Does winning at a casino, regardless of the size of your prize, really make you happier? Yes, yes it does. Think about it, we are talking about winning, people! In what world does winning not make you happy? And when playing in an online casino, there are so many opportunities to win that you’re practically guaranteed a mood boost.

New slot machine players are going to find a lot of advice for beating the slots. Have a healthy skepticism when a slots expert tells you they know how to beat the slot machines. Among the games in a casino, video slots (in general) have a high house edge. Besides finding gaming machines with high jackpots and a low house edge, no skill or strategy is required to play slots. That means you can’t expect to increase your odds of winning in most situations.

Read through the advice below to optimize your chances of winning at slots. None of the advice assures winning sessions. Instead, it helps you stretch your bankroll, so you enjoy playing the slots longer. Also, the longer your bankroll lasts, the more chances you’ll have of hitting the big jackpot every slots player wants.

Use a Slots Card

Upon entering a live casino, sign up for a slots card. This provides comps and cashback, which automatically lowers the house edge by a bit. Never play a spin without using your slots card. In an online casino, accept the highest slots bonus and play according to the terms and conditions until you meet the wagering requirement. Once again, this lowers the house edge on online slots.

Make Max Bets

Look at the payout chart on a slot machine to determine how jackpots are paid. On many slot machines, the 5-coin bet pays out a higher percentage on the top fixed jackpot. For instance, a 1-coin bet might pay $200, a 2-coin bet might pay $400, a 3-coin bet might pay $600, and a 4-coin bet might pay $800. You might expect the 5-coin bet to pay $1000, but many slot machines pay out $1200 or $1500 in that case, trying to convince bettors to make the max bet.

If the jackpot increases a bigger percentage with a maximum coin wager, then it makes sense to make the max bet on a slot machine. If the bet size is too high for your tastes, then lower the coin denomination and make a max bet at that level. Of course, if there is no additional jump between the 4-coin and 5-coin bet, then you can wager a single coin and max out the coin denomination to the bet size you like.

Read the RTP Information

If an online casino or land-based casino publishes its return-to-player information, read through the RTP percentages to find the video slots with the best RTPs. Return-to-player or expected return is the percentage of a theoretical $100 you expect to see returned to you. It is a theoretical percentage based on probability, so an RTP of 95% does not assure you’ll be paid $95 for every $100 you put in the machine. You might lose $50 or you might win $150, or you might win a progressive jackpot and go home rich.

The point of the RTP percentage is to give a player an idea of their expected return. If two slot machines sit next to one another and one has an RTP of 93% and the other an RTP of 95% (and both have similar jackpots), then it pays to play the game with the higher percentage. Over time, this leads to you maintaining a higher percentage of your bankroll.

Money Management Techniques

Read about bankroll management techniques. “Money management” or “bankroll management” is a series of steps you take to lock on winnings when good luck happens and limit your losses when a bad streak occurs. These do not assure that you’ll win, but it optimizes your bankroll.

Players should know three core bankroll management methods: percentage betting, win goals, and loss limits. Learn to calculate your bankroll and divide this into percentages. Then bet between 1% and 5% of your bankroll on any given hand, depending on your capacity for risk. This limits the amount of your stake you lose on any given session, keeping you playing for longer throughout your vacation. It is a given that people go to the ATM machine or credit card when they lose their whole bankroll — which means you spend more than you intended. The point of percentage betting is to assure your bankroll last through your whole trip, so you never have to replenish.

What Is a Bankroll?

“Bankroll” is not defined as your entire bank account. It isn’t defined as your discretionary spending budget or the money you have earmarked for entertainment expenses. Instead, it is a part of your discretionary spending cash and entertainment budget which is set aside specifically for gambling. In this case, a bankroll is less than your entertainment budget.

Once you have your bankroll figured, divide this into easy to understand percentage. If you have a bankroll of $1000, then divide this into percentages. These are simple calculations, but you should have an understanding of 1%, 2%, 5%, 10%, and 20% of your bankroll. In the earlier example, 1% would be $10, while 2% would be $20. 5% would be $50, 10% would be $100, and 20% would be $200.

Now that you have these, decide whether to bet 1% to 5% of your bankroll. Most experts suggest betting no more than 1% to 2% in order to maintain your bankroll throughout your casino trip or online slots session.

Setting a Win Goal

Next, set your win goal. This is the amount of winnings you set as your goal for any given slots session. If you have a win goal of 10%, then your win goal would be $100 for any given slot machine sessions. As soon as you hit that goal, you walk away from the slot machine — no matter what. A win goal is a hard-and-fast rule, because it locks in winnings. One of the biggest mistakes players make is losing back their winnings, because they think they’re on a hot streak.

Setting a Loss Limit

Even more dangerous is trying to win back cash you just loss. To protect against this tendency, set a loss limit. Once again, make this your hard-and-fast rule. Typical loss limits can be 5%, 10%, 15%, or 20% — though 20% means you could lose the entire bankroll in 5 slots session. 10% to 15% is a good middle ground. Once you’ve lost that amount, walk away from the slot machine under all circumstances. The slots game is not “due” to pay out, so step away from the machine and clear your mind.

Win goals and loss limits guard against gambler’s fallacy. Gambler’s fallacy is the idea that the law of averages assures or weight the odds in your favor. Slots use random number generators and every spin is entirely separate from the previous spin. Losing the last spin does not make it more likely you’ll win the next spin. The odds stay the same, no matter how many wins or losses in a row you’ve had.

Avoid Progressive Betting

For that reason, avoid progressive betting systems like the Martingale system, D’Alembert system, Fibonacci system, and so on. Betting experts have used computer simulations to track the progressive betting methods against flat betting (same bet each spin). Flat betting beats all of the progressive betting schemes over 1 billion spins.

Progressive betting seems like it’s working, because it leads to a lot of small winning sessions. The problem is that it also has a handful of huge losing sessions which wipe out all the wins — and then some. You can’t beat the house edge with the Martingale system, however it might look to the naked eye. The Fibonacci numbers are incredible, but they are not a magical way to beat the casino.

The reason progressive bets are bad is they increase the size of your bets (in some systems exponentially). If you start with $5 or $10 bets, a streak of bad luck has you betting hundreds of dollars on one spin. That’s busts your bankroll and leads to a “risk of ruin” — meaning you’ll lose your whole bankroll if you hit a bad luck streak. No matter what you read online, flat bets are better.

Take Breaks for Rest and Refreshments

Play when you are at your best physically and mentally. Don’t play when you’re tired or sleepy. Don’t play when you’re hungry or thirsty. Take frequent rest and restroom breaks. If you get bored, take a break and walk the casino. Play another game to change up the betting pattern.

When you are rested and engaged, you won’t have distractions that might lead to bad decisions. The idea is to have fun, so if anything is causing you to lose focus on the entertainment aspect of the game, walk away and save your bankroll.

Don’t Go on Tilt

Tilt is a concept in poker where a player makes decisions based on emotional responses instead of solid strategy. It can cost a player a lot of money if they make bets based on anything but rational decisions. While going on tilt is not a concept in slot machine gambling, every game of chance has a personal component.

In short, don’t play when you’re agitated. Take stock of your inner thoughts. If your ego or anger is causing you to make irrational decisions, take a deep breath and calm down. If that doesn’t work, walk away and clear your head. It stinks to lose a series of bets, but what stinks more is to lose a series of bigger bets when you’re trying to make up for lost bankroll.

Since jackpots online and offline have been in existence, people have asked themselves the eternal question, how often do slot machines hit the jackpots?

It’s been a question inviting both hope and trouble. We’re here to discuss the odds of slot wins and look under the hood of how big slot wins online and offline work, and more importantly, how often they occur. There’re several key aspects of the experience to consider before you can make an informed decision. The main things you should be looking into when it comes to playing slots are:

• The Return to Player (RTP) rates of the game
• The slot volatility, i.e. frequency of payout
• The actual probabilities of landing a big slot win

Before we delve into the essence of how often slot machines payout, we must be perfectly honest with each other; we can’t distil the nature of slot payouts to a pristine formula and no matter how good we are at understanding the why behind these games, there will be a substantial part that will depend on pure luck alone, even if you play at the best paying slots sites around.

Slot Machines: The Basics

Each slot machine comes with a randomised outcome thanks to the technology in the very crux of it – the Random Number Generator (RNG). RNGs are cutting-edge algorithms that guarantee the “complete randomness” at a casino. The RNG is needed to help computers create randomness, as they are programmed to predict an outcome and don’t understand “random” the same way you and we do.

When it comes to actual casino play, there is absolutely no way of knowing when a jackpot will arrive. The average pay cycle for each game will vary. It’s worth logging your spin outcomes as it can help you determine when the jackpot window has a more probable chance of being open. However, the complete randomness of the RNG makes it impossible for anyone, be that a supercomputer or a mathematical wiz, to determine the outcome or be able to call the exact time a big jackpot will actually hit.

Tempted by the idea of imminent big slot wins, many players have been persistent in their determination to spot the patterns.

Progressive Jackpot Patterns in Slots

It’s worth spending more time observing rather than playing yourself. In 2016, the win cycles for Mega Moolah happened every 70 days, give or take, but it’s worth noting that there were only four payouts the entire year.

The payouts started early in April and continued through late November. In 2019, we’ve already witnessed slightly more hectic results that haven’t followed a particular pattern so far. The first win came on January 30^th, 2019, followed by another one on March 5^th and then another one on March 6. If the wide-spread trend repeats itself, we can expect the next jackpot to hit 33 days from March 6^th, around April 8^th or before that.

This would be a fair observation. In 2017, the space of each was at least a month, but not exceeding two months. There were 13 wins in total, the game’s largest number on record.

Does capturing historical statistical data help determine when a mega jackpot is likely to payout?

The answer is – not really. While there is some evidence to suggest that payout cycles happen in a window of one or two months, we have no way of knowing how many slots wins there are going to be on any given specific year.

There is a reason why certain games never manage to amass a multi-million jackpots, this has to do with the return to player (RTP) rates and the volatility.

Consider the RTPs in Slots Online

Just because an outcome is random, doesn’t mean we can’t pick the games statistically more likely to payout. Whether it’s a progressive jackpot or a fixed jackpot, the Return to Player (RTP) will tell you a little something about what to expect.

Now, here’s the thing about RTPs. They are accurate, but in order to get them right, you will need to play around 10,000 spins. Anything below that, and you may end up with deviations. Playing less than 10,000 RTPs can still turn out accurate, it’s just for the most accurate results, you will have to play through towards that figure.

It’s like flipping a coin 10 times vs flipping it 1000 times, you can certainly expect that 50-50 outcome to be more accurate after 1000 times than 10 times when a freak outcome of 80-20 is more probable. RTPs don’t factor the bonus amount, so when considering them you must keep that in mind and regard them as something that will help you extend your stay at a casino and keep a healthy budget.

If you do avoid the progressive games, you can guarantee yourself a slightly more controlled type of play and less risk in exchange for more frequent returns.

Slot Volatility: Pay Attention

‘Volatility’ in slots and other casino games refers to the payout frequency a slot has and how much is paid. Again, this is more applicable to your regular slots wins rather than the big slot wins you want to get by landing a mega jackpot. And yet, volatility will help you plan your bankroll just a little bit better.

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Playing high volatility games means that the payouts will be bigger, but you will also have more cold streaks when the spins won’t get you any return. With low volatility, you will enjoy frequent payouts, but not really big winnings.

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There are trade-offs and depending on your budget, you will find both slots applicable. When it comes to jackpots, Mega Moolah, which we used as an example here, is definitely on the high-end of the volatility spectrum. So don’t be too disappointing if you have a run of 10 or 20 spins with no payouts at all, that’s just the nature of a high volatility slot game.

If you are looking for low-volatility jackpot games, you can opt for a game such as Dead or Alive by NetEnt. The standard jackpots payout around 200-1000 coins a payout, making this game a perfect pick for those of you who enjoy slot machine jackpots but don’t have a larger bankroll than you need to play through for the mega jackpots.

Staying on Top of Your Bankroll

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If you are keen on getting some decent slot wins, you needn’t necessarily go after the highest-risk games. It’s quite possible to build slot wins incrementally, indulging in games that have steadier, even if somewhat smaller payouts.

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Jackpot hunting is a tough game and while quite a few people report big slot wins you will have to remind yourself that luck has no small part to play in the final outcome. Only after realising this can you use the other information you have learnt here to better your odds at securing a hefty prize.