Casino Game: Slots

Slots are one of the best known and most widely spread forms of gambling, seen all over the world in bars and airports and holiday resorts. You’ll see hundreds of them lined up in orderly fashion in casinos everywhere, their flashing lights and colourful displays enticing all that pass them to stop for just a moment and enjoy their promise of excitement. They offer a familiar sight to the weary traveller, being very similar the world over – an upright machine with flashing lights and spinning reels, historically operated by a lever on the side although now often operated by the simple press of a button. They are so common that they tend to have familiar local slang names everywhere you go, known as fruit machines in the U.K., pokies in Australia, and one-armed bandits in the U.S. The premise behind them is simple – simply put your coins in the slot, from whence the name derives, and push a button or pull a lever and set the reels and symbols spinning. If you are lucky enough then your hoped-for symbols will line up on the payline and you can enjoy that familiar sound of lots of coins spewing from the machine into the winnings tray below.

Rules

The rules of slots are very simple! Just deposit your money, set the reels spinning, and hopefully your desired symbols will come to rest along the payline. The rules as they exist as such revolve around simply knowing how the different variations between games work, what the symbols mean, and how much money you might win.

Variations

The simple idea underpinning the popularity of slots means that the play is essentially the same the world over. The primary aim has, and will, always remain based on the attempt to line up a specific sequence of symbols along a payline. However, even with this simple idea there are variations. Some slots have multiple paylines and some slots have different numbers of reels, giving you increased ways of winning. The symbols used can change a lot too, with many slots developed now with themes from movies and other areas of popular culture. Different symbols can have different results as well, with so-called wild symbols sometimes being used to give bonus rounds instead of winning money directly. Another variation you might find is when the player is allowed to choose when the reels come to a stop, this being very popular in Asian countries. One of the main differences between slots though is in the method by which they pay out the winnings. Straight slots always pay out a fixed amount, whereas in progressive slots the jackpot increases as more money is deposited. Given the number of people playing online, in casino sites the jackpot on progressive slot games has been known to reach millions of pounds, and this has certainly added to the popularity of online slots. Although primarily playing for fun every gambler still hopes for that big win and slots definitely provide that opportunity! Discover the best online casinos for slots and video slots.

Strategies

Slots are a game of random chance and as such have little strategy attached to using them. What strategy there is centres on understanding how the payouts work. For example, if you can bet £5 or £1 and the chance of winning the jackpot is fixed then it is better to take 5 spins of £1 rather than one spin of £5. Also, knowing the payout percentage of the slot can help you decide what bankroll you need to maximise the time you’ll probably spend on the machine.

History

The first slot machine was invented by a car mechanic from San Francisco in the late 19th century. His name was Charles Fey and his invention became known as the Liberty Bell, named so because the highest payout was when three symbols of a Liberty Bell lined up along the payline. His slot machine became so popular that other companies copied his idea and the game spread rapidly across North America and soon crossed the Atlantic into Europe. The famous gangster Bugsy Malone introduced them to his casino in Las Vegas in the 1940s and they have remained there ever since, being one of the biggest draws for the hoards of enthusiastic gamblers who travel to Vegas every year. The first slot machines were operated by a lever on the side, hence their colloquial name of one-armed bandit in the U.S. From about the 1980s though most slots became electronically operated and the lever became obsolete, although it was still kept for nostalgic reasons on many of the machines. Now, inevitably, they have become computerized, and even the spinning reels have been replaced on many machines by video displays driven by random number generators, which has allowed their smooth transition into the world of online gaming. The machines have followed this inevitable technological progression but the simple idea behind them has remained the same – a series of spinning reels and the aim of matching specific symbols on a payline. It is this simplicity and ease of use, added to the building excitement while you wait for those reels to slowly come to a stop, that has cemented their position as one of the most popular forms of gambling in the world.

View the best casino sites that offer slots.