Winning at Slots

There’s nothing difficult about playing slots. There are no complicated strategies to learn as in blackjack or video poker and no need to choose among wagers with wildly different house edges as in craps.

You don’t even need to learn where to place chips to bet on four numbers instead of six or some other total as in roulette.

Still, a little planning and preparation can help you get the most out of your time on the slot.

It' s long been said that the players who get the best deal on the offline and online slots are those who bet bigger. Casinos generally put higher payback percentages on slot machines with higher coin denominations, and at least on three-reel games, payback percentages usually are highest with maximum bets.

One former casino company even had a cartoon character called "Max Coins" to remind players that bigger bets brought increased returns.

For nearly as long as there have been slot machines, there have been unsavory players who have tried to beat them using illegal means. But players have cheated with methods as low-tech as putting a coin on a string and yanking it back out after it tripped the coin-counting mechanism.

Looking for the best chance to win a big jackpot is practically the reason for existence for some slot machine players. Among the most frequently asked questions about slots are, "How can I tell when a slot is ready to pay a jackpot?", "Is there anything you can do to make a machine pay a jackpot?", "How can I track a loose slot?" and "Are you better off playing a hot machine that has just paid a jackpot or a cold machine that is due to pay a jackpot?"

And there's a fifth question: "Aren't there more jackpots in crowded casinos?"