We’ve previously shared that stopping the reels, slapping the buttons, and so on have no influence on the outcome of a spin. But one player wondered:
Then why do some have buttons that say stop reels? I see a lot of people doing it and winning /Bonuses and me getting nothing. But when I tap the button more than once it works.
Charlotte H.
The ability for players to stop a reels is such a myth that slot machine pay tables often now have a line in them where they confirm that stopping the reels before they come to a stop on their own does not have any influence on the outcome of a spin.
So why do slot makers offer the feature? There’s a couple of reasons.
One is that some players like to have the feeling of control, whether or not actual control is in their hands. The same goes with the idea of picking bonuses – some players like to think they have some sort of control, despite the fact we have no idea what’s hiding under those objects, and even in some cases whether our picking actually does anything at all.
For slot makers and casinos, giving players the ability to stop the reels, speed up the count-up and money and so forth has a practical consideration – it completes the spin faster, which generally means the next spin comes faster, and players will therefore wager more money. Over time, that means more profit for the casino.
But despite this feature being here, it goes back to gaming regulations, which confirm that it’s when the wager is placed, at the start of the spin, that the outcome is determined, so players have no influence over it by stopping the reels.
We do have influence over it, theoretically, by when we press the spin button to start the reels, but we won’t know whether the microsecond we chose was better or worse than any other.
So ultimately, we encourage players not to get too wrapped up in it, but most importantly, not to fall for the ruse that stopping the reels did anything other than speed up the outcome that was already on the way.
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