[cdcox]

Originally Posted by JD10367

Not true. All slot machines are computerized, even the "mechanical reel" ones. As soon as you press "spin" or pull the handle, the computer knows what the outcome will be.

Furthermore, the computer inside continues to "play" even when you don't play it. It's little brain is running the payouts, going "nothing, nothing, a buck, nothing, five bucks, nothing, two bucks, five hundred bucks, nothing, nothing, five bucks..." You simply have to be lucky enough to put the quarter in and press "spin" at the same time. In other words, if you play a machine, and stop, and walk away, and no one plays that machine for an hour, and an hour later someone hits on their first pull, that doesn't mean you would've hit an hour ago. Whether or not you played it for an hour or not, it wouldn't have hit until that moment in time.

However, it also depends on whether or not you were playing Max Bet, which is usually what you need for the huge payoffs. If, indeed, you were playing Max Bet, and if, indeed, you would've sat there for that whole time period, then, yes, you would've been the one to hit that jackpot at that moment in time.

(As you can tell, I spend too much time at casinos.)

The bolded part is true only if he hit the button at the exact instant (nearest 100th of a second) as the other player had hit the button. This is because the computer is generating 100's of random numbers per second (I bet it is even higher than that with current processors).

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.c...t-machine3.htm

"Whenever the slot machine is turned on, the random number generator is spitting out whole numbers (typically between 1 and several billion) hundreds of times a second. "

If you set up two identical machines to the same internal electronic state and started them at the same exact instant, and then had two people sit down next to one another and play, their outcomes would be completely uncorrelated. Which was my point in describing the mechanical machines.