Video Slots

The newest and glitziest slot machines on the casino floors display five or six simulated reels on a video screen. Although these games typically have nine to fifteen paylines, there are some with up to forty paylines that zigzag in almost every conceivable direction across the screen. On most machines, a bonus mode appears on a secondary screen when you hit the right symbol combinations. This bonus mode is the only real chance you have to recoup your losses and get ahead of he game. Other machines have a bonus banking mode to encourage you to keep playing in an attempt to reach the big bonus payout before your bankroll is totally depleted.

The most common games, however, have five reels, nine paylines, and encourage you to bet up to five coins per line. Because this adds up to 45 coins, a maximum bet on a quarter machine costs $11.25 a spin, which is too rich for most players. Consequently, the nickel machines have taken on new popularity. At $2.25 per spin, the maximum bet on a nickel version is all most players are ready to contend with. Yet the casinos continue to display their greediness by putting more and more ten-coin-per-line nickel machines on the main floor. At $4.50 for a maximum bet, these nickel games are competing with he $5 machines in the high-limit area. As you play any of these computerized wonders, keep in mind that when you bet 45 credits, and the machine noisily announces that you won 30 credits, you are still losing money.

Of course, none of this could happen if the nickel machines weren't more convenient to operate than they used to be. The days of buying rolls of nickels from the cashier and feeding them, one at a time, into the machine are gone. Now all you have to do is slip a bill into the currency acceptor and start to play. Of course, when you are ready to cash out, you still have to contend with that little coin bucket. Even this inconvenience is being over-come by machines that spit out credit tickets instead of coins.

Because most video games have multiple paylines and accept multiple coins for each payline, they might be called multiplier line games. And that they are, but within that designation there are two types of video games with distinctly different playing strategies. They are called bonus games and banking games. A third category, called multi-game, is a machine configuration that is important enough to be treated separately.

1. BONUS GAMES

Except for the video versions of spinning reel machines, almost all video games have secondary bonus screens that pop up when you hit certain symbol combinations. The bonus screens often require some action on the part of the player, and always result in the award of extra credits. Examples are:

2. BANKING GAMES

To the casual observer, these appear to be ordinary bonus games, in that a secondary screen is part of the mix. There is, however, an important distinction that puts them in a class by themselves. As the game is played, points or some form of game assets are visibly accumulated by the machine in a "bank". When the bank reaches a certain condition or the achievement of some goal occurs as a result of continued play, these assets are finally paid out in the form of bonus credits.

This feature is designed to entice players to remain at the machine longer than they intended in an attempt to reach the payoff goal. Regardless of this enticement, some players may quit the game (for any number of reasons) before reaching the payoff goal. This leaves the game in a favorable state for any subsequent player who knows how to take advantage of it. Of course, we will tell you how to do it in the next section.

3. MULTI-GAME MACHINES

This is a configuration where the player has a choice of several different games within a single game machine. Most multi-game machines, such as Bally's Game Maker, include a mix of video slot games and video poker games. The video slot games may be of the bonus and/ or banking variety.