If you've done any window shopping at online casinos, you'll know that the main attraction is online slots. Some online casinos feature thousands of them from dozens of manufacturers, and they offer a wealth of entertainment and potential profits. To get you going, we've put together this guide to help demystify tricky aspects of the games, like RTP and volatility, recommend some of our favorites and even provide some tips to ensure you enjoy yourself while playing.
What are Online Slots?
Online slots are more or less what you'd expect them to be: online versions of the slot machines you see in casinos and down the pub. However, online slots can have far more bells and whistles than their real-life counterparts and offer a much wider variety of styles of play.
Not all internet slots are the classic fruit wheels that you're used to. They may incorporate interactive elements in their gameplay, huge multipliers and bonus rounds, and even additions like grid slot formats to completely change the way the game is played. We even get slots with progression and even story these days.
How to Play Online Slots
Online slots are quite possibly the easiest online casino game to start playing. There are literally thousands to pick from and the operation is so simple it's really a matter of letting the game work for you. That doesn't mean, however, that there's no procedure to follow and no means of optimizing the experience. Here's a step-by-step guide on how you'll be starting with online slots:
Pick a casino — if you're a newbie to online slots, you'll need a good quality online casino to play them on! You can find plenty of them here on LiveScore.
Choose a slot game — there are so many slot games to choose from, so this can be difficult for newcomers. We recommend starting with popular games on your chosen site or choosing from our recommendations in this guide.
Set a budget, stake and paylines — before spinning, you'll need to determine how much you'll be staking per spin, which paylines you'd prefer to cover and how much you're prepared to spend overall. You can alter the first two during the game.
Play! — you're now ready to start the game. We recommend you read the game's instructions before you hit the 'go' button so you understand what's happening at any given point.
Bonus rounds, free spins multipliers and jackpots — during gameplay, you may unlock a vast number of features. In most cases, you won't need to worry about changing gameplay, but you'll find explanations of each feature in the game's instructions.
There are also some feature staples on slots that crop up from game to game:
- Cascading Reels — a feature where winning symbols explode or otherwise disappear from the screen to make way for new symbols to drop in, with the possibility of additional wins and multipliers.
- Gridslots — a type of modern slot game that's more like playing Candy Crush or Bejewelled than the traditional fruit machines. Spinning reveals a new grid of symbols, and streaks of matching ones build up the payout meter before clearing out to make way for new ones.
- Megaways — a type of online tumbler slot with six reels and variably sized symbols. This provides a larger number of paylines that are randomly determined.
- Progressive Jackpots — these titles tend to have lower RTPs, yet every bet by every player contributes to four jackpots. You can trigger these at random while playing for the opportunity to win enormous amounts of money. The MegaMoolah series of games is the most famous example.
Understanding RTP and Volatility
RTP and volatility are also among the hardest concepts of online slots to wrap your head around, and the most important. Both of these terms are associated with how often an online slot pays out to players, so a solid grasp of their meaning can help you choose a good game and slightly improve your odds.
RTP is short for 'return to player' and is the amount of money returned to players in relation to how much is staked on the game in total. You may be more familiar with its direct counterpart, the house edge.
For example, a game with 96% RTP (the average for online slots) will return £96 for every £100 wagered on this. This is not a guarantee, though, but an average. Your own win percentage could be far below or well above this figure. The RTP is simply the total payouts over millions of spins.
Responsible Gambling
While slots are never-ending fun, they're also one of the easiest casino games to lose control over. So, while you play online slots, always ensure that you employ responsible gambling habits to maintain control over yourself.
In the case of online slots, one of the best ways to control your habits is to have a proper and fixed budget for yourself. Online casinos have a multitude of ways of helping you manage your bankroll, so just use any limit you can and be adamant about where you put it. If you still find yourself falling into bad habits, you can also use tools to temporarily block your account, block marketing, monitor your activity and a variety of helplines and links in case you need direct support.