Despite the fact that slot machine interfaces have not changed in the past, the operation of slot machines have changed dramatically. Traditional slots used to work purely on mechanical basis, however today online slots or even the actual slot machines you find in Las Vegas or any other casino (and online casino) all around the world have been computerized. What I mean by that is, the logic and operation of slots are based on computer chips and software. To give you a better understanding of what actually goes on behind the scene, let me explain how a simple 3 reel slot machine would work, what I am about to say is something that actually has been implemented for the free slots of slothill.com. When you pull the handle (old fashion way) or press the spin button of slots, a random number generator chooses three totally random numbers within a specific interval set by the slot machines. Each of these numbers corresponds to a real in the slot machine, for example if it was a 5 reel slot machine, five numbers should have been generated having the first number for the first reel of slot machine, the second number for the second reel of slot machine and so on.The outcome of the slot random number generator totally depends on how the slot machine has been designed, for instance, lets assume the interval from 1 to 100 was chosen for the free slots at slothill.com.
As soon as you push the spin button on any of these free slots, three numbers gets generated, it is good to mention that even though the numbers are totally random, they are equally probable, meaning that the probability of a number like 8 coming out of slot random number generator is equal to any other number like 93 in the slot. Moreover, each of the numbers in the slot interval relates or maps to a symbol on our free slot reels, when the three numbers are determined the slot machines looks at its mapping table and determines on what symbol for each reel it is supposed to stop the reel in order to have the hit symbol under the payline. The tricky part is that the numbers in the slot interval are not equally distributed or mapped among the slots symbols, and practically this is the main reason that you do not hit the higher pay symbols as many as you hit the lower pay symbols, when you play our free slots or casino slots. Usually, in a slot machine the highest pay symbol is mapped to only 1 or 2 number in the slot interval, so the odds are very low to hit it comparing to other symbols. For example, in a case where only one number maps to the jackpot symbol the odds of hitting three jackpot symbols which pays the most on slots is 0.01 times 0.01 times 0.01 which is 0.000001 that shows how unlikely it is to hit the jackpot on a slot machine. Most of the time, each reel on slots has its own mapping table, that means if three identical numbers come out of the slot number generator for each of three reels, you do not necessarily hit the same symbol on each reel of the slot, and the reason is that a certain number on the first reel of a slot might map to a different symbol on the second or third reel of the same slot. However our free slots use a single mapping table for all reels on a certain free slot machine.
All real casino slots and online slots including our free slots must own a prize table (pay table) which is always displayed at top or bottom of the slots. The pay table simply shows which set of symbols have a pay out, and how much each set pays out. No need to mentions that, a set of least probable symbols pays out more than higher probable symbols on slots, following the above example, since hitting the jackpot symbol has the lowest probability on a slot machine it always has the highest pay out. Once the generated numbers are mapped to the real symbols, slot machines calculate the pay out based on the hit symbols. The way that slots take care of this is that they start to find the match from the highest pay out on the slots prize table to the lowest, as soon as they find a match they will reward the player with highest prize within the prize table of slots. Many slots including our free slots have a wild symbol, when the player hits this symbol on any of the reels, it can sit as the best symbol in order to match the highest prize possible on the slots table.