How To Beat Online Casino Slot Machines

This article doesn't list all the strategies to beat online slots you find online.

Slot machines are some of the most lucrative games on the casino floor for both the players, the house and cheaters. Even though they’re electronic, slots easily attract as many cheaters as. By managing your bankroll, picking the right machine, and using a little common sense, you can win at slot machines even if you leave the casino with empty pockets.

Instead, it focuses on the most effective online slots tips to understand how to play slots online and, potentially, avoid some common mistakes.

In other words, it shows you how to play slots the right way.

Continue reading to learn:

1. What is a Good Slots Strategy?

For most players, the idea of a 'slots strategy' is borderline absurd.

With slot machines being, by definition, a game of luck, the idea that strategic thinking could help you win more money feels completely off. And understandably so.

Everything in online slots is against the player — you.

The games are designed to help the 'house' (aka. the casino) win money in the long term. From the Return to Player to the progressive jackpots, all you see in a slot machine is there to take your money.

That's how slots work. But that's not a good reason to leave everything to chance and waste money on games that give you very little winning chances.

A GOOD slot strategy is one that helps you find the right games to play and save you from the mistake of picking the wrong ones.

While this probably is not the right place to discuss 'chaos theory' and see how science could one day help you win at online slots, you must understand that slots are random and you shouldn't play with the hope to scoring a good payday.

In the slots tips that follow, you will find a series of advice that will put you on a path to avoid some of the most common mistakes slot players make.

2. Slots Tips

Quit looking for a strategy to learn how to win at slots every time you play.

A simple Google search is enough to see that while a good number of sites offer you subscription-bases strategies to win money on slots…at least twice the number carries posts of known scams and utterly useless strategy advice.

All the tips in this article are a mix of common sense and experience. Because when you can't rely on math and probability theory, the only way to learn how to win at slots more often is to use the most precious resource you have left: your brain.

The Bankroll

Learning to manage your bankroll correctly is a tactic that will bring you very far, regardless of the type of casino games you play and your winning odds.

Most professional players consider managing the bankroll 'an art' and the only way to stay in the gambling world for the long run. In other words, you shouldn't play if you don't know how to do it.

If you are completely new to gambling and you don't know what a 'casino bankroll' is, you should stop right here. This No-Nonsense Guide to Bankroll Management is a much better-suited resource for you right now.

There, you'll find useful information to understand the concept of 'scared money' and 'extreme bets.' It also features the answer to the question 'how much money should I bring to the casino' - which seems to be something all players ask themselves at some point.

The main point about bankroll management is this one: you need to set clear upper and lower limits to the amount of money you intend to invest in your slots session.

• The Lower Limit is your 'losing goal,' the amount you can afford to lose.
• The Upper Limit is your 'winning goal.' Once you win at slots enough money to reach your upper limit — you stop.

If you learn to be realistic when you set these limits and to follow them - you are guaranteed to get a much better and positive experience when you play slots. And if experience tells me something, to win a lot more money on slots, too.

By setting an 'Upper Limit,' you identify an amount you are happy with. By ending your session when you reach it, you make sure all your profits don't go to waste for one bet too many. This is the only way to keep what you win on slots.

Need Help? Use Excel!

An easy way to keep tabs on your game is to run everything through an Excel file. This basic accounting measure is amazingly effective and can save your from spending more than you should.

The screenshot below is an extract of my personal Excel budget file. That's a comprehensive resource I use to calculate my profits and losses and to keep track of my gambling spent.

If you don't want to pay for an Excel license, Google Spreadsheet is a great free alternative.

The Paylines

How To Beat Online Casino Slot Machines Free

All slot machines include paylines. Whether you play online, on your phone, or at a casino in Las Vegas or Atlantic City, paylines are what distribute rewards and despair.

Hit the right combination on an active paylines, and you'll be shouting from the top of your lungs how happy you are for the win.

Do it on an 'inactive' payline and you'll end up staring at the screen to wonder why you did not invest those extra few cents on the right spot.

The majority of the newest slot machine games online feature fixed paylines. These are the games where you always play all paylines at the same time.

Quite a few games, however, let you bet on single paylines, allowing you to decide how many to activate (and put your money on) during each spin of the reels.

The more paylines you activate = the more chances to win you get.

Does it mean that playing all paylines is always the best strategy to win at slots?

Hold your horses, champ. We are not done yet.

Betting on Slots

The only way to find a proper answer to that question and to come up with a slots strategy that works is to solve the last piece of this puzzle and find the answer to another important question: 'how much should you bet?'

Most slots players do not know how to do this and that's unfortunate.

Knowing how much you can spend (the Lower Limit) and how much you would be satisfied with (the Upper Limit) is only part of your slots strategy. It's the big picture.

To be successful for real, you need to move to the nitty-gritty of slots playing and understand how to size your bets correctly.

In layman's terms, the size of your bet depends on:

• Your bankroll
• Your limits
• The bets allowed in the game
• The 'coin value'
• The Rounds per Minute (RPM)

Let's use an example understand the concept of bet sizing and see how these tips to win on slot machines applies to a popular game like Starburst.

This popular game is part of the NetEnt slots collection and is one of the most played slot machine games on the internet.

Bets on Starburst begin at 0.10 (level 1, coin value 0.01) and go all the way up to 100 (level 10, coin value 1.00).

To size your bets, you can act on both the levels and the coin values. Each of these influences the payout of the game - but not your winning chances.

During our tests, Starburst tracked at 40 Rounds per Minute (RPM). To be on the safe side, in the calculation that follows we will assume all our spins are losing ones. While this is statistically impossible, it helps us create a slot strategy model that considers the worst-case scenario.

• With a bankroll of 20 credits, you should expect to be able to play for five full minutes at 0.10.
• The time becomes 2,5 minutes as soon as the stakes raise to 0.20
• With the RPM staying the same, your playing time is always inversely proportional to the size of your bet.

So, ask yourself: how long do you want to play for?

Small bets are the best strategy to engage in long gaming sessions and beat variance 'grinding' your cash wins.

Bigger bets are more like 'blind lucky shots.' If they work, they can help you reach your upper limit with one spin. But if they don't, they may dry out your bankroll before you can count to ten.

Using Casino Bonuses

To end this collection of tips to beat online slots, let's look at casino bonuses. Used wisely, these can be a terrific resource.

The smartest way to look at casino bonuses to win at slots is to forget about the raw numbers and concentrate on the actual terms and conditions.

By picking the best offer, you get to add several free games to your session.

As a slot player, these are the best type of bonuses for you (in order of importance):

• Free spins with no wagering requirements and no cap on winnings
• Free spins with no wagering requirements
• Free spins with wagering requirements of 30x or less
• All other bonuses (incl. free money ones)

Online Casino

If you don't know where to start, the five offers below are probably the best ones to play slot machines right now:

3. A Quick Formula to Play Online Slots

Knowing how to set the right limits is key in a slot strategy. And so is betting the right amount of money.

While limits and bet sizes are subjective and connected with your disposable income, here's a starting point. A formula to try to win at online slots.

1. Deposit of EUR / USD / GBP 60 into your gaming account.
2. Split the money into three parts and use only 1/3 of the total on your slots session.
3. With a Lower Limit of 20 (60/3), go for the games with the best Return to Player
4. Set a realistic Upper Limit based on your total bankroll. Then set the bet size accordingly.
5. In this case, a good slots strategy is to set the upper limit to 40 (twice the total bankroll) and my max bet at .50.
6. Spin the reels and stop as soon as you reach the 40 limit.

Doubling your bankroll on 0.50 bets is a very good result and you should be proud of your wins if you hit that.

Should you want to continue playing, restart the process from zero.

• Move all the money (initial 20 + your winnings) back to your account.
• Set a new bankroll.
• Restart with the same slots strategy illustrate above until a) you win enough again or b) you reach your Lower Limit.

4. What Slots Give You the Best RTP?

Now that you know how to use the right strategy to try to win at slots, it's time to look at the games themselves.

Because knowing how to pick the right ones can help your winning odds.

The games in the list below offer some of the best combinations of RTP and volatility you'll find in the industry.

If you are serious about getting more chances to win money on slots and you want tips on the best games to play, start from the ten listed below. Then, if you want more, we have an entire page dedicate to how to pick a winning slot machine.

Disclaimer: Gambling is a game of chance and there's no sure-fire formula that guarantee winnings. You can improve your winning chances by using the right in-game strategies but there is no way to predict when a machine or a Casino game is going to pay. Also, this page contains affiliate links. If you click through and play, we might earn a commission. That’s what allow us to keep CasinoSmash free and bring you the best online Casino bonuses!

Progressive Jackpot Slot Pros

How To Beat Online Casino Slot Machines For Sale

Professional gamblers beat slots either by limiting their slot play to progressive jackpot slots at which the jackpot has gotten big enough to give a player advantage, or by using slot play to milk various kinds of loss rebates and free money offers, in both online and brick-and-mortar casinos. Usually professional slot players combine both methods—that is, they wait until the jackpot is close to giving a player advantage, and take advantage of casino points and comps as well.

In order to use the first method in slot games other than video poker, you have to record the results of enough spins on a slot game to determine the frequency of each type of payout and the percentage of your bet that goes into the jackpot. From this you can determine the house edge on the game. This all takes some work and a good understanding of the math involved..

Professional gamblers tend to either be good at math, or rich enough to hire someone who is. And they tend to be very dedicated about playing at casinos that give the most back for their play, through good points programs and comps.

How to Beat Slots: Tips for Recreational Players

A recreational gambler who enjoys playing slots, and expects to play slots regularly over a period of many years, would probably do better over the long term playing only progressive jackpot slots on which the jackpot was significantly larger than the average level at which it goes off.

Just be aware that you can't know for sure where a player advantage starts unless you go through the process of mathematically analyzing the game. And no matter how big the jackpot gets, it doesn't guarantee that you will win the jackpot, or even that the jackpot will go off while you're in town. There are no short-term win guarantees in gambling, not even for professional gamblers.

All a player advantage means is that, if you limit your play to such situations, and you put in enough hours, you will likely make more money in the long run than you put in. But the long run can mean a very long time, and if you play only a few hours a year, you may not get in enough hours in an entire lifetime to get ahead.

So no matter how big the jackpot gets, you should play only an amount that you can afford to lose without it affecting your lifestyle.

Also, slot pros don't like to play for too small an advantage, so they'll usually wait until the jackpot is significantly bigger than the minimum level necessary to turn the advantage to the player. On the other hand, if they know they'll be getting valuable points and comps for their play, they can play for a slightly smaller jackpot and still have a player advantage overall.

Pros generally prefer to play jackpots with a smaller average jackpot size than a gigantic average jackpot size. For example, a slot with an average jackpot payoff of $3,000 or $10,000 is considered a better bet than a slot with an average jackpot payoff of $1 million, because the variance on the games with the smaller average jackpots will be a lot lower. (That means a pro will require less of a bankroll to make sure he won't go broke chasing the jackpot.)

But professional slot players typically have very large bankrolls to play on—much larger than the average Las Vegas recreational player, who may bring a few hundred dollars in mad money to Vegas to try her luck. Slot pros who find a game where the progressive jackpot gives a player advantage are generally prepared to put in whatever money and hours it takes to keep playing until the jackpot goes off. And if that player is not the person to win that jackpot, he'll stiill have plenty of bankroll left to go after the next jackpot, whenever a player advantage occurs. He won't be broke.

Again, the reason the pros need such a big bankroll is because even when you're playing a progressive jackpot slot with a decent player advantage, you can't guarantee you'll win that jackpot. All a player advantage means is that you can know you'll win over the long run if you put in enough play.

For more information on how professional gamblers beat slots, read Million Dollar Slots by Peter Liston, an accountant turned high school teacher turned professional slot player.

The Casino Perspective on Players Who Know How to Beat Slots

Question from a Player: As a semipro card counter for about two years, mostly in Las Vegas, I have finally given it up for . . . the slots! The heat and the harassment associated with card counting finally wore me down. I’ve hooked up with a pretty well-financed video poker team. The money is steady and the heat is nil. It’s boring, but you can’t have everything.

What I don’t understand is this: Why is there no heat? Some of my teammates, to be honest, are downright rude when we go in to take over a bank of slot machines. Getting rid of the “tourists” is one of my least favorite parts of this job. I’m just a “worker ant” on this team, but I’d like to start running my own slot teams in the future. My technical question is this: Is there a mathematical formula for figuring out how much each “tourist” on a bank costs you in win expectation?

Answer: In the May issue of Casino Journal, Anthony Cabot, in his “Gaming Law” column, addresses the problem of professional slot teams from the casino perspective. He compares the problems casinos have with slot pros to the problems they have with blackjack pros, and reveals why the casinos seem to have such a high tolerance level for slot teams, who are virtually never barred.

Apparently, there is a gaming regulation in Nevada that implies that casinos are holding “in trust” for “the public” any progressive slot jackpot on any game that has a progressive slot jackpot, until a member of “the public” wins that jackpot. The specific wording of this regulation makes the casinos hesitant to exclude any member of “the public” from playing their progressive slots. The casinos fear the possibility of a lawsuit from some member of that all-inclusive public for whom their slot jackpot is being held in trust.

Cabot’s article is very enlightening. Don’t think that the casinos are unaware that many slot pros are “rude” to their regular customers. The casinos are very vexed with this problem. In my opinion, if slot pros continue to chase tourists away from the machines, it’s just a matter of time until the powers that be rewrite the regulations. The casinos have an enormous amount of political clout in Nevada, especially when it comes to keeping the tourists happy.

A big part of this problem arises from two misconceptions that pervade the slot world — one slot players’ misconception, and one casino operators’ misconception.

One: Many slot pros believe that it is more advantageous to take over all slot machines on a given bank in order to “lock up” the inevitable jackpot. This is false.

Two: Many casino operators believe that they do not profit from slot pros, since the pros only play on slot machines where the players have the advantage. This is also false.

To deal with the second misconception first: The casinos profit from slot pros the same way they do from their other slot customers. The slot pros’ advantage comes solely from the jackpot that is being held “in trust.” Technically, that is not even money that belongs to the casino. It is money the casino has already “lost.” It simply has not yet been determined which player has won that money.

While a slot pro is playing, the casino continues to “rake” the pot, and takes a profit from every pro’s dollar that is played. For a standard 8-5 jacks or better progressive, any time a professional slot team takes over a bank of these machines, regardless of how many machines are on the bank, and regardless of what the jackpot is at the time of takeover, the casino will profit, on average, $2,200 on quarter slots, or $8,800 on dollar slots, directly from the slot team’s play.

When a slot team moves in on a progressive dollar bank, they are virtually “paying” the casino $8,800.00 to “buy” the jackpot (which the casino doesn’t really even “own” anymore). Since the amount of money the slot pros are willing to pay the casino to buy the jackpot is money that those savvy players would not otherwise play in the casino at all, this money is all gravy to the casinos.

This profit to the casino will definitely be diminished by the number of non-pros who are pushed out of the casino by the slot team's “rudeness.” However, if these non-pros do not leave the casino, but simply move to other slot machines or games within the casino, there is no loss to the house of any of this profit from the slot team’s play.

As for the “cost” of “tourists” to a slot team — there is none. Whether or not the slot team takes over all machines on a bank or any portion of them, they will “pay” the same amount for that jackpot — $2,200 on quarter machines, or $8,800 on the dollars.

In fact, on video poker machines it is actually more advantageous to a slot team for tourists to continue pumping the jackpot up while team members shoot for it, because the tourists will continue to increase the slot jackpot total at no cost to the team, and at the same time the pros are still favorites by a long shot to win the jackpot, because most tourists play so poorly that they are far less likely to hit the jackpot.

The real problem in many slot departments these days is a supply-and-demand problem; specifically, there is a greater demand for progressive slot machines than the casinos are supplying. The overabundant slot pros are fighting for the profitable slot jackpot opportunities that arise, aggressively squeezing the “tourists” off the banks of machines they want to play. If there were enough progressive slot banks available to keep the pros busy, the casinos would maximize their profits by courting these pros with comps!

If I owned a casino in Las Vegas, I’d advertise “All Progressives All the Time!” And I’d put in unusual video poker machines to confuse the amateurs as much as possible, so that the video poker jackpots would get pumped up as high as possible as often as possible. I’d want the pros stalking my aisles ready to jump on any bank as soon as the profit opportunity hit an acceptable level.

I’d maintain a very cordial relationship with the professional slot players, with the understanding that these pros would not offend or pressure my regular customers. If the pros understood that they paid the same amount per jackpot whether or not they monopolized a bank, and if there were enough profitable jackpots to go around, “tourists” would be welcomed by the pros to continue pumping up those already profitable jackpots to even more profitable levels.

The sad situation described by Anthony Cabot is more a result of ignorance on both sides of this battle than any other factor. The casinos are sitting on a virtual gold mine with their progressive slots. They should be “milking” the pros for the real value these players represent, not resenting a gaming regulation that the casinos perceive to be tying their hands. ♠

The easiest way for normal slot players to win at slots is to play at online casinos with free money from the casino. See Arnold Snyder's How to Beat Internet Casinos and Poker Rooms.
For more information on how professional gamblers beat slots, video poker, roulette, keno and a wide variety of casino games, see the Blackjack Forum Library.

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