What Is a Slot?

slot

A slot is a position within a sequence, series or set. It can also refer to a particular job or position of employment in an organisation or hierarchy.

In a computer, a slot is an expansion connector such as an ISA (Industry Standard Architecture), PCI or AGP (accelerated graphics port). It may also refer to the space within a motherboard that holds a RAM chip.

When it comes to slots, the pay table is an essential piece of information that will let you know how much you could win from a specific pattern of symbols. Typically, the pay tables will be designed to fit in with the theme of the slot and they’ll often feature bright colours and animations that make them easy to read.

Traditionally, slot machines used revolving mechanical reels to display and determine results. However, this limited the number of combinations that could be made – and therefore jackpot sizes – as each symbol on a reel only appeared once in a cubic number of positions. With microprocessors in modern slot machines, manufacturers can assign a different probability to each symbol on each reel and the result is that the same symbol could appear on the same line, but with a higher chance of being a winning combination than if it had a lower chance.

In addition to the information on how to form a winning combination, the pay table will usually explain any bonus features that are available in the slot. These can include extra reels, Megaways, pick-style games, sticky wilds and re-spins, and they’re normally clearly explained in a way that makes it simple to understand how to trigger them.