With a rather large number of people lurking and posting, there should be a reasonable number of people who have won something worth mentioning.

My family has a running joke that we have to buy a lotto ticket every time something good happens. We do it with our eyes wide open (no expectation of winning) but, hey, After a thousand (or so) teckets purchased over the last 30-years, all I have to show for it is a few Thousand dollars donated "to benefit older Pennsylvanians".

 

I have won a few small cash drawings type lotteries from charity type things over the years.

Once a few years ago I hit a $500 jackpot on a $1 slot play while in Las vegas while on a business trip with the not yet ex! I gave the not yet Ex half of it when I cashed the pay ticket yet she was still mad that I didn't give her more. Even worse, she lost about half of what I gave her within 20 minutes doing her damndest to beat me on a win of her own.

I on the other hand spent about $20 more that night and won at least $50 back for it to which I bought the daughter a Lego set she wanted with the next day.

 

I've won $1,000 once and $500 twice on $2 scratch-offs. That was when i was in my late teens/early 20's. Don't buy them much anymore. Maybe one every month or two. I never win anymore.

 

With a rather large number of people lurking and posting, there should be a reasonable number of people who have won something worth mentioning.

My family has a running joke that we have to buy a lotto ticket every time something good happens. We do it with our eyes wide open (no expectation of winning) but, hey, After a thousand (or so) teckets purchased over the last 30-years, all I have to show for it is a few Thousand dollars donated "to benefit older Pennsylvanians".

Look at it this way. A couple of more years and you will start getting it back.

 

Once a few years ago I hit a $500 jackpot on a $1 slot play while in Las vegas while on a business trip with the not yet ex! I gave the not yet Ex half of it when I cashed the pay ticket yet she was still mad that I didn't give her more. Even worse, she lost about half of what I gave her within 20 minutes doing her damndest to beat me on a win of her own.

Once on a 6 hour layover in PR, I headed on over to the casinos at Isla Verde. That was back in the day when you could drop your bags in a sidewalk locker and head on out.

Anyway, in a few short minutes I made about $75 off of about $1 investment. I had never played slots before and couldn't figure out how they made any money like that. I learned how they made their money on my layover on the way back.

 

Look at it this way. A couple of more years and you will start getting it back.

I've hope I've been setting a good example so my kids (and their friends) will continue to fund the program for our benefit.

 

I've won $100 three times on scratch tickets. On the other hand, I won $350 (clear) at a Blackjack table in Vegas. Started with a $40 stake and played for 4 hours. Won a few $100-ish pots at blackjack on other occasions. Not big scores by any means.

 

Once on a 6 hour layover in PR, I headed on over to the casinos at Isla Verde. That was back in the day when you could drop your bags in a sidewalk locker and head on out.

Anyway, in a few short minutes I made about $75 off of about $1 investment. I had never played slots before and couldn't figure out how they made any money like that. I learned how they made their money on my layover on the way back.

When I was in my teens (~ 25 - 30 years ago) we took a family trip and were at Las Vegas for a few days.

One day while we were at Circus Circus we were going through the casinos and a little old lady (really old old. walker and breathing dust old) hit a jackpot on a slot machine. Major holy horns blowing jackpot!

Damn Near scared her into the grave! Back then the slots still paid out in either real quarters, 50 cent pieces, silver dollars or whatever token denoted their base value so she got dumped on out the payout slot in over $10K in whatever it was.

We stood and watched. When it was all done she had two security guards carrying her payout in five gallon buckets on push carts and she almost looked like she was going to die of shock for it all.

Today she would have just gotten a payout ticket and no fuss beyond a few bells and quiet a visit by casino security or whomever for it all.

 

Never won over 100 on the lottery. I did manage to hit a fair amount on a KENO machine at the Mt Pleasant MI casino. I joined the players club, got my promotional money, found a machine, entered my numbers, press the play max about 6 times. My wife hadn't played her first game. The bells went off and I won $8750 dollars. I still play those numbers now and then, but it hasn't produced like it did using the Indian's money that night. The wife won a fair amount of money that week. We certainly left with more than we went with.

The guy who "created" that sequence of numbers won consistently on them, as did his family. I know his daughter and granddaughter use them. @nsaspook if you feel like playing the keno game, the numbers are seven over six. Specifically ... 7 16 17 18 26 27 28. Good luck.

 

The guy who "created" that sequence of numbers won consistently on them, as did his family. I know his daughter and granddaughter use them. @nsaspook if you feel like playing the keno game, the numbers are seven over six. Specifically ... 7 16 17 18 26 27 28. Good luck.

To win consistently one must first play consistently.

Memory is selective. If someone plays a $1 game every day of the year and hit one day for $200 they will remember the "big payoff" and not the $165 loss.

I would need to see hard evidence these numbers do in fact pay off, or even pay off in a higher ratio over any other set of numbers, say, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7.

 

I've had a few good days at casinos, typically because I do not believe money has any allegiances, thus one is never playing with "the house's money."

If you won something that's YOUR money mate, and you best work to conserve it. Of course, I'll typically have a big hit soon into our session, so I don't want to play any more and just wind up following everyone else around till they get bored or broke.

Then I have to buy the ice cream.

Several stories: went to AC for a few days, got an offer when signing up for a player's card that any loss up to $200 in our first 2 hours of play would be refunded. YIPPIE, I truly cannot loose. So I head for the highest stake slot I can find nearby my wife, load $200 into a $5 machine, play the $10 max and very first pull I hit a 60:1 payoff for $600. Instantly cash out, spend the next three days of the trip playing off that amount, did manage to keep $100 or so.

NYS has a Quick Draw keno like game available in many places such as bars and restaurants. My wife like to play it and I like it when she is happy. One night I decide just to check our tickets before we leave but I'm sure there may be $2 or $4 on them and not worth the hassle. I scan them, one has a $400 payout on it. I took a while looking back on the game history but could not find how the heck we won that much off a $2 game.

Managed once on anther trip to AC to break away from the wife to go play some poker. Low fixed limit game with every one playing no fold 'em but me. After an hour or two someone notices everyone's chip pile is getting low though everyone has bought in for about the same $100 but now were down to under $50. Everyone's pile but mine, I was up $300 plus. Wife comes by, sees my pile, demands I leave. Seems she thought it evil I was taking money from the old guy next to me, who was having a great time making his donations despite his wheel chair and O2 tank.

Went to Curacao once, lots of very small casinos there, our hotel sported a 100 slot palace which was actually fun. Say with a friend to play some blackjack and we both were doing incredibly well, me up $300 and him $700 or $800 (he bets bigger) due to a run of luck and just 2 or 3 dealer errors in our favor. Just luck, no system beyond basic strategy. Lots of fun when you are winning with young pretty women who smile at you while they pay you off. The last dealer was a humorless young man who dealt lightning fast and swept cards away before you could even register the count. And he was killing us! After loosing 4 hands in a row I stopped playing but my friend persisted and lost half his winnings. I told him this guy is the Terminator send to step our winnings which is why we should be done. We came back the next tow nights and continued our winning streaks, though not as strong, but we even beat the Terminator the next time we were up against him.

 

I won once te equivalent to 30 Usd appr.

Many years ago I was buying regularly, tickets for the local Lotto (you win with 3, 4, 5 or 6 numbers of your choice from the 0 to 50 range). Every time I also did put aside the same amount spent to buy the ticket.

Around one year later (?) I found the quantity very appealing. Laziness and/or inflation (we play in the top league) made me to desist.

 

We stood and watched. When it was all done she had two security guards carrying her payout in five gallon buckets on push carts and she almost looked like she was going to die of shock for it all.

The old Circus Circus in Reno still has a decent real coin payout section. Love that 'Analog' machine payout sound.

 

The old Circus Circus in Reno still has a decent real coin payout section. Love that 'Analog' machine payout sound.

That is well known by slot makers and buyers, which is why they ay that MP3 of coins falling into the tray while printing out your ticket. Heck, they even still have a coin tray on most machines I have seen.

Slots are not my favored form of gambling. My choice is poker and that is more grinding rather that gambling. I could post my chip graph when it was still semi legal to play online and I raked in a few grand over a few years.

Not a bad take for just being a hobby.

 

The old Circus Circus in Reno still has a decent real coin payout section. Love that 'Analog' machine payout sound.

I was in Las Vegas around christmas last year and it just does feel the same now without that. Everything is too formal and electronic now.

My biggest dislike is the way the systems are all set up to work as one big machine so that no matter where you spend your first real bill every game you play with any payout or cash return ticket is tracked so they can pick your money off bit by bit as you go from machine to machine.

It wouldn't surprise me if they have the ticket cashing machines networked to the systems so that they can track every bill that gets paid out to whatever machine you put it in just to skim some more off you.

When I was there almost every $20, $50, or $100 I brought with me from home I put in a machine within 5 - 10 plays gave me a payout return that put me just a bit over what I had put in. Not a lot but maybe 5 - 15% above the inserted bills face value and enough to make me feel like I was winning and wanted to stay and play more.

However whenever I used a bill I got from one of the payout kiosks in the same casino I never got a return win that put me above the bills face value just as when going from machine to machine with the payout tickets opposed to using a new bill from home every time. Seemed way too consistent to me to not make me suspicious.

 

Trust me, the payouts on slots are completely random, though they are biased to eventually rake in everything you put in if you play long enough. No gaming commission anywhere would allow anything but that.

That is what "negative expectation" is all about.

While they do indeed track every penny you put in and take out (assuming you use your player card, and y should be using it) that too is for your convenience. Should you make a bit hit you can ask for a report so you can deduct your losses from that payout.

If you still fear electronic manipulation you can stick to table games where they shuffle of the cards or the roll of the dice determines the winners and losers. I do like to shoot craps where you can lace the best bet in any casino: "odds" bets have odds of 1:1 so over a lifetime you will loose nothing. You also gain nothing, but it is fun to play with lots of other people.

 

I got 100 scratchers 'free' when buying a new car in 1985. Turned them into a $10 and two $1's, then bought beer. First and only time.

 

Trust me, the payouts on slots are completely random, though they are biased to eventually rake in everything you put in if you play long enough. No gaming commission anywhere would allow anything but that.

How random each pull is depends on where you gamble. Oregon has the Vegas RNG system but across the boarder that's still illegal, so they use 'fake' slot machines in Tribal casinos.

http://www.rga-wa.org/docs/RGA_Q&A.pdf

A. Yes and No. Most people would describe these machines as “slot” machines. They look very similar, and have some of the features that are associated with Las Vegas type slots that make them fun to play. Frankly, that’s why operators want them---to give their customers the fun and excitement they are looking for in a casino setting. But, there is a critical difference between slot machines and electronic scratch ticket machines. Slot machines, like those in Las Vegas, have a random number generator in each machine on which the winnings for that machine are solely based. Players play against individual machines. The machines allowed in Washington State are essentially electronic versions of scratch lottery tickets and other games like pull tabs, which are existing forms of gambling. All of these machines are connected to a central computer, and winners are drawn from a pool of pre-determined winning tickets. A player at one machine is playing against everyone else who is sitting at other machines at any given time. In principle, there is no difference between sitting at a slot-style machine and repeatedly buying scratch tickets at a convenience store counter, or buying pull tabs in a tavern.

 

How random each pull is depends on where you gamble. Oregon has the Vegas RNG system but across the boarder that's still illegal, so they use 'fake' slot machines in Tribal casinos.

http://www.rga-wa.org/docs/RGA_Q&A.pdf

While the set of winners and losers is pre determined by the set of virtual pull tab cards which card you pull is still random, thus this is a fair game, albeit with a decided (30%!) house edge.

The distinction is just a legs technicality to get around the ban on slot machines per say.

Here in NY slots are illegal but "video lottery" is not, so we have slot parlors where you are seemingly playing a slot machine that in the back end is a lottery. The only difference the user sees is the lack of a slot handle.

The payouts suck, and the lines to redeem tickets are absurdly long.

 

While the set of winners and losers is pre determined by the set of virtual pull tab cards which card you pull is still random, thus this is a fair game, albeit with a decided (30%!) house edge.

The distinction is just a legs technicality to get around the ban on slot machines per say.

Here in NY slots are illegal but "video lottery" is not, so we have slot parlors where you are seemingly playing a slot machine that in the back end is a lottery. The only difference the user sees is the lack of a slot handle.

The payouts suck, and the lines to redeem tickets are absurdly long.

That's true but it's 'nice' knowing the actual bandit your playing took your money not a Class II machine bingo game randomization at a central location. Here "video lottery" is a Las Vegas style’ Class III machine. If I play cards at a bar I want Card odds not Bingo odds.
http://www.grandronde.org/news/smok...gas-style-slot-machines/#sthash.qA1qC9XO.dpbs
Either way, ‘you pay your money, you take your chances’

Odds of winning a huge lottery jackpot are about 1 in 50 million,
odds of winning at the MegaBucks slot machine game are about 1 in 25 million

The odds of being struck by lightning are 1 in a million.

Trivia:
The most popular slot machine game in any casino is Wheel of Fortune.

Why?

Spoiler

The game reminded them of watching Wheel of Fortune with their grandmother.