March 2010

The Truth About Playing Full Coin by John Robison

Almost every casino has its own gaming guide, and every casino gaming guide I’ve ever read recommends playing full coin at all times on all slot machines. Many slot books make this same recommendation. The reason they give for always playing full coin is that you get the maximum long-term payback possible from a machine only when you play full coin. This statement is true for some machines. For others, it isn’t. Moreover, concentrating only on long-term payback completely ignores the fact that you are putting more money at risk when you play full coin than when you play short coin. Is the extra risk always balanced out by the increase in payback? Are you really better off playing full coin at all times on all machines? I analyzed the programming on more than 1,000 slot machines to formulate Robison’s Rules for Playing Full Coin, which follow.

 — Play one coin at a time on Straight Multipliers. A straight multiplier is a machine on which the payoffs for the winning combinations for the second coin are exactly twice those of the first coin, and the payoffs for the third coin are three times those of the first, etc. An example of a straight multiplier is a two-coin Double Diamond machine, which pays 800 coins for the jackpot when you play one coin, and 1600 coins for the jackpot when you play two coins. Playing more than one coin at a time on a straight multiplier is a waste of your bankroll. You’re not buying any new winning combinations, nor are you buying a bonus for a winning combination. The long-term payback of a straight multiplier is the same regardless of how many coins you play.

— Play one coin at a time on Bonus Multipliers. A bonus multiplier is just like a straight multiplier, only one or more combinations pay a bonus over the straight multiple. A three-coin Double Diamond machine, which pays 800, 1600, and 2500 coins for the jackpot when playing one, two, or three coins, respectively, is an example of a bonus multiplier. The straight multiple for the three-coin jackpot is 2400 coins, but this machine pays a 100-coin bonus for playing the third coin. Even though bonus multipliers encourage you to play full coin to qualify for their juicy bonuses on some winning combinations (usually just the top jackpot), those combinations hit so infrequently that even huge bonuses on them increase the long-term payback by very little.

Let’s look at an IGT Red, White and Blue machine. One payback program available for this machine pays a 2,800-coin bonus on the top jackpot for full-coin play. The long-term payback when playing one coin at a time is 91.757%, while the long-term payback when playing three coins at a time is 92.47%. The 0.713 percentage point increase in long-term payback does not make it worthwhile to play three coins at a time, unless you also cut back on the number of spins in such a way that you give the same amount of action. If you play at the same pace, you’ll end up playing three times as much money in the machine, but you won’t get enough of an increase in payback.

Let’s compare the expected losses for the three styles of play: one coin at regular pace, three coins at regular pace and three coins at a slow (one-third of regular) pace. Let’s say we play through $1,500 at regular pace playing one coin at a time. The long-term payback is 91.757% when we play one coin at a time, so the house edge is 8.243%. When we play $1,500 against that house edge, our expected loss is 8.243% of $1,500, or $123.65. If we play three coins at a time at the same pace, we decrease the house edge to 7.53%, but we triple our action to $4,500. Our expected loss is $338.75. But if we can play three coins at a time at one-third pace, we play through only $1,500 at the full-coin house edge and have an expected loss of only $112.95. It’s nearly impossible to maintain a slow pace when playing the slots.

Because of the difficulty of playing at a slow pace, I recommend players play one coin at a time on bonus multipliers. I should mention one other thing. Many times the bonus is just a few hundred coins, but sometimes the bonus is huge. If you can’t stand the thought of missing out on that, do as I do, stay away from bonus multipliers with huge bonuses.

A few years ago, I was at a casino playing one coin at a time on a bonus multiplier that paid bonuses for full-coin play on multiple combinations. I hit one of the lower-paying bonus combinations. As I was waiting for my handpay, a passerby said I bet you wish you had played full coin. I said if I had known I was going to hit on this spin, I would have played full coin. I didn’t know that. Also, if I had been playing full coin, I would have run out of session money long before this spin. Instead, I chose to stretch my bankroll, playing one coin.

— John Robison is an expert video poker player and author of The Slot Expert’s Guide to Playing Slots, $6.95, by Huntington Press (800) 244-2224. He is the managing editor of the gaming pages at rgtgaming.com. Email: slotexpert@comcast.net.