If you want to make sure that you’re on the right side of truth vs. fiction so that you can always rest easy knowing that you’re playing slots in the best way possible, it is going to be essential that you differentiate the legitimate pokies advice from the various myths that are out there.

Only by doing so will you be prepared the next time you set foot into a casino or log on to an online gambling website.

Understand the Basics of Pokies

Frankly speaking the best way to avoid being misled by any erroneous advice is to simply have a firm understanding of the basics of pokies.

In particular, you should know that:

• The results of any spin on any game of slots is always completely random and there is no pattern to them whatsoever since they are generated by the Random Number Generator (RNG)

• The only factor that has any bearing on your odds of landing winning combinations in pokies is the payout percentage

Knowing these two facts will already help you to avoid some of the more common myths that are circulating. Of course, if you delve deeper and begin to understand more about the inner workings of slots then you’ll be able to analyze and evaluate all the tips, advice and strategies that come your way a lot more effectively!

Dismiss Outrageous Claims About Pokies

The very first thing you should do to make sure that you never end up falling for some of the more outrageous claims about pokies. Some of the so-called ‘advice’ out there is really easy to spot as being fictional!

For example, it is a very common rumor that casinos engineer it so that some games of pokies pay out more often. These are known as ‘hot’ slots. Similarly, supposedly some games of slots pay out less often and are known as ‘cold’ slots.

If you think about it you’ll realize just how outrageous this claim is. In order for it to be true it would mean that the casino or online gambling website would have to intentionally set certain machines to act this way – but why would they do that? If players realize that some games pay out more than others then everyone will gravitate towards those games.

The common explanation for this so-called ‘theory’ is that the casino wants high-paying machines to be in the vicinity of highly-crowded areas to get people to gamble, but what about all the other games in the casino then?

What you’ll find is that all games of pokies belonging to the same ‘series’ have the same payout percentage – which means that this claim is blatantly false.

Make no mistake, there are other claims out there that are just as outrageous, and it is going to be up to you to spot them and dismiss them!

Dissect and Evaluate any Pokies Strategies?

Of course there’ll be some advice and strategies that aren’t as easy to dismiss – and that is why you need to dissect and evaluate them as they come your way.

This is where it helps to have a strong understanding of not just the basics of pokies but also its inner workings.

A good example of a pokies strategy that many believe to be true (but actually isn’t) is ‘bet setting’. Essentially ‘bet setting’ means that you’ll be changing your bet with each spin with the idea that you’ll end up betting big when your odds to win are the highest and betting small when they are lowest. That way it is likely that when you lose, you’ll lose a small amount – but when you win, you should win a large amount.

If you look closer however you’ll realize that this entire pokies strategy is based on the assumption that you’ll know when a game of slots is more likely to pay out – which is impossible considering it is always equally likely to pay out.

Furthermore you’ll find that most of these ‘bet setting’ strategies follow a fixed betting pattern – but how is this going to help you? Sure if you’re lucky you might lose small and win big – but if you aren’t lucky you could very well win small and lose big instead!

By dissecting and evaluating the pokies and slots strategies that come your way you should be able to avoid most myths and stay firmly on the right side of the truth vs. fiction fight for slots.

Of course, it may take time before you get the hang of spotting the myths from the truth – but it is an effort that is certainly worth your while.

There is nothing worse than ending up losing when you play pokies simply because you were following advice that turned out to be baseless and completely untrue. On the other hand, if you can spot such advice and stick to following only the legitimate tips and strategies instead, you’ll find that your odds of winning when you play slots in a casino or online gambling website are that much better.

Who knows – you might even be able to come up with your own approach to play pokies!

Starting with the Pokies Basics

Needless to say when you first start learning about pokies it is going to make sense that you start by just learning about the basics. Fortunately, because slots is a game where you have to make relatively few decisions, learning the basics generally just means that you need to remember the following rules:

• Always choose a game of pokies with the highest payout percentage that you can find
• Be sure to play the maximum bet if it is necessary for jackpot eligibility and provides you with bonus multipliers
• Choose a denomination of slots that you can afford to play

Simple enough right?

Delving Deeper into Pokies

Knowing these rules will definitely help you out when you’re in a casino or online gambling website and playing slots, however from there you should try to build on your knowledge of this game.

The easiest way to do so is by simply asking: Why?

Why should you be choosing the highest payout percentage? Why should you be choosing the maximum bet? These are questions that will help you to start to understand how the payout percentage works and how bonus multipliers can help you.

By slowly familiarizing yourself with these concepts, you’ll start to get a closer look into the inner workings of pokies!

Managing a Pokies Bankroll

Having learnt about slots itself, there is one other area that you’ll need to get into if you want to truly expand your knowledge, and that is how to manage a bankroll.

No matter how you slice and dice it, the manner in which you manage your money when you’re playing pokies is going to have a role to play in the outcome that you obtain. Primarily, learning how to set a budget and winning limits will help you to set an upper and lower limit so that you don’t end up losing too much, and also know when to cash out to protect whatever winnings you’ve already made!

See how easy it is to learn more about slots if you go about it systematically? Frankly speaking there’s no reason why any pokies player shouldn’t take the time to learn more about the game – especially considering it can help them out in both the short term and the long term as well!

How does slots compare to all these games, and is it really worth playing it every time you head over to the casino?

Odds of Winning

As far as odds of winning are concerned you’ll find that pokies actually does compare very favorably against most other games of chance in any casino. This is because the payout percentages on most games of slots are fairly high and so the casino doesn’t have a huge edge.

What you need to remember is that in practically every game that you find in casinos, the house does have an edge – and the fact of the matter is that as far as the odds are concerned it is all about finding a game where the house edge isn’t all that big.

Assuming you can find a game of pokies with a payout percentage of over 90%, you’ll find that this can compare with games of Blackjack and roulette – where if you play the right way you can achieve the same sort of odds.

However the key phrase here is ‘plays the right way’.

Gameplay of Pokies

The one area where pokies differentiates itself from most other games is when it comes to making decisions – and in a game of slots you’ll find that after choosing a game and a bet there are really no decisions that you need to make.

On the other hand, games like poker, blackjack, and even roulette require you to make decisions here and there – which means that in order to get the best odds you’ll need to figure out the ideal manner in which to play these games.

For some people, this is a big stumbling block, and it is why slots is so popular in general. Not having to make any decisions and still benefiting from great odds is definitely something that many players find worth looking into.

At the end of the day, that is how pokies compares to other games that you’ll find in a casino or online gambling website. Right now you should be starting to realize just how advantageous it could be to play pokies as opposed to other games – and just how easy it is too.

Long story short, if you’re looking for a game that you can relax and play in the casino while still benefiting from a not-so-large house edge then pokies is definitely the game that you should be thinking about playing!

Before you do though, you need to first appreciate that there are no guarantees when it comes to slots and pokies, and every time you walk into a casino or log onto an online gambling website you are taking a risk.

What you can do however is mitigate that risk and ensure that you’ll have the best chance possible of winning when you do play!

All About the Payout Percentage

Since your focus is on making cash (i.e. turning a profit) then the first thing you’ll want to make sure is that the game of pokies which you choose will provide you with the best chance of actually winning.

To do so, you’re going to need to look at the payout percentages of these games.

Just in case you didn’t already know, the payout percentage is basically the percentage that the casino pays back to its players. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is going to definitely be what it pays back to you however!

No – the payout percentage basically works on an overall basis. So a payout percentage of 90% doesn’t mean that you’re going to be paid back 90% of your cash. Instead, what it does mean is that in the long term the casino will be paying back a total of 90% of all the cash played on that game of slots to the players who play it.

Frankly speaking, the way the payout percentage actually works is fairly involved and to understand it you’re going to need to also understand some of the inner workings of pokies such as the random number generator and the lookup table. Assuming you’re not interested in all of this however, the good news is that you don’t need to know it.

In fact, when it comes to the payout percentage there’s only one thing you need to know: Always choose the game of pokies or slots with the highest possible payout percentage.

Many a casino and online gambling website nowadays advertise the payout percentages of their games of pokies openly. If you find that the casino you’re playing at doesn’t want to let you in on the payout percentage information, it might be worth looking at playing somewhere else!

Controlling the Budget

When you’re playing pokies or slots and want to actually make a profit, you’re going to have to ensure that the control that you have over your budget is absolute. There is no room for mistakes – as they could definitely end up costing you in the long term.

There are two areas where your budget is going to serve you well when you’re playing in a casino or on an online gambling website, and ideally it should help you to:

• Limit your losses
• Ensure that you cash out when you should

The reason why this is important is because when it comes to games of pokies and slots the house always has an edge. What that means is that it is more likely that you’re going to lose than it is that you’re going to win.

With that in mind, it should be obvious that the best way to make a profit when you’re playing pokies is to make sure that when you do actually win you don’t stick around to lose it more. Also, you’ll need to avoid from taking on too many losses at any given time and then trying to break even.

The first step towards setting up this kind of budget is to determine how much you can afford to spend on a single sitting of pokies. It doesn’t matter whether you’re playing in a casino or on an online gambling website – this budget should be based on your finances and your personal circumstances.

Once you’ve figured out how large your budget should be, you need to make certain that you never, ever let yourself extend it. All too often you’ll find that it is tempting to double your budget or even triple it just so that you can stay on and play more – but frankly speaking doing so will only decrease your chances of winning.

But while you’re concentrating on that area of your budget you should also be aware that the other area you’ll need to play pokies is to determine when you’re going to walk away.

If you ever want to make a profit when you’re playing slots then you’re going to need to control yourself and walk away when you’re ahead. If not, and if you stay and play more then you’ll eventually probably end up losing whatever you won.

The longer you play – the greater your odds are of actually end up losing. If you want to turn a profit, you need to avoid this and take advantage of your good luck when you won in the first place and cash out.

Make sure that the figure you set for this portion of your budget is realistic and attainable – otherwise there wouldn’t really be much point setting it in the first place.

All said and done, you’ll find that if you play pokies using this approach – your odds of actually winning and turning a profit will be dramatically higher in the long run, and that is the best that can be asked for.

Bonus Offers

A lucrative bonus offer can be very appealing to someone looking for a new casino to play in. Most establishments on the web will offer something to welcome new faces, but these can be vastly different depending on where you go. You should take a good look around and check out what’s on offer – some casinos offer bonuses up to $1,000, so you don’t want to unwittingly settle for something much less!

Choice of Games

What’s the point in receiving a great welcome offer, without a decent selection of pokies games to use it on?! The best casinos on the web will carry over 400 of the most cutting-edge games the industry has to offer. You’ll find an extensive range of your Vegas favourites, from progressive and video slots, to table classics such as blackjack and roulette.

Giant Jackpots!

Let’s make no mistake about it. You’re here for one reason – to win big! Scan around for games offering the big-buck prizes. If you’re after a mega payout, look no further than progressive slots, which can be up in the millions!

Stay Safe

A casino can boast all the latest and greatest, but if they seem untrustworthy, then the smart move is stay well away. The best way to tell if an online casino is fair and safe is to check for the eCOGRA logo. It’ll be clearly displayed on the front of the home page of any reputable casino, so you can enjoy your play safe in the knowledge that your details and security are highly regarded.

Many players do – and mostly that is because they make poor decisions while they’re playing slots. Frankly speaking, most of these regrets are entirely avoidable, and all that you need to do is make sure that you make the right decisions!

Main Causes of Regret in Pokies

Whether you’re playing in a casino or on an online gambling website you’ll find that the causes for regret in pokies are almost always fairly similar to one another. For example:

• You may regret losing more than you intended to when you were playing slots.
• You may regret the fact that although you were winning you ended up losing most of those winnings.
• You may regret trying a pokies strategy that involved ‘bet sizing’ and finding that you ended up losing because of it.

See what all of these causes of regret in pokies share in common? None of them are based on factors that are beyond your control!

Avoiding Regret When Playing Pokies

In order to avoid regretting your decisions later it is up to you to make sure that you make the right decisions.

For example, if you find that you’re regularly regretting the fact that you ended up losing more in a casino or on an online gambling website than you intended to – it is up to you to set a budget and then strictly follow it so that you don’t end up losing any more than you were open to losing in the first place!

Similarly, if you find that you lost most of your winnings (and maybe even more than that), then you need to teach yourself to set winning limits when you’re playing slots so that you walk away when you’re up instead of staying and risking your winnings by playing more!

Last but certainly not least, when you’re trying a new strategy you should always check it out via trial runs first. Also, if your fundamentals of pokies were stronger you’d realize that bet-sizing doesn’t work and you’d know to avoid it from the get go!

See how easy it would be to avoid these regrets when you next play pokies? Before you even walk into the casino or log onto the online gambling website, you can put yourself in the right frame of mind so that you never end up facing these sort of regrets and end up doing a lot better when you play slots as a result!

To improve how you play and how you win at Slots tournaments, we’ve got some helpful tips for you to maximise your pokies play and end up with the big bucks in the bank!

What pokies tournaments offer…

Multiplayer tournaments usually have a set entrance fee for all players, regardless of skill level; this fee will allocate you a huge amount of spins to use up in the allotted time of the tournament. You could buy in for 10.00 and receive as much as 3,000 spins.

Using up all those spins in the time given is almost impossible, so the key here is to explode out of the starting blocks and leave opponents in your wake while you rack up the big money and eventually the major jackpot prize of tournament play.

May the luck be with you!

As everyone knows, Slots are about pure luck, the same applies to tournament play. You’ll need to accumulate the spins as quickly as possible and hope lady luck is by your side and see yourself leapfrog your opponents to the top of the leaderboard.

For Slot tournament play, you will need a good chunk of luck, but there is only one way to maximise your chances, and that is to play, play, play!

Slot tournaments are an awesome way to have fun and to win big money. Not to mention it is a test of your own Slot play skills, prove to yourself that you’re better than the rest and set the casino on fire and grab those big jackpots.

Satisfaction in tournament play

The cool thing about tournament play is that with the set entrance fees, you will know exactly how much you are wagering against how much you are winning, so setting a budget and staying within that budget couldn’t be easier.

Tournament competitions are usually played on some of the best games at a casino so you know you’re getting good value for money on an elite game that has awesome graphics and gameplay.

Try something a little bit different with tournament Slot play today!

What is ‘Hit and Run’?

Basically while there are several variations to hit and run strategies for pokies, the fact of the matter are that they all boil down to the same rough idea: Play, win, and then leave.

Take this as an example: Let’s say you walk into a casino and choose to play a particular game of slots. After a couple of spins you’ve found that you’ve won a few small pots. So with the hit and run strategy, you’d simple cash out your winnings and walk away from the casino!

The same applies to online gambling, only instead of walking in and out of the casino, you’d just log out instead.

Most of the variations of this strategy are in terms of how many spins you make before ‘running’ with your winnings, or how much you should expect to win before you ‘run’ from the game of pokies.

As you can see, the core idea remains the same – and so the question that you should be asking now is: What makes this philosophy so popular amongst slots players?

Effectiveness of this Pokies Strategy

The reason why hit and run strategies for pokies and slots are so popular is because they are effective. By setting limits after which you cash out and walk away, these strategies are ensuring that you don’t stay, play, and possibly lose whatever you might have won at that point.

In short, it is the same idea as setting winning limits in money management.

With a hit and run strategy, because you get into the game of pokies knowing that you’re just in it for the short term gain you’re more likely to walk away. On the other hand, most players who don’t use this strategy end up staying and risking more and more of their cash on the game – which the casino is bound to rake in considering the fact that they have the edge in terms of odds!

Granted, this strategy isn’t going to help you to win huge (unless you luck out and hit the jackpot) but it will help you to turn a profit far more consistently when you play slots than most other strategies out there. In fact, this is one of the few strategies that truly does do what it says it does – which makes it worth looking into!

In order to develop a solid understanding of the odds that are at play in every pokies and slots game (regardless of whether it is in a conventional casino or an online gambling website), you should start right at the beginning and work your way towards a practical understanding of the issue at hand.

Everything Begins at the Random Number Generator

No matter how you slice and dice it, anything to do with the odds for pokies has to begin at the random number generator – and this is true no matter what casino you’re in.

At the heart of every game of slots is a random number generator that essentially churns out sets of random numbers at an incredibly fast rate. Some believe that it does so every millisecond, or maybe even faster than that.

When you are in a casino or on an online gambling website and you push the ‘spin’ button of a pokies game, the game immediately ‘locks in’ the very last set of random numbers that were generated – and that is what is used to determine your results.

Two things in particular that you need to understand about the random number generator is firstly that it means that all results in pokies are entirely random, and secondly each spin has exactly the same odds as the one before it.

Exploring the Role of the Lookup Table in Pokies Odds

Needless to say, the numbers that are being churned up by the random number generator are just numbers – and in order to match them to a specific set of symbols the game of pokies or slots needs to rely on the lookup table.

In a nutshell, the lookup table takes those numbers and matches them with symbols according to a predetermined structure. However, this structure actually has a fairly huge role to play when it comes to the odds of that game of slots.

For example, let’s just say that a certain pokies game has a random number generator that churns out numbers from 0 to 9. In the look up table, numbers 0 to 5 are set to be cherries, numbers 6 to 8 are set to be blue bars, and number 9 is set to be the jackpot.

That means that for any reel, you have a 60% chance of it turning up as a cherry, a 30% chance of it being a blue bar and a 10% chance of it hitting the jackpot symbol.

Unfortunately, the lookup table is one piece of information that no casino or online gambling website will ever release – but it is important that you appreciate that this is the real key to determining the true odds of winning a spin in slots by landing a specific winning combination.

Coming to Grips with the Payout Percentage

So despite the fact that you know how the lookup table plays a huge role in determining the odds of a game of pokies – you can’t gain that information and so it is of little help to you. Fortunately there is one type of information that you can obtain, and that is the payout percentage.

In any game of slots, the payout percentage is the average expected outcome over the long term with regards to the amount of cash played that is returned to the players. That means that a payout percentage of 90% will imply that over the long term 90% of the total cash used to play that particular game of pokies in that casino will be given back to the players.

To cut through the technicalities of how the payout percentage is calculated, it should be clear enough that it is the based on the cumulative probabilities of landing winning combinations, and so it is going to be your greatest insight into the odds of any particular game of slots or pokies, whether in a conventional casino or on an online gambling website.

Are the Odds in Pokies Alterable?

Much earlier on you were told that the odds in pokies are the same for every spin within the same game – this is a hard and fast fact. Frankly speaking, there is no action that you can take to alter these odds while you play the game, which is why it is all the more important that you choose a game with good odds in the first place.

For slots, once you’ve chosen a game then you’re saddled with those odds and they don’t change. From time to time you might hear rumors about ‘hot’ games or ‘cold’ games, or even hear that games that haven’t paid out for a long time are ‘due’ to pay out.

All of this is really just a collection of myths that have risen over time regarding pokies and they have no basis. Don’t be tempted to choose games of slots in a casino due to any of these myths or you’ll quickly find yourself at a disadvantage.

Since you now have a clear picture and complete understanding of the odds when it comes to pokies, you should have no trouble wading through the myths though!

This might seem quite ridiculous – but it is the truth. In fact, it is quite possible that in an online gambling website or casino a game of pokies or slots may pay out very infrequently, but actually end up paying out more than most games in the long run.

To understand how this could happen, take this example:

Let’s just say that in one game of pokies, the game ends up paying out 19 times in 40 spins at a rate of 2:1, meaning that if you bet 1 coin per spin the game would have ended up paying out 38 coins in total.

On the other hand let’s just say that in another game of slots the game ended up paying out 10 times in 40 spins but at a rate of 4:1, meaning that if you bet 1 coin per spin the game would have ended up paying out 40 coins in total.

See what just happened there? In the second example the game of slots or pokies actually ended up paying out more, even if it did so much more infrequently than the first game.

Sometimes this could happen when you’re playing in a casino or online gambling website due to the fact that the payout table and lookup table may be structured in an odd fashion. Conventionally, it is a lot easier to hit smaller pots than larger pots, but in some games of pokies smaller pots are almost nonexistent, but larger pots are – and while they are harder to hit in general, they are still easier to hit than larger pots on games that prioritize smaller pots.

At the end of the day, the average total payouts of any game of slots in the long term are based on the payout percentage however – and that is what you should use to evaluate which game you want to play.

Just because a game isn’t paying out often however does not make it a bad choice. Even if the game of pokies that you’re playing may not be paying out all that often, so long as it has a higher payout percentage than others in the casino or online gambling website – it is better to stick to it.

Who knows, when you do hit you could end up hitting big because that may be the way that this particular game of slots balances things out!