PLAYING IT SMART by ALAN KRIGMAN

If the slots are unbeatable, why do some players win?

With a few notable exceptions, slot machines are unbeatable. This means mean you can't cancel or reverse the house advantage. But you can surmount it and win on any particular occasion.

Pretend you play a machine with the parameters shown in the accompanying table. In real life, you'd see the list of returns up front but wouldn't know the associated probabilities.

Returns and probabilities of a hypothetical 95 percent machine return probability probability (stated as (stated as a percentage) one out of ...) 10,000 0.0001% 1,000,000.00 1,000 0.0011% 90,909.10 500 0.0111% 9,009.00 100 0.1111% 900.10 25 1.1111% 90.00 5 1.6111% 62.10 2 11.7977% 8.50 1 16.8116% 5.90 0 68.5451% 1.50

This hypothetical machine has a 95 percent return to players. The house has a 100 - 95 or 5 percent edge. Over time, the bosses keep and the solid citizens lose 5 percent of the total wagered.

Here's how this works. Players with $200 bankrolls who bet $1 per spin and recycle intermediate returns might get 1,000 rounds in two hours. Their gross wagers are $1,000 (not their $200 bankrolls). Average losses, 5 percent of $1,000, are $50 per person -- 25 percent of their $200 stakes. Almost nobody losses exactly $50 in two hours, though. Some folks drop less or more. Others emerge ahead by varying amounts. The $50 is the average.

There's no way to predict how you'll do on any round, session, trip, or gambling lifetime. Were you to know the probabilities as well as the returns, however, you could calculate the likelihood of reaching any particular profit plateau before going belly-up.

This information is useful in three ways: 1) as a guide for balancing reverie against reality; 2) to explain why you can win on an unbeatable machine; 3) to illustrate that for any revenue goal and loss limit, the casino will ultimately come out ahead.

Pretend your gambling budget is $200 and you play the machine posited. If your plan is to quit when you earn $100 or deplete your poke, the math puts your chances at 65 percent of success and 35 percent of failure. With a $200 win goal, your prospects become 47 percent of ecstasy and 53 percent of agony. For a $500 profit target, the promise of joy rings in at 24 percent and of grief at 76 percent. You can spot the trend. More modest aims are statistically easier to attain. Further, by choosing an earnings goal sufficiently below what you're willing to invest trying, you not only can win but have greater than 50-50 odds of doing so.

As for the casino eventually coming up roses, picture 1,000 people, each pitting $200 on a run at a $100 gain. With the cited chances of success and failure, 650 are expected to grab $100 and 350 to dump $200. The casino would pay out 650 x $100 = $65,000 while keeping 350 x $200 = $70,000. The "hold" is $5,000.

About those notable exceptions. One might occur if something is amiss with a machine. Software errors and hardware failures are not unknown. But they're rare. And casinos usually discover them quickly and repair the machine or remove it from service.

Another exception involves progressive jackpots. In the hypothetical machine, the edge shifts to players when the jackpot exceeds $60,000. Don't sit around waiting. Say the jackpot starts at $10,000 and rises by a penny for every dollar played until it hits. The $50,000 increment would take 5 million spins at a cent apiece. Since the chance of a jackpot payout is one out of a million, 5 million rounds without a score is relatively unlikely.

Finally, casinos have been known to give out more in promotional packages than they take in from the edge. Not just comps for meals or hotel rooms. But cash. Some slot buffs find exploiting these programs more remunerative and no less exciting than merely playing. Redolent of this rhyme by the revered Sumner A Ingmark:

While novices find this confusing,
Proficiency in battles choosing, Can mean a win by those who're losing.

(c) 2008, ICON/Information Concepts Inc

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