Many people think that they have an equal chance to win or lose money when playing with VLTs. The population is not aware that most of these slot machines are not random. In fact, they look random, but thousands of winning combinations have been removed from these games. If VLTs were random, the machine would lose a large amount of money occasionally. But it seems like this does not happen. For example, the Five Reel slot machines are the biggest money makers in Alberta VLTs (Vegas Professor Say…, October 13, 2000) and the odds of winning are terrible. The Five Reel game has five pay lines including the three lines across and the diagonal corners. The cost to play is 25 cents per line, per spin, which can be increased to a maximum of $2.50 per spin. This game can easily cost $300 per hour, but the jackpot is only $250. How can we really know if VLTs are random or not? When a player pushes the button which activates the spin, is it really him who decides when to stop? No, it is the machine, so we have no control over them. Again with the Five Reel game, only 13% of all combinations (7,962,624) are actually winning spins where the pay out is higher than the original bet; 45% of the combinations pay absolutely nothing (means the player lose); 28% pay less than the original bet (the player still lose) and 12% of the combinations return the original bet (Vegas Professor Say ….,October 13, 2000). That means you can only win 13% of the time and this is how government make millions of dollars per month. “Your losses and winnings are electronically tallied as you play, (…)” (Cook, J., 1992) and this means we have no control over our bet.
Psychologist and sociologist often analyze how VLTs enslave people and take their money. First, the prime objective of slot machines is to make you believe that the winning combinations are imminent so you keep playing and putting your money into the machine. It means that these machines are very quick. It is not like lottery tickets...