Slot machine

There are many different kinds of slot machines in Las Vegas. Some of the most popular are the video poker machines. These are the standard 5 card draw machines, all the way up to 100 play machines, where you can play 100 hands at a time.

Becoming more popular now are the 9 line slots. Usually these are themed slots (Adam's Family, I Dream of Jeanie, etc.) with a bonus round. These can actually be quite fun to play. Most are 1 - 5 credits a line, with a few exceptions.

Of course, there are the standard 3 - 5 reel slot machines, of various types. These are the typical "one-armed bandits". You can find them from $.05 all the way up to $100.00 a pull!

Finally, there are progressive machines. These aren't a specific "type" of slot machine, they can be any of the above, but there's a progressive jackpot involved. If you hit a royal flush on a video poker machine, or a specific combination of characters on a regular or 9 line slot machine, you will win the progressive jackpot. Progressive means that for every amount of money played, the big jackpot goes up by a specific amount. Some progressive machines can pay $1,000,000 or more! Megabucks, a 5 reel dollar slot machine, can pay many millions of dollars.

It is a common belief that the odds on a machine have something to do with the number of each kind of symbol on each reel, but this is not the case. Modern slot machines are computerized, so that the odds are whatever they are programmed to be. For instance, if the jackpot combination is "7-7-7", you can fool ignorant people by making "7-7-(non-7)" come up frequently. Even if the machine uses real wheels, the symbols shown by the wheels are chosen by computer.