How to Win at Slots

How Slot Machines Work

Even if you have never played them before, you probably know the gist of how slot machines work. You put your cash in the machine, pull the lever or push the button, watch the reels spin and see if the results net you some winnings. But if you want to give yourself a better chance at winning, it pays to take a bit of a deeper dive into the inner workings of slot machines. Old-time slot machines had three vertical reels with one horizontal line for winning. But over the past decade, technology has stepped in to make slot machines a much more entertaining and engaging experience. Some modern-day machines are similar to the original versions, while others have anywhere from three to five reels and multiple lines you can choose to play. Each time the machine is played, it uses a random number generator to determine the outcome of the first reel, then the second, and so on. The amount you win for each spin is determined by the probability of lining up various, numbers, symbols or other icons across the lines that you played. Rare combinations pay the most, while more common combinations pay the least.

There is no doubt there are many ways to play and win at slots. All you need – is a little luck and the willingness to follow these tips:

Find Your Favorite Slot:

All online slots have a particular theme. Therefore, your first step on the way to play and win in online slot machines is to find some with a theme that you like. Playing video games, for example, is much akin to the platform Tomb Raider, while golfers will have fun with The Argyle Open. So enter and find the game you are according to your interests. You may find that playing a slot machine has a pleasant and interesting topic and thus you will maintain a positive state of mind, and thus turned lucky you begin arriving.

Understand Your Online Slot Machine

Do you understand the concept of pay lines? Does the slot machine have free spins? You should know the answers to all kinds of questions before you start playing online slots. You just need to click on a button and the reels start spinning and the casino software will automatically add your winnings to your account. But remember, the more you know, the more you will enjoy the online slots and both your winnings and your chances increase when using good strategies.

The Maximum Number of Coins for the Great Prize!

In all online slot games, you can earn an extra jackpot if you bet the maximum number of coins possible.

How Long Will it Last Approach

Too many slot players take the “how long will it last approach” to playing the machines. You take your playing bankroll and play the slots until you run out of money. This is a defeatist attitude so it’s no wonder these players consistently lose. Is there a scientific way to play the machines? I was once told, “people who consistently win at slots by playing them scientifically are called casino owners.” That’s because slot machines are programmed to return to players a certain percentage of coins put into them over a long period of time. There are no playing systems that will allow you to beat the slots over the long term. But over the short term, a player who knows how to play the machines smartly will have a much better chance of decreasing his risk and increasing his chances of walking away from the machine a winner. Following is my ten tips for smart slot play.

Pick Thy Machine

Slot machines that have smaller jackpots usually have a higher hit frequency that makes them a better bet over the short term.

Try to play on slot machines that certify at least a 98% or higher payback or return.

Play Max Coins

Most slot machines are programmed to pay off a certain amount for each coin played. When you insert two coins, the payoffs are doubled. Likewise, with 3 coins the payoffs increase proportionately to 3 times the 1 coin payout. However, the jackpot on most slot machines increases to bonus levels with maximum coins played. Always check if this is the case before you play the machine. How do you do this? Just glance at the payoffs listed somewhere on the machines.

More is Better

It’s no secret that the higher the denomination machines the higher the return percentages. On average quarter machines payback 91 to 96% whereas dollar and five dollar machines payback more.

Most gamblers, even those who only play with an edge, don’t make that much money. But you CAN improve your chances of winning at almost any casino or gambling game. Sometimes this means choosing the bets with the lowest house edge. Other times it means making the correct playing decisions. Even if you can’t get an edge over the casino or the sportsbook, you can still reduce the edge enough that your chances of winning improve. I’ve divided these tips for winning at gambling into 10 sections, each of which features 10 tips. All of these tips should improve the amount of entertainment and fun you get while gambling, even if they don’t actually increase your chances of winning. For most gamblers, recreation is the goal anyway—if you have more fun for your money, you win even when you’re losing. How to Win at Bingo – Some people don’t even think of bingo as a gambling game.

Alter Your Bets Often

Online slots sometimes pay out lots of smaller amounts or few larger amounts. They calculate your payout based on your bets. So, alter your bet often to see what kind of amounts the online slot machine wants to pay out, or not at all.

Look at the number of pay lines

The number of pay lines refers to how the symbols are going to line up. If you decide to choose an online slot with a straight pay line, you would need a series of matching symbols to land a win. However, some online slots allow you to place bets on all or some pay lines, thereby increasing your chances of winning. Fixed pay line slots take the option away but variable pay line slot games allow you to optimize your bet size versus chances of winning.

Know when to use ‘max bet’ This is a button designed to simplify and speed up the slots betting process. However, there is a bit of a caveat here, as it is not always wise to hit the max bet button on every spin. While the max bet button does make things easier and quicker, it is important to note that it also plays the highest coin value and all the pay lines on every spin, which can be quite expensive. You may be surprised how fast your bankroll can run out on a cold running slot! The best time to use the max bet feature is if the online slot in question has either a fixed jackpot or a progressive jackpot feature which can only be won if you are playing on max bet. Play minimum coins or pay lines during a cold streak and push these up during a hot streak.

Set limits

It is important to set limits and bank your winnings. After all, it is easy to be carried away while playing slots and you could end up losing more money than you intended. Therefore, establish a budget and stick to it, do not be tempted to break your schedule or budget if you are losing money quickly.

Slot Machine Strategies

Slot machines are a very popular game in both online and land-based casinos. They generally aren’t that expensive to play on and typically come in 3 and 5 reel varieties. Slots began with the singular pay line, it seemed obvious that to win, one must have a clear line of symbols, as time and games progressed the pay line would form various patterns but remaining singular. Now we have a deluge of options going from the rewarding to the bonkers, with slots covering lines of beyond a thousand. The function to win more lines is more so within online games than their land-based counterparts.

The slot terminology that house such lucrative pay lines are Basic reels, Multi-Line, Multiplier, and the infamous Progressive slot. The progressive slot machine proves to be very popular due to the huge jackpots that can be generated because you’re essentially playing in combination with several hundred people at any time, all contributing towards the available pot.

The Use of Strategies

When you dabble and take on a slot machine, there is absolutely no harm going in prepared with a strategy and you’ll no doubt get a feel for how the game is going after the first 50 spins. Read the game and bet wisely is always a chance for great success. The result of each spin is determined by a computer algorithm, the odds are the same for every spin and payout rates can be set by the casino so it’s a good idea to try to make some quick calculations before playing.

Chance is everything, there’s a chance you can get hit by a bus tomorrow, but not unless you view the whole dynamics, if you were to know the bus route and times, there’s a strong chance you won’t succumb to a tragic end by the number 43.

Learn a little bit about how slot machines work

Slot machines used to be mechanical, and their inner workings were pretty simple. The spinning reels were powered by springs and levers. You had an equal chance of getting any of the symbols on each reel on a stop at any given time.

About 30 or 40 years ago, they changed the way they worked. They look the same, for the most part, but they’re bigger and fancier now. And they’re no longer run mechanically. They’re electronically powered now.

Here’s who a basic slot machine works: You might have a game with 10 symbols on each reel. The odds of getting any one of these symbols on a stop might be 1/10. Lining up all 3 of any of those symbols might have a probability of 1/10 X 1/10 X 1/10. That amounts to 1/1000. But since you have 10 different opportunities, you really have a 10/1000, or 1/100 chance of getting 3 symbols lined up on a pay line.

The casino has different payouts for different combinations of symbols. The one thing that all these payoffs have in common is that they’re paying off at less than the odds of getting that combination. That’s how the casino makes its profit.

A super-simple game might have the same payout on every combination—95 coins. Since you have a 1/100 chance of winning, the casino has a payback percentage of 95%. For every $100 the game takes in, it will pay out $95 on average. Casinos and designers have different ways of massaging these numbers to create any payback percentage that they want. They can, for example, put more symbols on a reel.

These tips will help you whether you’re playing slots at a casino or online. But since all slot machines are completely random, there is no system that will change your odds of winning.

On the other hand, there are several things you can do to maximize our return-on-investment (ROI) while playing penny slots. Casinos offer slot players some great bonuses. Taking advantage of slot bonuses is the easiest way to gain an edge on the casino. This is the best part of being a penny slot player.

Land-based casinos reward slot players handsomely with complimentary rooms, meals, slot play, invitational slot tournaments, and more. Online casinos reward players with deposit bonuses, monthly reload bonuses and cash back programs. To get involved in a land-based casino’s rewards program, simply go to that casino’s players club and sign up for a player’s card. Make sure to use your card EVERY time you play penny slots or other casino games. Manage your money wisely – Always decide in advance how much money you are willing to wager in a given session. While it feels bad to walk away with a loss, it’s even worse to continue playing in order to “get even”.

Also, you should always gamble with money you can afford to lose. Look for penny slots with the highest payouts. In land-based casinos, you should look for signs that advertise a high payout percentage.

Slot machines are a good entry point for new casino visitors because they are simple to learn, fun to keep playing, and downright intoxicating when you come away a winner. Whether you are spending an hour of downtime on your own or with a group of friends, the slots are a great way to warm up for a day or night of gaming. But whether you are new to slot machines, or you have been playing them for years, you could probably benefit from knowing a few strategies. So on this page, you can find a quick primer on how slot machines work, common myths associated with these popular games, and a few strategic tips you can use to maximize your chance of hitting it big.

Common Myths

There are a lot of misperceptions about slot machines, and we want to debunk those. No matter what you hear, know that the outcome of spins on slot machines is not affected by any of the following:

Whether you pull the lever or push the button
The location of the machine on the floor
How long it has been since your machine last hit the jackpot
The specific day or time of day
Whether the machine is “hot” or “cold”
Whether your casino member card is inserted

Each spin on a slot machine is its own random event, similar to flipping a coin. Even if one person hit it big twice last weekend on a specific machine, it does not mean the machine was “hot.” It means that they got lucky with two winning spins that were each randomly generated. For some, knowing that the spins on slot machines are random can be frustrating.

What the jackpot would have to be on an 8/5 20 nickel game for it to be a 100% game, keeping in mind that it takes 20 nickels to be eligible for the jackpot? What about the same machine on a 7/5 game? And finally, what would it have to be on an 8/5 quarter machine that requires eight coins to be eligible for the jackpot.

On a 7/5 machine and 20 coins required the meter would have to reach, 46,956 coins. These figures assume you are playing the proper strategy for these pay tables with a per coin payoff for a royal flush of 800. As the jackpot grows some strategy adjustments are called for to more aggressively try for the royal. These adjustments were not calculated in this answer. You can typically bet on 1 to 9 pay-lines (even though some have as many as 15 different pay lines), and multiple coins per line; thus, with nine pay-lines and five coins played per line, you would have a total bet of 45 coins (even in nickles, this can start to add up!). Most payoffs are multiples of the line bet, even though there are some “bonus” wins that pay multiples of the total amount bet.

Any given line is equally likely to produce any given combination. Thus, the return is the same regardless of the number of coins played.