The odds of winning a typical $5,000 prize on a $1 poker machine are 9,700,000 to 1.Slot machines appeal to casinos because they are, as long as enough people play them, stable money-makers.

play at certain times of the day or night.

play a machine that has not had a big payout over a long time.

play a machine straight after someone else has had a big payout.

You can never predict how a play on a gaming machine will turn out. It's illegal to tamper with machines or change how a gaming machine operates without prior approval. The NSW Government checks the operating programs for all gaming machines to ensure they meet strict technical standards. However, you can be confident gaming machines are not rigged The lights and noise help create excitement to keep you gambling even if you're losing. because it looks like you're only parting with a small amount of money, your financial judgement about how much you're actually losing is disrupted.

The pokies design can trick you into thinking you're not betting much, so you have nothing to lose. Poker machines are there to make money for venue owners, not provide wins for players. If not, the machine just continues to generate outcomes until the button is pressed again.

If the machine determines a win, credits are paid. It then randomly determines the position of the symbols on the video display to produce an outcome, which is completely unrelated to the previous game's outcome. It does this continuously, every second, all day and night. The next second it generates thousands more possibilities. When the button is pressed, it randomly picks one result from thousands of possibilities. Each gaming machine has a built-in computer program that randomly generates thousands of possible outcomes every second.

How slot machines are rigged