A slot is a narrow depression, perforation, or slit, especially one for receiving something such as a coin or letter. A position within a schedule or sequence: Her TV show is in the 8 o’clock slot on Thursdays.

In aviation, a slot is a time period during which aircraft may take off or land at a particular airport. Air traffic control uses slots to manage the flow of air traffic at busy airports and prevent repeated takeoffs or landings by the same aircraft at the same time.

Psychologists have studied the relationship between slot machines and gambling addiction. They found that players of video slot machines reach a debilitating level of involvement three times as fast as those who play traditional casino games.

In a slot machine, the odds of winning are determined by the probability that certain symbols will line up on the pay table, which is typically displayed above or below the reels. In the United States, most machines accept coins or paper tickets with barcodes as credits, but a few casinos allow players to insert credit cards.

You can create a custom slot type to map value sets to specific slots in your bot. For example, you can use a location slot to recognize cities for a travel bot. To define a new custom slot type, select Add Slot Type from the left pane of the slot page. Enter a name for the slot type and choose a value set from the drop-down list. You can also add synonyms for the slot type so that Dialog Engine can recognize different words or phrases for each slot.