The concept of a so-called penny slot proliferated after the launch of ticket in ticket out (TITO) systems allowed game makers to have a broader array of options (including denominations that didn’t exist in coin form, like 2 cent). It would not have been cost effective for slots to have penny coin slots and hoppers in the coin era, but with tickets, it’s easier to manage.
But even though they’ve become ubiquitous, it doesn’t mean all players quite get what that’s all about, as with this example asked on a Brian Christopher video:
Why do you play for pennies?
Marilyn M.
When penny slots were first introduced, it was possible to find games that were 20 cents a spin, or even 9 cents a spin. But as we recently shared on the site, the average minimum bet on newer so-called penny denomination slots grew by a third in recent years to 80 cents a spin, with many machines broaching the $1/spin minimum requirement.
That’s just the minimum bet. Recent slot machine releases have had max bet on the 1 cent denomination reach $20, $30 and even $50 a spin – far from pennies!
When Brian Christopher selects slots to play, he will tend to pick games that are at a bet level that he wants to play at. Sometimes this means higher denomination slots, but sometimes this can be achieved on slots that are considered penny denomination.
But if he’s playing for pennies, as you note Marilyn, it’s still a lot of pennies! Brian’s not afraid to push those $30 bets on penny denomination, which means the big wins will reach into the hundreds or thousands of dollars.
The penny denomination term is less an indication of how much you can play or win, and now solely a marker of what each credit is worth. Nowadays the bet size as a whole (how many credits x the denomination = the bet size), that has the most weight on what happens on a slot machine, and can be structured in a variety of ways.
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