While the ‘brick and mortar’ or the conventional casinos offer services mostly for the rich and provided, they also come off quite unfair to a street-smart player who is as skilled but cannot afford the glamour. Hence, the evolution of internet gambling took place which not only offered better odds and deals than the land-based ones but also separated vanity from the skill. It is perhaps safe to say that the shift to internet and mobile gambling has been monumental; both in regards to scope and diversity. There are far more people exploring online games and other peripherals than before.
Let’s take slot machines for example. About 80% of the users head for the slots when they visit a land casino for the first time. There was a time when the land casinos treated slot machine players as second class citizens. The rewards were very small and the players weren’t given any of the complimentary bonuses such as free rooms, shows or meals. But with time, things changed as the casinos spotted the real value of these machines.
A typical user would spot a machine that appears simple to operate and feel a bit more secure in a place that is quite overwhelming otherwise. Table games have an intimidating factor where having to interact with fellow players and dealers can be particularly daunting. Slots avoid all of that and mean straight business. On top of that, they also offer the most lifestyle altering jackpots. Not a bad deal, after all.
Slots came into the picture in the late 1890s in the city of Brooklyn and were based on poker. Players would put in a nickel, pull a lever (hence the name ‘one-armed bandit’) and see the drums inside spin.
Almost every bar in the city then possessed a slot machine and offered free beer instead of real money. This was made into reality only decades later when a machine named ‘Money Honey’, the first electromechanical slot machine was designed. The machine could payout up to 500 coins automatically and did not need any manual intervention either. This set-up a new trend and soon a slot machine with video display was brought in.
There are many forms of slot-machines but the objective is common and pretty simple – win money from the machine. The game, usually, involves matching of symbols. Either on the mechanical reels that spin and stop to show the symbols or a video screen that does the same job but in the background. An online casino employs the same concept but has its own to get things done. These gambling sites use the concept of RNG or Random Number Generator which, essentially, is a set of algorithms that are spread across countless online casinos. The software is effective in terms of making sure that every a user clicks on the ‘spin’ or ‘bet max’ button, a random and new number is generated.
How RNG works and influences an online game:
Firstly, no online slot machine has memory. No history is considered when you play such games because there’s no log of how much you’ve won or lost in the previous spin. There’s always a good chance of winning big twice in a row or losing continuously. The important part of this logic is that the results of these online slot spins are not pre-coded and therefore do not fall into a definite pattern. The only thing that matters here is the second at which the mouse click is encountered and the RNG then determines what symbols appear on the screen.
Types of Slot Games:
Every site boasts of a variety of slot games and most of these are for free. There are many inherent techniques to lure users and the offers are therefore available in plenty. Let’s take a look at some of the popular slot games that are for free:
1. 3-reel: This is the simplest of all slot games and is the best option for a newcomer. There is a basic logic to the game however and it involves the RNG. Every time a user clicks spin, the RNG stops randomly on three symbols that land across the single line.
2. Bonus Slot: These are usually games within games and offered, as the name suggests, as bonus game rounds. Many of the seasoned players base their choices on whether a bonus slot game is a part or not. These games have vivid graphics and are often interactive to engage users more.
3. Video Slot: The video slot games have at least five reels. The 5-reel slot game operates just like its 3-reel counterpart but offers many different pay lines. A user is usually given an array of payline options and also gets bonus rounds, free spins, multipliers etc in addition.
So, in a nutshell, there are tons of online slot that operate similarly but offers different experiences. It is up to the user to go about choosing a particular kind and getting better at it.
