Slots-UK FREE Slot Machines and UK Slots Strategy!

On the surface, many reel spinners still look similar to slot machines installed in the early Las Vegas casinos over a half century ago. They have three spinning reels, and some of them still have a pull-handle on the right side, just like the old one-armed bandits.

Inside the cabinet, however, they are totally different. They may have mechanical reels, but those reels are driven by electric stepper motors that are fully controlled by a microprocessor. The pull-handle, which used to engage gears and cams that mechanically spun the reels, now simply operates an electrical switch connected to the same circuit as the switch under the SPIN button.

Many progressive machines are also reel spinners, but this section only covers games with a static (unchanging) top jackpot.

Although the variety of spinning reel machines may seem endless, they come in just four main flavors. All other differences have to do with the kinds of symbols used and the amounts of the payouts. Following are the four basic types:

1. COIN MULTIPLIERS

In most casinos, multipliers are very popular machines. Multipliers are single-payline games where the number of coins bet on one spin multiplies the potential payouts. When this mathematical relationship is exact, we call the game a true multiplier.

In most games, however, the top jackpot is higher than the multiple when the maximum number of coins is bet. We call this version a modified multiplier (see illustration). The purpose of a modified multiplier is to encourage the player to bet the maximum on every spin. For instance, on most three-coin multipliers, if the top jack-pot pays 1000 coins for a one-coin bet, the second coin will pay 2000 coins, but the third coin may pay 4000 coins (instead of 3000 coins), or even 5000 coins or more. The conventional advice is to always bet the maximum number of coins. However, this is not necessarily good advice, as we will explain later.

2. MULTI-LINE GAMES

As you stroll through the casinos, you will notice that there are plenty of reel spinners with multiple paylines. In the industry, they are called line games because the paytable is payline-driven. While a single payline slot has one horizontal line across the window, a three-payline slot has two extra horizontal lines, one above and one below the center line. The extra paylines are activated by betting additional coins, giving you two additional chances of hitting a winning combination. Although you may activate one, two, or three of the paylines by inserting one, two, or three coins, to qualify for the maximum jackpot benefit, you must play all three coins.

Some machines have five paylines, with two of them criss-crossing the window diagonally, giving you a total of five winning chances (see illustration). These machines take up to five coins, one for each payline, and here again, you must play the maximum number of coins to qualify for the top jackpot. From the standpoint of return on investment, the multi-line slots are perfectly fine machines if you don't mind the higher bankroll requirement.

When looking for a game to play, don't assume all machines with the same name are identical. The IGT game called Triple Diamond comes in several versions that have one, three, five, or nine paylines. Furthermore, the one-payline version comes as a two-coin or three-coin multiplier.

3. OPTION-BUY GAMES

Option-buy games are usually (but not always) single-payline games that may be called Buy-Your-Pay or Buy-A- Pay, as well as various disparaging names. When you bet more than one coin, instead of multiplying the pay-out, these machines activate additional winning symbol combinations. To get all the possible winning combinations, you must play the maximum number of coins. Unless you do so, the overall payback of the machine is seriously compromised.

Some three-coin option-buy games can be misleading because the second coin is a multiplier, and only the third coin buys you additional symbol combinations. Therefore, on any game you are considering, study the paytable carefully because if is an option-buy, you must never bet less than the maximum.

So why would anyone call an option-buy game bad names? Because many people do not read the paytable carefully, and then they get angry when they bet one coin, hit a winning combination of symbols, and get paid absolutely nothing. If it was a multiplier, they would have been paid a reduced amount, but they would have won something. Most people tend to get upset when they finally hit a winner and then don't get paid. Don't this happen to you. If you decide to play an option-l game, be sure you always bet the maximum.

4. BANKING GAMES

These are games in which points, credits, or some form of game assets are accumulated as they are played. They are designed to encourage players to continue playing until they eventually collect the banked bonus. Banking games may also have the paytable features of multipliers or line games.

Although some banking games, such as Piggy Bankin' and X-Factor, are reel spinners, more and more of them are video games with secondary bonus screens. The best strategy for profitably playing reel spinning banking games is basically the same as for the video versions. To keep all the detailed playing information for banking games together, the playing strategy for reel spinning versions is included with the video versions in Beating the Video Slots section.

VIDEO VERSIONS OF SPINNING REEL GAMES

The major slot machine manufacturers, such as IGT and Bally, provide some of their most popular machines in either a spinning reel or video format. These are three-reelslots and, except for the format, both versions are identical. They are either multipliers, multi-line, or option buy machines, so the information in this section applies to the video versions as well as the spinning reel versions.

Beating the Spinning Reels

When most slot machine players take a vacation at a gambling resort, they allocate a certain amount of money for gambling. We refer to this allocated money as their bankroll or stake. Some of the players lose their bank-roll by the end of the first day. Some of them are able to stretch their bankroll to the end of their vacation. Some of them come home money ahead. It appears that some people are just lucky and others are not.

This may be true, but if the same people almost always lose and other people almost always win, there must be more than luck involved. The difference is that some people play haphazardly without thinking, while others play thoughtfully and methodically. Is there a thoughtful way to play a seemingly mindless game such as slots? You bet there is - and in the following sections we suggest some shrewd and intelligent ways to improve your chances of coming out ahead.

STUDY THE GLASS

On a reel spinner, the paytable (known as the glass) is prominently posted above the reels. You should care-fully examine this paytable before you actually start to play any machine. You may be surprised to note how different the payouts are from machine to machine, especially how much the top jackpot changes. Two side-by- side machines that appear to be basically identical (say, two-coin, one payline) may have top jackpots of 2500 coins and 10,000 coins, respectively. Although it might seem better to play the one with the highest jack-pot, to compensate for that jackpot, it will have fewer small and medium payouts. The overall paybacks of the two machines may, in fact, be very similar.

So which machine should you play? If you select the one with the large jackpot, you can't worry too much about small wins, because you are going for the big one. Just try not to be too disappointed when you don't hit it, because that top jackpot is at least as elusive as a royal flush in video poker. If you select a machine with a smaller top jackpot, your bankroll will last longer and fluctuate less because it will be regularly replenished with small and medium wins. We think you will be more satisfied with such a machine.

Finally, before you start to play, check the glass to be sure you didn't inadvertently choose an option-buy game. This type of machine is not always obvious; especially those versions where the option-buy feature only applies to the last coin. If you really do want to play an option-buy game, be sure to read the section below on Multi-Line and Option-Buy Machines.

COIN MULTIPLIERS

Choose a Simple Machine

The strategy used by experienced players when selecting a spinning reel slot is to stick to the basic three-reel non-progressive machines. This is also the best advice for novice players. To stretch your bankroll, look for two-coin machines with a single payline. By sticking with a single-payline machine, you will know, without studying the paytable, that you are playing either a multiplier or an option-buy game. By betting maximum coins or credits on a two-coin machine, you know that you will always qualify for the top awards. Therefore, for inexperienced players, this is the safest approach for a minimum investment.

If you find the paytables to be even the slightest bit confusing, heed the above advice. The more sophisticated techniques outlined below require you to fully under-stand the paytables for the various types of games. If you are looking for more variety, there is nothing wrong with playing the three- and five-coin machines, so long as you have a sufficient bankroll that allows you to al-ways bet the maximum. Just remember that doing so will deplete your bankroll more quickly.

Avoid Games with High Jackpots

Somehow this sounds contrary to what we are trying to do. Don't we want to win the biggest jackpots? Sure, but the chances of being successful are extremely re-mote. For example, a very popular Bally game is Stars & Bars. One version of this game has a top jackpot of 10,000 coins, but the chances of winning it are 1 out of 262,144 spins. It doesn't take a math genius to figure out that at 400 spins per hour, you would have to play over 655 hours to rack up 262,144 spins.

There is another version of Stars & Bars with a top jack-pot of only 1200 coins, but the chances of winning are much better: 1 out of 32,768 spins. In this case, the lower the payout, the better the chance of winning it.

As we examine the specifications for different models of machines, we find this to be a general trend. Take a really high jackpot, such as the 40,000 coins found on French Quarters (50,000 in some versions). Here the chances of winning the top award are 1 in 2,097,152 spins! This is getting to be astronomical for a non-progressive game. Of course, there is a mathematical reason why the program designers have to do this: to control the overall payback on the machine, these very high jackpots have to be made much tougher to hit.

This leads us to the logical and correct conclusion that, most of the time, it is easier to win the top prize in a game with smaller jackpots. Furthermore, to keep the overall payback balanced, many games with modest top awards will compensate by rewarding you with a greater number of small and medium payouts.

Therefore, our strategy advice is to play those games with the lower jackpots, preferably no higher than 3000 coins. This has another advantage: Most slot players go for machines with high jackpots, so the ones with low jackpots are more likely to be available in a crowded casino. In the next section we advise you to look for true multipliers, and these games almost always have low to modest jackpots.

Bet One Coin Per Spin

"But everyone says I should always bet the maximum coins to be sure I qualify for the main jackpots. In fact, you just said that a few paragraphs earlier". Yes, we did. But that advice was for inexperienced players and those who would rather not walk around the casino studying paytables.

We disagree with the advice to bet the maximum when it is given as a blanket rule. You will actually be money ahead by betting only one coin when you play certain machines, such as a true or near-true multiplier with a relatively-low top jackpot (see illustration). This is the case even if you do eventually win that jackpot, which is a remote possibility.

Betting a single coin on a three-coin machine cuts your monetary risk to one-third of what it would have been with a maximum bet. Such an approach may also allow you to move to a higher denomination, and higher de-nomination machines are generally a little looser. Thus, by applying some judgment in selecting your machine, you could get a better overall return by betting only a single coin or credit.

Although true multipliers may be somewhat scarce in some casinos, you shouldn't have much trouble finding a near-true multiplier. There are usually plenty of them around. These are machines where the maximum bet jackpot is only slightly greater than the coin multiple. The following chart gives some examples of what you should be looking for.

The 1st Coin, 2nd Coin, and 3rd Coin columns show the top jackpot for those games.

Lesser payouts for all the listed games are exact multiples of the number of coins bet. Be careful when you check the paytables because some true and near-true multipliers also come in option-buy versions.

SPINNING REEL SLOTS