Bizzarre Behavior in the Casino
Some People Will Try Anything To Change Their Luck
People watching is one of the most entertaining activities in a casino. Some slot machine players go to extrodinary lengths to attempt to control the outcome of their play. Slot players in particular display behavior that is hard to believe. I enjoy some slot play at Snoqualmie Casino, a beautiful indian casino located a few miles east of Seattle. Featuring almost 3,000 slot machines, it offers the opportunity to see a wide variety of people trying to change their luck.
Many players believe that they can “control” the slot machine by fiddling with various controls. Slots offer very few opportunities for this. Most feature a slot to accept money or a casino “ticket”, another slot where a payout ticket is dispensed, buttons corresponding to the size of the bet you want to make, and a button to start the action. There may also be a “Max Bet” button that automatically bets the most the machine will accept. So how do you make sure you will win?
That’s the fun part. A common and very strange move is Cleaning Your Money. This is done by requesting a pay out, then taking the casino receipt and shaking it in the air a few times to shake out the bad luck, then placing back into the currency slot. I have seen some people do this after nearly every spin. I guess this action provides the illusion of control of the outcome. Another common behavior is “button dancing”. People who do this will press a betting amount button, then press the spin button, followed by rapid pressing of all the other button in some kind of private sequence. Apparently the machine is supposed to respond to this. They don’t.
“Windshield wipers” are another breed of slot players. These people believe that wiping the video screen with their hands will draw out the winning combinations. They perform this ritual on every spin. A varient of this behavior is the “screen dotter”. Screen dotters use the tips of their fingers to tap the screen, apparently drawing winning symbols to those spots. Another common behavior is to “fool the machine into thinking you are someone else”.
Players will insert their players club card (a card that records your slot play and then provides rewards like free food or even money), insert money and play. If things aren’t going well, they will cash out, like the ticket wavers, remove their club card, the wait. Some will wait as long as five minutes. Then when they are convinced that the machine has forgotten them, they will reinsert their card, put money into the currency slot, and play again.
Another class of behaviors occur when a player earns free spins. Most video slots have symbol combinations that trigger bonus play, usually some free spins with better payouts. When one of these is earned, our players really get into action! By my count the most popular reaction to a bonus round is the “I am not here” move. The player moves back from the machine and folds his or her arms and pretends not to watch the screen. No matter how much they earn on each bonus spin, they sit stoically pretending to be someplace else.
I have no idea where this originated, but more than half of the players perform this ritual. Another, my particular favorite, is “frantic screen helping”. This activity consists of a combination of tapping and wiping the screen very rapidly during the bonus play. Casinos must spend a fortune cleaning off the screens.
Obviously, all of this activity is based on the idea that somehow luck can be controlled. These people appear to believe that exotic interaction with the slot machine can actually change the outcome. This isn’t true. Here are the facts.
The machine doesn’t know me anymore
A great deal of the behaviors seem to be based on the idea that the machine changes the way it pays if a “new” player sits down. Thus by removing the player card and the cashing out, this triggers the new player behavior. This sort of behavior is truly pointless. A slot machine is a computer with multiple systems. The cash acceptance system and the club card reader do not interact in any way with the game itself. In fact, the game is unaware of the amount of the bet, the identity of the player, or how long that player has been at the machine.
Video slots consist of a random number generator that is constantly spitting out numbers at the rate of at least 10,000 new numbers a second. When a spin is triggers, the computer captures the next bunch of random numbers and uses them to create the display you see when the “reels” stop. The machine knows how much, if anything, you have won before your finger leaves the button.
Screen rubbing and tapping seems to be based on the belief that the touch-sensitive screen is always recording your actions, and if you get things just right you will change the outcome of the game. It’s true that many machines interact with you via the screen, but once you trigger a spin, that interaction is done. You can bang, wave, tap, wash, or kiss the screen with no effect on the outcome.
I think that on some level even the most superstitious player knows this. How stupid would it be to build a slot machine that you could manipulate? Give the manufacturers some credit! On a deep emotional level many people can’t accept that they are betting money on a pure chance event. An event that is rigged to take your money. Slot machine odds are controlled by the manufacturer. Casino operators order the machines with a specific payout percentage. Most indian casinos are fairly aggressive with how much of your money they keep. Many are set to return only 80% of the money bet. Most Vegas casinos pay out over 90%.
What this means is that over time (years), the machines will return the amount they are set for to the players. Over short periods of time the machines can take 100% of your money or pay you a fortune. The longer you play, the more likely the net outcome of your play will hit the payout percentage of the machine. It’s that simple.
Slot payout odds are only one way player loyalty is affected. Machines with high payout rates are more fun because you win more often. But that is far from the whole story. Modern machines are built using solid psychological principles to guide how the games actually work. Some are designed to have long periods of loss followed by bonus rounds that pay large amounts. Others are set to pay something (often less than you bet) on nearly every spin. Spend an hour playing a machine and you will see the play pattern selected. The most successful machines combine fun bonsu rounds with interesting play. Make no mistake, regardless of how the machine appears to pay, over time you will end up losing – maybe not all of your money but some. Enough to keep the casino profitable, but not so much to send you home unhappy.