The Slot Machine, which also goes by the name Fruit Machine in British and Poker Machine in Australia, is one of the most common gambling machines that you can find in any brick-and-mortar and online casino websites. It is also an overwhelmingly popular casino game nowadays among gamblers due to its simplicity. And in fact, the slots games contribute to almost 70% of the casino's income.

How To Play On The Slot Machines

The slot machine is a gambling machine which is characterized by three or more reels, with symbols printed on them, that will spin for a while when the player inserts some coins and activate the mechanism that will trigger the reels to spin, either a lever on older machine versions or a button. The simplicity of the slots rules became a hit for both young and old players alike. There is no skill required, and the player's luck is everything that will dictate whether or not he will win.

In order to play the game, all you have to do is to insert some coin denomination you prefer, then pull the lever on the side of the machine (or push the "SPIN" button in case of online slots games). The reels will spin for a few seconds and then will come to stop. When the reels stop spinning, the symbols on the machine will be assessed and if one or more winning patterns or combination are formed, the machine will eject a number of coins that is won by those winning patterns. In online slots games, the game will just add the amount to your bankroll.

Actual slot machines accepts chips representing real money from the players, while on online slots, you will have to choose the denomination of the coin (either 25 cents, 1, 2, 5, or 10 dollars) to be inserted in the machine. After the players have selected their desired amount, they will then choose from one up to 10 pieces of coin to wager. As the number of coin increases, the number of enabled pay-lines will also increase.

Each pay-line will have payouts according to the symbols that are formed, so the more pay-line there is, the more prize the player can get from the slot machine. Also, the value of the chip or coin that the machine will pay out is equivalent to the value of chip or coin the player has wagered.

Slot Machine Symbols

In a slot machine game, there are different symbols that the player can encounter. The most common of them are as follows:

Normal Slots Symbols - these symbols are the basic symbols that is found in the machine. The most common are displayed as any of the card ranks forming a royal flush in poker (10, J, Q, K, A) or other common symbols based on the machine's theme. If three of them line up in an enabled pay-line, the player can win some prizes.

Wild Symbols - the wild symbols in slots are like a Joker in poker, in which it can be used as a substitute to any normal symbol in order to form a winning combination in an enabled pay-line.

Scatter Symbols - these symbols are those that enables the player to win if they appear anywhere on the slot machine reels. Players only need at least one of this symbol to have a payout.

Bonus Symbols - these symbols are the special symbols that the slot machine features. Usually, forming three of the bonus symbols in an enabled pay-line will trigger the jackpot. In most casinos, they can be seen as the number 7, and 777 is a famous slot machine jackpot combination.

Multiplier And Bonus Multiplier Slot Machines

There are slot machines that offer payouts based on the number of coins bet on a particular spin. They are called the Multiplier Slots. For example, for every coin that the player wagers, the machine will pay out 20 coins if a pattern similar to the very recent winning pattern appears. So a bet of 2 coins will yield 40 coins. Likewise, 3 coins will win 60 coins total.

If the player wagers the maximum amount of bet, some multiplier slots will pay out some extra bonus following the criteria. For example, 1 coin will win 20 coins, 2 coins will yield 40 coins, and a maximum of 3 coins will pay out 100 coins. These are called the Bonus Multiplier Slots.

Progressive Slot Machines

Progressive slots offer jackpots that are much higher in value compared to straight slot machines. This is because multiple machines are connected with each other. With the progressive slots games, the total pot money increases every time a player wagers on any of the linked slots and as long as there is no one hitting the jackpot. Once the jackpot is taken by a very lucky player, the pot money will reset back to its initial amount. Most of the time the total progressive jackpot will even reach an amount of more than a million dollars, especially in online casino websites.