecting the reel stop positions
- ^ Collier, Roger (1 July 2008). “Do slot machines play mind games with gamblers?”. CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal = journal de l’Association medicale canadienne (Canadian Medical Association) 179 (1): 23–4. doi:10.1503/cmaj.080870. PMC 2464464. PMID 18591518.
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Video poker first became commercially viable when it became economical to combine a television-like monitor with a solid state central processing unit. The earliest models appeared at the same time as the first personal computers were produced, in the mid-1970s, although they were primitive by today’s standards.
Video poker became more firmly established when SIRCOMA, which stood for Si Redd’s Coin Machines, and which evolved over time to become International Game Technology, introduced Draw Poker in 1979. Throughout the 1980s, video poker became increasingly popular in casinos, as people found the devices less intimidating than playing table games. Today video poker enjoys a prominent place on the gaming floors of many casinos. The game is especially popular with Las Vegas locals, who tend to patronize locals casinos off the Las Vegas Strip. These local casinos often offer lower denomination machines or better odds, although this was more common in the 1990s as casinos across the country have recently been cutting their paytables and/or only offering 25 cent machines or higher.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.