HOW DOES AN ELECTRONIC GAMING MACHINE WORK?

The modern gaming machine bears very little resemblance to the old “one armed bandits.”
They are electronic and generally referred to as electronic gaming machines or EGMs or video gaming machines or VGMs.

It has a video screen that displays the game. You play the game by pushing buttons or by “touching” the menu on the screen. Internally, there are very few mechanical moving parts. It is similar to the inside of your home computer albeit with a few additional components for cash handling. Each poker machine has a computer program. Poker machines are all programmed to act randomly every time you press the button.

First the poker machine takes the credits you have bet. It then randomly determines the outcome of that play.

The outcome is independent of previous plays.
If there is a win, you get paid credits.
If not, the poker machine waits for the button to be pressed again.

You canNEVER predict how each play will end. None of these factors make a difference:
- The last time the machine paid out.
- Anything you or anyone else does to the machine.
- How much you bet or how many lines you play.- How long you have been playing.
- Past & future plays
- The time of day.

In Queensland, electronic gaming machines are programmed to either return 85% or 92% of their takings to the gambler.

An 85% return means that for every dollar placed in a poker machine, 85 cents must be returned to the gambler.

This return is achieved over the life of the machine, usually 3-4 years, and you can't expect to receive 85 cents for every dollar you bet in a single gaming session.

"Think about gambling as a business where you buy milk for $1 and sell it for 85 cents or where you buy cars for $10 000 and sell them for $8,500. How long do you think a business like this could survive?" (Simon Milton 2001 "Stop Gambling: A self-help manual for giving up gambling". Pan Macmillan, Sydney).