Reader of the site Vickie sent in this question:
Does changing your bet (increase/decrease) or your denom on a multi denom machine, after you win a jackpot, increase your chances of the machine paying out again?
–Reader Vickie
It’s a great question, and one that comes a lot given many players like to tinker with their denominations, especially after a coin drop or bonus on the Link style games.
STATUS: There’s no impact for the machine. But if it makes you feel good, have at it.
Regular readers of the site know there’s no bounds to the type of superstitions on slot machines. Players like to feel that they have some level of control, and one is the changing around of their bets.
Changing bets after a big win doesn’t change the odds of the next spin any more than any other action will, except when a machine is set to pay more on a higher denomination – stepping up your bet to a higher denomination could theoretically put you on the path to a slightly better long term payout.
But short term variance will make these differences pretty imperceptible because you could hit a jackpot or 100 dead spins in that immediate aftermath of the change.
Changing your bet may also change when you press the button for your next spin, and that random number generator is always running in the background. But you’ll never know if you’re changing it to a better result or worse result, because we don’t know what the other spin would’ve been. So even the timing argument is more a high level statement than anything measurable.
In the end, it’s about feeling good about a decision being made. Confirmation bias will reinforce your decision if it works out, and you’ll probably forget if you don’t. But you’re not harming anything either, so if it makes you feel better to tinker with your bets after a big hit, who am I to harsh your mellow? Just note that it won’t have any measurable difference, for better or worse.
