«How to Choose a Slot Machine

The search of «your» slot machine is not an easy task. For example, there are hundreds of different slots on this site, and there are much more in internet. The question is how to choose the game which suits your requests? Surely you have a general idea about your preferences: you like more classic or video slots, whether you are interested in «wild» or «scattered» symbols, whether you need a bonus game or free spins and so on.

When selecting a game, you should pay attention to the range of parlays, if you don’t have much money, make sure that there are parlays from a cent in the chosen game. If you are interested in jackpots, I can recommend you to check the games from Microgaming. The casinos with this software offer about ten jackpots from several thousands to several millions dollars. In the lobbies of many casinos there is a «temperature meter» of jackpots, which shows the last time the jackpot was hit. However, remember, that if the jackpot is «hot», it does not mean that you have more chances to hit it, it only means that if you are suddenly lucky, your winning will be more.

But in addition to external characteristics, it is very important for all players, to make the game enjoyable, met the inner expectations and the features of the character. I would say that people are generally divided into those who are willing to risk for the big winning and those who are more circumspect, preferring a gradual movement. In general, I want to say a couple of words about the dispersion. Slots are a random game and as any chance process, it is characterized by two options – an expected value and dispersion. An expected value is our payout percentage, laid in the game. Of course, we should strive for playing games with a maximum payout percentage. But it is very difficult to know it, and in fact, it is normally not too different from the analogical games. Dispersion determines the deviation of the results of the game from the expected value. Theoretically, it can be computed, as well as payout percentage, but nobody usually does that. But, as opposed to payout percentage, it is easy to estimate dispersion «by eye» during the game.

If the winning in a slot machine is drawn often and you win a bit more or a bit less than your parlay practically in every spin, then this is a low-dispersion slot machine. During the game you will fluctuate around the initial amount, probably slowly moving down (an expected value is responsible for a loss – it is less than 100% in a game). In high-dispersion slot machines, on the contrary, there will be a lot of spins without a win at all or with a winning which is less than the initial parlay, but, once in a hundred of spins (conditionally) you will get a bonus game or free rotations, which can more than compensate you the losses from the long disadvantageous series.

Typically, several tens of spins are enough to see how often and how big the winning are, and understand whether you like such a slot machine or not. But in fact, it is enough just to take a look at the payout table in order to understand whether the game is high or low-dispersion. So the more lines a slot machine has, the lower the dispersion usually is. It is clear that the probability to win something on one of the lines is higher, than if there are more lines in the game. The presence of a bonus game, free spins and especially free spins with the increased coefficient, usually show the high dispersion. You know, that if a player receives 10-20 free spins with a coefficient 2-3, then this will not happen often and the winnings will not be large in a regular game. The same applies to bonus games with the big winnings – these are the bonus options, which can give almost 50% of the payout percentage of a slot machine. By the way, the advice for such games is to be ready to game longer, until you get the desired bonus option, which will reward you for the game. Besides, the same advise (be ready to game longer) is helpful for the games, where there are special games or even personal jackpots, which are being accumulated and given for a period of time. If you make several tens of spins and quite the game – you just lose a solid piece of the winning.

Another, quite obvious indicator of dispersion is the values of winnings in the payout table. If the maximum winning is several hundreds or thousands of coins – it is rather a relatively low or a medium-dispersion slot, and if the largest winnings are several tens or hundred thousands of coins or with a jackpot, we can say about games with a high dispersion.In general, anyone will be able to find a game to his liking. Play for a bit, in order to understand whether you like the game or not, whether you are ok with the dispersion, or whether you like the bonus games or not, and good luck!