Stopping Reels Old Style Slot Machine

Posted : admin | On 24-05-2021

Readers ask if quick reflexes are the key to winning

By John Grochowski

I keep a list of questions that I’m most often asked about slot machines. You could probably tick off some of them: “Are games programmed to go cold after a big win?” “Do you get less payback when you use your rewards card?” And the big one, “Can you tell me how to win?”

The only tool required is a screw driver. Every slot collector should own this. The following machines are covered: Mills Castle Front style machines (good for all Mills 1930s/40 'Silent' type of slot machines) Mills 1920s Gooseneck style slot machines Watling Rol-A-Top style machines Watling Gooseneck style machines Pace Comet Jennings Chief.

Those have been standards ever since I started writing about casinos and casino games 20 years ago. But recently, another question has been shooting up the charts. I have it all the way up at No. 2 on the readers’ hit parade:

Vintage is a classic fruit machine from The Art of Games with a simple fruits theme and a traditional layout. The slot itself is styled as a real fruit machine in a games arcade, complete with arm to pull to spin the reels. This really transports player to the arcade and gives a wonderful authentic feel to the slot. There is a debate amongst some slot machine players. Can a player stop the reels on a slot machine to control the outcome? For example, suppose you see a nee.

“I’ve noticed on a lot of video slot games that if I hit the button a second time while the reels are spinning, they stop right away. I was wondering if I could use this to my advantage. If I see the bonus triggers or the jackpot symbols at the top, should I quickly hit the button again and try to stop the reels?”

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I had that thought myself the first time I accidentally double-hit a button and saw the reels click to an immediate halt. Could this be an answer to the chart-topping question, “how to win on the slots?”

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. In nearly all slot games that allow you to stop the reels, there is no skill or timing involved on your part. The random number generator has already determined your outcome when you hit the button to spin the reels, and you’re going to get the same result regardless of whether you stop the reels early, or let them halt in their own time.

When you play a slot machine, the game isn’t actually being played out on the reels, whether it uses “real” reels or video reels. It’s being played internally, on the game’s random number generator. The reels are just a player-friendly interface, and are told where to stop by the RNG. If there’s a malfunction and the reel display doesn’t match the numbers generated, it’s the RNG that counts. Large jackpots can be denied—and have been denied—if a check shows the random numbers on the internal computer chip don’t match the winning symbols on the reels.

But this is extremely rare. The engineering is good enough that almost all the time, the RNG and reel display are going to match up. This doesn’t change if you double-hit the bet button. If the RNG has spit out a random number that tells the first reel to stop on a single bar, then you’re going to get a single bar—regardless of whether you hit the button a second time for a “quick stop,” or just let them take their own sweet time.

Stopping Reels Old Style Slot Machines

There are rare exceptions. When I’ve answered similar questions in the past, I’ve mentioned IGT’s Reel Edge games. In their original incarnation, Reel Edge games enabled players to touch and stop the reels one at a time. There was actual skill involved. Your timing in stopping the reels determined the outcome. The reels spun very, very fast, so it was going take a keen eye and sharp reflexes to get better than random results, but it was possible.

I gave it a try, and found my reflexes just weren’t fast enough to generate more than my normal share of winners. In the original three-reel Blood Life game, I identified a green 7 as the easiest symbol to pick out as it whizzed by. I touched each reel individually as I saw a green 7 reach the top of the slot window, and managed to stop 7s on all three reels. Alas, I failed to land them all on the same payline. Some younger folks with quicker reactions may have been able to do better.

I don’t know if any of the first generation of Reel Edge games remain on casino floors. They were never widespread, and I don’t get lists from casinos or manufacturers telling me what games are available in any given casino. The new generation of Reel Edge puts the skill-based portions of the games in the bonus events.

Blood Life’s updated video incarnation, Blood Life Legends, allows you to test your skill with a joystick to guide a bat through the ups, downs, twists and turns of a cave as you try to collect gems for bonuses. There is actual skill involved, but it’s not the reel-stopping experience readers have been asking about.

On most slot games, even in the bonus events you’re getting an illusion of skill rather than actual skill. And when it comes to stopping the reels, it’s the random number generator, not your reflexes, that determines the results.

What about my readers’ other top questions?

To answer another—no, games are not programmed to go cold after big wins. Results remain as random as humans can program a computer to be. As long as the RNG keeps doing its thing, any big jackpot, any hot streak, and any cold streak eventually fade away into statistical insignificance, and the machine comes very close to its expected payback percentage.

No, you don’t get less payback when you use your rewards card. The player rewards system doesn’t interact with the RNG.

And no, with rare exceptions, there is no way to beat the slots except by being in the right place at the right time. There have been opportunities for small profit on games with banked bonuses such as the old WMS game Piggy Bankin’, where the sharpies would start to play only when there were enough coins in the bank to give the player an edge.

Such games are not common. Just as with stopping the reels early, your results are up to chance and the RNG.

With the reel bundle gone, we can begin the tear-down in earnest. Let’s take a look.

We’ll start with the reel stop levers. We need to get the levers out of the way, then remove them. The first step is to disconnect the reel stop lever springs. The springs are easy to find… they are the long springs attached to each of the reel stop levers that connect them to the back of the mechanism. As with most springs in the machine, one end will be threaded through a hole and the other end will be looped around some sort of post or ear. Generally it is a good idea to slip the spring off of the ear and leave it connected to the part where it is threaded through a hole.

After the springs are disconnected from the back bracket, you can lay the reel stop levers down as shown above. Now we need to remove the levers themselves by removing the shaft at the bottom of the levers. This is a pretty simple matter, although the shaft is sometimes difficult to remove due to the accumulation of dirt and hardened oil/grease.

Depending on the machine, this shaft is usually held in place by two hairpins or cotter pins. (Regional note: I’ve noticed that people in the South tend to use the term “cotter pin” while folks in the Midwest and Northeast tend to say “cotter key”. Either way, they are the same thing.) On this particular slot machine, the shaft is held by hairpins. We only need to remove the pin pictured above, which is easily accomplished with a pair of needle nosed pliers. Be careful when removing this sort of pin since they have a tendency to shoot across the room and get lost forever if you don’t have a good grip.

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With the other pin removed, take a small pair of vice grip pliers and lock them on the end of the shaft protruding from the A-frame as pictured above. The shaft should slide straight out, although you will probably have to turn it back and forth and possibly move the reel stop levers as you are pulling.

Once the shaft has been removed, put the other hair pin back in place and store the shaft for future cleaning. As with screws, it’s good practice to put pins back in place before proceeding on.

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The photo above shows what the three reel stop levers look like once they have been removed. I’m going to leave the springs attached for now just to keep up with them. Note that the three levers are not identical. The one on the right (as you are looking at the front of the mechanism) has an offset and two holes where the shaft goes through the lever. The other two levers are held apart by a separate, tubular spacer that also goes on the shaft.

With the reel stop levers and shaft gone, we have a much clearer view of the base plate. Let’s take a close look at the label.

Unfortunately I don’t think we’re going to be able to read the serial number through all of the dirt, oil and paint. I’ll still save the label, but I really wish the serial number was readable. Oh, well… you can’t win them all.

The next part we’re going to remove is the rear bracket that holds the reel brakes (if present) and the disc stop lever. It also holds the award token release lever on machines that are equipped for a gold award token dispenser. Removal is pretty straightforward since the bracket is only held on by a couple of screws. We’ll also have to disconnect a spring from the award token release lever. Before we go on, however, there’s a situation we should discuss. Let’s take a look.

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As you can see in the photo above, there is a paperclip bent around the bracket, keeping a hooked part behind the bracket stationary. Why in the world would someone do this to a slot machine? The answer is pretty simple, and this sort of “fix” is relatively common on antique Mills slot machines. The part behind the bracket is the anti-check payout hook, and its purpose is to keep the slot machine from paying out coins if someone has played a “check” instead of a coin. Checks look a lot like washers, having a hole in the middle, and were used in some locales to get around anti-gambling laws. We’ll look at this part in more detail later, but for now let me just say that this part is unnecessary for a home machine, and generally a pain to work with. The anti-check assembly has a tendency to freeze up or get sluggish, which can keep the machine from paying out correctly or at all. Some people remove this part completely, and others use a “fix” similar to the one above using bailing wire or a zip tie. For now we’ll just remove the paperclip and the other things securing the back bracket.

The photo above shows the left side of the bracket after the screw and paperclip have been removed. Note how the bracket fits in between the various parts… this will be important during reassembly.

Here’s what the bracket looks like after removal. Notice that the disc stop lever and the award token release levers are still attached. We’ll remove these later when we clean this part and put them back in place before moving on. I prefer working on parts and assemblies using this sort of “modular” approach rather than disassembling absolutely everything at one time. It keeps parts together and helps you get a feel for how parts interact on the machine.

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Here’s another view of the bracket and related parts. You can clearly see the disc stop lever in the foreground. This part keeps the reels from spinning backwards while the mechanism is being cocked.

Next time we’ll tackle the main operating fork and related parts.