Do you know how the odds work in games of pokies or slots? It may surprise you – but even some of the more experienced players out there have no clue as to what is going on in terms of the odds of winning.

Partially this is because many people feel that it is unnecessary to develop even the most basic of understandings regarding pokies odds because the one factor that you’ll end up basing any decision on is the payout percentage.

That being said, you’ll find that knowing a little about how the odds work in games of slots will help you out immensely when it comes to understanding and analyzing the game and various strategies related to it!

In short, by the time you next head to a casino or online gambling website you should be well-versed in what is going on behind the scenes of the games of pokies that you play!

So What are Pokies Odds?

When people talk about ‘odds’ for pokies what they really mean is the probability that you’ll end up landing a winning combination. Because games of slots have several winning combinations, you could say that your ‘odds of landing combination 1 is 10%’ or your ‘odds of landing combination 2 is 5%’ and so on.

Once you know how likely it is that certain combinations will appear, you’ll be able to develop an understanding as to exactly what you can expect to happen when you spin the reels!

Basic Calculation for Pokies Odds

If you know how basic probability works then you’ll find that calculating pokies odds on a basic level really isn’t all that difficult so long as you know how many times each particular symbol appears on a reel.

For example, let’s just say you know that in a certain game of slots the reels have 5 cherries, 4 bars and 1 jackpot symbol each. This would mean that your odds of hitting a cherry is 50%, your odds of hitting a bar is 40% and your odds of hitting the jackpot symbol is 10%.

However let’s just say that this particular game of pokies has 3 reels, so if you wanted to calculate the odds of landing 3 cherries in a row, it would be 50% multiplied by 50% multiplied by 50% which would give you 12.5%.

Similarly if you wanted to calculate the odds of hitting the jackpot on that same game of slots it would be 10% multiplied by 10% multiplied by 10% which would be 0.1%.

That is how you can figure out the specific odds for landing winning combinations for any game of pokies in a casino or online gambling website. Unfortunately however, you’ll find that you’ll be unable to do so for one huge reason!

Why Is it Impossible to Calculate Specific Odds in Pokies?

When you’re trying to calculate the specific odds of winning combinations in a game of slots the one piece of information you need to have is how many times each symbol appears on the reels, or in other words: How likely it is that a symbol will appear on a particular reel.

Unfortunately this is one piece of information that you could only ever acquire if you had access to the lookup table of a game of pokies – and that isn’t going to happen.

Without that information, you’ll find that it isn’t possible to perform any calculations to find the specific odds of landing winning combinations. In fact, you’re going to be pretty much high and dry because no casino or online gambling website is likely to release any information about the lookup table.

So although you now know the theory behind how to calculate accurate odds for pokies, you’ll find that you’re going to have to resort to more rough estimations.

Relationship Between the Payout Percentage and Odds

Most players don’t realize this but the payout percentage actually ties in very closely with the odds of landing winning combinations in pokies and slots.

Essentially, the payout percentage is the expected amount that will be paid back to players on average and over the long term. What this means is that it is the statistical expected value that is being calculated based on the odds that players have of landing winning combinations!

Unfortunately without any further information you’re not going to be able to reverse engineer the payout percentage to find out the odds of landing winning combinations – but the payout percentage itself will let you know what the expected outcome is!

In a nutshell this is the reason why the one piece of advice that you’ll have found time and time again related to slots is to always play a game with the highest payout percentage that you can find in the casino or online gambling website!

Now that you have developed a basic understanding of pretty much everything to do with odds in pokies it is going to be up to you to put this knowledge to practice when you next head over to a casino or online gambling website.

Remember that all games of chance are governed by probabilities and so it is up to you to make sure that you’re giving yourself as much of an edge as possible in terms of the odds of landing winning combinations. Assuming you do that, you’ll find that you’re that much more likely to win at pokies and slots!