A slot is a narrow depression or perforation, as in a keyway in machinery or a slit for coins in a vending machine. It also refers to a position within a schedule or sequence. He booked his haircut for the 2 p.m. slot.
In computer hardware, a slot may refer to an expansion port such as an ISA (Industry Standard Architecture), AGP (accelerated graphics port) or PCI (peripheral component interconnect) slot. It may also describe a location on a motherboard where a memory module can be inserted. The term is also used figuratively to refer to a place or time in a calendar.
Many players believe that a slot machine is “due” to pay out if it has gone long without paying off, so they play it more often. However, this strategy is flawed because casinos make money by giving away less than they take in from players. They therefore want to limit the number of machines that pay out large jackpots.
One effective slots strategy is to look for machines that have recently cashed out. You can do this by looking at the amount of credits left in the machine and the cashout amount, which will be displayed on the screen. If the cashout amount is hundreds of dollars or more, this is a good indication that the machine is paying out. These example sentences are automatically selected from various online sources to reflect current usage of the word’slot.’