If you visit a casino, online or offline, you are likely to find that the number of slot machines vastly outnumber the table games. Slot machines are extremely popular and thousands and thousands of different games are available, from very basic “one armed bandits” with three reels and fruit symbols to complex games with interactive bonus rounds, powerful speciality symbols and progressive jackpots.
Wagering on a slot machine
Many slot machines follow a basic setup where you, the player, can adjust the coin value, how many coins to bet per activated betline, and how many betlines to activate.
Example:
The popular slot Starburst from the Swedish game developer NetEnt have 10 paylines. (The lines where winning combinations can line up.) You get to decide how many of these that you wish to bet on, from just 1 payline to all 10 of them. Important: You can only win on activated paylines, i.e. paylines that you have bet money on. So, if you only activate the first five paylines and a winning combo lines up on payline #6, you get nothing.
The next step is to decide who much you want each coin to be worth when you play Starburst. If you are playing in Euro, the smallest coin value that you can select is €0.01 and the biggest one is €1.
Finaly, you decide how many coins to bet per (activated) payline, from just 1 to 10 coins.
This means that if you really want to keep your wagers low, you can decide to only activate (bet on) the first payline, set the coin value to €0.01 and bet only 1 coin per activated payline. This translates into a €0.01 wager, since 1 payline x €0.01 x 1 coin is €0.01.
If you have a big bankroll and want to make big wagers, you can instead chose to activate all 10 paylines, set the coin value to €1 and bet 10 coin per payline. This equals a €100 wager, since 10 paylines x €1 x 10 coins = €100.
Speciality symbols
Modern slot machines tend to come with special symbols, such as wild symbols, scatter symbols and bonus symbols.
Wild symbol
A wild symbol can replace another symbol to help you form a winning combination. Some wild symbols can only replace regular symbols, while others are strong enough to even replace special symbols (such as scatter symbols or bonus symbols.)
Modern slot machines sometimes have wild symbols with special gimmicks, e.g. wild symbols that freeze in their place and give you a free re-spin, or wild symbols that can spread to nearby areas of the reels and turn them wild too.
Scatter symbol
Scatter symbols doesn’t have to line up on a payline to give you a prize. In many slot games, getting just two scatter symbols – anywhere on the reels – is enough to be awarded with a small coin win.
Scatter symbols are often utilized by game developers as the key to a free spins round. Typically, you need a minimum of three scatter symbols – anywhere on the reels – to trigger the free spins round.