“It won’t happen often at all,” I told her. “Let’s pretend 00 is a jackpot symbol, and we need 00 on all five wheels to hit the jackpot.” Where the ball lands on each wheel is a random event. I asked her to imagine a set of five roulette wheels instead of one. That has to be directed somehow, doesn’t it?” “I can see what’s happening on the roulette wheel,” she said. Every individual result is random and unpredictable, but the odds of the game lead to a programmed, predictable payback percentage.Ī friend of a friend brought the issue up to me a couple of months ago, and she thought that size of slot jackpots must mean there’s a controller that sends the game to makeup time after a big win. That’s the way it works with slot machines, too. Individual results are random, but the odds of the game result in 94.74 percent return to players. So for many years, I’ve used a comparison to roulette, where you don’t know when any given number will turn up, but the odds of the game will lead to a 5.26 percent house edge – the same as a 94.74 percent payback percentage. Players sometimes have difficulty with the idea that slot machine results can be programmed and random at the same time.
