Slots are the hottest casino games going, both online and offline. In the United States, slots account for about 80 percent of casino revenue, and electronic gaming has grown by leaps and bounds in Europe and on the Pacific Rim, too.
That’s heady stuff for slots, with their humble beginnings in a three-reel game called the Liberty Bell, invented by San Francisco mechanic Charles Fey in 1895.
To claim their place at the top of the casino class, slots went through a technology revolution that made them multi-faceted entertainment experiences with animation, sound effects and games within a game as bonus events.
Jackpots are important, too. The chance to win thousands of dollars or more for a very small bet is in every player’s mind. Understand that the really big pays are rare treats and losing sessions are common. Enjoy the wins when they come, and meanwhile, have fun with slot entertainment.
Every game has its basics. Here are some things every player should know modern video slots, online and offline.
The short answer is that slots are games of pure chance that give no sign when they’re ready to pay off.
Las Vegas-style slots, used in most American jurisdictions including online as well as a growing number of casinos around the world, use a random number generator to determine results.
When you spin the reels, the RNG generates numbers. Other programming then maps those numbers onto reel positions. If, for one reel, the RNG generates No. 18, and the map says No. 18 corresponds to a cherry symbol in the middle position, then the game will stop the reel with a cherry in the middle position.
There is no way to anticipate what the RNG will do. You just bet your money and take your chances.
Now, let’s get down to basics.
Online, if your device has touch screen capabilities, you can touch to wager and play. If not, you can point and click with your mouse. Offline, you can either touch the screen or use buttons on a panel below the screen.
The symbols can be almost everything. Symbols that have been used for decades, such as 7s, fruit pictures and bars, are still in use, Many games have symbols designed to reflect the game theme – gift boxes, noisemakers and balloons in the popular game Jackpot Party, or scarabs, sphinxes and pyramids in Cleopatra.
The most common configuration has five video reels, each three symbols deep – effectively a 5-by-3 grid. However, some games use reels that are four symbols deep, some use more or fewer than five reels, and some have different numbers of symbols on different reels.
Offline, most credits are bought via electronic funds transfers. Check the rules on the website where you plan to play for rules on how to buy credits.
You bet by touching buttons on the screen or, on offline games, by hitting buttons on a panel just below the screen. Choose your bet size and hit the button to spin the reels.
On early three-reel slots, there was only one payline, straight across the middle symbols on each reel.
Today, video and online slots almost always have multiple paylines, and they don’t have to be a straight line. The first massively popular video slot, Reel ’Em In in 1997, had five paylines. There were lines straight across the top, middle and bottom reel positions, and there was a V line and an inverted V, or chevron.
Slots have evolved, and almost any path connecting symbols across the screen can be a payline. Thirty, 40 and 50-line games are common, and 100 line games are out there.
You usually can get a look at the pay table by touching the Help menu.
To give a simple example, imagine a game with just four different symbols: 7s, cherries, oranges and watermelons.
Each pays off when you line up three, four or five in a row.
When you look at the pay table, you’ll see a picture of the symbol along with the payoffs for each winner. Four our sample, if you see a 7 icon followed by the number 5,000 next to five 7 icons, the number 500 next to four 7 icons and 50 next to three 7 icons, it means the game pays 5,000 credits if you line up five 7s, 500 for four 7s and 50 for three 7s.
Next to a cherry icon, you might see payoffs of 250 for five cherries, 100 for four and 25 for three, then 150, 30 and 10 for the oranges and 50, 15 and 5 for the melons.
If you get one of the smaller payoffs on only one line, you might win less money than you wager. That’s part of the normal workings of modern slots. The small paybacks are designed to keep you engaged and give you credits to keep playing until bigger winning combinations and multiple-line paybacks come.
** PICK-A-PRIZE: Instead of the reels, your screen shows you a scene related to the game theme. On that screen, you touch items to reveal bonus credits. A durable example is the long-popular Jackpot Party, in which you touch gift boxes to reveal either credits or a “Pooper” character who ends the party.
** WHEEL SPINS: A vertical wheel is marked off into segments, and you touch a button or a screen to start it spinning. The position that stops on top indicates your credit win. The prime examples are classic Wheel of Fortune slots.
When you’re in a bonus event, you are adding credits to your meter without risking money on additional wagers. They’re fun to play, and to many players, the bonuses are why they play the games.
On progressives, a portion of each bet is added to the pot until somebody wins it. After it’s won, the jackpot amount is reset at a base value and starts building again.
Some jackpot slots run into the millions of dollars and can go months, even years without someone winning. But video and online slots often have frequent-hit, multi-tiered jackpots with levels such as mini, minor, maxi and grand, or bronze, silver, gold, platinum.
The lower-level jackpots may be only a few dollars, designed to give you the excitement of winning and a small sum to keep playing. Top levels can be hundreds or thousands or more.
Some progressives are won by lining up special jackpot symbols, but mystery jackpots are very common. One frequently used way to program mystery jackpots if for the RNG to set a target jackpot, and the player whose bet increases the pot to that amount wins the prize.
Online, representations of three-reel games work in the same way as the video slots described above. Offline, there are programming differences because of the need for physical reels to be small enough to fit in machine casings, but your results still are determined by a random number generator.