How to Play Online Slot Machines

Now it’s time to have some fun, and hopefully some profit too. We know where we want to play, we have selected our bonus and made our first deposit. Ready to go now? Yes and No.

Let’s take a few minutes to explore the online slots machine, how it works and what to do with all those buttons on the machine. One false move can really put a dent in your bankroll so we need to be sure our wager is set correctly before we spin.

Depending on the machine you picked, your options will be slightly different. First, we will look at multi line, 5 reel machines.

On the Real Time Gaming network, on most machines you can select how much you wish to bet per spin but there are a couple slot machines that have a "fixed wager" this means you are not able to select how many lines you want to bet nor can you adjust your coin amount. As for the vast majority of the online slots, you can control your bet. Let’s have a look at a typical online slot machine:

To adjust your coin amount, click the up arrow for more and down arrow for less. The minimum value will usually be .01 (per line). See below

Now look at the sides of the slot machine, see all those numbers? That is your pay lines. Different lines have different win combinations. Line one, two and three are straight across the reels. The remaining lines go up, down, diagonal. Here is an example:

Your total wager will be the coin amount times the number of lines selected. In the picture above, we are wagering .03 per line, playing 25 lines, so .03 x 25 = .75 per spin. By increasing or decreasing the coin value we can wager from .25 to $125.00 per spin. We can also wager less with a higher coin value by decreasing the lines played. The advantage to this strategy is the win amount on the line will be higher. So you could wager .05 per line and play 15 lines and your bet would still be .75 but a win on a line would be higher.

Some players will adjust their bet amounts up or down depending on how they are winning. In other words, start low and when you build up your money, increase your bet amount. Doing so will greatly increase the total amount won. And a larger wager will pay off much better during any bonus rounds or free spins.

Some online slot machines will allow you to bet multiple coins per line. This is true of the Rival Powered online casinos. This may make calculating your bets a bit trickier so lets take a look at a typical Rival slot machine next.

In the example above, you can see you have several options. – and + adjust your coin value, select lines increases how many pay lines you wish to play, bet max will bet all lines by your coin size and very important, "Select Coins". In the case of Rival slots, you can bet one to ten coins, per line, per spin. So if we do the math here, we are wagering .01 x 10 coins x 20 lines this adds up to 2.00 per spin. If you were to play one coin per line, the bet would be .20.

Pay close attention to this detail whenever you start playing, usually the machine will default to this configuration, (.01 x 10 coins x max lines). You might see .01 and not realize it is a 2.00 bet!

In our next topic we will discuss free spins and bonus rounds.