We’ve all heard about hot games. Especially in online casinos, there are always sections of hot slots, which, according to the casinos, are due to deliver nice winnings in the near future.
But what exactly does it mean for a certain slot to be considered hot? And is it really true that online casinos can somehow predict which online slots are about to pay out big prizes?
What are “hot” slots?
Hot slots are considered to be online slots which haven’t paid out massive wins in a while. By the logic behind the concept, a slot game that has seen a lot of action from casino players and hasn’t paid out any big wins in a while is bound to do so in the near future.
The concept does have some logic behind it, because all online slots have a predefined payout ratio which dictates how much they should pay in the long run. And long stretches of losing streaks are bound to end at some point as the slot needs to correct its payout ratio.
This concept of hot and cold slot machines was especially true in brick and mortar casinos.
There is a rather large group of casino players who base their gaming experience around this idea. They stand back watching other people play certain slot machines and as soon as they see a player who has lost quite a bit of money leaving, they take his place at the slot machine that was on a losing streak. They hope to catch the slot’s payout correction and win big.
While some players can swear that the method works, others are equally convinced that it doesn’t.
This belief that certain games are about to pay out based solely on the fact that they haven’t paid out in a while has led many to invest much more they could have afforded, which led to pretty dramatic events. So let’s see if any of this is actually true.
Can anyone really know when a slot is about to pay out big prizes?
The short answer is no. Nobody can predict the outcome of any upcoming spin in a licensed online slot. Regardless of that particular slot’s previous behavior, the RNG will generate a random outcome on each new spin. Each spin is completely independent from the ones before it.
There is actually a name for this concept. The gambler’s fallacy, otherwise known as the Monte Carlo fallacy is an event in which an individual believes that an otherwise considered random event is more or less likely to happen based on the outcome of the previous outcome or series of outcomes on the same kind of event.
For example, constantly increasing your bet on Red after each losing Roulette spin, being certain that the ball is less and less likely to fall on Black as this outcome keeps repeating, is a gambler’s fallacy and it is incorrect. Mathematically, the outcome of any random event remains random regardless of previous outcomes. In other words, the coin doesn’t know how many times before it fell on heads. Each coin flip has a 50-50 chance and there is no mathematical rule stating that it is impossible for a coin to land on heads forever.
The same thing is valid when it comes to online slots. The outcome of each spin is completely independent of the one before it or any series of previous spins. An online slot that doesn’t pay out any decent winnings in months is not “bound” to pay. Again, just like in the example with the coin, the slot’s way of operating is not influenced by anything other than pure math and since each spin is a completely new mathematical event generated by the RNG, its outcome cannot be predicted.
Our verdict
As much as we would like to be able to tell you that there actually is a way of guessing which games are hot or which slots are about to give out massive payouts, the truth is that nobody can really tell.
In gambling, everything is completely random on each spin, hand dealt or roll of the dice. You are just as likely to win 10 spins in a row as you are losing 10 spins in a row. Nobody can really tell.
