The nickname for old-style slot machines with a lever on the side is “One-Armed Bandit.”
These machines have been roaming the globe for over 70 years, robbing unsuspecting victims of their money!
The World’s First Pokie Slot Machine
When poker became popular in America in 1891, two enterprising New Yorkers, Sittman and Pitt, created a poker machine for a single player. These early pokie machines were nothing like today’s more exciting online pokie games! Behind the glass panel on the Sittman and Pitt machines were five reels, each with ten playing cards. Machines lacked side levers, so you had to press a plunger down to insert a coin. The cards flipped over as the reels spun.
Although the mechanism was delightfully simple, the machine did not payout (in most states, a cash prize would not have been allowed). However, because the machines were almost always found in bars, the bartender would always pass over a prize if you had a winning poker hand. Similar games are now much more convenient to play on the ever-popular Aristocrat pokie machines.
On the machine shown, a royal flush wins 100 cigars. A single cigar was the smallest prize, given for a pair of kings or aces.
Of course, the deck only had 50 cards with five reels and ten cards. The two unused cards were usually of high value, such as a ten and a jack of different suits, to reduce the chances of a royal flush. This means that only two of the four royal colors were possible. Royal flush odds on a fair machine: 1 in 50,000. Are you bored with your current job? Play real money online slots and put that tedious job behind you!
Changing the cards on the reels could further control the percentage of wins that any machine allowed. An unscrupulous bar owner may have placed all four aces on the same reel, effectively eliminating the possibility of two, three, or four aces appearing. However, this would have been a huge mistake because the customers noticed! Fortunately, this does not occur when playing modern online pokies.
The Odds
Each reel in the original Liberty Bells had ten symbols. If the bell symbol appeared only once on each reel, the odds of getting three bells were 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 = 1 chance in 1000.
Later, machines had four or even five reels, each with up to 20 symbols, and the variety of symbols increased. This allowed much larger jackpots to be offered, but the odds of winning were drastically reduced. It also made it much more difficult for players to calculate their chances of winning, especially since some of the symbols’ reels never stopped spinning!
The original machines paid out about 75% of what they took at best. As a result, throughout a long series of games, you’d hope to get 75c back for every $1 you put in. Fortunately, most modern slots and online games payout over 90%!
Overcoming Gambling Bans
Many states had banned these poker-style gambling machines by 1902, so the machines quickly evolved to circumvent the bans in various ways.
To avoid appearing like poker machines, the card symbols were replaced with various other images. Fruits were the most enduring set of symbols, so slot machines are known as fruit machines in many countries, including the United Kingdom.
Even though the machines accepted nickels (5c coins) when states banned cash payouts, trade checks were issued instead. These were usually metal tokens that looked like coins but had a hole in the middle. These trade checks could be inserted to pay for more games or exchanged for cash or prizes at a counter.
Another ruse was to attach a gum dispenser to the machine so that when you put in your 5c, you “bought” a very expensive stick of gum. You also received a “free” game, which was not considered gambling because you had not paid a stake!