Have you ever been on an airplane that seems to be stalled at the gate? You’ve checked in, made it through security, found the gate, queued to get on board, struggled with the overhead lockers and settled into your seat. All you want now is to take off, but the captain says “We’re waiting for a slot.” But what’s a slot and why can’t we take off as soon as we’re ready?

A narrow opening, especially one for receiving something, such as a coin or letter. Used to refer to a position in a series or sequence, or an assignment or job opening: He was given a slot on the committee.

When playing at a casino, one effective slot strategy is to look for machines that have recently paid out. This can be done by checking the machine’s paytable, which will show the amount of credits remaining and the cashout amount next to each other. If the credits are close to zero and the cashout is in the hundreds, this indicates that a machine has been paying out recently and is worth a try.

It’s important to understand how random numbers work when playing slots. Many popular strategies, such as moving to another machine after a set period of time or avoiding certain symbols, are useless because each spin is random. The same is true for rolling a die or tossing a coin: There’s an equal chance it will land on any side, but the probability of the top jackpot being hit is much lower than that of a smaller win.