A narrow notch, groove, or opening, as for receiving something, as a keyway in machinery or a slit for a coin in a vending machine. Also: (computing) An area of a display in which a particular type of object can be stored; a position in a series or sequence.
In a slot machine, a player inserts cash or, in “ticket-in, ticket-out” machines, a paper ticket with a barcode into the designated slot to activate the machine. The reels spin and stop to rearrange the symbols, paying credits according to the pay table if a winning combination occurs on a pay line. The symbols vary depending on the theme of the game, but classic symbols include fruits and stylized lucky sevens.
The odds of a symbol appearing on a given stop on a reel vary with each spin, but the odds of the symbols in a winning combination always remain the same. While long losing streaks defy probability, they are part of the expected results of any random process.
In offer management, slots are dynamic placeholders that wait or call for content from a repository item (a scenario) using either an Add Items to Slot action or a targeter. Scenarios and slots work together to deliver content, and slot properties are important to understand in order to manage them properly. For more information on how to use slot and scenario properties, see the Using Slots section of the ATG Personalization Programming Guide.