When someone says a machine is hot , they mean it's on a winning streak. But once you break down how a slot machine really works, it becomes clear that streaks  are nothing more than back-to-back wins that happened by chance.

We estimate that there are more than 580,000 unregulated gaming machines across the country and that Americans bet more than R$109 billion on those machines every year. With 870,000 regulated machines in casinos and slot routes, that means 40% of all gaming machines in the U.S. are unlicensed.

If you have ever sat in a casino and lost rolls of quarters (or pennies) in slot machines, odds are those machines were manufactured by IGT. International Game Technology's Las Vegas campus includes a three story office building and warehouse used for manufacturing slot machines.

In a typical slot tournament, players compete against each other to win large cash and/or FREEPLAY prizes by accumulating the most points during multiple rounds of tournament slot machine play. Participants are randomly assigned to slot tournament machines and are given unlimited spins for a preset amount of time.