A narrow opening, usually a slit, used for receiving something such as a coin or letter. Also used figuratively to refer to an assigned place or position, as in “he has the slot” (meaning he is the team’s go-to receiver).
In gambling, a slot is a machine with reels that spin for each time a bet is made. Until recently, players dropped coins into slots to activate games for each spin; but when bill validators and credit meters were introduced, it became easier to think of wagers as credits rather than cash.
When a player wins a slot, the amount of his or her winnings is displayed on the screen, alongside the number of credits remaining in the machine. In casinos, if you see a slot has been recently cashed out for several hundred or even thousands of dollars, it is a good indication that it’s paying well and worth trying your luck with.
Despite their name, slot machines can actually have many different pay lines and combinations of symbols; this is because the microprocessors inside them allow manufacturers to assign different probability weightings to each symbol on each physical reel, so that a given combination may appear more frequently on a particular reel than it would if all the reels were identical. The pay table is usually posted near the machine or in a help menu, and it’s important to read this before playing.
In football, a slot receiver is often physically shorter than a traditional wide receiver and as such has an increased risk of injury from big hits by opposing defenders. However, their ability to run routes that match up with other receivers on the offense means they can provide valuable blocking on running plays such as sweeps and slants.
The term “slot” also refers to the time and space an airline has been allocated by an airport or air-traffic control agency for taking off and landing. These slots are typically allocated for use during times of peak demand, or when an airport is constrained in terms of runway or parking capacity. Depending on their value, slots can be very profitable for airlines and have been known to change hands for a significant sum of money.