A narrow depression, perforation, or aperture; especially one for receiving a part that fits or slides into it. Also, a position within a group or sequence. He slipped the gamecube into its slot on the dash. She slotted a fresh filter into the machine.
In casinos, a machine in which players insert cash or, in “ticket-in, ticket-out” machines, paper tickets with barcodes, to activate reels that spin and stop randomly. Players earn credits based on combinations of symbols displayed on the reels. Modern video slots use microchips to manage random number generation, payouts, and machine communication.
Pay tables provide a look at how combinations of symbols payout and trigger other features in a slot game. They usually feature several rows and columns and may be split into multiple pages or slides.
The earliest mechanical slots were designed by New Yorkers Sittman and Pitt in 1891. Originally, these machines used five drums with 50 poker hands lining up on each side. By the early 1980s, manufacturers began adding electronics to their machines, allowing them to weight particular symbols to appear more or less frequently on each of the multiple reels. This increased jackpot sizes and allowed a single symbol to appear on multiple reels, but it also reduced the frequency of winning combinations.
In the context of airline scheduling, a slot is an authorization to take-off or land at a particular airport during a specific time period. In some jurisdictions, slots are assigned based on the amount of money that a company is willing to invest in an airplane or the number of passengers it is prepared to serve.
