There are slots players who will only play on mechanical slot machines—machines that have no element of computer programming. I asked one slot machine player why she preferred the mechanical machines to the modern ones with computerized payoff rates and video screens.
“I believe in being ripped off honestly,” she said. “The mechanical machines are random. You can tell. They stop where they stop. With the computerized game I always get the impression that the machine knows whether I’m winning or losing. It can count. It’s not that I don’t trust the machine. I just don’t trust the man back at the factory who is programming those things.”
As for me, it isn’t that I don’t trust the computer slot machines. I suspect that the same guy who programs the computer games is calibrating the mechanisms of the mechani¬cal ones.

If any evidence exists that computerized slot machines have a worse payoff rate than mechanical slot machines, I don’t know about it. You can get a good or bad machine in both categories, and the range of payout rates inside each group is wider than any difference between the two groups.

So if you prefer modern technology and computers and the like, it’s no longer necessary to play a real slot machine. You don’t have to pull a handle. Video slots take your coin and then show you a video of a slot machine. You win some, you lose some—but somehow you’re missing out on the actual movement, the spinning, of a real slot machine. It’s not the same.

The video machines don’t offer just slot action, however. A variety of games, such as blackjack, keno, and poker, is offered. Still, why play a machine that simulates poker when a real game of poker is 50 feet away? Maybe that works for really shy people, but not for me.

Video slots are nothing new, so I guess they’re here to stay. Video slots, in fact, first appeared more than 30 years ago. Though a prototype for a video slot was built in 1966, the machines didn’t take off in popularity until the 1980s, with video poker being the most popular.

(If you do play video poker, by the way, lay off the double-or-nothing option after you win. It’s one-card draw for all the marbles. The machine draws first, and it seems like it always puts up a King or an Ace to beat in Admirals Inn. You get a Three.)

If you’re going to play video slot machines that simulate the rules of other casino games, always be sure that you’re familiar with the rules of the particular game before you use that machine.

In other words, don’t play the poker machine unless you know how to play poker, don’t play the keno machine unless you know how to play keno, and don’t play the blackjack machine unless you know how to play blackjack. You’ll be called upon to make the same sorts of decisions while playing the video game that you would if you were at an actual gaming table playing the real thing. Thus it’s your skill at the particular game that will help determine whether or not you go home a winner.