As we’ve shared here previously, there are multiple machine formats that look like slot machines but function differently. We’ve talked a lot about Bingo Machines and Historic Horse Racing Machines, but another category is found in Washington State (with a similar, but different setup in New York racinos) that work closer to pull tabs or scratch tickets in that there’s a set number of “tickets,” outcomes, and when you place a wager you’re purchasing one of those outcomes randomly from the pool.
In this format, the prize is known upfront, and the game illustrates an outcome that matches the prize (either a losing spin for $0 or a winning combination, which can include a full bonus). If a bonus is triggered, the bonus will be predetermined, because the game knows upfront what the final prize needs to be and is showing a bonus that delivers that outcome “for entertainment purposes only.”
A player wonders if that’s a bad thing:
My deep dive into Washington State’s scratch off lottery slots mechanism is that nothing has any effect on events in a bonus because the outcome is predetermined. Does that change potential player wins or losses? I do know it’s changed how I feel about playing there. I will definitely go across the river to Oregon for more legit slot machines.
Nunzio S.
How a machine’s outcomes are determined is a separate and distinct topic from what the machine’s overall expected return to player, or RTP, will be. In a Vegas style slot machine, the totality of outcomes a machine can offer are added up, as is the cost to acquire them, and that’s how the RTP is calculated. For instance, if there’s one million outcomes that can be bought at $1 per outcome, and the totality of the prizes for those outcomes is $900,000, the RTP is 90%.
You can achieve a similar scenario with the machines in Washington. If the “ticket” pool as it were was a million tickets each costing $1, and the totality of the prizes available are $900,000, the RTP there too is 90%.
Even though one uses a random number generator to achieve the outcome and the other has a finite pool of opportunities, it’s simply two different ways to accomplish the same goal, and in that way in the long run as a player one won’t necessarily be better than the other.
Now, if the Washington casinos are offering better payback, that’s a good thing and would be a reason to go play there as your budget would be expected to last longer in such an environment. But the system it uses to get to those outcomes isn’t really involved at that point at all.
Now, one thing we’ve seen and heard is the finite pool of outcomes leads to scenarios where repeat wins of identical structure can happen on the same machine in the same session. One of our favorite examples was a Rudie playing at a New York lottery racino and her getting three identical bonuses on Ultimate Fire Link – same win to the penny, with the fireballs landing in the exact same spots.
With predetermined bonuses and the approach that the prize is determined first and then an outcome is shown to match it, these systems, which have been in place long enough to be considered older technology, can be a bit more limiting for some of the more mathematically complex games out there. But still, that doesn’t mean the payouts are worse, just how they get there is different.
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