How to Win at Slots

Online slots are one of the most popular pieces entertainments on the Internet nowadays. They offer you a great time, adrenaline, fun, and the possibility to hit a big win when playing a progressive jackpot. Such a jackpot might change your life once and for all!

So, if you like slots, you definitely have thought about your possibility to win, right? Is there any way to beat slots? Maybe some long-term strategy or in-depth knowledge of the theory of probability might help you do that?

HolyMolyCasinos did some research, and in this article we will explain everything about winning at slots and the ways to increase your chances.

High Expectations vs. Cruel Reality

While you play slots, your brain produces enormous doses of dopamine, especially when you win. Some players take it easy, realizing that the game of chance is only entertainment and nothing more. However, some gamblers want not just to play - but to win. They search for some intricate strategies, read articles like this one to learn how to beat slots, and forget about one simple thing. If you want to beat a slot game - you want to beat randomness, which is impossible, since randomness is (Ba Dum Tss) RANDOM!

If you’re interested in this, you can find tons of articles on this topic, and some of them will offer you “100% effective” and safe methods to beat slots. Some of them (whose authors were a bit smarter than others) offer you a way to beat one particular slot, slots from one particular software developer, or one particular casino, which looks slightly more reasonable. Usually, such articles begin with stunning revelations of an offended developer (manager, CEO, janitor or whatever), who is tired of lying and wants to tell the truth about online gaming. Then comes some nonsense theory or a “bug,” and a link to the casino where it should work.

Of course, it won’t. It’s just a way to attract customers to a third-rate casino, and we hope that it won’t work on you anymore, either.

Okay, we’re done with this kind of advice, but maybe there really are some reliable tips? Something from real life, not from the swollen brains of casino managers? Actually, yes! There are some tips that look a bit more useful, and many gamblers are trying to follow them.

A Bit Closer, But Still Total B.S.

Now let’s closely inspect another type of advice: the ones that look cool and reasonable but in fact have nothing to do with the truth. They are used to make lists look bigger, but aren’t related to the topic at all. Here are some of these tips:

If you read them, you see that despite seeming consistent, they’re not about winning or “beating slots”, but about basic rules of not screwing everything up. Don’t bet more than you can, deposit more to increase your chances to win, and other obvious things won’t help you to hit a jackpot at slots.

Now we have a confession to make. You’ve spent enough time reading this article, so we’ll say that there are no miraculous methods to hit a big win. You can increase your chances slightly by learning how slots work, and by inspecting the properties of a slot game before playing it.

Let’s pretend that you’re completely new to online casinos, and you want to make everything right. In the following paragraphs, we’ll describe what you have to do before you start playing.

How to pick a decent casino?

If you really want to have a chance at winning something - you have to carefully choose the casino which you’re going to play at. Not all casinos are equally reliable, and if you dig a bit deeper than a website header, you will find out just how different online casinos can be.

First of all - look for licensing information. If a casino is regulated by Malta or the UK - it was tested multiple times, checked, and audited before it got its license. You should also look for other badges, such as of the software fairness testing companies. The most reputable of them are eCOGRA, iTech Labs, and TST.

Usually, casinos display this information on their front pages, so if it’s not there - it could very well mean that the casino isn’t licensed, its software isn’t tested, and you should think twice before playing there.

When you’ve decided on a  casino to play at - it’s time to choose what game you’re going to play.

Video Slots and the Basic Principles of How They Work

Now we’re finally getting to the point: can you beat slots or not? The answer is - no, you can’t. If you’ve picked a licensed casino with a verified RNG badge, each spin of every slot is random.

We’re trying to say that it doesn’t matter how much you hit a win or hit blank - the odds of winning for your next spin will be the same as for all previous ones. There are many suchlike myths, spreading over the gamblers’ community like a pest, and we’ve gathered them all here:

As you probably guessed, all things mentioned above are pure rubbish. We’ve already told you about “hot” and “cold” slots, so let’s figure out the myth about reels. Some slots have a function to stop their reels when you feel like it manually. Many players think that something changes when they hit the “Stop” button. It’s a myth, the only thing you change is the animation of the reels spinning on your screen.

Now about the “near” hits. It’s a psychological trick of software developers, and it’s not good at all. You have to know how it works. Let’s suppose that each reel has 50 stops. One of them is a jackpot symbol, another 24 are lesser winning symbols, and 25 are blank. As the reel isn’t real (ha-ha), blank stops can be displayed as a slot developer wants, and usually, they’re displayed as the next stop near a jackpot symbol. We’re sure you’ve seen that many times, and maybe even thought that it means something - we assure you that it doesn’t.

The double function is another thing that goats players into making bad decisions. Usually, this function is animated as a flipping coin, spinning reel, turning card, or something like that. The point is that the animation makes you think that you have some influence on the results of the game, but you don’t. The results are random, just as everything else related to slots.

The most significant thing to understand is that all slots are random and all of them have a pre-set RTP (Return to Player) rate. By the way, it shouldn’t be lower than 85%. The RTP rate for a regular online slot is somewhere between 90% and 97%, so casinos keep at least €3 from each €100 that you wager. It also means that online slots, as well as real slots, shouldn’t be first-choice picks for players.

Pick-a-Jackpot

So, if you choose a decent casino and want to decide which game to play - you have to look for RTP rates. They might be displayed right on the game layouts, or in a separate tab. The casinos, licensed by the UKGC are obliged to display the RTP rates for all their games, and it’s another reason to look for a casino with the UK license.

You should also figure out which jackpot are you aiming at. There are lots of jackpots in almost any slot, and they’re ranging from a few thousand to tens of thousands of euros. There are also progressive jackpots which sometimes reach ten million euros or even more, but the odds of hitting them are extremely low. Take this into account when you think of how to spend your time.

Closing Thoughts

Remember that the game itself and all its features aren’t related to the payout percentage. You can play a generic three-reel slot or a modern 9-reel video super-mega slot with bonus rounds, arcade elements, and other stuff, and it doesn’t matter at all as the RNG determines your chances to win.

You can play whenever you want: on Monday or Sunday, on holidays or working days and it won’t matter if you’re playing at a reliable casino. There are no simple recipes or complex strategies to win at slots. The best way is just to take it easy and have fun while the reels are spinning. Choose a good casino, pick a slot that entertains you the most - and go!

Updated: 23 Feb 2018