15 Slots Tips You Need to Know: Straight from a Casino Expert
Today, we’re going to explore some online slot tips and tricks, and tips for playing slots in land-based casinos.
Whether you prefer the themes of Ancient Egypt, the reels of Ainsworth’s Mustang Money, Aristocrat’s Buffalo series, or Konami’s multi-games, there is something for everyone.
Whether you’re into the high volatility stepper games, or the low volatility ‘time on device’ games, or a bit of both, we’re going to take an in-depth look at what to do, what not to do, and what approaches to the games will give you the best options to win.
Let’s get started.
1. Use the offers that the casino gives you – they’re usually free.
Land-based casinos almost always give you a free play bonus when you sign up for their Player’s Club. Take it.
Online casinos also have bonus offers that they will give you as a welcome bonus.
These are always worth taking, too.
Occasionally, you may find that you have to make a cash deposit in an online casino to be eligible for the welcome bonuses, but go ahead because you’re going to play anyway, right?
Just be aware that you can’t just accept the free play and then cash it out. The free play requires that you play it off, sometimes more than once through the machine in order to cash it out.
Some of the online casinos may limit the amount of the bonuses – so you can only cash out a certain amount, not necessarily the total amount shown.
Make sure you record the bonus code correctly and enter it correctly on the casino’s website. If you enter the code incorrectly, it will not activate the bonus for you.
The bonuses may include free entry into special promotions, a welcome bonus when you open an account, a bonus for depositing money into your account and so on.
2. Make sure you have an amount you’re willing to lose. And an amount you’re willing to win, too.
It may be that you’re willing to lose $100. If that’s the case, some of the online casinos will allow you to enter that as a ‘stop loss’ amount and won’t allow you to lose more than that.
Stick to that loss amount – chasing money you have lost is a sure way to get in over your head
And you also need to have an amount you’re willing to win. And when you get there, cash out! Stopping when you’re winning is a standard behavior among experienced players.
We’ve all had the friend come to us and say ‘I was winning $300 and kept playing. I lost it all back’.
Why didn’t he cash out? Don’t be that guy!
So make sure you look after your bankroll – you have to have a win and loss number and stick to it
3. Split your bankroll
Basic money management is that you must have a session bankroll and a lifetime bankroll. Make sure you have control of both, so don’t overspend on one at the expense of the other.
Find the lowest House Edge – Google is your friend. Once you’ve found the game you like the best, Google it and try to find the % house edge on the game.
One thing that beginning players don’t know is that the lower denomination games have the lower Return To Player numbers, too.
What does ‘Return To Player’ mean? It’s the amount that a slot machine will give back to a player over an extended period of time.
For example
A machine that has an RTP of 95% will keep 5% for the casino over the lifetime of the machine. So the casino expects to win $5 of every $100 that you put into the machine.
4. Join the Player's Club
There are plenty of reasons why you should be a Player’s Club member, most notably that the casino gives you free stuff.
Being a Player's Club member makes you eligible for free play, extra bonuses, discounted or free food, free concert tickets, free entry into slot tournaments, free or discounted hotel rooms and so on.
Make the best use of the freebies they give you.
Some people will tell you that using the Player’s Club card allows the casino (land-based or online) to limit how much you win, or inform your bank manager or the IRS about how much money you’re playing etc. Which is absolute nonsense.
The player tracking software is completely separate from the slot accounting system and the casino likes it that way.
So join the Player’s Club – it’s a way for the casino to incentivize you to play by giving you free stuff.
5. Avoid the ‘famous’ slots
Wheel of Fortune is perhaps the best known, but there are many others – such as Monopoly, Game of Thrones, even the Elvis machines and many more all pay a big licensing fee to the star of the machine, plus the manufacturer keeps a chunk, too.
They take a large amount of the money that should be feeding the jackpot, and it reduces the amount the player can win.
It can be hundreds of thousands, or even millions, but it’s a lot less because there are others at the trough first.
6. Try to find the loose machines
Tight machines do exist – here’s the facts, ma’am.
The way the machine’s software is programmed is pre-determined, so the Slot Director may only have the choice between a 7% hold, a 9.5% hold, and a 13.7% hold on a specific machine.
And nothing in between. He has four 1¢ machines that have this theme on his floor.
The machines are identical from the player’s perspective, except that one of them now holds 7%, two of them hold 9.5%, and one holds 13.7%.
That was always a choice I had to make when I was responsible for setting up the slot floor.
Each game’s software would come with several different hold percentages available, and I would choose the hold percentage for each machine before we put it out on the casino floor.
The ultimate goal was to get as close to the ‘floor par’ that the GM had decided we needed to have to meet our budget goals.
Slot Tip
You arrive at the floor par by adding together the hold percentages of all the machines on your floor, and then dividing that number by the total number of machines.
When I was learning to be a Slot Director, I was always told that my floor par must be at least 7.5% and that’s the absolute minimum. You can’t make any money if you’re below 7.5%.
Bet the maximum on games where you want to win the big jackpot.
If you don’t bet maximum coin-in, you won’t win the big jackpot, even if you hit it.
You will only win the secondary award. That’s almost always the way the machines work.
The reason is the machine won’t pay you the maximum jackpot if you don’t bet the amount you need to bet to be eligible for the maximum jackpot.
Make sure you understand what the machine requires for you to get paid the maximum jackpot. If you don’t, you will be playing to load up the top award so that someone else can win it, not you.
If you don’t bet the maximum, you can’t win the maximum jackpot.
Always play the highest denomination game you can afford.
Play the higher denomination games because the higher the denomination, the higher the RTP.
Here’s a table from the Nevada Gaming Control Commission for 2022 that shows the RTP per denomination for the various areas of Las Vegas.
| Denomination | Las Vegas Strip | Downtown | Boulder Strip | North Las Vegas |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1c | 88.60% | 88.98% | 90.89% | 90.55% |
| 5c | 92.28% | 93.54% | 95.06% | 94.45% |
| 25c | 88.96% | 93.25% | 94.62% | 95.00% |
| $1 | 92.55% | 93.20% | 94.77% | 94.51% |
| $5 | 94.47% | 92.64% | 0% | 0% |
| $25 | 94.04% | 93.06% | 91.19% | 0% |
| $100 | 93.66% | 92.64% | 0% | 0% |
| Multi | 92.99% | 92.96% | 94.54% | 93.39% |
| Avg.% | 92.20% | 92.57% | 93.70% | 93.58% |
What’s most interesting to me about this is that all the higher denomination games, like the $5 and the $25 games were all set to hold much more than I ever set my games at – but I wasn’t in the Las Vegas market.
It’s a truism that the higher denomination games all have bigger paybacks.
Slot Directors manage their games by ‘win per sq. ft’.
A $1 machine and a 1¢ machine take up exactly the same amount of floor space, so the 1¢ machine has a much lower RTP than the $1 game.
Always bet the maximum to make sure you get all the lines, multipliers and symbols in action. Many in-game bonuses and progressive top awards aren’t even activated if you’re not betting the maximum.
Generally, the higher the denomination, the higher the payback percentages.
Here’s a table that shows the typical hold percentages and the RTPs that I would have on my casino floor.
| Denomination | Hold % | RTP |
|---|---|---|
| 1 or 5c slot | 8% to 15% | 85% - 92% |
| 25c slot | 5% to 10% | 90% - 95% |
| $1 | 2% to 7% | 93% - 98% |
| $5 and up | 0.5% to 3% | 97% - 99.5% |
If you’re a progressive guy, find the big jackpot – just be aware that the bigger the jackpot, the less likely it is to hit, and the longer time between hits.
And of course, the main reason is that the progressive builds up over time, so the longer it takes for the jackpot to get really huge.
Some of the monster progressives hit once every six months, and sometimes longer.
7. What volatility games do you like to play?
Select the right volatility for your playing style – are you a ‘I want to win a lot, and don’t mind waiting for it to show up’ player, or are you a ‘I’m going to play a long time, and don’t expect to win a fortune’ player’? Check out the slots volatility guide for more about the subject.
Or somewhere in between?
The smaller the jackpot, the more likely you are to hit it.
Find the smaller payouts because the smaller payouts will occur more frequently – if that’s your playing style.
Play the simpler games - the more bonuses the game pays, and the more complicated the game is, the lower your odds of winning a big jackpot.
The reason is that the game takes more of the coin-in to pay those bonuses – which takes away from the money available to pay the jackpot.
Back in the Day . . .
How often do you read articles like this one and they say that casino management put the machines that pay the most in the back of the casino to draw people there, or they say they put those machines in the front of the casino to attract people coming in, or near the restaurant, or away from the restaurant, or at the end of the row, or in the middle of the row and so on and so on.
I’ve been in the business for more than 35 years, and the guys who trained me for 20+ years before that. My mentor invented IGTs Sizzling 7s game – that’s how long he’d been around.
And he never mentioned putting the machines that pay back the most anywhere special.
And it never occurred to me that I should.
He did say that he liked to put his $1 machines by the table games pit because the players could use the $1 slot tokens on the blackjack games. That’s all he ever said.
If I was to make a location decision based on the RTP of a machine, I would put the lower RTP games on the end of a row.
Why? Because that’s where the humans prefer to play!
So I would have made a price/location decision this way. If you want to play in the most preferred position, there’s a cost associated with that.
But I never actually did that because philosophically that’s not how I think.
And the reason is I would find myself adding half a dozen new themes or, at most, perhaps fifteen new games to my floor.
And the places they were going were in the locations of the games that I was taking off the floor.
No magic, no voodoo. Simply ‘this game in, that game out’. Done.
If you look at a 5-machine slot bank, numbered from left to right 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, the coin-in on the machines would be, from highest to lowest, 1, 5, 2, and then 4 and 3. Every single time!
Don’t ask me why – that’s just how it works.
Of course, the players prefer the end games because they have more space to play, but why left or right?
I don’t know.
And with no coins to hit the hollow aluminum coin tray anymore, there is no big sound to signify a jackpot except the jackpot theme music coming from the machine. And the meter going up and the ticket printing out when the player leaves. Again, no magic, no voodoo.
8. Select the right RTP for your style
As the table above indicates, the RTP is usually based on denomination – so choose the denomination you want to play wisely.
If you like to play for a long time, select a low volatility game with a low ‘maximum coin in’ figure to minimize how much you must bet to get all the paylines, symbols, multipliers and so on activated.
If you like to ‘go for it’, and want to hit the big jackpot, choose a stepper game with high volatility, knowing that your budget has to be ready for you to play that way, because you need to play maximum coin in to make sure you’re going to get paid the top award if you hit it.
So make sure you choose games that fit your budget and personality
9. Use cash, not slot tickets
The reason is a slot ticket has no appreciable value. It’s just a thin piece of paper that looks like a receipt from your local supermarket. But a $100 bill? Now that’s real money, and worth $100!
By playing with real money, you are always aware that you’re playing with real money.
And you’re always aware of how much you’re playing because $20 is $20, and $100 is $100.
10. Make sure you know what you’re betting on
This is a 1¢ game that has 10 paylines. And you can bet up to 30 coins per line.
So your 1¢ game just became a $3 game – and the average player can play about 10 spins per minute on a video game like this.
Which means you can easily play $30 per minute on a game like this.
At first glance, it looks a bit complicated, but once you actually look at it, it’s fairly simple.
The colored numbers on the sides of the screen identify the 10 lines and you can see the various win line patterns that go across the screen.
But this game can easily cost $30 per minute to play!
Make sure you know what you’re betting on, because it can get really expensive if you don’t.
11. Always choose reputable online sites
I frequently see questions posted that read ‘how do I get my money out of XYZ casino? It’s been five days, and I still haven’t been paid’.
Always choose to play at reputable online casino websites.
12. Play the games for free before you put real money in action
It’s always a good idea to play a new game for free online before you put any real money into action.
That way, you will know the ins and outs of the game and there will be no surprises if and when you decide to play for real money.
13. Don’t try to find games that are ‘Due to Hit’.
Do you know why?
Because there is no such thing as a game that’s ‘due to hit’.
Modern machines and online games all feature a Random Number Generator (RNG).
They run through up to 1,000 numbers per second, so if you have a player who has just left the game, and a new player sits down, the RNG will identify up to 300,000 combinations of the various reels in the five minutes it takes the new player to sit down, get comfortable, put money into the game and hit ‘Spin’.
Of course, the ‘must hit before the progressive jackpot gets to $100,000’ games are due to hit when they’re at $99,998.72, but they’re a special case.
There’s no such thing as a machine that’s due to hit - so don’t try to find one.
14. There’s no such thing as ‘Priming the Pump’.
One philosophy I saw mentioned a few times when I was researching this article was the ‘start with small bets and progress to bigger bets to win big’.
The philosophy is that you must ‘prime the pump’ to hit the big winners.
What a load of nonsense!
The slot machine is an inanimate object. It has no thought process. It doesn’t know what combination it just hit. It doesn’t know how much you bet on the last spin, or the spin before that. It doesn’t know you bet $1.50 thirty spins ago. Or even if it was you who bet the $1.50.
And it can hit the top award on your first spin, or your nineteenth spin, or your six-hundredth spin, or not at all.
15. The online casinos offer more variety than the land-based casinos
It costs about $30,000 to $35,000 to put a slot machine on a casino floor. With the glass, the cabinet, the electronics, the player tracking equipment, the Bill Validator, the harnesses, the game software and so on, the manufacturers have a lot to address and spend their money on.
The online casino, on the other hand, only has to provide the software for the game theme. Much less expensive, so the online developers have much more budget to spend on their games.
And they can offer the game for free so that you can explore a new game without putting any money at risk.
So they offer you a much greater variety of games to play.
Conclusion
There you have the best tips for playing slots.
It’s a lot of fun, and you can certainly find different types of games to suit your preferred machines to play and your personal style.
Whether you like the highly volatile steppers or the low volatile video reels that award lots of bonuses but don’t offer huge jackpots, there is something that everyone can enjoy.
So good luck, and as always, play responsibly within your budget.
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