Slot Machine Secrets:
  HOW TO WIN AT SLOT MACHINES: STRATEGY

SLOT MACHINE SECRETS: WINNING STRATEGY

First, you must understand one inescapable fact that is the secret to winning regularly on slot machines and losing less.

Slotty's Secret Slot Tip #2   You can't win every time. That means you have to have enough bankroll to weather the times you don't win.

 

We don't expect to win every time we play a slot machine. Instead, more often than not, we can trace our yearly profits from slots to the returns from a few great winning sessions. Our goal is to position ourselves, without overspending, to achieve the big wins that will recover the smaller losses for the period and reward us with a profit for our efforts.

SECRETS OF THE RIGHT FRAME OF MIND

Slot machine games are great for excitement, fun and relaxation, precisely because you are not required to plot, plan, guess, figure, memorize, count or the like. Once you choose the right casino and machine, you can simply press the button, and often you'll get lucky.

Having fun when you play slots is important, because relaxation is the key to any winning strategy. Psychologists have shown that having fun puts you into a proper frame of mind for winning at all games. If you are stressed out because you are playing on money you can't afford, you are likely to overlook clues and information that might have been the key to your success.

Slotty's Secret Slot Tip #3   If you really want to win, first have fun. Never play on "scared money."

 

Professional gamblers have a saying: Never play on scared money.

SECRETS OF THE WIN CYCLE

If you, like us, want to help your chances of winning, the new modern slots in online casinos give you a wide range of options that can make a real difference in your results.

Slot players didn’t used to have many choices. The old reel-spinners all looked the same and were usually quite volatile—which means, occasionally you would have a big hit, but the dry spells in between were exceptionally dry.

Many slot players, however, don’t enjoy a slot game where they are too likely to lose all before they have enjoyed a decent amount of playing time. They want a slot machine where they can last a while—and where they want to last because the game is so much fun.

That’s not to say that there is no place for the traditional reel-spinners in a winning slot strategy. The chance for the occasional big payoff is important, even if it means bankrolling some dry spells.

The secret is that there are really two distinct types of slot players: the Play Longer players, and the Go For A Score players.

But the even bigger secret is that winning slot players switch back and forth between both types, depending on where they are in their win cycle—that is, where they are in their path toward reaching their winning goal.

Slotty's Secret Slot Tip #4   Understand your slot machine playing goals, and understand that they should often be different according to where you are in your win cycle.

But if you are going for a win, you should play the machines best suited for your Go For A Score goals. Then, after you hit a big payout, switch to a Play Longer slot machine to work off your play-through requirement, and have some fun.

SECRETS OF THE RIGHT SLOT MACHINE

As strange as it may seem, a slot machine can hit too often, especially one that pays out on as many as fifteen different symbol combinations, including blanks. Lots of little hits can mean insufficient bigger wins to allow a fair chance of making money. When you are in the Go For a Score portion of your win cycle, the secret is to choose a slot that refrains from giving all those smaller payouts, and puts the money instead into the medium and bigger jackpots.

But these machines that "pay too often" can be perfect when you are in the Play Longer portion of your win cycle.

Slotty's Secret Slot Tip #5   Understand the Secrets of Which Slot Machines Are "Play Longers" and Which are "Go for a Scores."     As strange as it may seem, a slot machine can pay too often!

How can you tell whether a slot machine is the Play Longer type or the Go For a Score type?

THE SECRETS OF THE SLOT MACHINE PAY TABLES

Looking at the pay table of the machine can help you judge how often that machine returns a big winner and how often it returns smaller payouts.

The more symbols there are, the more combinations they will make. The more combinations and small win amounts you see on that pay table, the more frequently you’ll get paid, but the less often you’ll hit a big winner.

Also, for the day-to-day part of your winning slot strategy, you don't want to aim for such a big winner that you use up your whole bankroll trying to hit it! There is a time and place for going after the progressives and jumbo jackpots, but generally you should keep such play to 10% of your overall slot machine budget.

In general, when going for a score, look for a slot with a lower top line jackpot and a stronger paytable overall. Those mid-level payouts are where most of your profits will come from. The bigger the top line jackpot, the more elusive it will be and the less of a factor it will be in your monthly returns.

Slotty's Secret Slot Tip #6   Look at the Slot Machine Pay Tables!

Clearly, a machine with 15 or 17 winning combinations is going to offer more small hits than the machine with only six or eight. But that doesn’t mean the six or eight-combination slot is the machine you should choose.

If you’re going for a score, the secret is the proportion of payouts that return the level of profit you are seeking. What many winning slot players look for is a 50% proportion of payouts larger than the total number of coins they are willing to put into that machine.

The long-time on-land casino favorite Double Diamond, for example, may have only seven winning combinations, but four of them fall into this higher payout category, and the doubling feature of this machine brings a fifth bigger payout possibility into play—single bars.

The Microgaming online casinos' new Frost Bite slot is very similar to Double Diamond, and highly suitable when you are Going For A Score.

When any single hit during a session returns 50% or more of the money you are willing to put at risk, there is a good chance of winning an actual score on that slot machine.

For more information on which slots to play, see our Meet the New Slots page.

MORE TIPS ON BONUS SLOTS

Bonus slots don’t usually have their pay tables on the main playing screen. Instead, you must click on the “Paytable” button or equivalent and look it over. What you are looking for is whether the bonus slot machine has a lot of winning combinations or very few, whether it has scatter symbols and wild symbols that tend to increase the frequency of payouts, or whether it has multipliers that tend to decrease the frequency of payouts. (Every time the machine has to save money for bigger payouts, some of the more frequent smaller payouts have to go.)

At Microgaming online casinos, take advantage of the small chart that appears at the lower right of the “Game Lobby” screen when you highlight the name of a slot you are considering playing. The chart includes an image of the slot machine screen, as well as exact information about its special features, such as whether the game offers scatter symbols, bonus rounds, free spins or the “gamble” option. About these, you will find more information directly below.

“Wild” symbols are substitutes for other symbols and can make the difference between a winning spin and a losing spin. If the other symbols on a payline are part of a possible payout lineup then the wild symbol will complete the combination.

Double payout symbols, such as you find on Frost Bite, are a combination of a wild card and a multiplication feature. When one of these symbols finishes on the payline, not only can it turn the stop into a winning combination, but it will double the payout. Complete a winning combination with two double symbols and the payout will be four times what is showing on the header board.

“Scatter” symbols are symbols that don’t have to be on the same line for you to get paid. Instead, you get paid a certain amount according to the total number of them that show up on a spin, wherever they are on the screen. That’s nice!

Some players love bonus slots like Gold Rally that offer “second-screen” bonuses that give you a chance to choose. The slot machine will literally take you to a second screen where you must choose between “X’s” (or other images) with a bonus hidden behind them. Once you make your choice and click on it, the bonus amount will be revealed to you, and you may receive another screen full of symbols to choose from to receive yet another bonus amount. Be sure to check the paytable for the bonus round top payouts.

Other bonus slot machines, like RTG’s Caesar’s Empire, offer “free spins” when a certain arrangement of symbols come up. Often, standard payouts are multiplied on these free spins, and multiplied again when a certain symbol turns up on a winning payline. Other symbols that show up during your free spins will win you even more free spins! With the multipliers and extra free spins, the winnings can really pile up! You can accumulate a lot of credits on a good round of free spins, and they are a lot of fun.

Another feature we use for our winning slot strategy is the “Gamble” feature. On slot machines with this feature, all wins can be gambled for double-or-nothing up to five times. This is a great way to go for a real score—essentially, it gives you a chance to manufacture your own jackpots!

Slotty's Secret Slot Tip #7   Look for the "Gamble" feature on the new bonus slots. This feature essentially allows you to manufacture your own jackpots!

STILL MORE TIPS ON BONUS SLOTS:

Paylines can be confusing when you first start playing multi-line bonus slots. Take a look at the maps on the paytable that show how the paylines crisscross the screen. Then relax. The on-land or online slot machine will remember the paylines, even if you don’t.

Warning: Casinos set up bonus slots partly because they know players may get carried away with trying for a chance at a bonus round. Always remember your win goal, and if you hit it, quit when you're ahead.

Slotty's Secret Slot Tip #8   Some bonus slot machines require that you play all lines to qualify for the top jackpot or other premium payouts. Play the maximum lines at smaller coins to stay within your budget.

And remember, it’s important to know that your decision to "go for a big score" versus "play longer" may change—even within a single visit to a casino. Which brings us to:

THE SECRETS OF MONEY MANAGEMENT

Let’s say you decide to go for a big score, and you hit one—yes, it will happen to you. It has happened to us many times. If you hit it while playing on an online casino bonus (a top secret of how to win at slots), you may still have some of the wagering requirement to do.

You may choose to “lock in” some of this win by switching to a smaller coin and a slot machine that will give you more frequent smaller payouts. That way, you won’t give back the whole win while you are finishing the wagering requirement.

Slotty's Secret Slot Tip #9   You can't win if you can't stop.

Then, when you finish the wagering requirement, STOP! It's time to savor your win! Remember that, if you can't ever stop when you're ahead, you can't win over the long run.

AND STILL MORE SLOT MACHINE SECRETS...

There are a number of other easy to advanced things a slot player can do to hold his or her own and increase their chance of hitting a big jackpot on today's slot machines. To read more about these slot machine secrets, follow the links below.

1. Play at the casinos with the best slot machine payouts.

How do you find the slot machines with the best payouts? As fellow slot players, we’ve gathered all that information for you. You can find the current slot payouts for the best online casinos, as well as on-land casinos all over the U.S., on our Best Slot Machine Payouts page.

And we’ll let you in on another slot secret. If you come back and study those charts many months in a row, you will see that the slots in the online casinos we list have consistently higher payouts than the slot payouts in the on-land casinos anywhere in the U.S.

2. Play progressive jackpot slot games only when the jackpots are exceptionally big.

A progressive jackpot is not more likely to go off just because it's gotten bigger than usual. There is no such thing as "overdue"—everything comes down to that Random Number Generator (see How Slots Work). But the secret is that you can get an edge if you play only when the jackpot is big enough. An edge means, over the very long run, you can expect the slot jackpots to pay you more than you have put in.

3. Play slots at reputable online casinos that offer a bonus.

If you only play at reputable online casinos, which give players generous bonuses to play on, you have more of a chance to win, no matter what else you do or don't do. Just take a moment and look, really look, at the valuable bonuses you'll find offered on our Hot Bonuses page and throughout Slot Secrets Online. And all you have to do to get this money to play on is click on a link and follow the instructions to collect.

Be sure to check the rest of Slot Secrets Online, because the secrets of how to win at slot machines are on every page, and we want you to learn every winning slot machine secret tip available. Our slot machine secrets and winning strategy are here for you. See you in the slot winners circle!