3 Easy High Limit Slots Tricks (Auditing Professor Slots #1)

In this post, I discuss the “easy high limit slots tricks” presented on Professor Slots’ website.

I respect Professor Slots. He’s a marketing genius, and he clearly had a great past in his various fields.

But the slot machine strategy content on Professor Slots’ site is nonsense. His website is so choked with pop-ups I can barely navigate it. He bills himself as a slot machine strategy consultant, which is just not an actual occupation you can claim.

I wanted to start a new series of posts in which I take an honest look at various pieces of advice offered up by the Professor since he popped up out of nowhere a few years ago.

I’m calling this series “Auditing Professor Slots” as a tongue-in-cheek reference to his nickname, and because I’ll be genuinely considering what he’s got to say and offering an alternative perspective.

In the first article of this series, I’ll be analyzing Professor Slots’ popular post called “3 Easy High-Limit Slots Tricks.”

In this post, he claims to know and be able to tell you how to trick a slot machine to win.

Also, if you’re interested in gambling for various stakes, you might enjoy my post about how to win at the sportsbook with only $20.

Who Is Professor Slots?

Professor Slots identifies himself as Jon Friedl. He’s a podcaster, blogger, slot enthusiast, university professor, physicist, aviation engineer, and a marketing wizard to boot.

So, is he actually a professor?

Yeah, he is.

I dug around just a little online and confirmed that he’s worked as an adjunct professor at a few big state universities. It looks like he still works in that same role. The courses he teaches sound intense, and I acknowledge both that I’d never be able to pass them and that the man is obviously intelligent.

In college, he designed a Foucault pendulum that’s still permanently installed at the University of Michigan-Flint. That’s awesome.

Most of his CV is his work in aviation engineering. There’s some cool military consulting-type stuff on his resume, too. It seems like he has experience in this field, and I respect that about him.

How did he become Professor Slots?

It seems like he’s lived all his life in gambling jurisdictions – Michigan, Iowa, Connecticut, and Ohio. He’d have had access to slot machines in all those states at different times.

I’m speculating, but I’d guess he picked up his fondness for slot machines while he was an undergrad at Michigan. Casinos were popping up in and around Detroit in the 90s while he was a student. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s his slot machine origin story.

He moved on to Iowa after Michigan, and I know that riverboat gambling was a big thing in Iowa in the late 90s and early 2000s, so that could have been his way in, too.

Whatever caused it, the guy obsesses over slot machines. The bio page on his website barely mentions slots and gaming, but the website itself is a testament to his obsession.

What Are Professor Slots’ 3 High Limit Slots Tricks?

Professor Slots offers everything from free strategy advice to travel tips and a little bit of math along the way. He’ll also consult with you to help you win more playing slot machines. The price changes depending on the time of year or something, I don’t know. I just went and checked, and at the time of this post, a one-hour session will set you back $147.

The post I’m talking about in part one is available for free. That’s about the only thing it has going for it.

It took some reading, re-reading, and a little note-taking, but I think I finally found the 3 high limit slots tricks from the title of his post.

These are the 3 tricks that supposedly teach you how to trick a slot machine to win:

• The 5-Spin Method
• Win, Walk Away, Return Later
• If a Slot Machine Shows a Win, Bet!

You have to do a good bit of reading (around 2,000 words) to figure out what these things mean and how they work. If you don’t want to do that, just read on.

Below is a breakdown of each of Professor Slots’ high limit slots tricks, along with my analysis:

High Limit Slots Trick #1 – “The 5-Spin Method”

Professor Slots’ 5-Spin method is simple. Here’s how it works:

You only play a slot machine for five spins or until you get a win of any size. When you’ve hit your five spins or your first payout, you move on to the next machine.

Professor Slots bases this method on the idea that slot machines are designed to provide players with “an initial winning taste” before tightening up and taking all of their money. This is a huge part of Professor Slots’ “How to Trick a Slot Machine to Win” philosophy.

If you take this idea of his as the gospel truth, the 5-Spin Method makes a lot of sense. If slots pay off more frequently when you first start playing, then stopping after just a few plays would give you the best chance to make money.

As the Professor says, “Instead of staying and spending [your initial winning taste] and more, move on immediately to another slot machine and collect its taste. On machine after machine, collect those tastes!”

Why “the 5-Spin Method” Is Silly

I have a couple of takes on this piece of advice.

For starters, this method would require a huge number of slot machines. You’d have to be at WinStar or Foxwoods or one of the other massive casinos to really put the 5-Spin Method into practice.

Think about it this way:

5 spins on a slot machine take no more than thirty seconds total. If you spend a few more seconds jumping over to the next machine, let’s say that’s forty-five seconds for each 5-Spin Method session.

That means you’d need 80 machines available to you for every hour of play. And these can’t just be any old slots — Professor Slots insists that you pick the slots with the lowest-possible minimum bets.

How many of those will there even be? At a typical US casino, it’s probably a matter of dozens rather than hundreds.

Besides the logistical problem of finding 80 unique low-minimum bet slots for every hour of play, there’s also the little problem of the basis of this rule being complete nonsense.

Slot machine designers do not design slots to pay out a “winning taste” when players begin and then tighten up after that. The slot machine spits out a constant stream of random numbers. That’s its job. It doesn’t consider who is playing, how long they’ve been playing, how much they’ve won, or anything else. It just produces numbers within a given range according to its programming.

One sure result from only playing a slot for 5 spins – you won’t be experiencing anything like the machine’s true volatility. A slot with a decent RTP in the high 90s plays pretty much like a crappy slot with an RTP in the 80s across just five spins. This can work in your favor, but it can also work against you.

My Alternative to “the 5-Spin Method”

My advice to slot players who are dedicated to getting the best return is to play a different casino game, like single deck blackjack or 10X odds craps. Slots in America just aren’t regulated to the point where anyone can tell you with certainty what kind of return you’re going to get. We just don’t have the numbers.

In short, you’re never going to play slots at an advantage. Most slots have win percentages double or triple what you’ll get playing table games or video poker (like Jacks or Better).

You’re not going to game a slot by playing it a certain way, a certain number of times, or in a certain pattern. Slot machines are designed to give the house an edge. You can’t overcome this edge by any legal means. You’ll never learn how to trick a slot machine to win because it can’t be done.

Spinning a slot machine’s reels just five times or quitting as soon as you get your first win won’t help you get rich at the casino. If you have tried it and enjoy doing it, then go for it. Anything that improves the entertainment value of your bankroll is a win. Just don’t expect it to produce more (or larger) jackpots.

High Limit Slots Trick #2 – “Win, Walk Away, Return Later”

The second of Professor Slots’ high limit slots tricks is “Win, Walk Away, Return Later.” It is exactly what it sounds like.

After reading through 20,000 or so words of the guy’s website, I can tell you with certainty that this is his main tactic, the thing he harps on the most.

Professor Slots promises that this trick is based on “casino operating systems,” but that’s just mumbo-jumbo.

Professor Slots says: “After winning a decent-sized jackpot, go home. Go home, then come back one week later to play the exact same machine starting about five to ten minutes before the time when the prior jackpot was initially won the week before.”

The implication is that you’ll win the same jackpot or something similar. His justification is that the prior jackpot is new information that we can use to predict future results.

He says, “For that specific winning slot machine and for whatever reason in fact exists for it to be a winner, that time of day on that day of the week had a higher than usual odds of winning a jackpot – so play it again on that day of the week, to see if the reason it was happening in the first instance is still in effect.”

Lots to unpack here.

His word choice is telling. Like a commercial psychic, he’s vague in just the right places. Look at phrases like “for whatever reason in fact exists” for a perfect example. Also, notice how he sows doubt into his theory before you’ve even had a chance to try it. Right at the end, his tone becomes neutral, and he isn’t sure whether or not it will work for you. Before, he’d been so certain of his method that he called it his “most successful winning strategy.”

That kind of verbal tomfoolery doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence for me in his abilities as a teacher.

Why the “Win, Walk Away, Return Later” Method Is Silly

It isn’t entirely silly. That’s why the professor’s ideas catch on, and why they can be dangerous at times.

It’s usually a good idea to consider ending a session after a decent jackpot. I’m not going to put numbers to it, because different players have different bankrolls and different conceptions of what a big jackpot is. But we all know what I’m talking about. When you get that big win, you should probably walk away a winner.

It’s the “return later” part, the part where Professor Slots tries to say that a slot is likely to pay out this week the same way it did last week, which makes this concept silly and worthless.

Slot machines ARE NOT programmed on a schedule. Picking a weekly schedule is arbitrary.

Why wouldn’t the slot be programmed on a daily schedule, or a monthly one, or an annual one?

What special knowledge does the professor have to prove that playing a slot “five or ten minutes before” the time you hit a jackpot last week will help you win?

We don’t know. He doesn’t say.

In fact, by the end of the post, he changes his tune again, saying that you should use this tactic as a research tool, not as a winning strategy. But if it was a winning strategy for the professor, why wouldn’t we be able to use it that way?

Maybe you learn about it in the $147 consult. I can’t be sure because I’ve never taken his session. I’d be happy to (and I’d write an honest review about it) if he were to offer it to me for free. Maybe the high limit slots tricks shared during his session are better than the free advice he offers on his site, but I doubt it.

My Alternative to “Win, Walk Away, Return Later”

This one’s easy. If you like the idea of Professor Slots’ second tip for high limit slots, but don’t want to put the stupid part of it into practice, then all you have to do is win and walk away.

The last time I was in New Orleans, I only played slots. I was just in the mood. And I had $500 I could afford to lose, and I wanted to play for a few hours. I sat and played for $0.50 a spin for a couple of hours. Without realizing what was going on, I hit a $463 payout. I hadn’t even been paying attention. Considering I’d come in with $500, and my total was suddenly north of $750, I figured it was time to claim my cash and get out of there.

Here’s what I didn’t do:

I didn’t go back a week later and play the same game, expecting the same result. I took my wife out to a nice dinner. We had oysters and all sorts of goodies, and it was well worth it.

Here’s what else I didn’t do:

Shell out the cost of a night at the movies with me and ten of my best friends to try and learn how to trick a slot machine to win.

Win, and then walk away if you want, but don’t go back to the same machine later expecting the same outcome.

High Limit Slots Trick #3 – “If a Slot Machine Shows a Win, Bet!”

Professor Slots saved the funniest and most ridiculous piece of high roller slot advice for last.

The advice here is to check for a machine’s last play. If it was a win, you should play that game. He adds a caveat – if the game has been played recently, skip it, even if it shows a win.

You’re looking for a slot that paid out a win on its last play but hasn’t been played in “a while.” The professor doesn’t say how long it should be, just that it should be a long time. He does insist that you should only play these slots for one single spin.

How are you supposed to know if a game has been played recently?

He says a machine “probably hasn’t been idle if its chair is still pulled out. The chair being pulled out is a beautiful clue …”

Okay, to recap. You’re looking for a high limit slot machine game that paid out a win on its last play, and one whose chair is still pulled out.

How many of these could there even be? This seems like a tactic that would only work once or twice per session.

How helpful is that?

Why “If a Slot Machine Shows a Win, Bet!” Is Silly

The logistics of it are silly on their own. Some slots don’t have chairs that can be pulled out.

How would you know if a slot without a chair had been played recently?

Are you supposed to sit around and watch and wait for a couple of hours? Wait – Professor Slots never told you how long you’re supposed to wait. Confusing stuff.

But let’s not get caught up in the weird details of the professor’s suggestion. Let’s talk about why betting on slots that won on their most recent play won’t help you win more often at high limit slot machine games.

Every spin of the slot machine is an independent event. I can’t stress this enough. The slot machine isn’t aware of what happened on the last spin or the one before that, etc. Each outcome is the result of software that captures a random string from another random string of numbers. A slot is not more or less likely to hit after a win or after a loss.

Putting time between a slot’s most recent play and your play won’t help either. A slot machine isn’t aware of the passage of time, unlike those of us who’ve read Professor Slots’ advice. Believing that it’s a good idea to play a slot that hasn’t been played in a while is nothing short of shamanism. It requires belief in a slot conspiracy theory with no basis – namely, that slots are designed to entice play by paying out a “winning taste.”

My Alternative to “If a Slot Machine Shows a Win, Bet!”

The idea of having to come up with an alternative to this goofiness is offensive.

But, I have an idea for how to counteract the ill effects of Professor Slots’ whole shtick:

Just don’t think about it. You don’t need high limit slots tricks to win — they don’t work anyway.

Don’t worry about the last play of a slot. It isn’t your business, and it will have no impact on your success.

Don’t worry about when a slot machine was last played. There’s no way to know without engaging in some weird stalker behavior or making a guess based on the placement of casino furniture.

If you like VGT slot machines, then look for those and play them. And if you like penny slots, they’re easy enough to find. If you want to chase a progressive jackpot, you have lots of choice at most US casinos.

If you’re bound and determined to play slots, focus on having as much fun as possible. Your slot bankroll is your entertainment budget. It’s no different than money you’d set aside to go on a date or take a friend out to a ball game or something.

Conclusion – Are These Really the High Limit Slots Tricks You Want?

Slots are fun to play. They’re designed that way. You should only play high limit slots that you enjoy playing.

Ignore everything else. Lots of people who write about gambling on the Internet want to get their hands into your pockets. I’m just a guy who likes to gamble and uses writing to relax and keep his mind sharp.

You’re never going to learn how to trick a slot machine to win – not for $150, not for $150,000. It doesn’t matter how many high limit slots tricks you read.

Please don’t pay the price of a round of golf at a top-tier course to get yammered at by Professor Slots for an hour about his casino conspiracy theories. All the advice on my site is free and it isn’t designed to separate you from your cash.

Also, if you want really detailed advice from a real slot machine expert, check out this series of articles about how slots really work from Michael Bluejay.

I’ll continue this series next with a takedown of Professor Slots’ popular post called “Can You Guess Who Controls Slot Machine Odds?”

Tune in, it’ll be a lot of fun.