“About 12 years ago a group of ladies came in to play and brought a friend whose husband had passed away,” recalled Johnny Barrientoz, director of slots who oversees some 1,430 machines at both Turtle Creek Casino and Leelanau Sands Casino. It could be a life-changing moment if the prize is hefty enough. Suddenly you realize you’ve just won a big jackpot. It’s the dream of every slot player: Slide money into the machine, press the button, (or pull the handle if you’re an old school player), and watch the symbols line up. The present study should also promote the use of laboratory-based research to test long-standing hypotheses in the gambling literature.What Really Happens When You Hit a Slot Machine Jackpot By Al Parker | Sept. They are more consistent with a behavioral theory of gambling behavior. These results appear to question the 'big win' as an explanation for pathological gambling. Participants who experienced a large win on the 1st play quit playing the simulation earlier than participants who experienced a large win on the 5th play. The authors observed a significant effect of group.

No other winning outcomes were programmed. A 3rd group experienced 2 small wins on the 2nd and 5th plays.

Another experienced a large win on the 5th play. One group experienced a large win on the very 1st play. In the present experiment, the authors tested the 'big win' hypothesis by having 4 groups of participants with little to no experience gambling play a computer-simulated slot machine for credits that were exchangeable for cash. Although this hypothesis has been around for several decades, only one controlled empirical study has addressed it, and that study reported null results.

One hypothesis for the reason a person might become a pathological gambler is that the individual initially experiences a big win, which creates a fallacious expectation of winning, which may then lead to persistent gambling despite suffering large losses.

Big wins on a slot machine