There’s a variety of theories about casinos making games that are on casino floors longer harder to win. Here’s one of our favorite new ones, left as a comment on one of Brian Christopher’s recent videos:
It is not your fault…. this is an older game. By now the casinos know how to tweak it so that the 6 trains don’t appear so easily…. they used to appear when the game was new…
Cesar M.
Casinos don’t have the ability to control how often a bonus appears, or how often six trains appear in this case. Slot makers don’t give them that level of granularity.
What can they control? They can control payback, but even bonus frequency doesn’t have to be directly connected to payback – the bonus could just pay a bit less, or certain bigger line hits could be reduced in frequency, replaced with smaller line hits. So even lowering payouts doesn’t mean a bonus is less likely.
The frequency certain things happen is an important aspect of game design – in some cases it’s part of what makes a certain slot feel like that slot. Giving casinos control over elements like that would potentially change how much a player enjoys a game, and if it turned players off because Casino A was doing something specific to a game, it could hurt the game’s success over time.
In turn, the way payback is achieved is through a set of outcomes, designed a specific way, and the RNG delivering each outcome roughly the same number of times. If casinos could tweak that, it could have impacts to the game as a whole that would make it impossible for regulators to know what’s going on. And games have to be reviewed and approved by regulators, and tested by third parties who confirm the paybacks are accurate and the game is working as designed.
All of this is to say casinos have less control over slots than players really understand most of the time – and that includes their not having the ability to determine how many bonus symbols are going to come out.
But they don’t need to control that. By setting a slot to, say, a 90 percent payback percentage, they’re already setting it up to be one of the best money makers in the casino. American Roulette pays back 95 percent or thereabouts; video poker is often above 97 percent, and Blackjack above 98 percent.
Just setting up a popular slot and letting players play it is one of the most profitable things a casino can do. They don’t need to touch the trains – it’s doing just fine.
