The Horseshoe Casino in the heart of blue collar Cleveland is providing nearly 2,000 jobs internally, as well as over 2,000 construction and contractor jobs. The casino itself will not be as glam and glitzy as anything in Vegas; it will be centered around other Cleveland attractions including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and their home sports teams. It will have around 2,000 slot machines, 60 specialty table games and around 30 poker tables, which will be a pretty good size Casino situated right in the middle of downtown. According to Bingo.com it is supposed to draw around 5 million tourists who will also be enjoying shopping and dining in the downtown area.

One of the determining factors for the bill to pass was the promise for even more jobs with further construction on the casino in the coming years. The main reason these casinos are being approved is because of the failing employment rate and economy in Ohio. Cleveland and Toledo are one of the poorest major cities in the US and these casinos are meant to help turn that statistic around.

Hit frequency is a method of choosing an online slots game that is slowly gaining in popularity. To compare it to payout percentage, the payout percentage of an online slots game is a measurement of how much of wagers are paid back out. Hit frequency measures how often a winning combination comes up on the reels.

A couple of things to know about hit frequency—it does not go hand in hand with payout percentage. An online slots game, for example, could have a low hit frequency meaning it does not hit often but a high payout percentage meaning it pays most of the wagers back out. So keep that in mind.

Hit frequency counts all hits, not just the jackpot hits or just the high paying winning combination. So keep in mind that an online slots game could have a high hit frequency but when playing it you notice that it makes lots of smaller payouts but few large payouts. It still falls in with its hit frequency because it is still hitting often. It just is not the hits that you wanted.

This is only one factor that players look at when choosing which online slots game to play. This afternoon I will talk some more about choosing online slots games.

There are some legal tussles going on in which some lawyers are trying to get the courts to declare online poker as a game of skill, which would then make it legal. But online slots games do not get that accord.

And in all honestly, they are not games of skill. They are games of chances. But the true lover and player of online slots knows this, accepts this and still loves spinning the reels. There is a feeling of excitement in not knowing what the reels are going to stop on and whether or not you will win. This comes from the nature of the game itself.

When playing online slots, the player’s roll is to choose their paylines, choose the denomination of their coin and then choose how many coins per payline to wager. After this come clicking Spin. The player then waits until the reels stop spinning to see what they have won or not won on that spin.

Notice in that sequence that once the reels start spinning, the online slots player is only waiting for the outcome. The online slots player does not do anything to affect how the spin will result. This is what is meant by game of chance. To play and not be able to influence the outcome of a spin is a game whose results are based on chance.

There is nothing at all wrong with playing a game of chance, and do not let anyone tell you otherwise. If you enjoy playing online slots and are gambling responsibly, there is no reason to stop playing a game you like.

Such is the way with multi player slots games. This type of slots game first popped up in the G2E conference last year with slot machines offering the opportunity for more than one player to partake in the slot machine action. Each player had their own seat and screen, but the action was all brought together in a bonus game that carried the theme of the game, such as the Dark Knight slot machine game.

Now the trend seems to have crossed over into the online slots realm.

Within the last year Microgaming alone has released two online slots games as multiplayer games. The first is called Wheel of Wealth. And the latest, which is set to be released this month, is called No Worries.

Multiplayer slot machines are pretty straight forward. The players all sit in their own seats, play their screens until the bonus game is triggered and then they compete against each other.

Online slots that are multiplayer are a bit more complex. Obviously players are not all sitting in the same physical room. Instead a virtual room is created based on the denomination. The players in that virtual room, no more than thirty to a room, play their on their own reels accumulating points. The points translate into standings on a leader board for that room, and when a bonus game is triggered, those at the top of the leader board get a percentage of the bonus prize.

So online multi player slots are a little different than the multi player slot machines. But there seem to be more and more of them popping up, so I think that this is the next trend in slots games.

But it brings up the point of knowing when you have to fill out a W-2G and when you have to claim your winnings from a slots game. And you do want to know because you do not want to face an Internal Revenue Service audit because of slots winnings. And now that we have a little less than a year until next tax season, I want to tell you know as a reminder so no forgets throughout the rest of this year. I would not want a fellow slots player to forget and face an IRS audit.

Here are the rules in regards to slots winnings that require a W-2G to be filled out:

- $1,200 or more has to be won from a slots game
- If the slots games are operated by a state’s lottery, the slots games are considered video lottery terminals despite being slots games, and either $600 or more is won or the payout is a minimum of 300 xs the wager.

If you have a winning from a slots game that falls under either of those two rules, then you have to fill out the W-2G and claim your slots winnings come tax time. And really it is not a huge deal to fill out a W-2G and to claim your slots winnings. I know players may not want to claim and potentially pay taxes on their slots winnings, but that is just a part of our country’s laws. And paying those taxes, if any, is better than being audited. So hang on to your tax forms and claim your slots winnings.

Let’s say you are facing the decision of playing a ten payline slots game or a twenty five payline slots game; which is better?

If you went with playing the slots game with fewer paylines you cost per spin would be less. Say you only wagered a dime on each payline. The ten payline slots game would only cost you $1 per spin while the slots game with twenty five paylines would cost you $2.50 at a dime a payline. If you are wanting to keep your bankroll alive longer.

On the other hand, more paylines means more opportunities to win. Twenty five ways to win is a lot more than ten. But more paylines will burn through your bankroll faster than if you were to play a slots game with less paylines.

As for actual payouts, all payouts except for Scatters are based on how much is wagered on a payline. So regardless of whether you are playing a ten liner or a twenty five liner, as long as you are wagering the same amount you will be paid the same amount. In the above examples, if you are wagering a dime per payline, you will receive a payout based off of a dime.

Scatter payouts on the other hand are based off of the total wager per spin. So players playing a twenty five line slots game would be paid more with a Scatter payout than on a ten payline slots game.

It is also known, perhaps not as well known, that progressive slots games are linked to each other. For slot machines this means that if there are seven machines with the same game all competing for one progressive jackpot, that those seven players are playing against each other. For online slots this means that however many online slots players are online and playing that particular progressive slots game, they are all playing against each other.

But what happens to the other slots games that are linked together when a progressive jackpot is hit?

Well for starters do not worry that there is some countdown or tally that the linked slots games have to go through before any of them can hit the progressive jackpot again. It does not work that way.

What happens is the RNG of the slots game that landed the jackpot will instantly send a message to the program that controls the linked system, letting it know that the jackpot has been hit. The controller then sends that message on to the other linked slots games as well as resets the jackpot.

At that point slots play continues like normal. Players will keep wagering until the progressive jackpot is hit again. As I said, there is no preset number of spins that the linked slots games need to process before the jackpot can be hit again. While unlikely owing to the vast number of combinations progressive slots games have, it is possible for the progressive to hit back to back. Although that is unfortunate since the second jackpot would not have had time to rebuild.

And it occurred to me that I have never written anything about how to play slots online.

I know, really it is all that complicated. But I feel that to be a well-rounded site about online slots I should include something about how to play online slots.

Obviously you start out by choosing an online slots game to play at the online casino you are registered with. You can choose your slots game based on theme, payout percentage, hit frequency or any other means. The important part is to choose one.

Once you have chosen your slots game, the next part is setting up your wager. This is actually the most complicated part.

First choose the paylines you want to be active. Most players will leave all paylines active as that opens up the most opportunities for winning combinations.

Now we come to coins and coin amounts. Many online slots games that are being produced now have the option of wagering more than one coin per payline. Hence the complication.

Begin by selecting the amount you want a coin to be worth as in a penny, a nickel, a dime, etc. Once you have set your coin amount, then you can choose how many of that coin to wager per payline; for example, you could wager two nickel coins on each payline.

When setting up your wager check the total amount of your bet in the total bet section. This allows you to know exactly how much you are wagering per spin and gives you better control of how you are using your bankroll.

Now that is all and it is time to click Spin.

Once you have your wager set, leave it where it is. It is not good slots wagering to keep changing your wager on each spin. Mistakes become possible. Set your wager and keep playing for as long as you like. Only change your wager if you want to change it for the foreseeable future up or down.

And that is how you play online slots.

Playing online slots because you enjoy the games and excitement of finding out what the reels will land on is a good reason to play. Slots games as a form of entertainment is just dandy. Some people will take $20 or $30 bucks and spend it on a trip to the movies. Others would play a slots game. Even if the slots player loses all of their $20 or $30 does not mean that slots is a bad form of entertainment. Either way the slots player or the movie-goer are not getting their money back. They are both a form of entertainment.

And do not say it is a different matter because movies are not gambling—with the stuff Hollywood is turning out nowadays, it is a gamble whether or not a movie will be good or not.

So what are some not-so-good reasons for playing online slots?

The first one that comes to mind is easy money. A big misconception about online slots is that because the game is easy to play and because you hear tales about people winning jackpots, that anyone—yourself included—get could some easy money from playing online slots.

But the truth is that you are more likely to lose money from playing any kind of slots game, be it an online slots game or a slot machine. True, a handful of people will win jackpots and some will win some decent sized payouts, but on the whole people lose more money than they win. That is just the nature of slots games.

So if you are thinking about playing an online slots game for easy money, stop right there and walk away from the computer. But if you are thinking of playing because that game looks like fun and you have the money to spare, then by all means carry on.

First, the definition of a cash cow: what is it?

Urban Dictionary has cash cow defined as so:

“Something whose sole purpose is to bring in money, and usually loads of it.”

That definition sums up slots games to a T.

Casinos and online casinos keep plenty of slots games within easy reach just so that players will be more inclined to play them. It is no coincidence that online casinos have more online slots games than their other online casino games combined. And it is no coincidence that casinos keep a plethora of slot machines on their floors—for the table game player taking a break from roulette or what have you, there are some slots to spin so they do not get bored.

While some players will win big off of slots games, most will find their bankrolls slowly withered away. This is not some secret about slots games. Savvy slots players know this is what slots games do.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. It is just something to keep in mind when playing a slots game. After all, if slots games are your favorite online casino games, why should you not play them? Which is exactly the attitude that savvy slots players take.

Just because slots games are the cash cows for casinos does not mean that they should be avoided. It merely means that players should be astute when playing them, and understand that slots games are a fun form of entertainment, but not get-rich-quick devices.