How Should Slots Players Choose between Ways to Win or Paylines Slots?
This is a public service article since we have found that most of our gamers—who prefer slots by far over all of the other games we offer—very often play for a slot machine jackpotwithout fully understanding how they can win the jackpot. This applies both to gamers going for a very big to huge progressive jackpot to those who are hoping to hit a more normal slots jackpot that might pay as much as 50,000x the original wager.
A Confluence of Parameters
How’s that for a post-graduate headline? All it means in the real world is that there are a number of factors that will determine who can win a slots jackpot and that these factors come together in every game. So, it is a very good idea to learn something about how gamers win in slots and which games are best suited for you as an individual slots player.
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Paylines
The first slot machines had three reels and one payline. The payline went across the screen and since there were only three reels it was easy to see if you had a winning spin. This was the case in slots for decades. Finally, players started to get bored with such simple slots and the developers realized that they had to do something to perk up interest in slots.
Slots are Eternally Popular
It is true that slots have been very popular from the outset. But people who run businesses or market games know that popularity is fleeting. Does anyone remember the great personal computer game called Pong? If you do, you are probably well past your 50th birthday!
We played Pong for hours but who would play it today? Not even greybeards are into Pong anymore. Without grand changes, slots might have become the dodo of the casino!
Adding Paylines
The advent of video slots was a godsend for gamers and game providers alike. The digital nature of video slots made it possible to add paylines. This the providers did very quickly. At first, they added a mere handful of paylines . Soon they discovered that gamers liked slots with many paylines and the number of paylines zoomed upward.
Today, even in the “simple” slots that are available online or at land based casinos, there are anywhere from 9 to 100 paylines! The larger number of paylines meant that there had to be more reels so five reel slots made a grand entrance into the slots world.
Now, of course, it is not unusual to have six reel slots and in the case of Real Time Gamings’s slot Diamond Fiesta, the reels can expand from a 5 x 3 grid all the way up to an 8 x 4 grid!
Directional Changes
Even today, the overwhelming number of slots have a left to right orientation for winning spins. Given the abundant number of paylines in so many games, it is very true that if all the possible payline wins were to be put on a canvas, it would look like the Jackson Pollack paintings in the local art museums!
The crowding that began to develop in slots meant that there were ever more convoluted ways to create a winning spin! This has become a good thing as it gives an extra measure of thrill to every modern slot. But it does come at a price.
How Much to Wager on a Slot?
If you are playing for a progressive jackpot, you have to bet the maximum on the winning payline. That can get to be quite expensive for the average gamer and out of reach of low wager gamers.
One of the many lessons the proliferation of both progressive jackpots and slots with a lot of paylines is that many gamers simply have to choose to play non-progressive games! There is no greater disappointment than getting the configuration you would need to become an instant millionaire only to find out that you didn’t bet on that payline so you didn’t win the big jackpot!
Better to not play those slots at all!
Hello Scatters My Old Friend
In order to have some way around the left to right orientation of slots, game developers introduced the scatter symbol. This symbol has two main purposes in almost all slots: it wins in all positions and it takes gamers to the free spins bonus rounds!
Winning in all positions means that any three scatters appearing anywhere on the reels win. They don’t have to start from the left and they don’t have to be consecutive in a fixed payline. In essence, the scatter symbols crate their own paylines!
In many slots, you only need two scatters to win but you still need three scatters to get to the free spins bonus round.
All Ways to Win
The increasing desire of gamers for more and more ways to win led game providers to develop the all ways to win format. In this format, you bet a fixed amount and you have more ways to win than you can count. Well, we are sure that you can count the ways but it is would take a lot longer than Emily Dickinson needed to count the ways she loved her lover!
What’s Better: More Paylines or All Ways Slots?
This depends on your bankroll. The size of your bet will be determined in advance in fixed betting slots or will be up to you in other slots. Most gamers like to bet on every payline so they choose those slots where they can easily afford to bet on every payline.
Keep in mind that a one cent minimum bet on a payline is only a one dollar bet on all 100 paylines in those slots!
The Excitement of Slots Themes
Aside from the number of reels, the number of paylines, the different tricks the game uses to help you win from free spins to wild symbols to cascading or expanding reels to exploding icons and so on, a lot of gamers choose the slots they play based primarily on the theme of the slot.
Here lies one of the truly vast advantages of playing slots at an online casino such as Jackpot Capital. At an online casino, you can play as many slots as the casino offers! You can try out different story lines and different types of slots. You never have to decide whether to give up your seat in order to try out a different slot, since there aren’t any seats at an online casino!
People who play slots at land based casinos have only one so-called advantage and that is the ever-present bells and whistles that permeate the atmosphere at land based casinos. Aside from the bells and whistles, and flashing bright lights, and the sometimes inebriated gamblers, land based casinos have little to offer slots players that they can’t find at an online casino!
Gamers looking for some quiet time at the casino play at an online casino!
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