[205guy]

I could be wrong, but I always thought it was possible to "hack" the algorithm that the slots use, as in notice how it might not be totally random and exploit that (but not like that story of the poker-machine bug). For example, people are saying it's totally random, and you can't win, but is it really? Slots are programmed, and I believe they are programmed to give the near-misses that the article talks about.

One pattern I noticed once is that after a few plays (5-20), I would often get a small win, sometimes more than what I'd played already. If I stayed on the machine, the next small win would be after I'd played those profits and a few more plays--I was losing money. But if I got up and switched machines after the small win (usually, but not always, with a small profit), I could get another small win on a different machine much quicker. Once I made about $20 on 25cent slots this way. Another time, I lost $5 trying and gave up. These 2 data points happened 5-10 years ago, I don't go to casinos often enough to claim to know anything. I could be just another gambler with a "sure-win" strategy. Or maybe that was a "naïve" algorithm used by the early video slots and it was too easy to figure out and has since been replaced by different ones. We'll never know.