Slots Strategy

Slots, slots games or slot machines are the most popular land, online and mobile casino game for many reasons – they’re easy, entertaining and lucrative to play, they number in the thousands, they’re bright, colourful and noisy, they accept a multitude of coin and bet sizes to suit any budget, and they’re packed with lots of fun and worthwhile features.

This is why when you visit any premier land casino in Africa you’ll find that slots outnumber all the other types of casino games by a mile. Slot machines always take up the most area on a casino’s gaming floor, just as there are more slots than any other casino games available at African-friendly online and mobile casinos. People just can’t get enough of slot games.

This then begs the question of if there is anything you can do to help improve your chances of winning more than you lose on slots? The short answer is yes, but not in the way you may think. Since slot games are 100% luck-based, there is no such thing as a slots strategy that can help you reduce their house edge or influence their outcome in any meaningful way.

There is, however, a slots strategy you can use to help you pick out the most potentially lucrative slots, slots with the biggest pay-outs and/or jackpots, slots with the highest RTP (return to player) and slots with the most high-paying features. There is also a slot strategy you can use to help preserve and manage your bankroll and even make it go much further.

Below we’ll highlight that strategy in detail, as well as provide you with some insight into the various types of slots there are that can take your slots experience to dynamic new heights.

This should be a no-brainer, but is worth mentioning. Online and mobile casinos are a dime a dozen, but truly excellent mobile and online casinos are not. In other words, not all online casinos are equal and the rule of thumb is that the better, safer and more reputable a casino site, the greater, more secure and more lucrative its slots and other games are.

As such, selecting the right online casino to play real money slots on is the first and arguably most important step in any effective slots strategy. You can easily differentiate ‘the right’ (i.e. excellent) online casinos from average casinos because they meet the following criteria.

The very best African slot casinos online:

• Are owned and run by respected and experienced gaming firms
• Welcome real money players from one or more countries in Africa
• Are licensed and regulated in recognised online gambling jurisdictions
• Offer hundreds of instant play demo + real money slots and other games
• Are supplied games by one or more leading online casino software vendors
• Have generous no deposit and sign up bonuses, plus worthwhile promotions
• Accept a multitude of currencies as well as a wide variety of payment methods
• Offer 24/7 fast, efficient and effective customer support from well-trained staff

At the world’s premier online casinos you’ll come across many types of slots from Classic Slots (3 reels, 1 pay-line) and Video Slots (5 reel, multiple pay-lines) to Bonus Slots (feature multiple bonus rounds) and Progressive slots (offer ever-increasing jackpots). The slot you choose may depend on the size of your budget i.e. amount of playing funds you have.

The reason for this is that slots can accept a multitude of different coin and bet sizes, some of which you may find too low or high for your particular budget. For instance, if you have a bankroll of $100, rather not waste your time on a slot with a $10 maximum bet, because that would only give you 10 spins before your bankroll ran out (assuming you didn’t win).

It would be more prudent - and a much better slots strategy - to choose a slot game with a $1 maximum, because that would give you 100 spins or opportunities to win. Similarly, if your aim is to win an enormous progressive jackpot, be prepared to play a hefty maximum bet, which is the price you must pay for a chance to win millions of dollars instantly.

Every slot has an RTP (return to player) or pay-out percentage, which is how much of every dollar (or any other currency) played in it is paid out as winnings over time expressed as a percentage. In other words, how much players will win collectively from every buck bet.

For instance, take an example of two video slot games, the first with an RTP of 96% and the second with an RTP of 97%. The second game has the more desirable RTP because 97c of every dollar gambled on it is paid out as winnings compared to 96c with the first game.

While a 1c difference may not seem like a big deal, it is when you consider that many slots process hundreds of thousands of dollar in bets every day. It must be noted, however, that an RTP of 97% doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed a return of 97c for every dollar you wager.

This is simply an overall average worked out over time across multitudes of players. In case you’re wondering, the missing percentage of any RTP is retained by the casinos and is how they generate their revenues and remain profitable when it comes to their online slots.

As such, a good slots strategy is to only seek out slots with RTPs of 95% and higher. Anything lower than that and we would definitely advise you to leave the slot, and the online casino offering it, well alone. The online casinos we promote typically have slots with high RTPs.

As simple as online slots are to play – fund your online casino account, examine the list of slots on offer, select a slot, click to open it, choose a coin size, number of levels to play and number of pay-lines, and click Spin – always read the rules of every slot you play.

This means going into its pay table - which every slot has - to see how many and what its pay-lines are, what its symbols are, how much they are worth and, importantly, what its feature symbols are. These include Wilds (that can substitute for other symbols), Scatters (that can activate free spins) and Bonus symbols (that can activate bonus rounds).

It’s always useful to know what and how many symbols you need to land across your reels in order to trigger bonus games, free spins or help make more winning combinations. You will find everything you need to know about a slot game and its pay-outs in its pay table.

Another reason to look at a slot’s pay table is to see if the maximum pay-out of that game is worth its maximum bet. In other words, will you have to bet more than you’re prepared per spin in relation to what you can win? If the answer is yes, find another slot to play.

A common mistake many rookie or first time slot fans make is to forget to play slots with all pay-lines active. While this is not a problem with classic slots that only have a single pay-line, it can be with video slots that can have as many as 30 pay-lines or ways to win.

Sometimes the default setting of newly opened slot games is not to have all pay-lines active which means if you click the Spin button and you land one or more winning combinations, because they don’t cover active i.e. paid for pay-lines, you aren’t paid out for them.

Similarly, most modern video slots have a range of levels you can choose from that will also affect your bet size, and thus the amounts you can win. As such, it’s very good slot strategy to always check the bet size, levels and pay-lines activated before you spin the reels.

The only problem with premier African online slots is how hard it can be to stop playing them because they are so entertaining. This is why it’s an important and necessary slots strategy to set an affordable daily or per session slots budget, and stick to it.

By doing this you’ll never have to worry about losing more than you can afford (on those less than lucky days). Even on days you when convince yourself a few dollars more should be enough to unlock the riches of a particularly stubborn slot, you must stop.

No matter how lucky you are, not every slot session will add more funds to your account. So instead of trying to chase away a ‘cold streak’ with unbudgeted funds (which is exactly what the casinos are hoping you’ll do) log off and come back fighting another day.

Similarly, when you find yourself on a ‘hot streak’ and you see your winnings pile up, don’t let greed get the better of you, and log off before you lose everything. That’s not to say you shouldn’t ride out a hot streak, just to stop as soon as your luck starts to change.