Slot Machines: Easy Fun but Difficult to Understand?

As reported by the South Town Star: "Slot machines are unlike any other gambling option in casinos across the country and around the world.

And slot machines are the easiest of all the games
  to play. Just sit down, put in some money and press the button or pull the handle. You'll find out instantly whether you've won or lost.

Table games and video poker, on the other hand, require some homework. You have to learn how to play them in order to participate on an intelligent level.

During the process of learning how to play the games, you also acquire an understanding of the economics of gambling and how the odds are stacked against you.

There are economics to understand about slot machine play, too.

But, unless you take it upon yourself to learn about how the so-called "electronic gaming devices" work and what the real odds are against hitting a significant jackpot, you're pretty much out of luck because the casinos aren't about to tell you.

Neither are the slot machine manufacturers.

Every slot machine is governed by a computer program that guarantees a profit for the casino that owns it.

Even though a particular machine may be programmed to pay back 95 percent of what it takes in and hold the other 5 percent as profit, the odds against winning the top award can be in the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands to one against you.

Sure, paying back 95 percent is very generous, but you have to remember that this includes every single winning combination, and it is distributed among the thousands of people who play the machine during the course of a year.

Only one entity gets the remaining 5 percent, and that's the casino..."