Near Miss Slot Jackpots

March 5, 2008

It seems like a common occurence for casino patrons is to line up two of the highest jackpot winning symbols but not the third. Sometimes that symbol appers on the screen but on a different line, tantalizingly close to giving you your big payday. These near miss slot jackpots can be heartbreaking to the player, but it’s almost a tease when you get so close and then you just want to keep pumping in coins. There are players out there who think this is a big trick put on by the casino to induce play, but casino expert Mark Pilarski has his own take on the situation.
It seems like everyone has been there, watching a treasure chest come up, followed by another, only to see a good for nothing, worthless symbol ruin our hopes of financial freedom. Winning combinations that appear more often than would occur randomly is called near-miss programming. While we don’t know the legality of this near-miss programming in each and every gambling jurisdiction, we do know that both New Jersey and Nevada have declared this practice illegal, and on average most states’ Gaming Commissions follow suit to whatever these two states are doing.

The reel display on modern slot machines is controlled by computer software, so in theory a machine could be programmed to display combinations more frequently, combinations that are closer to the winning combinations. Giving players hope by displaying winners on the first two rounds then a bust on the third can tease players into a gambling frenzy since they believe that they almost just won the jackpot.

You should also consider that with 20 symbols on a reel and 256 different stopping points, Treasure Chests can appear above or below the payline and seem like a near miss. Even so, slot machines cannot be specifically programmed to show winning combinations at a mathematically impossible rate. The near miss must be just as likely to occur as any other equally random combination.

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Near Miss Slot Jackpots

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