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Should You Move On After a Win?

Let’s say you are lucky enough to win a jackpot at a Las Vegas casino. Bells ring, lights flash, and you scoop up your winnings from the machine. Too often, we consider this the “happily ever after” of your gambling fairytale, the end of the story. But let’s get realistic – you don’t always leave the casino immediately after a big win! In fact, your newfound flush status might be even more motivating to you, to keep on playing. You now face a big question: do you abandon the slot game you won, because it is now “empty” and you have no chance of winning again?

The answer is ambiguous, we’re sorry to say. On one hand, it is true that fruit machines run completely on random outcomes. It would be akin to getting struck twice by lightening, but there’s no reason why a slot game could not hit a major jackpot on two consecutive spins. It’s like flipping a coin, if the coin had thousands and thousands of faces instead of just heads and tails. The machine does not “remember” that you just won, so your odds of winning are no greater or lesser than they were on your fateful spin.

That said, the high payout percentages on casino slot games have a flip side. The house has to win sometimes, and, if a machine has just spat out a big chunk of change, it knows that it has to recoup a certain amount to maintain that magic number. So perhaps it is best to move on… hopefully, not to a machine that another big winner has just left!

Back to September 2008 Archive.