There’s actually been a ton of research on how to optimize “slot machines,” at least in a generalized sense. For more reading, check out the literature on multi armed bandits.

that analogy is so boring now with so many real world examples of actual LLM work.

people still can't get over the unreasonable effectiveness of algorithms.

Games like Diablo are basically a whole bunch of slot machines, and there are strategies you can follow to optimize your run.