Statistically speaking, Magic Red White Blue slot machine is a 3 reel, 3 pay line slot that offers players the chance to play from as little as 0.10 a spin or as much as 2.00 a spin. To boost your winnings, you can bet from either 1, 2 or 3 coins per line too.

• Appendices
• Slots Analysis
• Miscellaneous

Introduction

In the past I feared to show a concrete example on this page, not wanting to violate copyright laws. However, in the Netherlands, information on the reel stripping and probabilities of each win are sometimes posted on small cards on the machine. A fan of the site sent me the information provided on an IGT 'Red White & Blue' machine.

First, let me present the pay table. For those who are not familiar with the game, a 3-bar is in blue, a 2-bar is in white, and a 1-bar is in red.

Pay Table for Red White & Blue

After the player makes a bet and presses the spin button, the machine selects three random numbers, one for each reel. These are chosen from a random number generator that is constantly drawing random numbers at a rate of thousands per second. The numbers chosen at the moment the play is initiated are the ones used to determine the final outcome. In other words the outcome is predestined the moment you press the spin button.

In the case of Red White & Blue, each random number has 64 equally likely outcomes. Each random number is mapped to a stop position on what is called a 'Lookup Table.' The following is my estimate of what the Red White & Blue lookup table looks like, based on the total number of stops per symbol per reel, provided to me.

Lookup Table for Red White & Blue

Immediately after the random numbers are chosen they will get mapped to a stop on the machine via the Lookup Table, the outcome will be scored, and the player paid if he won anything. For example, if the random numbers chosen were 26, 8, and 43 the player would get Blue 7, Blank, Red 7.

Note how there are clusters of the same symbol in a row. For example, stops 60 to 62 on reel 1 all are mapped to a 1 bar symbol. These will all be directed to the same 1 bar symbol on the actual reel. There are exactly 22 groups of like symbols on each reel, which is the standard number of stops on an electro-mechanical three-reel slot machine, known as a 'Stepper Slot.'

Also note that only stop 45 on reel 1 is mapped to the red 7 symbol. However the blanks above and below it have five positions each. This causes the often seen near miss effect, where the reel stops directly above or below the highest paying symbol. Many people have written to me, claiming that this near miss effect is against the law. My slot machine Appendix 1 proves otherwise.

To calculate the return of the machine, add up the number of positions for each symbol on each reel, to get the total symbol weightings. The following table shows these totals. This table is what was indicated on the Red White & Blue machine in the Netherlands. The Lookup Table above, was reverse engineered to produce these total weights.

With the weighting of each symbol and reel known, it is just take simple math to calculate the return. The following table shows the win, number of combinations, probability, and contribution to the return for all possible events. For example, the table above shows the number of white 7's are 6, 1, and 7, for reels 1, 2, and 3 respectively. The total number of winning combinations for three white sevens is thus 6 × 1 × 7 = 42.

50 000.00 Red White And Blue Slot Machine Wins

Return Table for Red White & Blue

The lower right cell shows a return of 86.58%. That means that for every dollar bet at the one coin level, the player will get back 86.58 cents, on average. Doing the same table for two coins results in a return of 86.58% as well, and three coins has a higher return of 87.47%, due to the disproportionately high win on the top two pays. The standard deviation is 9.03 for 1 or 2 coins, and 10.80 for 3 coins.

Other Information on Slots

• Appendix 1 shows the details and analysis of almost 4000 actual spins on a Reno slot machine.
• Appendix 2 shows an example of the virtual reels behind a hypothetical slot machine and how the average return is calculated.
  
• Appendix 3A Las Vegas slot machine rankings.
  
• Appendix 3B Jean/Primm slot machine rankings.
• Appendix 3C Tunica slot machine rankings.
• Appendix 3D Henderson/Lake Mead slot machine rankings.
  
• Appendix 3E Quarter and dollar returns for Las Vegas slots
  
• Appendix 3F Miscellaneous slot machine rankings.
• Appendix 4 shows how the return is calculated for my Wizard's Fruit Slot Machine
  
• Appendix 5 analysis of the 21 Bell Slot Machine.
• Lock and Roll analysis of the skill-based slot machine found in North Carolina.
  
• Baltimore Sun article in which I am quoted.

External Links

• For a simplified explanation of slots, please see my companion site Wizard of Vegas.
• German translation of this page is available at richtigspielen.com.
• Another decent overview of how slots work and some practical advice for playing them is How Slot Machines Work at VegasClick.com.
• PAR Sheets, probabilities, and slot machine play:Implications for problem and non-problem gambling by Kevin A. Harrigan and Mike Dixon, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. This is an outstanding academic paper that details how some popular slot machines were designed.
• Blazing Sevens simulator.

So who pays for those Volcanic eruptions? Pirate Battles? Carnival Parades? and Glittering Showrooms? Slot Machines. 60-65% of casino revenue is generated by those bell-ringing one armed bandits that seem to multiply on casino floors like rabbits. So how does the average player gain an advantage and possibly win? Well... aside from cheating (which we really don't suggest you get involved in) the only way to gain some sort of advantage is to choose your slots with utmost care and discrimination.

Slot machines in Las Vegas are required by law to payout 75% of the money that goes into them, actual payout in Las Vegas is approximately 95%. Will you be the one that takes the money instead of gives it? That is up to luck, but with a little investigation one can easily learn to identify which machines are more favorable to the player than others. Slot machines are all about the payout... Red White and Blue, Double Diamond, Dick Fucking Clark, Cherry whatever. At the end of the day what every slot player needs to do is look at the pay schedule on the machine they want to play. Very often the same machine one row over will pay 5,000 credits on 3rd credit jackpot while you're playing on a 2,000 3rd credit machine. Plain and simple you're cheating yourself.

50 000.00 Red White And Blue Slot Machine Winners

Slot Spotlights

A few notable slot machines we here at VT have found more playable, or more interesting, than the other nonsense out there like Leprachaun's Gold or Tabasco Slots or whatever.

We like machines that have the best payouts on the lowest winning spins. These will keep you going longer between larger wins and not enact the ATM-In-Reverse principle seen at many of the larger joints (Venetian being the worst we've experienced).

100 or Nothing
Red, White and Blue
Slot Machine Jackpots Photo Gallery
Wheel of Fortune
Wild Cherry

Slot Machine Payback Percentages

Below are the slot payback percentages for Nevada's fiscal year beginning July 1, 2002 and ending June 30, 2003:

50 000.00 Red White And Blue Slot Machine Winnings

5¢ Slot Machines
The Strip - 90.32%
Downtown - 91.50%
Boulder Strip - 93.03%
N. Las Vegas - 92.97%
25¢ Slot Machines
The Strip - 92.59%
Downtown - 94.83%
Boulder Strip - 96.47%
N. Las Vegas - 96.63%
$1 Slot Machines
The Strip - 94.67%
Downtown - 95.35%
Boulder Strip - 96.48%
N. Las Vegas - 97.21%

$1 Megabucks Machines
The Strip - 89.12%
Downtown - 88.55%
Boulder Strip - 87.76%
N. Las Vegas - 89.41%
$5 Slot Machines
The Strip - 95.33%
Downtown - 95.61%
Boulder Strip - 96.53%
N. Las Vegas - 96.50%
All Slot Machines
The Strip - 93.85%
Downtown - 94.32%
Boulder Strip - 95.34%
N. Las Vegas - 95.32%

The Math of Casino Slot Machines

For every dollar you wager in a slot machine, you will lose 100% - Payback% of that dollar. For example, you're at Bellagio playing the $1 Double Diamond slot, wagering Two Credits ($2) per spin. According to the table, for every $2 spin you will lose 5.33% of that bet... just shy of 11¢. Granted these 11 cents don't get extracted instantly... this is computed over time. So if your bank roll limit is $10 it will take you, on average 52 spins before your bankroll is toast (under $1) and you are out of credits.

How was this number derived:

STAKE x (Payback Percentages) = STAKE x (Payback Percentages) = STAKE x (Payback Percentages) = ...
Repeat calculation until the number gets below the minimum bet - if you play long enough, you're gonna go broke. THAT is a FACT. Slot machines are entertaining, relaxing, require little thought beyond pressing a button. IF you want to truly GAMBLE, you might want to look into Video Poker, and eventually Blackjack as other options.

Granted, sometime in there you just might hit that $500 win on the Wheel of Fortune, or The Elvis progressive might shake rattle and roll $1000 your way... but the math inside the machine determines that you will in fact lose a certain percentage of your wager on each spin, and the more you spin... the more you will lose despite short runs of successful jackpots. If you find you are UP... leave. Every spin of a slot machine generates a random number that has NOTHING to do with previous numbers. SLOT MACHINES do NOT run in streaks (even if you might wish to think they do). Don't expect to get any of the money you put into a machine out of it unless you learn to press the CASH OUT button.

Gamblers Library

VT fully recommends the following books to help you decrease the house advantage on casino card games.

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