Slot machines aren’t really seen as a competitive activity. Sure, you can play next to a friend and see who wins the biggest prize, but that doesn’t really capture the same kind of drama you get from battling against other players in a poker or blackjack tournament. There’s no benefit from doing better than your friend; really, the best situation is that you both win big.
Slots tournaments change the entire dynamic of playing a slot machine. This competitive form of slots play will test your reflexes and (sometimes) your sense of strategy, as you try to increase your winnings more than your competitors in the hopes of winning a big prize. With slots tournaments, there’s only one goal: to finish first.
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How Slot Tournaments Work
Slots tournaments have become more and more common in both land-based and online casinos. We’ll spend a little time talking about the traditional brick-and-mortar slots tournaments, and then focus on how online slots tournaments can be a little different.
In a typical slots tournament, a player signs up by paying the entry fee, at which point they are assigned a machine to play on. The machine will be preset with a certain number of credits ready to be played. Once everyone is set, the tournament director will alert players that it’s time to begin playing.
Players will have a set amount of time – say, 15 minutes – to play all of their credits. In a standard slot machine tournament, players will then have to race to play their credits, with each win being recorded in a separate meter. After you run out of time or out of credits, your machine will lock up. Credits you win cannot be fed back into the machine in this style of tournament; the winner is simply the person who wins the most on their spins. If you don’t manage to spend all of your coins, you’ll lose the unspent balance at the end of the tournament.
Once you’re done with your play session, a tournament official will record your score. There may need to be multiple “flights” to accommodate all of the players who wish to participate. Once all the scores are tallied, the winners will be determined; the highest score will win the biggest prize, while other top finishers may also win prizes.
Online Slot Tournaments
Online slots tournaments run in much the same way as live tournaments. However, since there’s no shortage of machines to worry about, there’s no limit on the number of players who can participate at the same time. Often, online slots tournaments will take place over the course of a day or a week rather than just a few minutes. This gives you time to play without rushing through each spin. There are also be a few different types of slots “tournaments” offered. Some events give prizes to the players who wager the most money on a given machine over a time period; these types of events are not really tournaments as much as promotional giveaways, even though they might be advertised as tournaments.
Slot Tournament Strategy
Proper strategy in a slot machine tournament comes down to two key factors. The first occurs before you spin the reels a single time: choosing the correct tournament can make a big difference in your results.
In both live and online slots tournaments, there is great variety in the types of tournaments that are offered. In some, everyone will pay an entry fee, and a certain percentage of those entry fees will be returned to the players as prizes. For instance, you might pay $20 to play in a tournament and know 90% of each entry (or $18) would be put into the prize pool. While these types of tournaments can be somewhat less worthwhile than the ones below, they can be fun, and if the casino is offering a few incentives or freebies for entering, the tournament can sometimes even pay for itself.
A more lucrative form of slots tournament can be one with a guaranteed prize pool. If you’re simply looking for a big prize if you get lucky enough to win, then just having a large guaranteed prize pool should be enough to attract you. However, if you’re looking to make a profit, what you’ll really want to seek out are tournaments where there aren’t likely to be enough entries to cover the guaranteed prize pool. For instance, if there’s a tournament that guarantees $10,000 in prizes and a $10 entry fee, it would require 1,000 players in order to cover those prizes. If you’re playing at a small casino site that figures only to get a few hundred entries for a tournament, then playing in this tournament is a tremendous value.
Finally, many online casinos use slots tournaments as a promotional giveaway when you first sign up for an account and make your first deposit. If your casino gives you some free tournament entries for opening an account, don’t forget about them; make sure to take advantage of each ticket. The prizes for these tournaments are rarely huge…but if you’re not paying to play, any prize is a good one!
Once you’re actually in the tournament, the key factor in strategy is speed. In any tournament that has a time limit, there may be a rush to spend all of your credits; leaving any credits unused is definitely a disadvantage, since they won’t count towards your score.
Both speed and timing factor in here. Make sure to tap the buttons lightly, not holding down the button for longer than necessary during play. You’ll also want to correctly time the start of your next bet to coincide with the moment the previous spin ends, and all winnings are paid. Don’t celebrate your wins; just be ready to continue playing at the first available opportunity.
If your casino doesn’t preset the amount that’s bet per spin, remember that it is almost always correct to bet the maximum number of coins or credits allowed on each spin. Not only does this result in spending your credits more quickly, but it will also keep you eligible for the largest prizes possible, since many games offer incentives to play the maximum number of coins. Even if this increases your variance on some machines, it’s well worth it; since you’ll need to get very lucky to win a large tournament, it’s better to maximize your small chance of a huge jackpot than to shoot for having a larger chance of winning some small prizes.
