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Slot Terms You Need to Know: Volume 7

Hold or Hold Percentage: State and federal laws mandate that the operators of slot machines must pay out a certain percentage of all the money that players put into a device. The house is not permitted to keep all the proceeds of a slot game; in some places, they are required to pay out as much as ninety percent! The amount of money that the house keeps is called the hold, and is expressed as a hold percentage. Smart slots players will look for the devices with the lowest hold / highest payout percentage – these are the machines that are most generous, whether they pay out more frequently or turn out the highest jackpots.

Full Pay Machines: These are THE slot games to look for! These hot machines are those that offer the very highest payout percentage for the game type. Depending on where you play, this could approach or TOP one hundred percent if played with ideal skill. (In terms of strategy-based slot machines.) Of course, casinos and slots parlors don’t just give away money all the time – these machines are almost always located right next door to a machine that pays put poorly.

Hard Count: What do casinos do with all that money that lands in the slot machines? Naturally, they count it! When it comes time for the operators of slot games to tally up all those coins, they open up the device (with a security guard standing safely nearby, of course) and transport the haul to a secure room – imagine the massive wall safe at the bank – to count. Most casinos have special scales that can determine exactly how many coins have been placed on its tray based on weight, but some situations call for a hand count or “hard count” of the revenue. Depending on the machine in question, this can be a pretty arduous task!

Continue to part 8 here.

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