Picture yourself playing for hours on your favorite slot machine and you’ve done nothing but lose the entire time. You finally had enough so you get up and leave. As soon as you leave you notice someone else take your seat. “Have fun losing your money,” you think to yourself as they begin to play. You turn to walk off and suddenly you hear bells and sirens going off. You look back and it is coming from the machine you were playing on. That person just hit the jackpot.

The common reaction to this situation would be regret that you didn’t stay longer at the machine because you would have hit the jackpot if you had of continued to play. You may even get angry and believe that should be your jackpot. The reality is even if you continued playing the machine in this situation above you probably wouldn’t have hit the jackpot. Let’s take a look at how slots really work to examine this situation closer.

The random number generator or RNG is constantly running as long as the machine is turned on. The RNG is responsible for creating a number sequence that corresponds to a specific result on the machine. The RNG is going through hundreds of number combinations every second even when the machine is not being played. Therefore, the likely hood that you would have hit the spin button at the exact mili-second the person who hit the jackpot did is very unlikely.

It can be very frustrating if this situation ever happens to you, but rest assured knowing that the machine wasn’t “due” to hit. Even if you kept on playing your chances of hitting the jackpot would be the same. It’s purely luck and that person got lucky and you didn’t, so don’t beat yourself up thinking you would of won the jackpot if only you played a little longer.