Strange Slot Machine Notions
By Maria Proctor

1. Loose Machines / Tight Machines

People often have a notion that some machines are actually loose while others are made tight. Nothing can be farther form truth. All machines are designed and made to the same mechanical/electrical/electronic precision and random logic and it is totally a matter of luck as to which machine is loose today (usually for the other guy) and which one is tight today (usually for you).

2. Hot Coins / Hot Results

There is a strange theory that if you a heat a coin, say with a cigarette lighter, and drop it in the machine, it will expand the coin storing mechanism causing the machine to rain-in coins. The truth is it will burn your fingers and you could be charged with tampering the slot machine.

3. Cold Coins / Gold Coins

The opposite of hot coin theory is drop cold coins and get gold coins. These people put coins in ice buckets ordered from the bartender and drop cold coins with the hope of converting them into gold coins. The cold coin is supposed to contract the mechanism causing it to drop coins like ice cubes from an ice dispenser. Just like hot coins don't give hot results, cold coins don't drop gold coins.

4. Dents are Rents

Find a machine with dents. The theory goes that the machine has been so bad at paying that players have repeatedly kicked it in frustration. So the casino, out of guilt, will have loosened this machine a bit. Guilt and casinos? Since when have the casinos started having guilt?

5. Stay Away from a Paying Machine

The theory here is that if a machine has been paying out for sometime, keep away from it because it will stop paying after a certain amount of money in a certain period of time. This presumes that slot machines are live and able to determine themselves that it is now time to go off to sleep.

6. Tune to the Rhythm

This is based on the belief that the drums rotate in set cycles and come back to the same winning sequence at regular intervals. And if you can get tuned to this rhythm..... the coins too would drop in rhythm. The truth is slots machine have no preset rotating cycles.

7. Pull and Spin

Some players think by alternating between a certain number of handle pulls and a certain number of push button generated spins - 5 pulls, 2 spins, 3 pulls, 2 spins and so forth in a set combination - they can make the machine pay. The fact is you are as much likely to win as you are likely to lose in any of your favorite combination of pulls and spins.