Slot machine
Three reels, six symbols, a stake from 100 Sulkies to 100,000 according to your balance. The page displays the table of winning combinations with the symbols: what it does not say is how often each one comes up. Here it is.
The exact odds
Out of 10,000 spins, this is what comes out on average:
| Win | Out of 10,000 spins | That is roughly |
|---|---|---|
| 200 times the stake | 2 | 1 spin in 5,000 |
| 100 times | 4 | 1 in 2,500 |
| 50 times | 8 | 1 in 1,250 |
| 25 times | 16 | 1 in 625 |
| 12 times | 40 | 1 in 250 |
| 6 times | 70 | 1 in 140 |
| 4 times | 100 | 1 in 100 |
| 2 times | 3,350 | 1 in 3 |
| nothing | 6,410 | close to two spins in three |
The lines read in the order of the table of combinations displayed on the page: the first six are the three identical symbols, from the rarest to the commonest; then come the two partial combinations, which make up most of the wins.
A little more than one spin in three brings in something, and nine times out of ten that something is the modest doubling of the stake.
What those figures mean
Add them up: out of 10,000 stakes, the machine returns 9,600. That is 96 % of the stakes redistributed and 4 % that stay with the game. The three little games redistribute exactly the same share; none is more advantageous than another, only the form of the chance changes.
Those 4 % are the whole subject. Over ten spins they mean nothing: one ×25 and you walk away ahead. But the more you play, the more your result sticks to the average — that is the law of large numbers, and it makes no exception. A thousand spins at 100 Sulkies is 100,000 Sulkies staked and about 96,000 got back. Losing, in those conditions, is not bad luck: it is the announced result.
And insisting does not force luck. The ×200 comes out twice in ten thousand. Spinning a hundred times does not give you a hundred times more chance of getting there, but about 2 %. Each spin is drawn independently of the previous one: the machine does not “warm up”, owes nothing to anybody, and has no memory of your failures. There is neither a run to chase nor a right moment.
So this game is not a way of winning Sulkies: over time, it costs them. See it for what it is, a few minutes' entertainment — something to fill the wait for a race's results.
“Last big prizes”
The table at the bottom gives the five finest wins of the last twenty-four hours. It is accurate, but remember what it does not show: the thousands of losing spins of the same day. Seeing winners does not mean that wins are frequent, only that there are a lot of players.
Stopping, and coming back if you want to
The I want to disable the games of chance button is placed right at the top, before the game, and that is not by chance. A spin lasts two seconds and calls for no thought: that is precisely what makes it easy to keep going well beyond what one had planned. If you feel it coming, one click takes the three games off the menu.
The gesture is not irreversible: the Play little games of chance box, in My account then General options, brings them back when you decide. Your choice follows you from one world to another: it is copied over at the moment you connect to another world.
In version 6, disabling was final. It no longer is — but the box has been deliberately put far from the game, far enough for one not to come back to it on a whim.
The other two games: Scratch ticket and Wheel of fortune.