How to pick a decent casino?

If you really want the chance to win something – you need to choose the casino you want to play at carefully. Not all casinos are equally reliable, and if you dig a little deeper than the headline of a website, you will find out how different casinos can be.

First – look for licensing information. If a casino is regulated in Malta or the UK – it has been tested, audited and reviewed several times before it received its licence. You should also look for other badges, such as those from software fairness testing companies. The most reputable of these are eCOGRA, iTech Labs and TST.

Usually casinos display this information on their home page, so if it’s not there – it could very well mean that the casino is not licensed, its software has not been tested and you should think twice before playing there.

Once you have decided which casino you want to play at – it is time to choose which game you want to play.

Video slots and the basic principles of how they work

Now we finally get to the point: can you beat slots or not? The answer is – no, you can’t. If you have chosen a licensed casino with a verified RNG badge, every single game on a slot is random.

Our point is that it doesn’t matter how many times you hit a win or a nite – the odds of winning the next game are the same as all the previous ones. There are many such myths that spread like a plague through the gambling community, and we have gathered them all here:

Video Slots and the Basic Principles of How They Work

As you might have guessed, all of the above are total rubbish. We’ve already told you about “hot” and “cold” slots, now let’s explore the myth of reels. Some slots have a feature where you can manually stop the reels according to your feeling. Many players think that if they click the “stop” button, something will change. It’s a myth, the only thing that changes is the animation of the spinning reels on your monitor.

Now for the “near” hits. It’s a psychological trick of the software developers, and it’s not even a good one. Suppose a reel has 50 stop positions. One of them is the jackpot symbol, 24 are smaller symbols and 25 are studs. Since the reel is not real (haha), rivet stops can be displayed however the developer wants, and usually they are displayed as the next stop next to a jackpot symbol. We’re sure you’ve seen this many times, and maybe thought it meant something – we assure you – it doesn’t.

Classic Slots and the Basic Principles of How They Work

The “Double” or “Double” feature is another thing that causes players to make bad decisions. Usually this feature is animated as a coin toss, wheel of fortune, a card being flipped or something along those lines. The point is that the animation makes you think you have influence on the outcome of the game, but you do not. The results are random, just like everything else about slots.

The most important thing to understand is that all slots are random and have a default RTP (Return to Player) rate. This should not be lower than 85%, by the way. The RTP rate for a regular online slot is somewhere between 90% and 97%, so the casinos keep at least $3 of every $100 you wager. It also means that online slots, just like real slots, should not be the first choice for players.

Choose-a-Jackpot

So, when choosing a decent casino and deciding which game to play – you need to look at the RTP ratio. It can be displayed directly in the layout of the game or in a separate tab. Casinos licensed by the UKGC are required to display the RTP odds for all their games, and this is another reason to look for a casino with a UK licence.

Pick-a-Jackpot

You should also consider which jackpot you’re aiming for. There are many jackpots on almost every slot, and they range from a few thousand to a few tens of thousands of dollars. There are also progressive jackpots that sometimes reach tens of millions of dollars or even more, but the odds of winning these are extremely low. Take this into account when thinking about how you spend your time.

Final thoughts

Remember that the game itself and all its features are not related to the payout percentage. You can play an ordinary three reel slot, or a modern 9 reel video super mega slot with bonus rounds, video game elements and other stuff, and it doesn’t matter at all because only the RNG determines your chances of winning.

You can play whenever YOU want, on Monday or Sunday, on holidays or working days and it doesn’t matter if you play at a reputable casino. There are no simple recipes or complex strategies to win at slots. The best way is to take it easy and have fun while the reels spin. Choose a casino, pick a slot that entertains you best – and go for it!