Slots Strategies: Regular Slots

Playing Slots Online – The Basics

When it comes to simplicity Slots are probably the easiest games to conquer quickly when playing an online casino for the first time. If you've ever played a real-world Slot or Fruit Machine of some kind you should feel right at home with the method of play. The Slot will have a display showing either three or five ‘reels' marked up with a variety of symbols, usually following some theme connected to the Slots' name e.g. classical Egyptian imagery on the ‘Cleopatra II' Slot found at Virgin's online casino. For the cost of a fixed credit, the player can then click to spin the reels, which will then be randomly stopped. By reading the symbols off the stopped reels across a designated path called a ‘payline', the player wins a cash prize if the combination matches one shown on the Slot's ‘paytable'.

You'll find a myriad of Slot machines to choose from at the best UK online casinos (some like Ladbrokes Casino have selections of over one hundred), but the basic gameplay is essentially the same whichever you choose. Another common feature you'll be glad to know is that each and every online casino we recommend on this site uses independently certified random number generators to run their Slots games, so you can play safe in the knowledge that the results are not ‘fixed' against the player.

If you already play the real-world Fruit Machines found in pubs and clubs you may find online Slots a bit over-simplified compared to those machines. Functions like ‘holds' and ‘nudges' are not found on Slots – it's usually just a single, spin-to-win game of chance. However online Slots do often build in ‘bonus rounds' triggered by winning with a specific sequence, which add a special themed game to the fun, which can earn the player rewards such as multiple free spins or ‘multipliers' which can snowball a win by several factors.

Other common features of online Slots that can provide more chances to win when your spinning are multi-paylines and ‘Wild' and ‘Scatter' symbols. Mutli-paylines are common on five-reel machines and allow players to activate a set of extra paylines across the reels. Each additional payline activated will cost an additional credit, but adds another alternative ‘path' across the reels which may yield a winning combination of symbols. ‘Scatter' and ‘Wild' symbols also operate to increase a player's chances to spinning a winning combination; the ‘Scatter' merely has to be visible on a reel to be considered for the paytable (i.e. it doesn't have to fall under an active payline), whereas a ‘Wild' can substitute for any other symbol on a reel.

If the act of clicking an online Slot's spin button seems like far too much hard work to you, (a) we're concerned for your health, and (b) you'll probably like the Autoplay feature found on many machines. It's not something we can get excited about, but this option can put the Slot into autopilot to play up to 99 spins for you (providing of course you've got enough credit to fund them all!). Autoplay, of course, can be disengaged at any time so you aren't at the mercy of the machine if you set it off then change your mind about how many spins you want to bankroll!

The final thing to mention about online Slots is the lure of the Progressive Jackpot! And you can read more about that be clicking here.