How Do Online Slot Games Work? An Overview

Slot machines, which are also known in other countries by names like fruit machines, poker machines, one-armed-bandits, and puggy, have been around since the end of the nineteenth century. The Liberty Bell gambling machine was the precursor of the slot machine. Developed by Sittman and Pitt of New York, the apparatus consisted of a drum that held 50 card faces. The game was based on poker. Players would insert a nickel and pull the lever to spin the drum to give them a random poker hand. The game soon became very popular at many Brooklyn bars. Then, between 1887 and 1895, Charles Fey from San Francisco devised a machine with a much simpler mechanism. It consisted of three reels containing a total of five different symbols. By 1908, the new Liberty Bell machines were being installed in saloons, bowling alleys, barbershops, and even brothels all over the United States.

Today’s online slot games are not too different from the original ones. Both involve the random generation of symbols in the hope of matching pictures and winning. But how exactly do online slots work? Let’s take a closer look.

How do you play online slot games?

The basics of playing online slots are straight forward. You place a wager, spin the wheel and wait for the reels to stop. If the stopped reel displays a line of symbols that match or contains a special symbol specific to the game you are playing, you will win.

Pay-lines are at the heart of any online slot game. They determine whether you have won or not, and they also determine what sort of win occurs. Real-world slot machines began with a single pay-line along the center. Today’s online versions have upped the ante. You will typically find online slots, like those at Kazoomcasino.com, with five pay-lines or more. Indeed, some online slot games even have up to 50 pay-lines, meaning you have 1023 different ways to win!

How do you decide how many pay-lines to bet on?

It can be quite challenging to determine how many pay-lines you should bet on when you first begin playing online slot games. Some games have fixed pay-lines, meaning all pay-lines are active on every spin. But other machines allow you to select the number of pay-lines you want to be active. The more pay-lines that are active, the higher your bet will be for that round. So, the best way to determine how many pay-lines to wager on is to budget your bankroll and stick to your betting limit. The more you play online slots, the more you will become familiar with them and the simpler it will be to determine how many pay-lines you feel comfortable playing with.

How are online slot games programmed?

Many newcomers to online slot games worry about whether the games are fixed and the platforms are scams. But all reputable online casinos must follow stringent rules and laws to ensure they provide fair games. Besides, the very nature of how online slot games are programmed means you can be assured slot game outcomes are always random.

Online slots use a random number generator to ensure every outcome is entirely random. A game’s RNG creates random sequences every millisecond, so the previous spins will not affect the next spins and a winning sequence whatsoever. Even if a slot game has just paid out a jackpot, you have exactly the same chance of winning a jackpot on the next play. It is precisely the same as flipping a coin. Every time you flip it, you have the same odds of it landing on heads or tails.