If you visit a casino regularly, there’s a class of player you are familiar with: The bangers, the rubbers, the slappers, the knockers. Does getting physical with a machine help in any way?
Does knocking on the screen cause the bonus to drop faster? Do you have to pay if you knock so hard and break the screen?
Yvette H.
Any physical effort, whether rubbing, banging, slapping, knocking, etc., doesn’t have any impact on the software inside the machine. It’s all for superstition at that point, but you raise a really good question.
Casinos can, and oftentimes do, charge players who damage a machine for being too forceful. We’ve heard plenty of stories where a player broke a machine, the casino caught it and charged them a significant bill to repair it.
Slot machine cabinets are built to withstand a lot of abuse, but there are obviously limits, and some players will be more forceful than others. We’ve watched players hitting monitors hard enough that the screens are morphing colors from the pressure, for instance.
And all those Dragon Link players who slap the buttons and tap the squares constantly aren’t doing anything either – you can’t actually speed up those hold and spin spins, and the outcome is decided when each spin is initiated in the bonus, so the banging and slapping are just going to wear the player out, as well as the machine, without any further assistance.
So they don’t bring bonuses faster, and could yield a player to be charged a hefty bill to repair a slot machine. Why do players do it? Superstition, frustration, a feeling of control… they have their reasons, and casinos seem to tolerate it happening for the most part, so it doesn’t look like anything is changing soon.
But for those of you reading Flip The Switch, we know you’re a savvier player, so take this as your confirmation you can forgo the physical forces in favor of just enjoying your casino time.
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Sone games actually do let you speed up the Hold N Spin features, including “Phoenix Link” and “Lightning Buffalo Link”. Whether or not it affects the outcome is another story, but they will let you stop the spins and/or the add-up at the end.
Thanks for noting that newer games do offer some opportunity to speed up – we most often see the button slapping on Lightning Link and Dragon Link, where it doesn’t do anything at all. And it’s worth noting that the outcome of each spin is established in the hold and spin bonus when you start the spin, not when the spin is stopped, just like on any other spin of the slot. (And of course you can’t change the outcome during the add-up, although it’s nice newer games will let you count it up faster if you choose!)