How To Play Slots

How To Play Slots

Slots are the most common games you'll be playing when you're doing casino offers, although they're not always the best.

Blackjack and Roulette have very low variance and tend to have a very high RTP, making them ideal... however for most offers, they're simply not eligible - meaning you have to use slots.

There are thousands of different slots games out there, although they tend to follow the same basic idea. Most slots tend to have an RTP of around 96%, although this can vary from 90% up to 99%, and the variance can also vary a lot as well.

The variance is typically a lot higher than with blackjack or roulette, which means you can go many spins in a row without winning anything, or you could win a lot from a single spin. The high variance of slots can yield higher value for some medium/high risk offers so bear this in mind later in your casino journey.

The main thing to know about slots is that there's no real strategy to them, you just hit spin and wait to see if you win.

MORE ABOUT SLOTS

Slot games are often a series of reels or columns, usually 5 or 3, with pictures or symbols along each reel. As you hit spin, the reels randomly spin and then stop. If you get enough matching symbols in a line the slot pays you out. Slot machines usually pay out from left to right, and usually require you to get 3 or more matching symbols to get a payout.

A payout line on a slot isn't necessarily just a straight line through the middle though, most modern slots have a lot of different paylines. Along the side of the slot, you can preview all the paylines by mousing over them. Getting matching symbols along any of those paylines will result in you being paid out.

The amount you get paid out is dependent on the size of your bet, and the symbols that you get. Every slot has a paytable that shows what each symbol is worth. Some symbols are worth a lot more than others, and generally speaking, getting four or five symbols in a row is worth a lot more than getting just 3. These amounts represent a multiple of your line bet.

Some slots also have "Wild" symbols that act as any symbol, allowing you to get paid out even when you don't have 3 of the same symbol. And whilst I said most slots only pay for matching symbols in a row from left to right, some of them also pay from right to left.

In addition, most slots have some sort of special "bonus round", which when triggered, can result in a fairly large payout. You'll encounter a lot of these as you go through, but again they don't usually require any skill,

So that's the idea of how they work, let's look at the options. Slots let you adjust your bet amount in different ways.

ADJUSTING STAKE SIZE

This is a slot called Halloween Fortune. If you look at the bottom left, we can adjust the number of lines, and the line bet amount. If we lower the number of lines down, you'll see that the number of payout lines decreases. If we set it to 1, then this means it would only pay out on matches along that middle line. If we raise it back up to the maximum of 20, we can see all of the different payout lines of the slot.

The line bet is the bet size per line. If we set the line bet to the minimum of 1 pence per line, then our total bet is 20p, because it's a 1p bet for each line, and there are 20 lines.
If we increase the line bet, you'll see that our total bet goes up as well.

For most offers, at least when you're starting out, you want to go with the maximum number of lines, and the minimum bet size. So I would set this to the max of 20 lines, and the minimum line bet of 1p, for a total bet of 20p per spin.

The reason for this is it gives the lowest possible variance. We'll win frequently because we have so many payout lines covered, and if we do have a streak of bad losses, the amount we'll have lost is only small because we're betting such a small amount on each spin.

If we go with a higher bet per line, this means that whenever we do win, we'll win more money, and it will mean we complete the offer faster, but it increases the chance of having a bad luck streak and making a loss. At later stages of your journey, using higher stakes can be a good strategy because it does increase the EV in some situations, but it's not a good idea to start with.

You'll see there is a bet max button. Don't ever press this, as it will perform a spin using the maximum amount that you can afford; you don't want to do that.

Then there's the 'Spin' button, which will play one round of the game at the set stake size.

If we look at some other slots, you'll see they don't all have the same options. This slot, Immortal Romance, doesn't let you adjust the number of lines, it's always set to the max. It has an option for "Coin Value", and "Bet Level". These are basically the same thing, they adjust your bet per line. If we set the coin value to 1p, and the level to 1, then each line is worth 1p. If we set the level to 2, then each line is worth 2p. You can basically just adjust each of these to get the bet level to what you want. Total bet is the main thing that matters, which again you'll want to keep at the lowest possible when starting out.

So again, when starting out, always go for the maximum LINES, and the minimum stake. This gives you the safest strategy to complete the offer. You can increase the stake if you want to, which will make it go faster and could mean you win more money, but it also increases the risk that you'll lose.