Slots Hero

So many paylines to choose from! How can an online slots player choose which ones to wager on? Are there some that are better to wager on, that have better odds?

In all truth there is no payline that has better odds than any of the other paylines. A diagonal or a horizontal is no different in terms of odds from one that dips. The odds of an online slots game come from how many symbols are on a virtual reel—or how many possibilities there are of a symbol coming up on the display at the end of a spin from the RNG.

So if all of the paylines on an online slots game are not any different when it comes to their odds, how does an online slots player choose which ones to wager on?

The answer is surprisingly simple. Wager on all of them. Wagering on all of them will cover all possibilities where a winning combination could land. If a winning combination comes up on the reels and that payline does not have a wager on it (also known as being inactive) the online slots player will not receive that payout.

I do not know about you, but I have the kind of luck that if I were to leave a payline inactive, the jackpot combination would land on that inactive payline. It is because of instances such as that that makes it worth keeping all paylines active with a wager on them. It also stands to reason to keep the wager on each payline equal—think of it as maximizing paylines. I will talk more about that this afternoon.

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The online casino industry is rife with offers of bonuses for online slots players. There are the Welcome Bonuses, the weekly bonuses, the weekday bonuses, the Happy Hours, the cash backs—the list seems to go on and on.

This is not a bad thing. Online casinos choose to offer such a variety of online slots bonuses because they want to appeal to what is a very wide range of tastes and desires. In essence there needs to be something for everybody, and that is what online casinos are trying to accomplish.

For some online slots players, this might seem like they have died and gone to bonus heaven. So many bonuses that it is hard to choose and so there are a lot of players who take them all. Well, not all of them but a good many of them.

And when seeing all of that bonus money in their player accounts gives off a really good feeling, there is one thing that is forgotten: wager requirements.

A wager requirement is the deposit combined with the amount of bonus money received, and then that amount is wagered a certain number of times. Wager requirements must be met before players can withdraw any money won from that bonus.

So it is with wager requirements that accepting any and all—or most—online slots bonuses gets tricky. First off players have to remember how far along they are in meeting their various wager requirements so that they do not accidently try to withdraw too early from the wrong one; that would void the bonus money. Plus players have so much wagering to do to meet all of those wager requirements.

It is simpler as a whole to be a bit on the choosy side when it comes to which online slots bonuses are accepted so as not to overwhelm the online playing experience.

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Linked slots can usually be found in two places: online progressive slots and progressive slot machines. Notice anything about that statement?

Yes, slots games, be they online slots or slot machines in a brick and mortar casino, will be linked if they are a progressive game. The reason for this is the more players there are wagering on the slots game, the more money that is fed into the progressive jackpot.

Granted progressive jackpots do have a base that is put up by the casino or online casino. But they not only need to have a way to increase the jackpot but to also make their money back. That is where the linked slots games come into play.

Not every penny of a progressive wager goes into the progressive jackpot. Part of it goes back to the casino like any slots game would—think payout percentage and how whatever is not returned to players as a whole goes to the casino. But between the casino making money and the jackpot being built up, it is reasonable to understand why progressive slots game need a maximum wager.

But in order for the jackpot to really climb to those life altering amounts, more than one slots game needs to feed the progressive jackpot. Hence linked online slots games and slot machines.

Linking the slots games means more players are contributing to the jackpot. Why slots players need to know this is because when playing a linked progressive slots game, you are competing against everyone else who is playing. There is a jackpot controller that links all of the machines, and is the device that resets the jackpot when one of the slots games triggers it.

So always be mindful when playing a progressive slots game that you are playing against other players.

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We all love bonuses when it comes to online slots.

Online slots players start out with a Welcome Bonus at the online casino. Often times online casinos will offer a special Welcome Bonus meant for only online slots players. After that it is the slots bonuses we receive from that online casino on a regular basis; the weekly slots bonuses and the special bonuses that are issued around holidays.

And on top of those bonuses there are the special weekly bonuses and cashbacks that are only available to members of player rewards clubs.

All of these are meant to give online slots players the most amount of money, real of bonus, to spin the reels with. But those bonuses come with a price: a wager requirement.

A wager requirement is a stimulation put on the acceptance of an online slots bonus. Usually the wager requirement is the combined amount of a slots player’s deposit and their bonus amount. So if you were to deposit $100 and receive a 100% deposit match your bonus amount would be $100, making your wager requirement amount $200. Hang on to that number for a moment.

Once a slots player knows the total amount their wager requirement, they then have to wager that amount a specific amount of times before they are allowed to make a withdrawal. Usually that amount is 20x to 25x. In the case of our example amount of $200, the slots player would have to wager $4,000 or $5,000 before making a withdrawal.

Do not worry though, online slots players are not supposed to turn $200 into $4,000. Casino games that are eligible to be played with the bonus will have a dollar amount assigned to them. Players must rack up those dollar mounts to equal $4,000 or $5,000 in the case of our example.

Wager requirements should be kept in mind when choosing an online slots bonus. Knowing how much you will have to wager and play to fulfill the wager requirement can help determine how much money you deposit.

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Awhile back I talked about hit frequency and slots games. Just a quick review, the hit frequency of a slots game is how often the slots game hits or lands a winning combination.

But what good is this information to a slots player if they do not know what this means?

In truth the hit frequency can help a slots player choose which slot machine or online slots game to play. While hit frequency is not an exact judge, it can help determine which game to play. But knowing if the hit frequency is high or low does not mean a thing if a player does not know what those two distinctions mean.

When a slots game has a high hit frequency it lands winning combinations often. The higher the number, the more wins generated. And when a slots game has low hit frequency it means it does not land winning combinations as often.

When I say winning combination I mean any combination that pays out be it a small payout or a large one.

That all being said, you would think that you would want to play a slots game with a high hit frequency since it lands more often. Not quite so. Remember it could be landing any winning combination and is likely to be a slot machine or online slots game that seems to only make small payouts.

Now compare that to a lower frequency slots game, which is more likely to payout larger payouts but do so less often.

There is a balance to be sought. Do you play a slot machine or online slots game with a lower frequency and not win as often but winner larger payouts, or do you play a higher frequency slots game with the potential of winning smaller wins more often?

It is a toss-up that is entirely up to the player. Hit frequency is meant to be a guide when choosing a slots game. They are not percentages to be taken as dead on facts, but as a guide. Keep in mind the numbers do not only apply to one player but to all the players playing that slots game.

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Heads up! A new slots myth has surfaced and swam ashore on my beach. This new one touts that slots players can impact the cold streak a game’s Random Number Generator (RNG) is stuck on by altering their speed of play or spins per hour.

The theory goes that if you are playing an online slots game, and the game went into a cold streak, the player could alter their rate of playing to knock some sense (so to speak) into the RNG and cause it to leave its cold streak behind. The most popular theories say that players must slow down, or make their rate of play cold, in order to push on the RNG.

A kind of ‘If you are going to be cold, then I will be cold too’ sort of theory.

This, like the majority of slots myths, is not true. Streaks happen but they are not predictable, nor can anything be done to cause a cold streak to end. Or for that matter to cause a hot streak to begin. Both kinds of streaks are unpredictable.

The only thing slowing down your rate of play will do will help preserve your bankroll. The house edge of a slots game is against the player, which means players have a much better chance of losing money than making it. Hence slots games being games of chance.

The more a slots player plays in an hour, the more they will lose in an hour. So while slowing down your rate of play will not do anything to a streak, it will help preserve your bankroll.

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This afternoon we will take a look at the concept, or myth depending on how you look at it, of how long in between hits a slots game, either online slots or slot machines, must wait before it let’s its jackpot go again.

Are you ready for the answer?

There is no designated time that a slots game must wait before letting the jackpot it is holding go again. It could happen in the next spin, the next ten spins or the spin ten weeks from now.

I know; that is probably a disappointing answer. So many slots players are looking to find out what the secret is to a slots game’s jackpot. But in truth there is no way to determine when any slots game is going to pay up on its jackpot.

There are some slots players, and I am sure you will eventually come across one here or there, that insists on tracking the spins of a slots game. The problem with this is that a player who insists on tracking would have to sit there from when a jackpot was triggered to when it finally triggered again marking down every single spin. That is a lot of days to stay awake on a twenty-four hour watch.

And even still the number of spins counted will vary from jackpot to jackpot. It truly is a random happening. The winning player has to be lucky enough to be playing that slots game at the time the RNG happens to pull the outcome that triggers the jackpot.

The point that I am coming down to is that slots games are not predictable. So do not waste time counting spins when you could just be enjoying playing slots.

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Because there are some differences between the online version of some casino games to their counterparts in the brick and mortar world, there have been some misconceptions build up about online slots.

One of the biggest is that because online slots games are run by a computer program that they can be predicted. This would be false.

In all reality, online slots games are not that much different than their counterparts in the casinos. Nowadays, slot machines hold a computer which runs a program to give players the slot machine experience; there are no reels anymore, it is all virtual.

Because of the fact that slot machines are running virtual slots games, they are not really all that different from the online slots games. Both are run by a program and both have a Random Number Generator (RNG) to pull outcomes of spins to keep the randomness of the game alive.

Another belief is that symbols can be counted in order to predict when an online slots game will hit. This is also untrue, and it is because of the aforementioned RNG.

The RNG is programmed with every single possible outcome for a spin. Each time the Spin button is clicked, the RNG instantly pulls an outcome randomly from all possibilities. This means that it is impossible to predict an online slots game based on tracking symbols.

Another biggie is that slots strategy is real and possible. This would also be untrue.

There is no way for a player to impact the outcome of a spin or their slots odds like can be done in other casino games, such as blackjack and poker. From the moment a player clicks spin on an online slots game, the results are out of their hands. This makes it impossible for strategy for online slots to exist.

There are countless other misconceptions out there about online slots. The key is to research these misconceptions to see if they are true or not before putting any stock in them on the reels.

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Sometimes slots players confuse slots odds and house edge as being the same thing. They are not the same though.

On average online slots games carry a house edge of 14% to 15%. But that is only the average. I have heard of online slots games with a house edge of 12% and the largest house edge was 20%. It just depends on what you choose to play. But the average is 14% to 15%.

House edge is the expected amount of loss a player can expect on a wager.

So in terms of a house edge of 15%, a player can expect to lose 15% of their wager. If $1 is being wagered per spin then $0.15 of that wager can be expected to be lost.

Granted slots are not that exact. Players can win more than the house edge on a spin or they can lose more than the house edge. House edges are what a player can expect on average.

And while the outcome of a spin in terms of actual payouts will vary, the house edge for a slots game does not alter. If a slots game’s house edge is, say, 14% then it will stay at 14%.

Slots games are games of chance, which means that there is nothing in a player’s power to impact the outcome of a spin like players in blackjack and poker can do. That is just the way slots games are.

So the theory is to find the slots game with the smallest house edge. It is the best indicator of how a player can expect to do when playing that slots game but it is by no means guaranteed to a player.

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Yesterday I talked about the hit frequency of slots games. Mostly I talked a little bit about what hit frequency was for a slots game as compared to payout percentage since a lot of slots players either confuse the two or think that hit frequency and payout percentage are the same thing.

But the question becomes how does knowing a slots game’s hit frequency impact a player’s slots strategy?

Like how payout percentage can help a player determine which slots game they would like to play based on how much of its total wagers. Similar to how slots players can use the payout percentage of a slots game to determine whether or not they want to play it, they can use the hit frequency to choose as well.

We will call this choosing a slots game strategy.

Hit frequency is how often a slots game hits. The greater the hit frequency the more often it make a payout. Conversely, the lower the hit frequency of a slots game the fewer times it will make a payout.

But here is the downside: all you as a player know is the frequency the slots game hits; you do not know exactly how often it will hit. It could hit several times in a row or there could be long periods of time between hits. There is also no indication of the kinds of payouts the slots game will issue or how much it returns. The payout percentage gives an impression of how much, but not the likelihood of a hitting.

The strategy here is to choose a slots game with the highest hit frequency possible. Using that strategy to choose a slots game means that you are more like to receive hits on a slots game, although such a strategy does not tell you what kind of hits you will get—only that you are more likely to hit more.

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