A narrow notch, groove or opening, such as a keyway in machinery or a slit for coins in a machine. Also used figuratively: a position or slot in a schedule or program; a vacancy or opening in something such as a timetable, book or program.
The earliest slot machines had only three reels, which allowed for just over a thousand possible combinations. The modern versions of these machines use a microprocessor to select the stops on each of the reels. The visible reels merely serve to show the results of this selection. The computer assigns a different probability to each symbol on each of the multiple reels, so a winning symbol might appear on the payline just as often as a losing one. To the player, it might seem that a particular symbol is so close to appearing that it’s “just so lucky”, but in fact, this is just a side effect of random number generation.
Players’ enjoyment of slots is influenced by both their cognitive and emotional state during play. The intermittent rewards and attention-capturing features of the game distract them from unpleasant, self-depreciating thoughts, allowing them to experience a sense of flow (Dixon et al., 2018). In addition, the exogenous reining in of attention by the machine induces a characteristic state of mind that Dixon and colleagues call dark flow (see the article on Dark Flow for further discussion). Dark flow correlates with the intensity of pleasure experienced during slots play, but does not predict how much a player enjoys playing slots in general.