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Setting Up Slot Machine Tournaments

If you have ever participated in a slot machine competition, you may have wondered how the casinos involved set up their devices in anticipation of the competition. Because you read this site regularly, you have doubtlessly discovered the fact that casinos are not allowed to change the payout percentages of their devices any old time they feel like it. Yet, if you have ever stood back and watched the participants in a slot tournament do their thin, it may seem like they get win after win.

You are not incorrect. The pokies involved in slot tournaments do not behave like normal fruit machines, because they AREN’T actually the same devices that a casino uses in normal, day-to-day operation. It’s not the payout percentage that is different, actually. Slot-caliber machines feature more winning symbols per reel than do typical one-armed bandits. But that’s not the only difference. Some slot championships give players the same amount if coins to start with and let them have at it; others set out a time limit in which players can try to get as many spins as possible. In terms of these latter types of games, the slot device will actually be specially programmed to allow free play and count down a time limit. Also, the credits awarded for winning combinations may be saved up and paid out en masse at the end of the time limit, rather than one-by-one as they are achieved.

Because the functions of a slot machine being used in competitions are so different from those of a device utilized in normal play, some tournament organizers will bring their own machines to the casino housing the event. (That is, if course, in cases where an outside company coordinates the competition, instead of the casino itself.)

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