How to Beat Slot Machines
aka “Advantage Play”

Last update: September 4, 2024

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Facts vs. B.S.

Most articles about how to beat slots are garbage because the the typical author

1. Has no professional knowledge of how slots work.
2. Pulls random ideas out of his a$$ and states them as though they were fact.
3. Plagiarizes other similarly worthless articles.

By contrast, I know how slot machines work because I program them.  And I cite my sources.

So, with that out of the way...

It's not what you think

You’re probably thinking that winning at slots means there are special methods to either tell when a machine is about to pay out, or force it to pay out.  If only it were that simple.  The truth is that slots are random so there's no way to force a slot to hit, and with very rare exceptions, no way to tell when a hit is imminent.  (And if you're about object that you think slots aren't actually random, remember, I program them, and you don't.)

Winning at slots is also not easy.  It takes research and effort, and it's probably not even as lucrative as you expect.

There are two radically different mindsets to playing slots profitably, and we can easily tell what camp someone's in by whether they use the term "beating slots" or "advantage play":

In this article I'll give only the general ideas of advantage play, not extremely specific recipes.  Just like you can't become an electrician just by reading some article on the Internet (it requires formal study), you can't hope to make a living playing slots by reading a single article, either.

Summary of the five methods

1. Signup bonus.  Every casino gives you something for free when you sign up as a new player, and the best signup bonus is free-play.  If a casino gives you $25 in free play, and you play it on a 90% machine, your expected return is $22.50.  Yeah, like I said, real advantage play is not usually lucrative.  But there are some ways to leverage signup bonuses as we'll see below.  Similarly, online casinos like Bovada often give big matching bonuses (e.g., deposit, $500, they match it with their $500, so you have $1000 to play with).  Of course there are strings attached, which we'll also cover below.
2. Promotions and Multicarding.  Just like you can get often free play when you first sign up for a player’s card, the casino will often mail you (or email you) periodic free play offers.  It works like the signup bonus: it's free money, but usually not a lot of money.  The ways to leverage this are to do it at lots of casinos, and to get lots of family and friends to let you use their cards so you can collect all their freeplay ("multicarding").  It's a lot of work.  And even though it seems to be legal, the casinos definitely frown on the practice, and you'll risk things like the casino hauling you into court on trumped-up trespassing charges, like they did with one AP. (WoV)
3. Variable State Slots.  Some slots build up a small bank as you hit whatever symbol builds the bank.  The trick here is to find machines with a mostly or completely full bank and then play them.  The problem is that the overwhelming majority of slots don't have a growing bank, and for those which do, you're competing with lots of other slot vultures who know the same trick.  You're unlikely to ever find slots in an about-to-pay state, and even if you do, the winnings won't be that significant.
4. Must-Hit-By Jackpots.  Some slots have a progressive (growing) jackpot that's listed as definitely being awarded at or before some level.  The trick here is to play only when the jackpot is close to that level.  The problem is the same as before:  Other vultures will likely already have beaten you to it.  Also, you'll have to know the math to even calculate at what point it becomes profitable to play.
5. Positive Progressives.  Sometimes a progressive meter grows so high that it's profitable to play.  That is, you expect to hit the jackpot and win more than you put into the machine.  Three huge caveats: first, you have to be able to able to calculate the point at which a progressive becomes profitable.  (Good luck.)  Next, you might be looking at putting tens of thousands of dollars into the machine before you hit the jackpot.  Finally, if the machine is linked to other machines that share the same jackpot, and you've pumped in thousands and thousands of dollars, what if someone else hits that jackpot before you?

Let's look at these methods in more detail.

Method #1:  Signup bonus

At land casinos

Every land casino lets you sign up for a free “Player’s Card”.  You don't need one to play, but having one opens the door to comps (free goodies from the casino), and one of the best comps is free play (credits that you can play on the machines).  Not every casino gives you free play when you sign up, but if they do, it's like free money.  If they give you $25, and you play it all in a machine with a 90% payback, then your expected return is $22.50.

Yeah, it doesn't make you rich, but I warned you, real advantage play is not what you think it is.  However, you can leverage this:  In Vegas, there are so many casinos so close together that you can sign up at a bunch of casinos and get the free play from all of them.  Note, however, that MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment each own about one-fourth the casinos on the strip, so you can't get a card from each of those casinos, you get an MGM card that covers all the MGM casinos, and a Caesars card that covers their properties.

To make this easier, most casinos let you sign up for the cards on their websites.

At online casinos

With online casinos, instead of them giving you small amounts no-strings-attached freeplay, they give you much larger signup bonuses, but with strings attached.  For example, you deposit $500, and they match it with $500, so you have $1000 play with.  The catch is that you can't withdraw it immediately, you have to play it x number of times.  If the rollover requirement is 3x, you have to wager $1500 before you can withdraw any of the bonus money.  The rollover requirement varies by casino, and actually varies within a casino, since they either offer different promotions with different requirements, or the rollover is higher for low-edge games like table games vs. slots, or both.

Know that online casinos are notorious for finding a way to deny your payout.  If online casinos are legal in your state, then play there for sure.  Otherwise, if you play at an unlicensed casino, pick one that has a decent reputation, like Bovada. (Bovada isn't perfect and I don't guarantee you'll never have a bonus problem with them, but they have one of the best reputations among the unlicensed casinos.)

One last warning:  Don't try to claim multiple signup bonuses from the same casino under different names.  Trying to scam online casinos is the fastest way to having your winnings confiscated.  For that matter, don't even have multiple people in the same household sign up for their own accounts, or let anyone who doesn't live with you play on their account with your Internet.  Here again, the casino may accuse you of trying to claim multiple signup bonuses and confiscate your winnings.

Method #2:  Promotions and Multicarding

At land casinos

Just like you can get often free play when you first sign up, you can often get periodic free play offers in the mail or email.  It works like the signup bonus: it's free money, but usually not a lot of money.

What you try to do is to get bigger freeplay offers, by playing more.  For example, you might be willing to lose $1000 if you knew that would generate a $1200 free play offer from the casino.  You'd then return to the casino, play through the $1200, hope to get back ~$1100, and realize a $100 profit.

Yeah, not very lucrative.  But what if you could get 30 friends and family to sign up for cards and let you use them?  Then you're looking at 30 x $100 = $3000, which is a nicer return, especially if you can do it repeatedly.  People who do this are called "card runners", and the practice itself is called "card running", or "multicarding".

As with the signup bonus, you can leverage this by doing multicarding, which is getting your friends and family to sign up for cards and let you use them.

Is that even legal?  Seems to be, as long as you definitely have permission from the people whose cards you're using.  I've never heard of an AP (advantage player) doing jail time for using other players' cards.  But you might run into other problems:  Casinos definitely frown on the practice, and they fabricated a trespassing charge against one AP.  He ultimately prevailed in court, but it still cost him big legal fees and a considerable amount of time.  There are other risks:  The same player once suffered someone breaking in and stealing a massive amount of money and all his hundreds of players cards from two hidden safes.

At online casinos

Most online casinos (like Bovada) will give you a "reload bonus" every time you deposit money.  All the same caveats apply as with the signup bonus:

1. You have to meet the playthrough requirement before you can withdraw.
2. Since online casinos are notorious for denying payouts on wins from matching bonuses:
1. You should play at a licensed casino if online gambling is legal in your state.
2. If you play at an unlicensed casino, choose one with a decent reputation, like Bovada.
3. Don't try to play with multiple identities at the same casino, don't have multiple players at the same casino in the same household, don't let anyone play on their account with your Internet.

Method #3:  Variable State Slots (VSS)

Some slots have you make progress towards a big payout.  For example, on the game that started it all, decades ago (Piggy Bankin'), every time you got all blanks on te payline, the amount in the bank would increase, and be shown on the display.  Then when you got the Break the Bank symbol on the payline, the machine would pay out the amount in the bank.  The strategy is to find machines with nearly-full banks that other players have built up, because then you don't have to play very long to get the bank payout.  Players who scour the casinos looking for positive machines are known as "vultures".  Here's a story by one vulture who says he beat Piggy Bankin' this way.

These slots go by many names:  "Variable State Slots" (VSS), or "Persistent State Slots", or "Accumulators".

The problem with this is obvious:  Why is anyone going to abandon their game when they're about to get their 10th-ball bonus?  And even if they do, some other knowledgeable player is likely to swoop in and play the machine before you see it.

Some players say that hunting for VSS in the built-up state is lucrative, but I'm skeptical.  When I was working in downtown Vegas over 20 years ago, I swept through the Four Queens casino multiple times a day, checking out all its Piggy Bankin' machines, looking for ones whose bank had been built up.  I did this for a solid month, and never once found a machine that was primed to give up its bonus soon.  Fast forward 22 years later, and now the word is out about VSS, so there's even more competition among other players seeking out attractive VSS in about-to-pay states.  As another game programmer noted, “When I am in Las Vegas, I see 20 people per hour checking the same penny game.  It is hard to see much income potential in a very competitive market.” (WoV) 

More on this topic:

• Reddit thread, mostly saying that it's not really lucrative.
• Machine Pro Club sells subscriptions to the alleged detailed strategies for all the VSS in the casinos.  I can't vouch for their info.  And the testimonials on their site from the customers supposedly winning tens of thousands of dollars a month strike me as obviously fake.  And you have to ask yourself, if the site owners were so successful in winning tens of thousands of dollars a month with their special knowledge, why would they need to sell that info for $49/mo.?

Method #4:  Must-Hit-By progressives

You're familiar with progressive slots, where the jackpot grows progressively larger as people play it.  A twist on progressive slots are those with a "Must-Hit-By" jackpot, where the jackpot must by awarded before it hits a certain level.  On a regular progressive there's no upper limit, but on an MHB slot, there is.  And the machine tells you what the max is.  So if the Must-Hit-By amount is $5000, and the jackpot is currently $4975, you know it's gonna hit soon.

Here's how an MHB chooses when to award the next jackpot:  When someone hits the jackpot, the jackpot resets to what we call the "seed" amount, let's say $500.  And let's say the maximum jackpot, which is the "Must Hit By" amount, is $5000.  The machine picks a secret hit value between the $500 and $5000.  And it doesn't have to pick randomly, it can bias the secret value towards the max amount, and most machines do.  Let's say the value it picks is $4977.  Until the jackpot grows to $4977, you have no hope of hitting the jackpot, it will not hit.  Whoever's bet pushes the jackpot to $4977 will be the one who gets it.

The play here is, armed with some math, figure out how high the jackpot has to go before it becomes profitable to play, and then play.  The problems are similar to that with accumulator slots: 

1. It's not every machine.  Only a tiny percentage of machines are MHB slots.
2. You have to wait a long time for a jackpot to grow to the MHB amount.
3. When it does, there's lots of competition from pros and other knowledgeable people who are going to swoop in to play when the jackpot gets big enough.
4. You have to know how to calculate when the jackpot is high enough to be a good deal for you to play.

Back in 2002 Fitzgerald's in Reno had a bunch of these games and there was almost no competition, certainly no pros.  I scored lots of jackpots during my stay there.  However, I imagine the competition today would be fierce, if they even still had the games.  Fitzgeralds closed years ago.

More on this topic:

• Good article on Wizard of Vegas about playing MHBs.
• Wizard of Odds article, going over the math to determine at what jackpot level an MHB is profitable to play.
• Peter Liston wrote the book Million Dollar Slots about how he attacked MHBs.

Method #5:  Positive Progressives

Sometimes a progressive meter grows so high that it's profitable to play.  That is, you expect to hit the jackpot and win more than you put into the machine.  As usual, if only it were that simple:

1. You have to be able to calculate the point at which the machine goes positive.  You could do that if you had access to the slot's par sheet (the mathematical blueprint for the slot), but the manufacturers keep those secret, so you're S.O.L. there.  If the machine is electromechanical and you're good at math, then you know how to figure the jackpot odds by sampling the jackpot symbol frequency, and from your play you could also calculate the jackpot contribution.  Failing that, you could monitor the game and record at what level the jackpot hits, then once you've got data for several hits, take the median figure.  That could take months or even years.  And some jackpots go literally decades without hitting.  Have fun. 
2. You need a sizable bankroll.  Even if a progressive goes positive, it could take lots of play before it hits.  One AP player says he was down $80k (!) at one point while chasing a positive jackpot. (WoV)
3. You could lose big.  If the machine you're playing is linked to other machines that all share the same jackpot, then someone else could hit the jackpot you're trying to hit…after you put tens of thousands of dollars into it.

Play slots online

I suggest you play something other than slots because slot odds are so bad.  You could also play online with fake money, because then it doesn't matter if you lose.  A good casino for free-play is Bovada, since it requires no download and no registration.  (If you see a registration box, you can close it and continue without registering.)  You can play with real money too, though I hope you won't (or at least won't bet more than you can comfortably afford to lose). (advertisement)

All my slot machine articles

• Slot machine basics.  How much it costs to play, how much you can win, expected loss, why they're a bad bet, why they're popular, how you can limit your losses, speed of play
• How to play slot machines
• Slot returns.  How much they pay back.
• The Randomness Principle.  Slots don't continually get looser and tighter as they're played.  They don't have to.
• How they work. Explains the randomness principle, and runs through the math to show how a game returns a particular payback percentage.  There's a companion page on Par sheets.
• Strategies. Tips for increasing your chances of winning, and saving money.
• Slot Jackpots.  Odds of hitting the jackpot, progressive jackpots, and other jackpot topics.
• Bonus Rounds (all about them)
• How to Beat Slot Machines, aka Advantage Play (AP).  It's not what you think: it's not easy, and for the most part, not lucrative.
• Slot Machine malfunctions. How and why slot machines screw up, causing players to think they've won the jackpot when they really haven't.
• Slot Machine Myths
• Slot Machine B.S.  Wrong info that's published elsewhere.
• Biggest Jackpots.  The largest slot and table game jackpot wins in Vegas.
• Skill-Based Slots.  The scoop on the new games in which your results aren't entirely determined by chance.
• Slot Machine Simulator.  I programmed an exact replica of the Blazing 7s slot (odds-wise).  Click it to play thousands of spins in one second and see how you do.
• Slot name Generator.  Randomly creates a slot machine name using common slot words.  Hilarious!