How to Play Slot Machines. Playing casino slots can be a fun (and sometimes addictive) hobby. These machines can bombard your senses with lights, sounds, or vibrations, all of which are designed to entice you to play either in a casino. Cheating at Slot Machines. Cheating at slots is whole lot harder than it sounds and I wouldn't suggest trying it. First of all, cheating at a money game like a slot machine is essentially stealing money. If you're caught, you'll be treated like a thief, which is.

Slots are the easiest games in the casino to play -- spin the reels and take your chances. Players have no control over what combinations will show up or when a jackpot will hit. There is no way to tell when a machine will be hot or cold. Still, there are some pitfalls. It's important to read the glass and learn what type of machine it is. The three major types of reel-spinning slots are the multiplier, the buy-a-pay, and the progressive.

The multiplier. On a multiplier, payoffs are proportionate for each coin played--except, usually, for the top jackpot. If the machine accepts up to three coins at a time, and if you play one coin, three bars pay back ten. Three bars will pay back 20 for two coins and 30 for three coins. However, three sevens might pay 500 for one coin and 1,000 for two, but jump to 10,000 when all three coins are played. Read the glass to find out if that's the case before playing less than the maximum coins on this type of machine.

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The buy-a-pay. Never play less than the maximum on a buy-a-pay, on which each coin 'buys' a set of symbols or a payout line. The first coin in might allow the player to win only on cherry combination, while the second coin activates the bar payouts, and the third coin activates the sevens. Woe is the player who hits three jackpot symbols on a buy-a-pay with only one coin played--the player gets nothing back. A variation is the machine with multiple payout lines, each activated by a separate coin. All symbols are active with each coin, but if a winning combination lines up on the third-coin payout line with only one or two coins played, the payoff is zero.

The progressive. You also have no reason to play less than maximum coins on a progressive machine. A player who eventually lines up the jackpot symbols gets a percentage of each coin played. The first progressive machines were self-contained--the jackpot was determined by how much that particular machine had been played since the last big hit. Today most progressives are linked electronically to other machines, with all coins played in the linked machines adding to a common jackpot.

These jackpots can be enormous -- the record is $39,710,826.26, a $1 progressive at a Las Vegas casino. The tradeoff is that frequency and size of other payouts are usually smaller. And you can't win the big jackpot without playing maximum coins.

If you must play fewer than maximum coins, look for a multiplier in which the final-coin jump in the top jackpot is fairly small. Better yet, choose a machine that allows you to stay within your budget while playing maximum coins. If your budget won't allow you to play maximum coins on a $1 machine, move to a quarter machine. If you're not comfortable playing three quarters at a time, move to a two-quarter machine. If you can't play two quarters at a time, play a nickel machine.

With so many paylines and the possibility of betting multiple coins per line, video slots are different. Some penny slots with 20 paylines take up to 25 coins per line. That's a $5 maximum bet -- a pretty penny indeed! Most players bet less than the max on video slots but are sure to cover all the paylines, even if betting only one coin per line. You want to be sure to be eligible for the bonus rounds that give video slots most of their fun. Some progressive jackpots require max coins bets, and some don't. If a max-coins bet is required to be eligible for the jackpot and you're not prepared to roll that high, find a different machine.

Money Management

Managing your money wisely is the most important part of playing any casino game, and also the most difficult part of playing the slots. Even on quarter machines, the amount of money involved runs up quickly. A dedicated slot player on a machine that plays off credits can easily get in 600 pulls an hour. At two quarters at a time, that means wagering $300 per hour -- the same amount a $5 blackjack player risks at an average table speed of 60 hands per hour.

Most of that money is recycled from smaller payouts--at a casino returning 93 percent on quarter slots, the expected average loss for $300 in play is $21. Still, you will come out ahead more often if you pocket some of those smaller payouts and don't continually put everything you get back into the machine.

One method for managing money is to divide your slot bankroll for the day into smaller-session bankrolls. If, for example, you've taken $100 on a two-and-a-half-hour riverboat cruise, allot $20 for each half-hour. Select a quarter machine -- dollar machines could devastate a $100 bankroll in minutes -- and play the $20 through once. If you've received more than $20 in payouts, pocket the excess and play with the original $20. At the end of one half-hour, pocket whatever is left and start a new session with the next $20.

If at any point the original $20 for that session is depleted, that session is over. Finish that half-hour with a walk, or a snack, or a drink until it is time for a new session. Do not dip back into money you've already pocketed.

That may seem rigid, but players who do not use a money management technique all too frequently keep pumping money into the machine until they've lost their entire bankroll. The percentages guarantee that the casino will be the winner in the long run, but lock up a portion of the money as you go along, and you'll walk out of the casino with cash on hand more frequently.

That is changing in new server-based slots that have started to appear in casinos. Operators will be able to change payback percentages at the click of a mouse, but they still must have regulatory approval to do so.

There is a lot more to slot machines than meets the eye. But if you learn the ins and outs of playing them, you can use some strategies that just might help you hit the jackpot.

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When you decide to expand your PC with a new device, you need to understand the expansion slots on your PC’s motherboard so you can determine what type of new device to buy. There are a bunch of different expansion slot standards and variations.

The two most common slots available on today’s PCs are PCI and PCI-Express:

PCI: The Peripheral Component Interconnect type of slot is the most popular and widely available expansion slot on today’s PCs. It’s normally colored white, though often beige is used. There are 32-bit and 64-bit PCI expansion slots.

PCI–Express: The latest rendition of the PCI standard is PCI-Express. PCI-Express slots are generally colored black or dark gray or sometimes even yellow. They also feature a variety of sizes.

Older expansion standards include

PCI-X: The PCI Extended standard was developed to improve on PCI, but as a standard PCI-Express superseded it. Some older PCs may still feature the PCI-X slot, which looks like a standard PCI slot but is considerably longer.

How To Confuse People

Be careful not to confuse PCI-X with PCI-Express! They’re different standards, different slots, and different expansion card types.

How To Confuse A Slot Machine Computer System

AGP: The Accelerated Graphics Port slot was designed specifically to handle high-end graphics adapters. It may still be found on older PCs, but today’s systems use PCI-Express expansion slots to handle high-end graphics adapters. AGP slots were often colored maroon and had a hinged hook on one end to help anchor the AGP card.

ISA: The original expansion slot for the PC family was ISA, which simply stood for Industry Standard Architecture (because the expansion slot lacked an official and suitably technical-sounding name). It had two varieties: 16-bit and a longer 16-bit version. An older Windows XP system may still sport an ISA slot, but few (if any) relevant ISA expansion cards are available today.

Sadly, without opening the case, there’s no way to determine what type of slots are present on your PC’s motherboard, let alone whether the slots are available (or empty). The only way to know for certain is to open the case and have a look.

• When the PC’s motherboard features a variety of slots, and you have a choice, choose a PCI-Express expansion card first.

• Expansion slots are keyed: The edge connector on the expansion card cannot be plugged in backward. Of course, most expansion cards feature a rear slot mount, which means that you have to be determined to plug an expansion card in backward in the first place!

• You can look on the back of your PC and examine the slot covers to determine whether a slot is empty. A blank slot cover, however, may not indicate that an expansion slot is available, because some expansion cards may not use the slot cover. Also, some expansion cards are double-wide and may render useless any empty expansion slots next to them.

• Even though the expansion slots are all standardized, expansion cards come in different lengths. You can find full-length cards, half-size cards, and others. Smaller PC consoles may have room for only smaller expansion cards, or perhaps some expansion slots are limited to hosting only shorter expansion cards. Knowing this type of information before you buy an expansion card will prove to be a boon to your self-esteem.

• PCI-X also featured two sets of voltages for expansion cards: 5 volts and 3.3 volts. Special notches in the expansion cards prevented the wrong slot from being used, but the differing voltages were still an issue for choosing the proper PCI-X expansion card.