Slots are great fun and really simple to play but do they offer good value to the player or are they just a great way for the casino to make easy money? We take a look at the house edge on slots and, along with other pros and cons of the spinning reels, access how they compare to other casino games such as blackjack and roulette.

Easy and instant comparison of the house edge of slots and other games is not easy because there is no fixed house edge for slots in the same way there is in games such as roulette, craps and baccarat. Whilst the house edge for blackjack varies according to the exact rules and game variant, the basics remain the same and, moreover, if you know the rules it is possible to calculate the exact profit margin the casino is taking.

With slots, things are a little different because not only do all slots have their own house edge, many software providers allow individual casinos to alter the house edge of their games, meaning that the same slot may be more or less profitable at one casino than it is at another.

In general slots have a significantly higher house edge than many other games you’ll find at an online casino, with video poker, blackjack and baccarat generally being the games that offer the player the best chance of making a profit over the long term. Whilst the house edge on many variants of those games can drop to 0.5% or lower, the edge on slots is more likely to be around 5%, with 10% or even 15% not uncommon.

However, slots have two HUGE advantages over many games you’ll find at an online casino and this is where their value and worth becomes apparent and why they remain well worth playing.

Bonus Wagering

Almost all casinos count slots at 100% towards any bonus rollover, whilst blackjack, roulette and so on may count at a rate of as little as 2.5% or even not at all.

The Big Win

In blackjack, baccarat, craps and to a lesser extent roulette, you can’t win big without staking big. In contrast slots and especially progressive slots offer the chance to win hundreds or even thousands – or even MILLIONS – times your stake.

Slots might not be as glamorous as some of the casino world’s other great games but they still feature in some great movies. Here we take a look at the best slots moment from the silver screen and if you ever need a bit of inspiration to play at your favorite online casino or slots site, fire up this movie and you’re sure to feel like spinning those reels. Alternatively how about three great slots based on even better movies if you want to enjoy movie magic whilst playing slots?

What Happens in Vegas

Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher star in this so-so romantic comedy in which they are brought together by a huge slots win. Released in 2008, the movie sees the leads have a typical, drunken, shotgun Vegas wedding before realizing they hate each other. However, the next morning when Jack (Kutcher) hits a $3m slots win with a quarter given to him by Joy (Diaz), the pair are forced to spend six months together in order to be able to hold onto their half of the mega slots win. Whilst the legalities of that may be somewhat questionable, the movie illustrates beautifully how slots, and in particular progressive jackpot slots, can change your life forever in just one spin.

Slot: Gladiator

This epic movie starring Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix was directed by Ridley Scott and is action-packed from start to finish. The slot of the same name packs a similar punch and if you get the Gladiator bonus you could be in for a big win.

Slot: Ghostbusters

Ghostbusters is a 1980s classic with brilliant comedy, some not-so-brilliant (at least looking back) special effects and some great performances by a young Sigourney Weaver and Bill Murray. The slot is bang up to date though and captures the spirit(!) of the movie brilliantly, not least with the excellent Ball Room Bonus and chance to blast Slimer!

Slot: At The Movies

This one isn’t actually based on an individual movie but instead aims to capture all the magic and fun of Hollywood. A brilliant 3D video slot, it features 30 paylines and has five reels and with Oscars to play for and even a bit of Brad Pitt, it’s sure to appeal to movie fans.

Unlimited slots bonuses might sound too good to be true but, in this case, the old saying that if things look too good to be true, they probably are isn’t quite right. Believe it or not, there are some reputable and trustworthy slots sites and online casinos that offer unlimited bonuses to their customers. In fact, as we’ll explain, several of our favorite online casinos offer bonuses that, whilst not always marketed as unlimited, are effectively just that.

Too Good to be True? What’s the Catch?

There is no catch, per se, but as with virtually all casino bonuses, you can’t just take the money and run – all of the sites we write about here will require that the bonus is wagered a certain number of times before you can make a withdrawal. Usually, when a casino gives you a bonus you must wager the amount of your deposit and bonus (combined) around 20 to 30 times before you can request a withdrawal of your winnings.

However, given many sites offer bonuses of 400% or even more, what’s guaranteed with these bonuses is a huge amount of fun! If you would normally spend $100 on a casino session, you could have $500 of action for that same $100 outlay? That means you can place bigger bets, play for longer and enjoy more thrills and, if luck rolls your way, you could win big… really big!

Unlimited Bonuses

Aladdin’s Gold Casino is one USA friendly site that allows unlimited bonuses, for the first seven days after you join at any rate. In that glorious first week every single deposit you make will enjoy a 200% bonus and you can deposit as much as you want!

Planet 7 also offers an unlimited casino bonus – again at a rate of 200% of your deposit – but their offer is ongoing, such that whatever you deposit will ALWAYS be trebled (as long as you use the Promo Code USASLOTS)!

Bonuses for Existing Customers

Whilst those are the only two online casinos that purposely market “unlimited bonuses”, if we delve a little deeper we can see that many of the best US friendly online casinos have semi-permanent lists of weekly and monthly reload bonuses that effectively mean that every deposit you make – if you choose to use the relevant bonus codes – will receive a bonus.

With codes such as this available to use at Jackpot Grand, Classy Coin, Grand Parker and other great online casinos, you can be sure that there is always a bonus on offer. And with codes redeemable more than once, you effectively have even more unlimited casino bonuses to choose from.

Most online casinos use third party software to help power their sites and in particular the games they present to their customers. Some of the casino software companies are huge multinationals that help power literally hundreds of online casinos and slots sites, as well as producing slots and games for real world technology and live dealer games. Here we take a look at what makes a great casino software company and what difference it makes to you, the player.

What is a Casino Software Company?

Most sites use the games and technology provided by other companies, rather than creating their own games, because it is such a specialist field, with great resources needed to design and develop the sort of exciting, advanced and good-looking slots and casino games that you will find at the best sites. Moreover, because the games need to be multi-platform and also fully integrated with banking and finance systems, as well as other parts of the casino site, it’s often the case that these third party technology companies provide more than just games, offering secure financial solutions, interlinked games and jackpot networks and much more.

What Makes a Good Site?

Much of what makes a casino good, bad or indifferent comes down to personal taste but there are some things that most people would certainly want to see and expect and many of those things derive from the software the site uses, as much as the casino itself.

The best sites will have games that are available to play in instant play mode – which we prefer – and download versions, whilst increasingly many top online casinos also have mobile versions, meaning you can play great slots and games on your cell.

One obvious factor that is hugely important is the quality of the games and the range of options you have. The best software companies offer casino games that look and sound very nice indeed and have gameplay that is fun, striking the right balance between regular wins and big payouts.

Another thing the software will impact is the progressive jackpots, with most progressives running via the software company and networked across the various casinos they power.

Finally it’s important that, whether playing online or on your cell, the games are stable and secure because nothing is more annoying than games crashing mid-spin.

Playing slots online is great fun and you can even play on your cell phone, thanks to mobile slots and casinos. This means you can play slots pretty much anywhere you like and also at any time, even if you only have a few spare moments. Most – if not all – online slots and casino sites offer new customers a bonus when they first join and these offers give you a great chance to have lots of slots fun without risking lots of your own cash.

Slots bonuses are viewed as marketing by the slots sites themselves and are used to attract new customers but for us, the slots fans, they are a great way to test out new sites, new games or both.

How do slots bonuses work?

Some sites will actually give you 100% free cash, meaning you don’t need to make a deposit at all in order to play, and you cannot lose any of your own money. These no deposit casino and slots bonuses are the best around because, whilst you can win real money, as you haven’t actually made a deposit, you literally cannot lose. No deposit bonuses tend to be quite small – maybe $20 or so – and they also have very high wagering requirements, meaning you must stake a certain amount before you can withdraw the bonus and/or any winnings from it.

A more frequent type of bonus is a deposit match, whereby you deposit a certain amount into an online casino and they boost your deposit. Normally most casinos offer at least a 100% match but some offer 200%, 300% or even more, meaning that if you put, for example, $200 into your account, a 300% bonus will leave you with $800 to play with! Wagering requirements again apply before you can withdraw, but even so these bonuses mean you can bet much larger amounts than you might normally.

Can I profit from casino bonuses?

The casinos aren’t crazy, so you can’t simply withdraw the bonus and run, but with just a little bit of luck you have a great chance of using the bonus to accumulate some big wins and complete the bonus wagering with a nice profit. Even if you don’t you’ll still have plenty of excitement along the way! Good luck!

If you’re new to playing online slots or you are just looking for some advice on how to play them more profitably, you’ve come to the right place, because we’ve got some top tips that could help you win more when you play slots. That might make it sound like we have a silver bullet with which to slay the slots vampires, but in truth there is no guaranteed way to win playing slots – if there was, casinos would go bust… and where would be the fun in that?

However, there are some little tricks and strategies you can use – as well as pitfalls you can avoid – to give yourself the best chance possible to win when you spin the reels.

Our first piece of advice is to pick a casino that offers a good welcome bonus – that is to say, a bonus that applies to slots, has fair wagering requirements and offers a good percentage boost on your first deposit. If you do that you may actually just about have the edge on a casino, but in order to ensure this is indeed the case you need to make sure you check the terms and conditions of whatever slots bonus you sign up for.

Once you have your bonus make sure you only play eligible games as some casino sites do not include play on progressive slots towards the bonus rollover requirements. On the other hand, if you’re playing with your own cash, rather than a bonus, playing a progressive slot can actually be another very good way to turn the odds in your favor, albeit with an incredibly low chance of hitting the big, often VERY big, jackpot.

When progressive slots reach a certain level of jackpot, the odds of you hitting that jackpot compared to the total payout can actually be favorable, such is the staggering size of the jackpot. Of course, you still have to be extremely lucky to win, but if you like progressives anyway, only playing them when the jackpot is very high certainly makes sense.

For standard slots play the best betting strategy is to choose a slot with a low house edge. This gives you the best chance of profiting overall so it’s worth checking on the site or with customer support what the payout percentage is on your favorite slots.

Whatever online slot you play you will need luck… and we wish you all the best!

For most people playing slots offers a bit of excitement and is a great way to pass a little time or have some fun. However, around the world, every single day there are players winning sums of cash that change their lives forever; and slots, especially progressive jackpot slots, can offer huge wins in just one spin of the reels. Here we take a look at some of the biggest and best slots wins in history, including those won in online casinos as well as those in bricks and mortar casinos in Vegas and resorts.

The Biggest Online Slots Win Ever

The biggest ever online slot win seems a pretty good place to start and that came back in 2013 when an anonymous player from Finland scooped a very cool €17,861,813 – that’s around $22.3m at today’s exchange rate – playing the appropriately named Mega Fortune slot. The slot is powered by software giants Net Entertainment and is part of their huge progressive network. Amazingly the player won the fortune on a spin that cost just €0.25!

The Biggest Slots Win in History

Okay, perhaps we should have started here, because the $22m won on Mega Fortune can be deemed small change by the LA gent who walked into the Excalibur Casino in 2003. The anonymous 25-year-old was only playing slots to pass a little time and was actually interested in the basketball but that all changed – as did his entire life – when he hit the jackpot on the Megabucks slot. When we say jackpot, we mean JACKPOT! How does $39.7m sound? The player had to make do with just over $1.5m a year for 25 years under casino regulations but I think he was probably quite happy with that!

Lightning Can Strike Twice

If you ever got a big win and thought it couldn’t possibly happen again and so decided to stop playing, the story of Vegas legend Elmer Sherwin hasn’t reached your ears yet. Sherwin, a former World War II vet liked to play the slots and in 1989 won a very impressive $4.6m at the Mirage. He kept on playing and in 2005 lightning struck again as he landed the Megabucks jackpot once again, this time for a staggering $21m. Good going for a 92-year-old!

Online gambling has existed since around 1995 but in recent years it has become a huge, global business, with literally billions of dollars changing hands. Love it or loathe it, it looks like online gambling, be that in the form of sportsbooks, poker sites, online casinos or slots sites, is here to stay and so here we examine the pros and cons of online gambling from a consumer perspective.

We say from a consumer point of view as we don’t intend to discuss the philosophical and ethical points of online gambling, but rather we shall look at the pros and cons of internet wagering as opposed to actually playing in a “real” casino.

Visiting Vegas, Atlantic City or some of Europe’s finest casinos is a real thrill for millions of people and is sure to remain so, but the growth and potential widespread legalization of online gambling offers many casino and slots fans an alternative.

Playing slots or other great casino games online offers a number of advantages over visiting a real world casino, the most obvious and important being convenience. Even if you happen to live near a physical casino, playing online from the comfort of your own home – or office, or, thanks to mobile casinos, pretty much anywhere – is so much easier. No planning is needed and you can play for as little or as much time as you want.

With this added convenience also comes a financial saving as, for most people, visiting a casino is effectively a vacation with the associated costs. Of course, that aspect of visiting a bricks and mortar casino is, perhaps, also the biggest positive about the experience. “Experience” is the key word because, as much fun as playing at an online slots site is, it can never compete with the thrill and excitement of the real thing.

Playing online at home is more like playing a game and whilst it can be hugely enjoyable and exciting, it can’t rival the overall experience and memories a Vegas vacation can offer.

However, playing online is ultimately highly likely to be more profitable, thanks to a combination of the bonuses online casinos offer, the cost savings and added extras like loyalty schemes and reloads.

Playing in a physical casino and playing online both have their pros and cons but the great thing now is, increasingly, we have the freedom to choose.