Slot machines don’t become due for a win when they haven’t paid out in a long while, and they also don’t become hot and start paying out more. Every spin is like a single coin toss or a single roll of the dice—the outcome is independent of all the outcomes prior to it. The location of the slot machine.

Slot machines often get a bad rap from gambling writers. But the truth is, slot machines are the perfect gambling activity for certain types of people. They’re easy to understand, they’re easy to play, and they offer the possibility of big winnings.

The unicorns that most gamblers are looking for in the casino, though, are the loosest slot machines. What does that mean?

When a gambler describes a slot machine as “loose” or “tight,” she’s usually referring to the payback percentage for the game. Slots with a higher payback percentage than average are loose, while slots with a lower payback percentage than average are tight. Loose slots usually have a higher hit ratio than tight slots, too.

You’ll find plenty of inaccurate information about how to find the loosest slot machines in the casino. I try to avoid most of those inaccuracies in this post, but I do want to begin with a warning:

The probabilities involved with slot machines are “opaque.” That means you don’t have any way of knowing what the payback percentage for any particular slot machine game is. The random number generator that determines the outcomes is programmed to have each symbol come up with a certain probability, but there’s no way of knowing if that number has been set to 1/6 or 1/60. Even observing a large number of spins only provides limited insight into these probabilities.

You do know what the payouts are for the various combinations. But since that’s only half the equation, you can’t really know whether a game is loose or tight except anecdotally. I’m going to assume that anecdotal evidence has some value, but in terms of math, science, and statistics, anecdotal has no value at all.

1- Look for the Loose Slot Machines in the Locations Where Loose Slot Machines Are Found

Casino mapping is a real thing, but it’s not as simple as some gamblers would have you believe. If finding the loose slot machines were as easy as just playing the games located nearest the walkways, everyone would play those games to the exclusion of the other games.

That being said, it might be worth giving those games a try if they look like fun. They’re not more likely to be tighter than the other machines than any other game on the casino floor.

I’ve read that some areas in the casino have lower payout machines than others, and it might be wise to avoid games in those areas. These might include:

• The main slot machine floor. These games probably see the most action, so it would make sense for them to have lower payback percentages.
• Near the table games. These games see more than their fair share of action, too. The same reasoning would apply.
• Near the poker room. I’ve seen some gamblers swear that these are the worst machines in the casino. You have to wonder about a poker player who spends a lot of time playing slots, though.

Of course, there are other locations where the loosest machines might be located. Depending on whom you believe, these might include:

• Anywhere that gets more traffic than usual. For example, if a slot machine is located near the elevators, it might have higher payouts to attract play from someone who might not otherwise play.
• Anywhere that another gambler recommends. This is, of course, the classic mistake—relying on anecdotal evidence. It’s possible, though, that you might find a slot machine player who’s been paying close attention and knows where the loose machines are.

In fact, that leads me to my next point…

2- Don’t Be Afraid to Ask

The obvious person to ask about the location in the casino of the loosest slot machines is someone who works there. This isn’t a guarantee that she’ll be able to direct you to a loose machine, but she might have some insight based on her observations. Depending on how long she’s worked at the casino, she’s probably seen tens of thousands of even hundreds of thousands of gamblers over her career there. She might have noticed that a lot of them seem to be winning on slot machines in a certain location.

If you’re dealing with a cocktail waitress, it’s a good idea to tip generously. For that matter, no matter what they do at the casino, if they try to help you find a loose gambling machine, tip them. At some casinos, employees are forbidden from suggesting specific games. Sometimes you’ll find casino employees who just don’t want to be bothered with such concerns, too. Don’t be a jerk if that’s the case.

3- Don’t Play Slot Machines That AREN’T in Casinos

In towns like Las Vegas, slot machines are everywhere, in all kinds of businesses. Every bar in the city seems to have some slot machines. The airport is full of slot machines, too. You can even find slot machines in the gas stations and convenience stores.

We know one thing for certain about slot machine games in these non-casino locations:

Casinos, on the other hand, are competing with other casinos for the mindshare and hard-earned dollars of the casino gamblers. Since they’re in competition with the other casinos, they must offer payback percentages that are as good as their competitors’ or better.

This is one ironclad rule for finding the loosest slot machines in the casino:

ONLY play slot machines in a casino, not the slot machines in other businesses. That’s as good a starting point as any. The difference could be as significant as the difference between a 94% payback percentage and a 74% payback percentage.

Assuming you’re a conservative, low-stakes player, here’s the difference in predicted hourly loss between those 2 examples:

• Assume 400 spins per hour at $1.25 per spin, for $500 per hour in action.
• A game with a 94% payback percentage will see predicted losses of $30/hour.
• A game with a 74% payback percentage, though, will see predicted losses of $130/hour.

If that difference doesn’t seem significant to you, what are you doing playing penny slots anyway?

4- Look for the Plainest, Most Boring Games with the Fewest Paylines

Generally, the slot machines with lots of paylines have lower payout percentages. They’re able to compensate for this psychologically by having a high hit frequency. With 25 paylines, you might win something on almost every spin, even if it’s an amount lower than the amount you wagered in total.

For example, you might be playing a penny game with a max bet of 5 coins and 25 paylines. You’re betting $1.25 every time you spin the reels. Many times, 1 or 2 paylines might win, but the payout on those bets might only be 50 cents. That’s a lot compared to the nickel you bet on that individual payline, but you bet on 25 paylines, remember?

Since such games have no bonus features or bells and whistles, the casino can afford to have them pay out more than the big fancy games. I had a lot of fun on The Big Lebowski slot machines recently, but I can’t even imagine what such a big impressive game like that must cost a casino. The cost of the machine alone must be outrageous.

5- Stick with the Flat Top Slot Machines

Slot machines can be broadly lumped into 2 different categories:

• Progressives
• Flat tops

A flat top slot machine is a game with a jackpot (top prize) of a fixed amount. This amount is usually 1000 times the size of your bet, give or take.

For that matter, you probably won’t get rich playing progressive slots, either. The odds of winning the jackpot are just terrible, comparable to playing the lottery. Sure, some people win the lottery. But I can’t imagine playing a game with a house edge that large repeatedly, hundreds of times per hour.

6- Play the Highest Denomination Game You Can Afford

You’d probably be surprised to know that penny slots are often as expensive to play (or even more expensive) than dollar slots. Here’s why:

Most penny slots require you to wager 5 credits or more per spin. It’s also hard to resist betting on multiple paylines. It’s easy to find a game with 5 coin bets on each line and with 25 paylines. Before you know it, you’re betting $1.25 on every spin.

But you could switch to a dollar slot machine and probably do a lot better. For one thing, you could just bet a dollar per spin on a single payline. Now you’re betting less per spin than you were on the quarter machine. But what’s really impressive is the difference in payback percentage.

Suppose you play 600 spins per hour on that penny machine. You’re putting $750 in action each hour–$1.25 per spin multiplied by the 600 spins per hour. With an 88.49% payback percentage, in the long run, you’ll average $663.68 back per hour. That’s an average loss per hour of $86.33.

No play those same 600 spins on a dollar machine, betting only a dollar on each spin. That’s $600 in action multiplied by 92.63% to get an average payback amount of $44.22. You’ll lose HALF the money on the dollar slot as you would the penny slot! That’s a significant difference, and one you should take note of.

Just be careful and read the pay tables. Slot machines vary a lot from one machine to another, and you should always play enough coins to activate the biggest jackpot. If the ratios change based on playing for fewer coins, you want to avoid that game or bet max coin. You might be surprised at how many slot machines DON’T require you to place a max coin bet, too, though.

7- Try Online Slot Machines

Since online casinos don’t have all the brick and mortar expenses of land-based casinos, their games sometimes offer higher payback percentages. You must balance this with the trustworthiness of the casino, though. Some internet casinos are notoriously hard to cash out of.

Of course, if you stick with the casinos recommended on this site, you probably won’t have to worry about that. Our team of casino reviewers and researchers has thoroughly vetted the properties we list here on our site.

And if you take how competitive they are as a measure for how loose their games must be to attract customers, you’ll find that the casinos on the web are even more competitive than the casinos in Las Vegas.

8- Track Your Results and Make Some Assumptions

I recently visited a casino and tracked my results carefully on a machine. Of course, there’s nothing especially scientific about 200 spins on a machine, but you’re still operating from more data than most players if you do this.

It’s not hard to project a payback percentage, either. Start by writing down how much money you put in the machine. Then count how many spins you make on that machine. When you cash out of the machine, take a note of how much you’ve lost. You multiply the number of spins you made by how much you were betting per spin. You divide the total amount of money you lost by how many spins you made. Then you know the average loss per spin and can convert it into a payback percentage.

In my case, I was betting $1.25 per spin, so I put $250 in to action over 200 spins. I lost $50, which amounts to 25 cents per spin. 25 cents divided by $1.25 is 20%, which is the house edge. The payback percentage is the amount you get to keep—in this case, 80%. (You just subtract it from 100%.) Your goal is to find a payback percentage that’s better than average. Tracking your results this way also makes playing slot machines more interesting, because you have something to pay attention to.

Gambling at a casino—especially on slot machines—should be considered an entertainment expense. Budget for it accordingly, and if you occasionally win, great. But don’t count on it.

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How to find loose slots? Here we will give main guidelines and tips on how to find the loosest slots in any online casino.

The knowledge on how to find loose slots have always been the Holy Grail of casino players. There are a lot of myths surrounding that topic, especially regarding land casinos: near the entrance, in the end of the line, etc, and although there is no buffet in online casinos, there are still certain guideline you can follow in order to find loose slots and avoid the tight ones.

Online the situation is a bit more simple since many slot developers publish the expected return on their machines. Below you can see a list of best paying slots by software and then updated overall rating.

Loose Slots by Type & Country

Best Paying Slot Machines Online

Play Free Dollar Slot Machines

Unfortunately, not all providers publish these details. In this article we will go over the key rules on how to find loose slots in any online casino. For specific slots and more info on how online slots work, how they differ from land slot machines, feel free to click through to the relevant pages.

Best Overall Slots

If you find our loosest slots list helpful, we would appreciate if you share it with others. Thank you!

What is a loose slot machine?

There are endless speculations regarding loose slots. It’s natural, since finding a loose slot is the Holy Grail of every casino player. Before we go into that, we need to be clear: there is ONLY one sure way to know if the slot is loose or tight and that is to check the RTP (Return to Player).

RTP of a slot machine is the single number that defines what is the average return the player will get. The higher the RTP – the looser that particular slot. Luckily, many of online slots developers are forced to publish the RTP of every slot they make, so you have no reason to search for various signs and follow ridiculous beliefs. All you need to do is check the number and that’s it. As simple as that.

Generally speaking, when it comes to internet slots, 97% and higher is considered loose. 95%-96% is average. Below 94% the slot should be considered tight.

Top Dollar Slot Machine Videos

Which Slots Tend to be Tight

It’s hard to give general guidelines as each slot is different and the best solution is just to check the official RTP, it is published. However, here are two general rules:

Progressive Slots

Stay away from Progressive Slots. Progressive slots sound like fun- Who wouldn’t like to win $1,000,000 in one spin, but the chances of hitting the jackpot on a progressive slot are similar to winning in lottery. The casinos promote them and their huge jackpots in order to attract players, but for every player that hits the jackpot, 1,000,000 players loose all their bankroll. Our first advice: stay away. If you must, limit yourself to 10% of your bankroll or lower.

Online Slots by Land Based Manufactures

There are exceptions, but in general land based focused manufacturers, such as Amaya, SG, Bally, Aristocrat, tend to have lower RTPs than online focused developers (NetEnt, Microgaming, Rival, BetSoft, Thunderkick, etc). It’s not precise on individual slot bases but more as a general rule.

The main reason for that is that monsters like Bally or Amaya are aware that their slots are played in all brick and mortar casinos across the globe, and they assume that players will stick to the familiar titles. Even then, the online versions have higher returns – for example Cleopatra slot online can offer 95% return while in land based casinos the returns are usually below 90%.

Loose Slots Myths

Of course, there is also endless number of myths surrounding slot machines. Many of them are completely false while some cannot be truly verified. The main problem is that these beliefs can be very misleading, give players false sense of security and cost them more money than what they intended to risk.

We will go over a few, but for example look at this article at WikiHow. Here are the things they recommend players to do:

1. “Play the maximum number of coins” – true but only for specific slots. There are some slots that offer higher payout for maximum number of coins. However, on the other 99% of slot machines, it won’t help you at all and can just cause you to loose more money by increasing your bet per spin.
2. “Test the payout of your machine” – that’s simply bulls**t.Even you if you spent the last 10 years playing slots in Vegas, you cannot make a few spins and understand if it’s loose or not. Each machine has different variance and settings. In reality, you need to make 10000 spins to be able to analyze the RTP.
3. “Play multiple machines at once” – not true or false. That’s something that varies between casinos and cannot be verified.
4. “Don’t play multiple payline slots” – false. There are plenty multiple line slots that offer much higher returns. Maybe it was true 30 years ago when multiple line slots just entered the market but it’s not correct now.
5. “Gamble in casinos”– true. It’s better to play in casinos and not in airports for example.

Old Slots vs New Slots

The theory is that old slots tend to be more loose than the new ones. The reason behind this rule is simple: most of the players that visit the “New Slots” section of the casino are the regular players, the loyal customers that are checking the new game. The casinos are aware of that. They know that new slots is what the regular players are looking for and it’s very unlikely for them to abandon the casino after few bad sessions on the “exiting- one of the kind- special-new” slot machine and take advantage of that.

Boring is Good

Another theory is boring slots. In most cases they are more loose than the exciting ones with special graphics and effects. The reason behind it is that the casinos like to post that their payout is up to 97%/98%/99%/etc. Of course it doesn’t mean that all slots pay 99%, but still there are one or few that do have that payout. The highest chances to find those slots are between the “forgotten” slots, the ones the almost no one plays. It takes some time and some testing, but if you go over few slots and you are patient, you will find it.

FAQ

So, can I make money by playing loosest slots?

In general the answer is no. However, there are exceptions that allow you to get a small edge over the house. The main one is a combination of favorable bonus + highest payout slot. In some cases we checked you can get even to +10% over the house, but it’s limited as the maximum bonus amount is $100. So we would say it’s not a way to make money but a way to increase your winning odds while playing online.

Are high limit slots have higher odds?

Not necessarily. When it comes to online casinos, 95% of the slots offer the same payouts for all range of bets. However there are exceptions. For clearest example are some of Barcrest slots where you get much higher return on Big Bets. Monopoly Bring the House Down is a good example where the regular RTP is 94.1% but it goes to 98.1% on big bets. Bottom line: read the rules before you play.

Can I trust the published RTP?

Yes, you can. The reason why many providers list the RTP data is due to UK Gambling Commission Regulations. Those RTP’s are being tested intensively and they will suffer enormous fines if they post misleading information.

Is there a way to tell when a slot machine will hit?

No. There is not. As simple as that.

Do online slot have different return than land based slots?

Yes, they are. The average return on online slots is much higher than in land based casinos. The average return in brick and mortar establishments varies based on specific country and state rules but on average stands on 85% while in online casinos it is 10% higher – 95%.

Does a slot machines pays the same in all casinos?

In most cases yes, but there are few exceptions. There are few software providers, the most familiar are RTG and Play’n Go, which have three different settings for their slots – loose, medium and tight. And each casino can define which of these settings they use.

Can a casino change the payout percentage?

No, they cannot. The exception is the software providers we listed in the previous question, but even here they cannot alter the slots, but choose different setting from those allowed by the software developer.

Will I improve my odds by redeeming a bonus?

Not always. It depends fully on the bonus terms. In general only cashable bonuses will increase your winning odds. Plus they should have low wagering requirements and no maximum cashout. The last part is extremely important so make sure the bonuses you redeem don’t have this term.