The Basics About Playing Slots

Because of an explosion in the popularity of slot machines and the fantastic advances in electronic technology in recent years, many new slot games have appeared in today's casinos. It is no longer a matter of walking up to a slot machine, inserting a coin, and pulling the handle. For one thing, many new games do not have handles, some of the new slots require that you indicate how you want to play by depressing buttons before the outcome of the game can be determined.

Mechanical or Electro-Mechanical Slot Machines

Still the most familiar and common machine found in the casino is the conventional mechanical or more advanced electro-mechanical slot machine. This is the kind of slot we all know about, right? Wrong! Most players recognize this type of slot machine because it looks like a slot machine should, it has reels that spin around when the handle is pulled. Where the reels stop determines if you win or not, that simple.

Well, as you will soon see, casinos make millions and millions because people assume they understand how a familiar-looking slot machine works. Years ago, capitalizing on the appeal of these machines, slot machine designers began making it possible to win and lose on more than one payline each time the handle is pulled. This means more than one coin can, or in some cases must, be played at a time if you are to get paid, even though you have lined up a winning combination of symbols on one of the paylines.

Jackpot-Only or All-Jackpot Slot Machines

Slot machines that pay only jackpots are actually just multipliers or multiple-line machines that omit the smaller pays in favor of less frequent but larger payouts. For example, one quarter, five-coin multiplier, jackpot-only machine has only three pay combinations. With one coin played, you can only win $5, $25, or $50, with five coins played, you could receive $25, $125, or a last-coin bonus jackpot of $500.

In other words, any pay of 18 coins or less that you would expect to receive somewhat often on regular machines is eliminated on the all-jackpot machines. These small pays are omitted by simply removing all the pay combinations except jackpot symbols from the reels of the machine. You can instantly recognize a jackpot-only machine the minute you walk up to it by the fact that there are a lot of blank spots on the reels where a regular machine would have cherries, oranges, dollar signs, or some other symbol.

Is there any advantage to playing a jackpot-only slot instead of a regular machine? No. It's just a matter of personal choice. The regular machine will put fewer coins in the tray more often, the jackpot-only machine will put more coins in the try less often, that's all. For what it's worth I think it's more fun to get a few coins paid out frequently than a bunch only once in a while. All things being equal such as same hold, same number of reel stops, etc., both the regular machines and the jackpot-only machines will pay out about the same over an extended period of time.