Slots

Everyone is familiar with the incessant ringing and singing of slot machines, a feature in all modern casinos and a phenomenon that has taken the world of online casinos by storm. These games play to the gambler in all of us, with huge wins available on most machines, but they also appeal to the gamer in most of us, with similar reward mechanisms, sounds and features that make video games so popular.
Slot machines go by many names, and depending where you come from you might know them as slots, fruities, fruit machines, one-armed bandits, pokies or even puggies, but all of those names refer to the same machines, and these machines are loved all over.

The History of Slots

One of the first ever slot machines to have been invented was known as the Liberty Bell, due to the symbols that it used. This was a mechanical machine, working on a system of gears, and it was created in San Francisco, California. The very first machines were a little different to the modern machine in the sense that they were installed in pubs and bars, and instead of paying out money directly, they would offer tokens for free drinks and other prizes. It didn’t take long for the developers to turn them into self-paying devices, perhaps seeing the immense profit that could be made from doing so.

Although the first one was only invented at the end of the nineteenth century, into the next century they were already beginning to spread throughout the United States and much further afield.

The first electronic games came about in the 1960s, and the first computerized games emerged a couple of decades after that. In the online age, with the internet becoming present in more and more homes, it wasn’t long before online casinos emerged, and one of the first things that they concentrated on, namely due to popularity, but also because of the significant house edge, was slot machines. The machines were very simple back then and there was a time when slots in general didn’t change very much, but in the modern age, with technology advancing faster than ever before, slot machines are getting more and more advanced and reaching heights not previously thought possible.

How to Play Slots

How you play slot machines depends entirely on the individual slot. There was a time when these games were very simple. You paid your money, you pulled the lever and you tried to line up three fruits on three separate reels. These fruit symbols also included a jackpot symbol, typically a “Bar” or “7” and if you were lucky enough to line up three of these instead, then you won the jackpot. Simple, but things changed.

These days there are multiple ways to win and to play. There are also tend to be more reels, more symbols and more jackpots. There are bonus rounds, each of which typically includes a jackpot. There are also added bonuses, with some games offering up to half a dozen random wins that can, theoretically, appear with each spin. Wild symbols also add extra excitement, as these basically substitute any other symbol, and some games have wild reels, turning the entire column into wilds.

Online slots tend to be more complicated, but they also all have information on how to play them, and if you’re still not sure then many online casinos allow you to play their games for free, trying before you buy and ensuring limited losses as a result.

When it comes to price most games can be played for just a few cents, but some require significantly more as a minimum bet. You should always check the bet when you join a game for the first time, never click “Spin” without first looking at this as many games will automatically set the bet as $1 or $2 per spin, which might be out of reach for many.

Where to Find Slots

Slots are widely available, and depending where you are in the world, you can even find them outside of casinos. In Australia and the United Kingdom, as well as other countries, it is not unusual to find them in hotels, restaurants, pubs and similar venues, whilst in gambling cities in North America you can find venues catering exclusively to these machines, with banks and banks of them ringing to the tempting sound of big jackpots day and night.

Slots are also widely available online as well, with no shortage of online casinos that have hundreds of them available. The best site we can recommend is Spin Palace or Royal Vegas. The Spin Palace platform is more advanced graphically than their offline counterparts, but both versions feature graphically advanced bonus rounds, extra features and much more that make slots an enjoyable and even an addictive experience.

In fact, slots have become so popular in recent years that you can even download specially created slot machines to play on your tablet, smartphone or even your PC or laptop through Spin Palace or Royal Vegas. These games come with all the bells and whistles of real slots (sometimes literally) and the only difference is that there is no money to be won, and therefore no money to be lost either.