Slots Machines Terms

Fill	A name for the act of a casino employee filling the hopper when it runs out of coins.
Hold	House profit, a percentage of each game. Usually 3% to 15%.
Hopper	This is where the coins are held in the machine. Hoppers not only run empty, they also overflow. When this happens the surplus coins drop into a bucket underneath the hopper, making the casino profit. The buckets are usually emptied in the early morning hours when traffic is slow.
Pay cycle	A widely held belief which means that, after taking in a number of coins slot machines must pay out in order to meet the percentage payout that has been programmed into the software.
Pay line	The line in the middle of the slot window. Can be three or even five lines. Only winning symbols on a pay line will make the coins drop.
Reels	The reels on which the symbols are displayed, usually three reels but sometimes two and four or even higher. The more reels the machine has the harder it is to hit the jackpot.
Symbols	The icons or symbols that appear on the reels can be anything, depending on the manufacturers imagination.
Take cycle	This is the opposite of the pay cycle. If you believe in the pay/take philosophy then you believe that a pay cycle is always followed by a take cycle, meaning you may get a small hit but basically it's feeding time for the slot.
Tilt	Slots stop paying and the tilt light comes usually because they have run out of coins, or because a coin is stuck in mechanism. slots memory will hold coins owed to the player and will pay after the corrections have been made to the problem.