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Slot Terms You Need to Know: Volume 3

Arm: Something that gets tired after repeatedly playing the slots. No, seriously – the arm of a slot machine is the large lever (usually with a ball-shaped finial at the end) that is pulled to activate the slot game. All slot machines used to have levers as triggers, and they were gradually phased out by push-buttons. The arm has been making a comeback, however, and now some machines have both options.

Pay Cycle: There is an enduring belief held by slot machine players that ever slot game has a “cycle.” The online slot machine website or casino must meet its percentage payout, so the machine triggers a jackpot after so many coins. If you can become hip to the pay cycle, you could feasibly time your play and hit a jackpot. This is nonsense when it comes to the online slots, and is only marginally more realistic with land-based slots. In reality, such a “cycle” would last thousands of spins, making timing a jackpot nigh near impossible.

Number of Coins Bet: Simple enough – this is the amount of coins played as a bet in a slot.

Odds: This is your likelihood of winning the slot you are playing, generally expressed as a dollar amount. Odds may also be expressed as a fraction or ratio, however.

Australian-Style Slots: Aussie “poker machines” (“pokeys”) use video slot machines’ screens to simulate physical reels, and usually utilize card symbols on their reels. May tie winning combinations to poker hands, as a throwback to classic slot games.

Basic Machines: These slot games are your classic devices… no high-tech gimmicks attached. The opposite would be a device with all the “bells and whistles” attached.

Continue to part 4 here.

Back to September 2008 Archive.