Online slots are a massive success. Today, if most people want to start gambling, rarely do they visit a land-based casino. More often than not, they go to an internet casino, and try their luck playing the hundreds, if not thousands of slot games that the website has to offer.
The popularity of slots has not gone unnoticed. Every day, new people log onto these websites, and dive headfirst into the slot game ocean. However, a lot of them are newbies, who don’t know much about gambling. That is why we are here. In this article we will explain the three basic terms you need to know, if you want to play slots.
Pay Lines
The most basic term that most non-gamblers will be familiar with is the pay line. For those who are unfamiliar, a pay line is a sequence of symbols that a player can get on the slots reel. Once they’ve done that, the machine pays out. Hence, pay line.
The old-school slots that featured a single reel only had one pay line. However, that is not the case with modern online slots, as you will see on this website. Modern slots feature several reels, placed on a grid-like screen. Therefore, they can have as many as 25 pay lines, and sometimes even more.
Obviously, most players look for slot games that have more pay lines. However, it is a mistake to view the pay lines in isolation. The reason is that the number of pay lines often interacts (positively or negatively) with the RTP and volatility.
Return to Player (RTP)
When people talk about casino games, you will often hear them talking about house advantage. The house advantage is the percentage that dictates how the casino’s likelihood to win the game. Most casino games have a certain house advantage, which is something that all gamblers understand from the get go. After all, that is where the phrase “the house always wins” comes from.
But, what does the house edge have to do with return to player? Well, it is quite simple, the RTP is basically the opposite of the house edge. An RTP is a percentile indication of how much a slot machine will payout, for each 100 units wagered. So, an RTP of 96% means that for each 100 units wagered, the machine will pay out 96.
There is an important disclaimer to bring up here. The RTP does not mean that every time a player wagers 100 units, the slot machine will payout. Instead, it is talking about a long-term wager. For example, a person could wager 1000s of units and get nothing. On the other hand, a player could wager for the first time in their life, and place a bet of 1 unit, and hit the jackpot.
Volatility
Finally, we have to bring up the matter of volatility. For those who don’t know, volatility is the likelihood that a slot machine will payout. A high volatility means that a machine is less likely to pay out frequently. However, in exchange, the payouts are higher. On the other hand, low volatility means frequent payouts, of lower value.