7 Quick Strategies for Winning Slot Machine Play

Do you believe that slot machines are 100% luck? If you do, not only are you close to being right, but you also believe the same as many other slot machine players.

The truth is that slot machines work based on mathematical principles, but your chance to win any particular spin is largely based on luck.

But this doesn’t mean there isn’t anything you can do to help you win when you play slots.

Here’s a list of 7 quick strategies that you need to use every time you play slot machines. You can alter your luck when you play slots.

1 – Big Deposit Bonuses

The number 1 thing that every slot machine gambler should use is a big bonus. Online casinos offer some wild and big bonuses for slots players. I’ve seen bonuses of $10,000 and higher offered for slots play.

Land based casinos don’t offer bonuses the same way that online casinos do, but they offer other types of promotions. You’re going to learn more about these promotions in another section on this page.

Slot machines grind out consistent profits for the casinos. Players win sometimes, but overall the slot machines are gold mines for the casino. And the casinos know that if they can get you started, the odds are good that you’re going to keep playing.

Online casinos also include terms in their bonus offers that require a lot of play before you can cash out your winnings. This keeps you playing longer and gives the casino a good chance to win back any money you win.

The main reason why a big bonus is important is because it gives you more opportunities to hit a jackpot. Learn more about playing for slots jackpots in the next section.

2 – Always Play for Jackpots

Whether you play online slot machines or in a live casino, the only slot machines you should play are the ones that have a jackpot. It can be a progressive jackpot, but it doesn’t have to be progressive. Plenty of slot machines have a set jackpot of $100,000 or more.

The reason why you should only play jackpot slot machines is because the machines slowly drain your bankroll. The only hope you have of coming out ahead over time is to get lucky and win a jackpot.

If you play on slot machines that don’t have a big jackpot, you don’t have any chance to win in the long run.

Of course, you have to balance the cost of chasing a jackpot with the chance to hit 1. If you have to bet $2 or $2.50 per spin to have a chance at a big jackpot your bankroll is going to go down quickly.

I prefer playing on slot machines that have at least a $100,000 jackpot with a cost per spin of $1 or less. Even at $1 per spin your bankroll can drain quickly, but not as quickly as when you’re risking $2 or more per spin.

3 – Reduce Your Average Wager Size

In the last section you learned why you should always play on slot machines that have a jackpot. But you also need to play with the lowest possible average wager size. This can be tricky, but with enough research and effort you can find the right slot machines.

I cover payback percentage in the last section on this page, but consider some numbers based on your wager size. Here are a few numbers based on different average wager sizes using the same payback percentage.

If you spin the reels 400 times every hour on a slot machine with a 96% payback percentage, here are your average losses every hour.

• Wagering 25 cents per spin you lose $4.00
• Wagering 50 cents per spin you lose $8.00
• Wagering $1 per spin you lose $16.00
• Wagering $2 per spin you lose $32.00
• Wagering $5 per spin you lose $80.00

It’s easy to see how fast your bankroll is going to be depleted from these numbers. When you know the payback percentage for a slot machine you can run a quick calculation to see roughly how long your bankroll is going to last.

Using the numbers above, a $1,000 bankroll is going to last roughly 250 hours on a quarter machine, but only 62.5 hours on a $1 machine.

4 – Get Other Promotions When You Can

Bonuses aren’t the only types of promotions available to slot machine players. Bonuses are usually only available when you play mobile slot machines or online slot machines. But casinos that offer land based slot machines have other ways you can earn special promotions.

Every slot machine player needs to earn comps through the slots club, but I cover this in a different section. In this section I’m talking about coupons, free spin promotions, free tournament entries, and other things you can get from the casinos.

It’s also a good idea to look for coupons and free entry promotions in local newspapers and online before you head out to the casino to play slots.

5 – Control Your Overall Risk

I’ve already covered some of the main ways to control your risk when you play slot machines. You control how much you risk when you play slots by choosing how much you risk on every spin. But you can also control how much you risk by regulating how much you play.

In the examples in a previous section you saw how to determine how long your bankroll might last. I used 400 spins every hour in those examples, but you don’t have to make that many spins.

You get to play as many spins as you can or taking your time between spins and making fewer wagers. This is pretty much common sense, yet most slots players take as many spins as they can. This can easily top 500 spins every hour, and some machines will let you play 600 or more spins every hour.

If you’re chasing a jackpot with a big bonus you might want to play as fast as you can, but if you slow down and take fewer spins you’re going to be able to play much longer.

6 – You Must Earn Comps

If there’s 1 rule that every real money slot machine player needs to follow it’s that you should never play without using a bonus and/or earning comps. Slot machines are almost impossible to beat so you need all of the help you can get.

Sometimes comps are the only thing you can get from land based casinos for slots play. If a live casino doesn’t offer a comps scheme, you should play somewhere else.

You can find a few online and mobile casinos that have a comps scheme, and when you find 1 of these casinos you might be able to use a bonus and earn comps at the same time. This is as close to perfect as you can find when you play slot machines.

7 – Research Payback Percentage

Every slot machine has a programmed payback percentage that dictates how much it keeps for the casino profit and how much the machine gives out in winnings.

A slot machine with a 96% payback percentage keeps 4% of all of the money wagered on the machine and pays out 96%.

It’s not always easy to find the payback percentage for individual slot machines, but you should do some research to find out as much as you can. Slot machine payback percentages range from somewhere around 98% for the best machines to less than 90% for the worst machines.

Another important thing to understand is that the payback percentage gets better on progressive jackpot slot machines as the jackpot goes up.

When you combine a high payback percentage with low wager amounts and slow play you make your bankroll last much longer.

Conclusion

The main way to alter your luck when you play slot machines is to use as many promotions, bonuses, and comps as you can. These things don’t change your chance to win any single spin, but they can offset your losses.

Another thing you need to do that most slots players don’t is research the payback percentage for slot machines. When you play on slots that have a higher payback percentage you win more often. Finally, if you’re going to play slots you might as well try to win a big jackpot. Why limit the chances of winning a life changing amount?