Slots Beginner Guide: Slots Online

The choice of Slots games available at online casinos is pretty staggering (and often the bulk of the games that make up the casinos' boasts of game selections that number into the hundreds) with more being added on a regular basis. Luckily the basic mechanics of playing them is pretty much universal so there's hardly any learning curve to playing a new machine. We would however suggest that, to get the best out of any one machine, do have a look at the game guides at your chosen online casino to familiarise yourself with its software's controls and any options or features unique to that Slot. Common features that are popular with online Slot jockeys are multi-line and progressive jackpot machines, of which more below.

Multi-line Slots - These are typically ‘Video Slot'-style games with five reels that enable a player to bet across multiple paylines in the game window. Every payline put into play requires a further stake, but creates more opportunities for getting a winning combination on each spin with some Slots offering up to fifteen different payline across a single set of reels.

Progressive Slots –A progressive slot is one where the jackpot is a constantly accumulating prize, the value of which is shown and regularly updated in the game. The jackpot is built by a percentage of each stake played through the machine being added to the jackpot until it is won, whereupon it resets to a default staring prize (often and already hefty sum) to start building again.

These are a big draw online since the more players that play them and the longer the period it takes for the Jackpot to be hit, the bigger the prize gets. Furthermore, many online casinos use common gaming software that includes ‘linked' Slots, so that players from all those different casinos are in fact contributing to a common jackpot – this, as you can imagine, vastly increases the pool of players building the progressive and, it turn, is responsible for historically generating some enormous seven-figure jackpots that have turned lucky players into multi-millionaires on a single spin!