How To Play Online Slots

How to play online slots? Everybody might think that online slots are all about slapping down a wager and hitting the spin button to wait for your grand prizes to appear. In truth though, that is the last thing you do in an online slot, not the first.

There is a little bit of knowledge you need before you hit that spin button, and if you want to be really on the ball, you should make one or two decisions before hitting that big spin button too.

Differences in slot games

Firstly, understand that online slots come in many genres and variants. Some include bonus games, others do not. Some include multiple pay lines, others do not. Some have progressive jackpots and others do not, and so on and so forth. Online slots can in fact be quite varied, just as much so as any other online gambling game.

Before you hit that big spin button, why not decide what is the perfect online slot for you? The theme will go a long way to helping you enjoy the slot game. Choosing an online slot that is themed after something that you are remotely interested in is just one step in the process however.

Which features does your slot game have?

You are going to want to make sure that online slot has all of the features that you require. Good online casino game review sites can help you with this. These sites can tell you whether or not an online slot has a progressive or non-progressive jackpot, multiple pay lines or a single pay lines, wild cards, scatter symbols, multipliers or free spins.

Most importantly of all, you are going to want to know if the jackpot is worth the maximum wager. Generally speaking, only if you make a maximum wager can you win a big jackpot, so if the maximum wager is upwards of one hundred pounds or more and you can only win a couple of hundred, it would hardly seem worth it; not when you play a slot that has a maximum wager of one hundred and a jackpot of a few thousand, or tens of thousands!

Pay table and pay lines

Once you have decided what slot you wish to play then you must take a look at the pay table, for that will ultimately tell you what you need to know about the slot.

If you haven’t read up about how to play the slot, don’t fret just yet. By clicking on the pay table button on the slot game, you can see all of those magical symbols that you will need to hit in order to win the jackpot. You will also see available slot features, what symbols are the games wild cards, scatter symbols, bonus round icons and also if there is a bonus game, how it works and how it is triggered.

If you don’t know already, wild cards are icons that will change themselves into something you need to help you win a pay line and generally five of them will win you the big jackpot. Scatter symbols can do anything from multiply your winnings to offer you free spins at the reels. They can also trigger a bonus round in the event that there are no bonus symbols in the slot machine game.

So you’ve decided what to play, and you know what you need to win and how to go about it. The next thing you need to know is how the pay lines work. If there is only one pay line then this will not concern you. But if there are multiple pay lines, you need some more information.

You can choose how many pay lines you wish to play with. Each pay line acts as a possible combination that the symbols you have can be accepted in. The more pay lines you have activated the greater your chance of winning. However, every time you add an additional pay line, you multiply your stake once more. For example having thirty pay lines means that your stake (line bet) of £1 is multiplied by thirty, and so becomes a £30 stake. The larger your stake, the larger the winnings you will be able to claim though, so it isn’t all bad!

Progressive jackpots

If you are playing a progressive jackpot slot (a jackpot that keeps rising until it is won), then you will probably need all of the pay lines and maximum wager selected. If you are playing a standard jackpot (fixed jackpot) then you might get away with a smaller wager and fewer pay lines to win it.

Choose your wager amount to play online slots

Finally, you need to place your wager. The coin bet feature determines how much your coins are worth, which determines how much you are able to wager per pay line. Decide this, and then determine how much you are going to wager per line. This will then become your wager.

Only once all this is done, are you finally ready to hit that big and bold spin button. You see, there is a little more to online slots than spinning, and it is all very much within your control!