A narrow depression or perforation, especially one for receiving a piece that fits into it or slides in it. A period of time, position within a sequence or schedule. (Antarctica) A crack or fissure, especially in a glacier.

In computer technology, a slot is an area in memory or on a disk that can be allocated to hold a particular type of object. The slots are created by the compiler when the program is built, and are used by applications to access that object.

When you create a slot, you specify a name and a type for it. You can also choose whether the slot is shared with other intents or available only to your bot. Then you assign a value to the slot, which determines how much capacity the bot can use for executing tasks.

If the amount of space allocated to a task exceeds your slot capacity, jobs continue to execute and accrue usage until enough additional slots become available for them. You can preemptively borrow a small fraction of your slot capacity for jobs, to reduce future queue latency. The borrowed slots are excluded from your slot usage, except for detailed execution statistics.

The key to winning at slots is planning, budgeting and knowing what you’re playing for. Be sure to understand how a machine pays out and its odds of hitting a jackpot or top prize, by checking the pay tables on the machine’s touch screen or through a ‘help’ button. Also, remember that luck plays a big role in how often you hit a jackpot or top prize. Don’t fall for strategies that say you’re due a payout, as all spins are random and controlled by the machine’s software.