Choosing Real Money Slots that has good payout can be hard, but if you decide to play random slots it can be catastrophic. This is where we come, where we review slots that offers good payout, interesting features that make the game more entertaining and winning times more frequent and has good graphics.
When you try to find a high paying slot by chance you are losing large amounts of money and time is thrown away. Instead, you could have already been hitting some juicy jackpots.
To be a profitable slots player you need to think smart no matter how much they say that slots are just pure luck. No, there is more to that and players usually tend to avoid the most essential part of the process, which is researching the games. Stick around and we will explain this below through various tips and strategies that players have discovered work best.
Best Real Money Slots Casinos
The best slots come with the best casinos. In order for a slot to be considered the best, it needs to offer a good payout, interesting features that make the game more entertaining and winning times more frequent, and it needs to look good. Well, the third factor is optional, but very important for players that like ultra-modern and flashy slots.
In the same way, for a casino to be considered best, it needs to offer good slot payouts, interesting features like bonuses or other, needs to have good reputation including a license, and to be good looking. In the end, choosing the best slots casino can be a serious business.
7 Key Factors to consider when playing at real money Slot Casinos
We have been asking more than thousand players on the internet what their key considerations are when they decide on a slots casino, and here is what they said:
Reliable Statistics: Players like to research the numbers that make up a casino, more precisely the average percentage payout. This is closely tied to eCOGRA and whether the casino slots are subjected to independent eCOGRA audits, which are then published via links on the casino website.
Big Winners: Players say that a sure sign of a high paying casino is when there are the occasional big winners. It can be an excellent sign for big paying slots. Almost every casino a ‘Recent winners’ ticker on the website, and announce publicly when a big win has occurred. After all, it is in their interest for other players to want to come and play their games.
Games: Some players enjoy when they have 300 and upwards slots available at a casino. This is usually the case with casinos that offer games from multiple of the industry’s leading providers, which is also a key factor for most players when they select a casino.
Generosity: Bonuses are big part of the online casino industry and they picture how much a casino is generous. But, generosity is not only giving out big bonuses, it’s about giving bonuses under favorable conditions, freebies that don’t require deposits etc.
Background & Reputation: Some players go even to the extent of checking the operator’s background. Some operators own multiple casinos, and among those casinos there may be one or more that are not legit or have not been paying out players. If an operator has a non-legit casino, players will avoid it. A reputation check is pretty much a standard thing, and an easy one to do.
Customer Support: Many players have had bad experience in getting help from a casino’s customer support team, so the most important thing for them is for the casino to have polite and helpful support agents.
Payments: This factor is one of the biggest out there probably. Does the casino have your payment methods, and are there hidden costs for the transactions? Some casinos offer only one free transaction in a week, and they may not advertise that fact. Spend some 10 minutes to find out these things before it’s too late.
History of Slot Machine and how real money slots started
The invention of the original slot machine has two different versions. The first version is about the well-known Liberty Bell invented by Charles Fey in 1887, which was a very simple machine at that time with just five symbols and three reels. The symbols were a spade, a diamond, a heart, a horse shoe and a Liberty Bell of course, hence it’s name.
But, there was another slot version that you may all know, the one where supposedly two men named Pitt & Sittman invented the first slot machine in 1895, which they officially released in 1891. In this version Charles Fey is the one that developed his machine after Pitt & Sittman, and not the other way around. Pitt & Sittman’s machine was more based on poker, which is why in Australia they call slots “pokies”. It had five reels and 50 card symbols on them (10 on each). People won depending on how high the poker hand was.
Chronology of Slots History
Here are some of the most important moments in the history of slots:
1887-1891: The first slot machines were invented by Pitt & Sittman and Charles Fey.
1910: The Operator Bell, an extremely popular slot machine, was invented in Chicago by Herbert Mills and the Mills Novelty Company, which had reels with fruit symbols, hence the nickname, fruit machines.
1915: Mills introduces a lightweight slot version by getting rid of the cast iron body and using a wooden cabinet instead.
1940s: Bally developed the High Hand draw poker machine, which was the first machine to exhibit the basics of the modern, electromechanical slots.
1963: The first modern slot machine as we know it was invented by Bally. It was an electromechanical machine called Money Honey. It revolutionized the gambling industry by being the first electronic machine, which didn’t require an attendant to make the payout.
1976: The golden age of video gambling games further revolutionized the gambling industry, when the first fully electronic video slot was invented by engineers at Fortune Coin Co. The guests of Las Vegas Hilton Hotel were the first that were able to play a video slot on a 19’’ Sony color screen.
1978: Fortune Coin Co. was bought by one of the pioneers in developing slot games, IGT (International Gaming Technology) and one of the biggest companies in the industry today.
1990s: The first online slots were developed for the needs of the first ever online casino which was launched with the help of Microgaming, the no.1 online casino games provider in the world.
1996: It was the year when video slots became even more interesting. That year WMS Industries Inc. introduced the Reel Em In video slot, which had the first ever second screen bonus. Today’s players measure up slot games by how good their second screen bonuses are.
2003: The biggest slots jackpot in the history of Las Vegas was won at the Excalibur, where a 25-year-old software engineer from Los Angeles won $39.7 million.
Somewhere in the 1960s, casinos realized that slots were becoming extremely popular, so they started making them more prominent by redesigning the sections where they were installed to be more attractive to people. As a result today up to 85% of the average casino’s profit comes from slots only.
The evolution of the “One Armed Bandit” as it was popularly known has gotten so far that now players can enjoy them directly on their smartphones in full HD all over the world. The evolution continues on with the help of companies like Microgaming as the main driving forces who are in the process of developing casino games that can be played on VR headsets.
How a real money slot works
Today’s slots are based on the RNG (Random Number Generator) technology just like every other casino game. This means that every spin of the reels will get you a random aligning of the symbols. There are no patterns or similar things at all. But, there are no skills involved too because you can’t affect the results in any way. All you can do is keep spinning until you have hit a payline.
The reels you see on the screen represent the actual spinning reels from when slots were just mechanical games with a lever that you need to pull. Today that lever is a simple button. So, whit each click of the ‘Spin’ button, the reels start spinning and stop after a few seconds showing different symbols chosen at random.
Can You Beat the House?
Mathematically, the house always has a small edge over the player. This is how they generate profit and it doesn’t mean that you are necessarily the loser on the long-term.
For example, an average player playing with a $100 bankroll at some point can easily increase it to $300 by making a hot streak. Ultimately, he can also lose all of the money won as well as his deposit and walk out like a loser. This is not because it is predetermined for the house to always win, but because a slots player needs to know when to stop.
Stopping when you are ahead means you have beat the house edge. Be it with smaller jackpots, or some massive progressive one that could make you a millionaire, the house can be beat. It’s no science fiction.
3 Popular Tips when playing slots for real cash
Forget about all the myths you know about slots. They were proved wrong long time ago, and won’t work for you in these modern times. You will just end up with an empty wallet and a lot of regrets. Instead, you need to be smart, and think smart.
What this means? It means that you need to be picky about which slots you are going to play, where you are going to play them and for how long. Let’s break it down:
Choose the slots with the highest payout percentage. Most of the casinos disclose their RNG third-party audits, where you can see the house edge. The smaller the house edge the better.
Choose casinos with good welcome and reload bonuses for slots.* Playing slots is all about having a sustainable bankroll that you can afford to lose and can keep you long enough to double or triple it.
Know your limits. Knowing your limits means knowing when the time is up for you. The best rule by which you can guide when playing slots as well as other casino games is to stop when you are starting to have too much fin. This is when the adrenaline pumps up, you are hungry for more, but the RNG will give out only as much winning lines as you are going to get mathematically. Stop while you are ahead!
* Good bonus does not mean just big bonus amounts. It means a bonus that has a small wagering requirement.
Pay attention to what more experienced players say. They have been through a lot of the slots games and have seen the best and worst in them.
Slots Strategy
The internet is filled with strategies intended to make you a winner at slots. Many of them were written by people based on their experience, but in most cases they deal with simple or more complicated mathematics.
For example, with the Standard deviation strategy you try to determine the frequency at which a particular slot game makes a payout. This is done by counting the number of spins between each win, until you have a representative sample. Do your calculations and you will know around which spin you can take advantage of the statistics and make money by increasing your bets, while reducing them when the numbers say you have to wait for the next chance.
There are also strategies for bankroll management, that help you find out how not to lose your entire bankroll by simply adhering to some guidelines that will make you resistant to the temptation to make big bets where you shouldn’t make.
Slots Rules
Slots are arguably the easiest casino games to play in terms of game mechanics. The rules say that you have to hit the ‘Spin’ button, and wait for the reels to stop spinning on which the symbols may or may not align into a winning payline.
Rules for 3-Reel Slots
These are the direct descendants of the Liberty Bell, which originally had only 3 reels. You can still find simpler 3-reel slots across casinos, which are offered mainly to keep the old school feel.
In order to start playing, you have to select your bet size and the coin denomination. The higher the denomination, the more the payout is affected, meaning you get the chance to win higher amounts of money.
These slots have only one horizontal payline. A payout is triggered if the same 3 symbols align perfectly on the payline.
Rules for 5-Reel Slots
The only difference between 3-reel slots and 5-reel is that the latter have multiple paylines. Depending on the slot, this can be from 10 up to 100 paylines.
The most common are the 25-payline slots and usually the lines are formed from left to right, but on some slots the lines are formed in both ways, giving extra profit.
Naturally, 5-reel slots offer much bigger benefits than 3-reel ones.
Who Regulates Slot Machines?
The casino industry, both online and offline, is a heavily regulated one. Brick and mortar casinos, such as those found in Las Vegas, Macau, Australia, or other gambling heavens undergo different regulations including regulations for their slots games. In order for the games to be officially introduced on the casino floors, they need to be approved by the respective gambling boards.
In a similar fashion, online slots undergo regular audits performed by third-party auditors which have the highest reputation in the industry. One such auditing agency is eCOGRA, whose mark is worn by a good deal of online casinos. When a casino is certified by eCOGRA, it means the games are regularly audited and safe to play.
On top of that, slots are regulated with various gaming laws, as well as provisions set out in the casino licenses awarded to online and offline operators. As per the license agreements, the casinos are responsible for offering slot games that are fully functional and not tampered with.
Slots Fun Facts
The next time you get to talk with someone about slots, you can impress him or her with these fun facts:
Las Vegas is the most densely populated casino heaven in terms of slots. There are about 600,000 of them, which means that there is 1 slot machine for every 8 people living in the city. When it comes to countries, Japan has the most slot machines per citizen, or 1 slot for every 27 citizens of Japan.
The biggest slot machine in the world, and also one of the first to announce the coming of the electromechanical slots was Big Bertha followed by a sequel Super Big Bertha. It was made in 1950s, it had a very bad payout percentage and was high 2.5 meters. There were eight massive reels and one giant lever for people to pull. It was a very unpractical slot game. The game alone costed $150,000 to be built, which equals to $1.2 million in today’s value.
When someone says flat-top jackpot, he or she refers to a jackpot whose maximum amount is not altered. It’s always the same maximum amount you can win. But, when someone says progressive jackpot, he or she refers to a jackpot that grows with each wager and has no limit on how big it can get. It can grow into millions and is restarted when someone hits it.
In the beginning of the 20th century when slots were becoming increasingly popular due to which the government made them illegal, the vendors stopped paying out in coins, but instead they started paying out customers in cigars, food and other small items so that they won’t be charged for organizing gambling operations. As a result slots were called “vending machines”.
Regardless if it’s being used or not, a slot game calculates random outcomes even when it’s waiting to be played. This is because the RNG is in perpetual motion, which is why the myth about a game being hot and due for a payout is false.
Mechanical slots found in brick and mortar casinos are built with approximately 1,200 parts.
TOD stands for Time on Device (the time players spend on a game), and it is the main metric that operators take into account to determine if a game will be profitable for the casino.
Today’s modern slots have almost nothing in common with the original ones. They don’t have slots for inserting coins, there is no lever for pulling, no hopper for payouts and no reels. Everything is digital and with 3D graphics. Moreover, they are played on touch screens.
Most Popular Slot Games to Play for Real Money
Today when there are thousands and thousands of different slot games on the internet and off the internet as well, it can be a real challenge to find the slot that suits you, and most importantly, the game that has the best payout percentage.
Why do certain slots become so popular? Because not only they offer entertaining and dynamic game play, but they pay often enough to stay ahead too. Here are some of the most popular slot games today, especially those that are most suitable to play using bonuses.
When Pigs Fly
NetEnt’s flying pigs have made a big success in the recent year. This slot has that recognizable NetEnt style and offers great features that can be used to a player’s advantage such as the re-spins where your potential win progressively increases, wild substitutions, as well as free spins with 3125 ways to win. The average payout percentage of When Pigs Fly is around 97%.
Dragon’s Myth
NetEnt’s biggest rival in the industry is Microgaming, a legendary company that can be said to be the biggest. Microgaming is responsible for some of the best looking and conceptual games of latest, and one of them is Dragon’s Myth whose average payout percentage is 96.5%.
This slot will take you to a Viking fantasy world where dragons rule the sky. Dragon’s Myth is a great slot because of the interesting bonus rounds that are activated by capturing dragons. When you have captured the necessary dragon symbols, you are taken through the awesome dragon world made with superb visual graphics equal to a Pixar blockbuster animated movie.
In the bonus round you can activate lots of multipliers and free spins and in best case scenario you can win thousands of dollars.
Drive: Multiplier Mayhem
The best thing in competitive industries is the perpetual need for companies to outdo themselves and their competition. Drive: Multiplayer Mayhem is the result of this. It was developed by NetEnt, and as the title of the game says, it’s focused on insane multipliers, which can mean payouts that are triple or quadruple their original value. It’s also a great slot for those that are into cars. The average payout percentage is 96.7%.
Gonzo’s Quest
Gonzo’s Quest by NetEnt is a slot game for players that like unconventional slots. First of all, it doesn’t have reels, but columns made up of blocks with symbols. So instead of spinning reels, there are blocks that fall from above. When a winning payline is formed, the blocks that make up the payline explode and new ones fall from above, while the old ones above them settle on their place. It works like an automatic re-spin.
You can have up to 4 of these re-spins and with each re-spin the multiplier increases and has the potential to make massive payouts. During the free spins bonus round, the multiplier is even bigger. The average payout percentage is 96%.
Mega Moolah
Mega Moolah is a well-known game in the casino industry. It’s the game that holds two world records, one for paying out the biggest progressive jackpot on the internet, and the other is for paying out the biggest progressive jackpot won on a mobile device. This slot has an old-school feel to it because it lacks glitzy and flashy design, but it does what it does excellent. The average payout percentage for Mega Moolah is significantly smaller than for the other slots on this list because it’s a progressive slot.
Real Slots FAQ
To address some more topics, here is a Q&A session with the most frequently asked questions by slot players that are new to slots.
How do wild symbols work? – If you have played poker and know what the joker is used for, then you know what a wild symbol is. The wild symbol is like a substitution for any symbol on the reels. If 4 symbols align into a winning payline, and where there should be the 5th symbol, a wild symbol is in the line, the wild is used to substitute the missing symbol.Some slots have wild symbols that they call stacked wilds. These appear on top of another and help you trigger multiple paylines. Wild symbols are usually designed according to the slot theme.
How do scatter symbols work? – Besides wild symbols, there are symbols called scatter and they help you trigger a payout no matter where they appear on the reels, hence the name “scatter”. Every 5-reel slot has a scatter symbol, and most of the time they are used to trigger a bonus round by landing at least 3 scatters symbols. Sometimes it is possible to win the jackpot if 5 scatter symbols appear on each of the reels.
What are bonus rounds? – Bonus rounds are additional rounds where you play for some sort of a bonus. It can be either by revealing symbols, through free spins or other ways depending on how creative the game designers were. They are usually triggered through scatter symbols or in some other way. The quality of a slot is heavily measured by the quality of the bonus rounds because they give extra profit.
How do progressive jackpots work? – Progressive jackpots are large money pools that are created with small percentages of each wager made on the progressive slot in question. The more players play, the higher the jackpot gets fueling a massive win such as the $39.7 million jackpot won in Las Vegas. When a lucky player wins it, the jackpot is restarted to a starting amount and grows again. Progressive jackpot slots are extremely popular among players.
What is a payout percentage? – A payout percentage is a long-term representation of how much a player gets back from the money he wagered. This does not mean that the player literally gets his money returned. It means that over a period of time as the player wagers, he will win some and lose some. In the end, when you add all the wins and all the losses, you will come up with a number that says 3% went to the house while 97% of the money went back to the player.Of course, if a player has hit some big jackpot, he will be in profit. Moreover, if he knows when to stop, he will be able to keep the profit instead of lose everything as the result of greediness.
Are online slots better than brick and mortar casino slots? – In some aspects, yes, they are better. The most important difference is that online slots have far better payout percentages. This is because brick and mortar casinos have more expenses, so they try to cover them up by gaining bigger profits from the house edge.Also, online casinos give out many interesting bonus offers and have slots promotions where people can score freebies to play the slots. This is not the case with brick and mortar casinos.Online slots are more available too enabling you to play on your mobile wherever you are. In terms of graphics and visual effects, they are at the same level with the slots found in Las Vegas or the casinos around the world.
Doug is a passionate Slot fan and an expert in the gaming industry and has written extensively about online slot games and various other related information pertaining to online slots. In his spare time, he enjoys time with friends and family, reading, travelling, and of course, playing the slots.
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