Down Slot

A slot machine in a trend where it pays out less than its average payout percentage. Roughly synonymous with cold slot or tight slot.

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"Down slot" is a reference to the Up/Down Slot Cycle. Slot machines are supposed to run through cycles where they either pay out more than their average pay out percentage (and up slot) or pay out less than their payout percentage (a down slot).

The idea is that random number generators cycle through a list of numbers to randomly generate their numbers. Some parts of this list contain more losing numbers than other parts of the list, while some parts of the list contain more winning numbers.

When you recognize the slot machine is on a down cycle, you walk away from it. When you realize it's on an up cycle, you bet more coins. The up/down slots cycle is the slot machine version of card counting, suggesting that you bet more when the odds are in your favor and bet less (or not at all) when the odds are against you.

The problem with this theory is there is less information to go on with a slot machine and its random number generator. When you're in a blackjack game with 6 decks of cards, then you are talking about 312 cards to keep track off. If ten 10's are played immediately, that's a relatively important number of the cards you are counting.

With a random number generator, the list of reel symbol combinations is huge. So you are trying to pick out a pattern with a much larger number of factors. Also, the RNG selects hundreds of numbers per second. Say the RNG selects 500 numbers per second. If you hit the button every 10 seconds, you're only seeing the results of 1 selection for every 5,000 combinations the RNG is selecting.

That's a tiny sampling of numbers to try to find a pattern out of. In other words, even if there were an up/down cycle in slot machines, it would be impossible to pick out the pattern. The idea is to test slot machines by playing it and figuring out if it's up or down, but the sampling once again of even 10 sessions on one slot machine would be way too small to determine whether it's a down slot or not.