Best Online Slot Machine Strategies

| Last Updated: April 15, 2024 7:55 am PDT
Best Slots Strategies, Images of land-based slot machines with graphics of light bulbs and tips

The best slot machine strategy is the one that wins you a ton of cash. That said, there are multiple different ways to improve your chances of winning at your favorite online slot machine.

Take a look at the top 10 slot machine strategies below and take your online game to the next level.

1. Play Slots with a Hot Drop Jackpot

My first casino slot machine strategy is to play a game with a hot drop jackpot.

Progressive jackpot games are all on the rage nowadays, and there’s a good chance you’ve seen a few already. Well, these slot machines are getting more and more popular, and with good reason.

Their main selling point is that they have timers on their jackpots. The different jackpots have to drop by a certain time, or before they reach a certain limit. So essentially, they give you an idea of when a jackpot is going to drop.

Your next question might be, are they worth it? That depends, do you think $300,000 is enough? I’d say so. The biggest jackpot has to drop before it reaches that amount, which is certainly life changing.

Other hot drop jackpots will drop hourly and daily.

For Example
The daily jackpot at Ignition Casino started at $10,000 for today and will only go up.

One lucky winner will take home a prize more than that amount within the next 24 hours.

You’ll find that the best slots strategy is mostly just choosing the right slot machine. This popular casino game doesn’t require much once you’ve already picked a game to play, so make sure you pick one worth your time.

I’d say that hot drop jackpots are the way to go. Our Ignition Casino review can tell you a little more about their site and hot drop slots.

They have a 300% welcome bonus (up to $3,000) and they just added a few more games to their already impressive collection. Head over there now to play now!

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2. Read Online Slot Machine Reviews

The internet is the world’s greatest lending library and can be quite helpful in discovering all manners of interesting information about any subject of interest.

Sure, you need to acquire some skill in recognizing fiction and nonfiction, but just because Sturgeon’s Law is often optimistic isn’t a reason to ignore everything you learn about a slot machine.

Learning everything you can about the specific games you want to play is an excellent slot machine strategy.

Start by reading reviews of those games.

They’ll teach you what to expect from a particular slot machine—and may alert you to hidden or unannounced features that slot games may have.

You’ll also learn the game’s RTP, its volatility, its release date, and the software developer that created it. For comprehensive reviews for the top online gambling sites as a whole, check out our reviews page.

Just keep in mind that those reviews are all-encompassing. To get the best picture of a site’s slots offerings, it makes sense to test them out at any given casino.

3. Research the Return to Player Percentages

If you’re looking for the best strategy for slot machines, one thing you’ll want to pay attention to is the Return to Player (RTP) rating.

RTP is a percentage representing the theoretical amount of money any slot machine will return to the player over the machine’s lifetime.

A machine with an RTP higher than 100% is one that, in the long run, will pay out more than it takes in.

Guess how many slot machines have an RTP higher than 100%. None! There are no slot machines that will eventually pay out more than they take in.

All joking aside, slot machines tend to have RTPs between 90% and 98%, although some can dip lower than that.

Heck, even the ATMs in casinos have an RTP (of sorts).

They each charge a fee for giving you your own money—generally about 2%-5%. If you’re headed for the casino, stop by your bank and withdraw the money you’ll gamble with.

Back to slot RTPs. Naturally, you will want to play slots with the highest RTP. Sure, you will lose money in the long run, but you are not there for the long run. You want to win a reasonably-sized jackpot and go home.

Incidentally, another characteristic of a slot machine that is usually tracked is its volatility.

Volatility is basically an indication of how frequently the machine pays out. Low volatility machines pay out more often but in smaller amounts.

So, remember that RTP is the number you want to know by heart. Volatility is a good indicator of how much “action” you will get from the machine. Want to give this slot machine strategy a try? It’s a good idea to start with the best RTP slots.

5 Best RTP Slots to Play Online

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4. Adjust Paylines and Other Settings

Not all slot machines are made the same. Some have five reels and three rows, while others will have six and seven. A certain slot machine might have a 94% RTP, while the one next to it is at 97%.

You get the point; slot machines are very different.

I already highlighted the importance of researching your slot and its RTP, but another thing you want to pay attention to is the slot settings.

Most slots allow you to adjust your bet size, but some will even allow you to adjust the paylines.

Why is that important? Well, it allows you to change the settings to fit your style best. One slot machine might say it costs between $3 and $50 to spin. If you are on a $5 slot machine strategy, that doesn’t exactly work for you.

By lowering the amount of paylines, you can cheapen that minimum cost per spin even more. A lot of slot machines will allow you to reduce your paylines to just one, and you can spin for just a penny.

Make sure you are aware that some slot machines will require you to play for a certain amount in order to qualify for jackpots.

5. Bank Your Winnings

Remember when slot machines had metal coin trays, and every win was delivered in a clang and clatter of coins or tokens? Me neither, fellow kids. But that was the golden age of banking your wins at the slots.

The strategy was simple: Limit yourself to a certain amount of play, say $20. If you hit a jackpot, collect your win, and move to another machine.

Otherwise, limit yourself to that $20, then collect your winnings, and move to another machine.

Your winnings were easy to keep separate because you either bought rolls of coins from the wandering change folk or you purchased racks of dollar tokens at the cashier cage.

Either way, your winnings were the coins or tokens in the plastic buckets stacked everywhere in the slot areas. Yeah, life was easy back when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

You can still use this casino slots strategy—even at online casinos.

Although your wins and the amount you initially put into the slot machine are commingled these days, it’s still possible to track your wins.

You’ll almost certainly have to ignore minor and micro wins since to do otherwise would require more bookkeeping than gambling.

Still, you can track sizable wins on your phone and tell when you hit a big jackpot. As hard as it is, you need to take that jackpot and move it to another machine.

Playing the slots at online casinos makes the bookkeeping portion of this strategy relatively easy since you have everything you need to track your play, with no pesky casino employees peering over your shoulder as you take copious notes.

6. Don’t Chase Jackpots

I know that I mentioned playing hot drop jackpot slot machines as one of my top slots strategy, but there’s more to the story. Although it may seem like they are telling you when a jackpot is dropping, you shouldn’t overcommit to it.

You always want to make sure you are sticking to your budget and a certain pace.

The faster you blow through your bankroll, the worse off you’ll be. Simply play at a normal tempo when the hot drop jackpots are about to drop, and you’ll be fine.

So, the best strategy for slot machines in this case is to avoid chasing non-hot drop jackpots.

Everyone talks about the gambler’s fallacy—that erroneous belief that a previous instance of a particular occurrence in a series of random events can be used to predict a future occurrence in that series of random events. Those history signs at the roulette tables that show the last 20 or so results of the game?

Those are for the benefit of people who have never heard of the gambler’s fallacy or those who believe the laws of probability don’t apply to roulette.

But there’s another logical fallacy at the casino that can be just as dangerous to the gambler who wants to lose the least and occasionally win some. It’s called the sunk cost fallacy.

This is the unwillingness to give up on an unprofitable machine because “things are bound to turn around.” No, they aren’t.

Whenever you find yourself in a hole, the correct thing to do is stop digging. Go have lunch. Go home. Read a book. That slot machine will be there when you return.

Suppose you frequent the brick & mortar casinos. In that case, you are probably already aware that casinos invariably have loyalty reward cards and clubs that give you gifts and sometimes even free play for your continued patronage.

These clubs cost you nothing to join and can offer you significant benefits in dining discounts, show tickets, and sometimes even free play at the slots.

If you can dine at the casino’s best restaurant (and some of them are truly spectacular) for free—and you were going to be there anyway—you have every reason to sign up for that loyalty reward card.

I recommend reading our gambling tips that can help you become a smarter bettor.

7. Take Advantage of Casino Bonuses Online

Casino

Deposit Match

Maximum Bonus

Free Spins

Rollover X

Visit DuckyLuck Casino

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Yes

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Visit Wild Casino

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Visit Super Slots

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Visit TrustDice

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Casino bonuses are the online gambling world’s way of rewarding frequent gamblers.

The online casino can’t give you free dining at their restaurant because, come on, they’re on the internet. They don’t have a restaurant.

So, since the online casino is limited in the material things it can offer patrons, instead, it provides additional gambling opportunities in the form of matching bonuses for your deposits.

To avoid buyer’s remorse, be sure to take advantage of the best online casino bonuses.

These casino bonuses are typically first-deposit matching bonuses or reload bonuses, typically between 50% to 500% of your deposit.

Now, you’ll need to work to earn that matching bonus—this is a process called rollover. A rollover is the amount of gambling you will need to do to receive your bonus.

For slot players, this usually means that you’ll need to play anywhere for 20 to 40 times the amount of your deposit plus the amount of the bonus to be able to withdraw that deposit and any winnings you may have had.

Incidentally, you will generally churn a considerable amount of money in a slot machine during any period of play. Nobody quits playing a slot machine right after it spits out a $5 win. They just note that they now have five bucks more to play with.

Best Welcome Bonus for Online Slots Players – DuckyLuck

DuckyLuck logo

DuckyLuck Casino is a good online slot casino site with an extensive inventory of slots (including hot-drop progressive jackpot slots).

If you’re looking for somewhere to implement these slot strategies, I highly recommend doing so on their site.

Not only do they have a great selection of games, but they also have arguably the best welcome bonus for new users. You get a massive 500% deposit boost, which maxes out at a whopping $2,500.

DuckyLuck also awards 150 free spins, which helps them stand out even more. You can read our DuckyLuck review and learn it’s an expansive online casino or head there to play now!

8. Do Your Slot Playing Online

List of online slots

Is there any strategy to slots? Well, there’s only one way to find out.

I recommend visiting the best online casinos to get some practice in. Some of the best games are at the tip of your fingers, so why not see for yourself if a slot machines strategy can help you win more?

Brick & mortar casinos have their place, but once you’ve driven there, parked, and walked to the gambling floor, you’ve made an implied commitment to gamble there for however long your bankroll permits.

Many online casinos also have a hidden advantage over their real-world counterparts: Free versions of their slots.

That’s right—many online casinos offer their slots in both real money and free play forms. This makes it easy and cost-free to test-drive a new slot machine.

One such online casino is Ignition Casino. If you’re going to use a slot machine strategy to win more money, I recommend doing so on their site. They have a generous welcome bonus, hot drop jackpots, as well as other casino games.

Read more about what they have to offer with this complete Ignition Casino review, or check out their top casino slots!

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9. Don’t Bet Max Coins Unless You Must

Another important slot strategy is never to wager more than you must. Should you max bet slots? For some games it might be the best option. However, that’s not always the case.

Some slots pay one coin in as they do for five coins in, except the win is 1x when you bet one coin and 5x when you bet five coins. Since there is no advantage to wagering five coins, don’t bet five coins.

When playing progressive jackpot slots, this rule and when to apply it gets blurry.

Now, playing the progressives is one of the most rewarding slot machine strategies; knowing when to bet max coins in is sometimes unclear.

Some hot-drop progressives are randomly awarded to anyone playing that bank of machines, regardless of how many coins are in.

Other progressive jackpots require you to bet max coins in to qualify to win the jackpot. For these games, you should either bet max coins or find a different machine that does not require max coins.

In both cases, the requirements for wagering will always be in the machine’s information available, usually wherever it displays its pay tables and other game-specific info.

Is this the best slot machine strategy? I wouldn’t argue with you if you thought it was. That said, I do think it’s incredibly important to know the rules of each game before you decide how much you’re going to wager.

10. The Five-Spin Method

What is the easiest slot machines strategy to follow, you ask? All of them are pretty straightforward, but perhaps the simplest is the five-spin method.

You can actually make the number of spins anything you are comfortable with, but let’s just stick with five for now.

The five-spin method is a casino slot strategy that many use to keep themselves modest when playing their favorite games.

Essentially, you spin at a slot machine five times, and you get up and move to another one, regardless if you’re in the green or red.

This is based on the fallacious belief that casinos have programmed slot machines to pay out a bit to every new player initially.

This is magical thinking at its best.

As I explained above, the casino does not need to alter the natural random selection of the reels on a slot machine. It has a guaranteed profit based on the difference between true odds and paytable wins.

Random is random. Always remember that.

I wouldn’t say this is the best slot strategy, but maybe it’s something that you can have some success with.

Using Strategies to Win at Slots Online

So, is there a strategy to slots? Your initial thought might have been no at first, but hopefully, you’ve changed your mind by now.

Slot machines don’t require much when it comes to actually playing, but there’s a lot that goes into the decision-making beforehand.

For example, you want to research your selection of slot machines and find out what they have to offer. Some will have hot drop jackpots, while others have higher RTPs. Your main goal should be to find a slot machine that has what you’re looking for.

It’s also important to not get too greedy when it comes to chasing jackpots.

There are some other ways to help you keep your eye on the prize, but the main goal is always to win some money.

If you want to know how to improve as an online slots player, I’d start by following a slot machine strategy.

It also doesn’t hurt to touch up on your overall skills. Be sure to check out these casino tips for beginners for more.

Ready to take your game to a whole new level? Find out what it takes to gamble on slots professionally.

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J.W. Paine
J.W. Paine Author

J.W. Paine is one of the most experienced writers at GamblingSites.com. He's written for television and the printed media, and is a published novelist (as Tom Elliott).

Paine loves writing about Las Vegas nearly as much he loves living here. An experienced gambler, he's especially familiar with thoroughbred horseracing, poker, blackjack, and slots.

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