A slit or other narrow opening, especially one in a machine or container. He slotted the coin into the slot and dialed.

A slot is a position in a schedule or program where an activity can take place. He booked a two-hour slot for a meeting.

Modern slot machines convert cash into credits ranging in value from pennies to $100. Players insert cash or paper tickets with barcodes in a slot or press a lever or button (physical or virtual on touchscreen-based machines) to activate reels that spin and rearrange symbols until they line up in a winning combination, awarding payouts according to the paytable. Most slot games today offer multiple paylines, which can run horizontally, vertically, diagonally or in zigzag patterns.

While many believe that slots tend to pay more frequently and larger jackpots at night, this is simply a result of higher player volume at that time. The random number generator determines the outcome of each spin, and while some machines appear to be “hot” or “cold,” these fluctuations are due to a variety of factors.

In logical replication, a slot is a single row in a table that contains the state of a set of consumers (that is, a subset of all executing queries). A slot knows nothing about its own consumer, so as each query completes, any capacity consumed by that consumer automatically becomes available to other consumers within the same logical replication slot. In this way, the system can efficiently share resource usage across a large number of users.