A slot is an elongated depression, notch, or slit that receives and admits something, such as a coin or a letter. A slot in a piece of wood can be cut to accommodate a screw or bolt to fasten it in place. A slot in a machine is an opening into which a coin or token may be inserted to activate the machine and produce a payout.
In a slot machine, players insert cash or paper tickets with barcodes (in “ticket-in, ticket-out” machines) into a slot and then press a button or lever. The reels then spin and stop to rearrange symbols, and if the player matches a winning combination, they earn credits based on the paytable. Symbols vary from game to game, but classic symbols include fruit, bells, and stylized lucky sevens.
The computer inside a slot machine assigns different probabilities to each symbol on each of its reels, so that even if a particular symbol appears only once on a physical reel, it will appear far more often on the digital version of the reel and thus have a much higher probability of appearing as a winning symbol. As a result, jackpot sizes are larger than they would be with traditional mechanical reels.
In computing, a slot is a dynamic placeholder that either waits for content (a passive slot) or calls out for it (an active slot). Slots are governed by the ACC, and they can be filled with content from the Media-image repository or from the Solutions repository using scenario action or a targeter.