Smarter Bet Guide to Slots and Video Poker
Tight, Tighter, Tightest Slots
Basil Nestor is the author of the new Playboy Complete Guide to Casino Gambling. This wonderful book teaches players how to avoid sucker bets and win more when playing gambling games. He is also the author of The Smarter Bet Guide series for video poker, slots, craps, and many other books about gambling. Basil's website is www.smarterbet.com like a parking lot; the convenient spaces are taken, so the player heads deeper into corners of the layout to find an available machine. That game is invariably tight.
Slots near a hotel’s front desk, a line for a show, a restaurant, or any other waiting area, are similar to the machines near tables. The audience is essentially captive, so the games are usually not generous.
Big Bertha machines (the giant games with the oversized reels) will be played regardless of their payoff, so they’re notoriously tight. Ditto for any novelty game that people will play just to see the reels spin.
The tightest of the tight slots can be found in non-casino venues like airports, gas stations, and convenience stores. The Brake-n-Buy is not competing with a casino, and it doesn’t care about generating slot excitement. A few occasional dollars from bored patrons is the lone goal.
A similar situation applies to a riverboat or Native-American casino that doesn’t have competition nearby. Tight games are more common when customers cannot easily go elsewhere.
Of course, tight doesn’t mean impossible. Any game that operates within legal specifications will occasionally provide a nice jackpot, but remember that the difference between 83 percent and 98 percent isn’t just 15 percent more for the casino. It’s also a 750 percent increase in a player’s long-term loss.
Now you know the basics of where to find loose slots. In the next section we’re going to put it all together in a unified strategy.