Are You Making These 6 Slots Mistakes?

Slots are the #1 money maker for the casino industry. This is why most casinos have more slot machines than all other games combined. And casino gamblers still flock to the slots and dump money in them at a brisk pace.

Casinos offer gambling activities that are better for players, but slots players either don’t know about them or don’t care. If you’re going to play slots, you need to learn how to gamble without making too many mistakes.


Here’s a list of six mistakes that you can avoid as a slots gambler.

1 – Playing the Wrong Slots

Whether you play real money slots in a live casino or in mobile or online casinos, you have plenty of options. You can find hundreds of different slots games. This is good and bad.

Choice is almost always good, but if you don’t know how to choose, too many options can lead to mistakes.

You can look at two different things when you’re trying to choose the best slots games to play.

The first thing is trying to find the slots games that offer the highest rate of return. It’s great if you can find slot machines with a high rate of return. But the problem is that casinos try to keep this information secret.

I use a simpler method to choose slot machines. I look for slot machines with big jackpots. These slot machines are going to take my money most of the time anyway. However, every once in a while, I could get lucky. When I get lucky, I still want to have a chance at getting lucky in a big way.

When I play on a slot machine that doesn’t have a big jackpot, I don’t have any chance to get rewarded a higher amount. This is why it’s a costly mistake to play on a slot machine that doesn’t offer a big jackpot. Can you imagine getting a win but only getting paid a couple of thousand with the million-dollar machine sitting right next to you?

2 – Not Activating the Top Paylines

Some slot machines let you choose which paylines to activate, and others have all of the paylines activated automatically.

It doesn’t matter which type of slots game you play, as long as you make sure all of the paylines are activated. If you play on a slot machine and don’t activate all of the paylines, it’s the same as playing on a machine that doesn’t offer a big jackpot.

The way slot machines are designed, the only way to activate the best paylines is to activate all of the paylines. This makes things simple because all you have to worry about is making sure they’re all activated.

This is how the casinos can offer penny slots and still make plenty of money. You can’t play a penny slot game for a penny. You’re forced to activate paylines and sometimes bet more than one coin on each payline.

This doesn’t mean that penny slots are bad. But you have to look at the total cost of each spin on each available slot machine in comparison to how much you can win when you get lucky.

3 – Playing Slots Without Comps

The fact that slot machines are profitable for casinos can’t be argued. The machines are designed using computer programming that guarantee profits, and the reports casinos have to provide in some gambling jurisdictions show that this works.

This means that you’re going to lose when you play slots. The only slots gamblers that don’t lose are the few who get lucky, hit a big jackpot, and are able to reduce or limit their play to avoid giving all of their winnings back to the casino.

All of this is important to understand because you have to learn how to use a couple techniques that can help you get back or offset some of your losses. The best way to get some of your money back is through a comps scheme.

Comps schemes are common in land-based casinos. They’re called slots clubs or players clubs or some other type of club or membership. They all basically work the same. You sign up for the club, you get a card, and you use the card when you play slots.

The casino tracks your slots play through your card, then they give you back a bit of what you bet in the form of comps.

4 – Playing Slots Without Bonuses

Another technique that you can use to offset your losses is online and mobile slots bonuses. Bonuses aren’t the same as comps schemes. Instead of giving you comps, the casinos give you extra money upfront to play slots with.

You can usually at least double your bankroll with a mobile or online slots bonus, and in some situations, you can do even better. Every online and mobile casino has their own bonus offers, and you simply need to look around to find different ones.

Using slots bonuses doesn’t really help you lose less. But what they do is give you a bigger bankroll. A bigger bankroll gives you more chances to get lucky and win big. And this is why bonuses are so important.

The more spins you can take, the better your chances are of winning a jackpot. This is simple math that you need to take advantage of. Every chance you have of getting a bigger bankroll you need to take.

You do need to do one important thing when you look for slots bonus offers. You must read all of the rules for each bonus. Sometimes, there’s a rule that limits how much you can win. And when you’re chasing a jackpot, you don’t want to work with any limits.

5 – Not Understanding Speed and Losses

This is a fairly simple mistake, but almost every slots player makes it. The more you bet, the more you lose. And the faster you play slots, the more you risk.

As a simple example, if you’re risking $1 on every spin and take 612 spins in an hour, you’re putting $612 at risk. On the same machine, if you only make 431 spins every hour, you’re only putting $431 at risk.

If the slot machine you’re playing has a return to player percentage of 96.5%, this means that you lose $21.42 risking $612. But you only lose $15.09 when you risk $431.

Slots games are designed to be played fast. But they’re also designed in a way that gives you control over how fast you play. The evidence is clear in this case. If you play slower when you play slots you’re going to lose less money.

Playing slots slower is something that you have to work on. You need to train yourself to play slower. The best way to start is by tracking how many spins you’re taking every hour now. Then, you can work on reducing this number.

6 – Making Large Wagers

This is closely related to playing slot machines too fast. Anything that you do that creates a situation where you risk more money when you play slots is costing you more than you think. This can be from playing too fast and/or by betting too much on every spin.

In the last section, you read an example where you were betting $1 on every spin. If you bet $2 on every spin, you lose twice as much money.

This means that you can reduce your losses by playing on slot machines that cost less to play. A slot machine that only costs .50 per spin is four times better than a machine that costs $2 per spin.

The perfect slot machine is one that offers a good jackpot and costs $1 or less per spin to play. A .25 or .50 per spin machine is perfect as long as it has a decent jackpot.

When you find a good slot machine with a low cost per spin and learn how to play at a slower pace, you’re doing everything that you can to limit your losses.

Conclusion

If gamblers stopped playing the worst slot machines, the casinos would replace the machines with better ones. But this doesn’t mean you have to play on the worst slots games. If you’re going to play a game that takes your money most of the time, at least play on a game that offers a lot of money when you get lucky.

When you play slots, make sure you’re getting every bonus and comp that’s available. These won’t help you win overall, but they do give you the best chance to stay in the game longer to get lucky and win big.

Finally, understand how the speed of play and the amount you risk is directly tied to how much you lose.