Reel Slot Machines

Players often ask how many coins they should play in a slot machine. This is somewhat of a personal decision you should make based on the amount of money you have brought with you to the casino to play slots with. The only hard fast rule you should follow is “Always play full coins in a Progressive Machine.” If you don’t have maximum coins in and you hit the winning symbols you will not get the Jackpot.

So always play full coins on the progressive. But what about the other types of slot machines? First you have to decide which type of slot machine you want to play. You have the choice of a video Slot or a Reel type slot machine.

The new video slots are fun and exciting and the slot makers are doing their best to make sure they are very entertaining. One other thing they have been doing to the video slots is adding pay lines and the number of coins you can bet per line to increase the amount bet on each spin. There is a reason for this. Video slots, especially those with fancy bonus screens take a little more time per spin than do the regular reel machines. While the video reels are spinning or the bonus round is playing, players are not putting money into the machine. Compare this with the reel type machines that take three coins and spins rather quickly. So by making it enticing to bet more coins per spin they recoup some of the revenue the machine is not generating during the normal spin/play process.

In the last few years the slot makers have been adding more pay lines to their games and have been increasing the number of coins that can be played on each line. Most of the new video slot machines have a minimum of nine lines and you can play any number of coins from one to ten on each line. The standard on the most new machines is five coins per line which means a maximum bet would be 45 coins. The amount for a maximum bet would be $2.25 for a nickel machine and $11.25 per spin for a quarter machine. If you want to play just a single coin on each of the nine lines it would be 45 cents for the nickel and $2.25 for the quarter. It can cost you a lot more money to play video slots than a standard reel machine.

One thing to take into consideration when deciding whether to play video slots or reel slots is the return on a single spin. On a reel machine when you do have a hit you get at least your money back for that spin your money back. This may not be the case with a video slot. You might have one line that is a winner and pays three coins but you lose on the other eight lines. It cost you nine coins for the spin and you only get three so you are still out six coins for that spin.