When playing certain slot machines, you may see reference to the word “denomination” and wonder what it’s in reference to. Some games allow play on multiple denominations, and so the designation of a denomination can be important to players as well.
When you talk about money, a denomination is a bill or coin. In slots, you don’t need a specific bill or coin to have a specific denomination, but similar to having a single bill or coin as a unit for denomination, on a slot it refers to how much one credit has in value.
Penny slots are easy – each credit is worth a penny, and so 100 credits equal a dollar. The same goes for dollar denominations – one credit equals $1, so 100 credits is $100.
However, there’s a variety of other denominations slots can take, including:
- 2 cents
- 3 cents (yes, they’re out there!)
- 5 cents
- 10 cents
- 25 cents
- 50 cents
- $2
- $5
- $10
- $25
- $50
- $100
The above are just ones I’ve encountered over the last year or two; there may be even more.
The game will usually, and pretty prominently, show what a credit equals, or say what denomination it’s set to. That way a player can do the math. If it’s a 10 cent denomination and it’s 30 credits a spin, that’s $3.00, for instance.
Players should pay close attention to a machine, as it can be a multi-denomination machine without them knowing it, or may be set higher than a penny near a bank of penny machines. Otherwise you may accidentally overbet.
So effectively your total bet is the denomination times number of credits. Similarly, on machines where you can’t touch the credit amount to show the cash amount, you do the same with your credit balance to determine how much money you have in the machine.
