Newer slots can have scenarios that make it harder to bonus than older ones. The payouts will have the potential to be bigger, but that’s still not necessarily satisfying when it can take a very long time to get there. Here’s a question along those lines:
Do you personally think it’s normal to play over 950 cycles/spins without a bonus?
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We wouldn’t use the word normal, but we also wouldn’t use the word impossible. The thing about slots and the randomness involved means there’s times when bonuses will come fast and furious, and other times where the bonuses will be painfully slow to arrive.
That’s part of the nature of slots that can make them exciting, and lead to those big wins, but also what can yield some heavy losses when things don’t swing your way.
Reader Don M. regularly chats with us via email on various topics, and got curious recently about what sorts of chances things can have to happen based on math, and decided to run the numbers. He chose the example of a slot machine bonus that comes on average once every 100 spins. (The data collected by third party firms actually shows that average being more like 120 spins nowadays, so this is probably a bit rosy relative to today’s casino floor.)
Now, you’d think an average of 100 spins would mean that half the time they’d arrive in less spins and half the time they’d arrive in more spins, right?
Well, actually, no, because the statistic that determines that would be the median, not the average. And the median is actually 69 spins in Don’s example – this explains why it’s not unusual on even tough machines for bonuses to seem to come more frequently at times. Half the time, they certainly do!
So why 69 instead of 100? That’s because there’s technically no upper end to the range. It’s not like that it has to deliver a bonus at 150 or 200 spins. It could be more – much more. And those incredibly long droughts are balanced out by more frequent bonuses at times.
Don’s calculations show a more than 8 percent chance you don’t bonus in this scenario after 250 spins, and a more than 1 percent chance it takes more than 450 spins to get there. That’s easily more than a half hour spinning normally in pursuit of a single bonus! Don’s math only goes out to 800 spins, which shows a 0.03% chance of a bonus not arriving by then.
So your example of 950 is certainly at the extreme end of the spectrum, but it’s not impossible. That’s because with the random number generator, the odds of a bonus happening on any spin are the same, even if the last 949 were not bonuses. Your chances don’t improve as the number of spins without a bonus increase.
But ultimately, there is some percentage of the time that the bonuses will be elusive. And a smaller percentage of the time that it’s elusive to the point of frustration. But that balances out the times when the bonuses seem to be plentiful. And one slot machine can provide all of that, which is why it’s understandable some players think casinos are tinkering, when it’s more likely just a bad session or series of sessions on a tough machine.
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FWIW, with an average (mean for the stats nerds) being 120, the median is 83 spins. I think it’s actually kind of useful to look at the 5% best and 5% worst bonus gaps – it really emphasizes how lopsided the distribution is. If your game has a mean of 120 spins between bonuses, 5% of the time you’ll get a bonus within 7 spins, but on the flip side, 5% of the time you will wait 358+ spins! 5% is 1 in 20, so pretty much anyone who plays slots regularly will experience both of these scenarios. I think that’s why people feel like someone has “done something” to their slot when they have a bonus drought – the difference between waiting 7 spins and 358 spins is immense, but both are equally likely to happen!
Thanks for jumping in with the math on 120 spin averages, Don! It really does illustrate the range of possibilities – one game is capable of being very nice or very mean without a casino needing to do anything to that slot.