Slot Dictionary / Terms

Although you don't need to know most of these when playing slots online it is always good to know them should they ever come up in conversation or when playing conventional slot machines.

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Glossary of Terms Below:

Fill: When hoppers run out of coins, a fill is called for which simply means an attendant gets a bag of coins from the cashier and refills the empty hopper.

Hold: This is the percentage of coins played that are held by the machine, the house profit. In most cases this number is from roughly 3% to 15% and up.

Hopper: This is where the coins are held in the machine. Often hoppers are filled to overflowing by players, so they don't only run empty they sometime are overflowing. When this happens the excess coins drop into a bucket underneath the hopper. This is the profit the casino takes. The buckets are usually emptied in the early morning hours when the traffic is light.

Loose/Tight Slots: Loose slots have a higher payout over a period of time. Usually achieved by having more payout symbols. The opposite is true for tight slots.

Multiplier Slots: Pays on a graduating scale. For example, win 4 coins for playing 1 coin, 8 coins for playing 2 coins and 12 coins for playing 3 coins.

Pay cycle: It is a widely held belief that slots go through pay cycles which means that, after taking in a number of coins They must pay out in order to meet the percentage payout that has been programmed into the software.

Pay line: Usually the line in the middle of the slot window but also it can be three lines or even five lines. Only winning symbols on a pay line will drop coins in the tray.

Reels: The reels upon which the symbols are displayed, usually three reels but sometimes you will find a two reeler and four or even higher. The more reels the machine has the harder it will be to hit the jackpot.

RNG: A Random Number Generator is a piece of software, usually housed on a computer chip placed inside the slot machine by the manufacturer. In online terms, the Random Number Generator is the piece of software on the game server. The purpose of both is identical, and that is to randomly select hundreds of numbers and symbols every second, faster than you can pull the handle or click the spin button. It's working even when the machine is idle. Each random number corresponds to a certain reel and symbol combination that is randomly chosen after the first coin is dropped or credit played. Naturally, the fewest programmed combinations are for the top jackpot.

Symbols: The icons or symbols that appear on the reels are of an infinite variety and can be practically anything that the manufacturers and the casinos can dream up.

Slots Drop and Hold: The slots drop is the amount of money played through the machine. The slots hold is the amount of money the machine retains (that which is not paid out as winnings). A slot machine payout percentage is calculated by dividing the hold number by the drop number and multiplying by 100%. For example: a machine which takes in $100 and pays out $50 can have its payout percentage calculated as such: 50 / 100 x 100% = 50%.

Slot Testing: The act of playing through a set number of coins without using accumulated credits, and keeping track of the drop and hold, in order to determine your session payout percentage for a selected slot.

Slot-mix or Slot Placement: Often people claim casinos place high paying slot machines near highly visible areas of the casino so that winners can be seen and heard better by the populace. This theory has been proven wrong by the Wizard of Odds.

Short Win: Large jackpot win after a small cash outlay - happens often.

Take Cycle: This is the opposite of the pay cycle. If you subscribe to the pay/take philosophy then you believe that a pay cycle is followed by a take cycle, whereby you may get the odd small hit but essentially it's feeding time for the slot.

Tilt: Slots tilt usually because they have run out of coins, or because a coin is jammed in the mechanism. They stop paying and the tilt light comes on. Coins owing the player are held in the slots memory and will pay after corrections have been made to the problem. I have never seen a machine that didn't give out the correct number of coins, regardless of a tilt.