How do online casino slots work?

Online casino slots replicate the excitement of land-based slot machines without you needing to leave your own home.

When playing an online slot, the aim is to match paying symbols on a series of reels that spin at random. An active payline is a horizontal arrangement of symbols running across the reels. The more symbols you match on an active pay line, the more you win.
Each individual reel may contain 30-40 symbols. The frequency of high and low-paying symbols on a reel can affect the chances of you winning large or small prizes.

Each combination of symbols has its own payout structure. You will find a list of payouts in the slot paytable. In the paytable, you will also find details on the pay line arrangement and any bonus features that you can trigger.

Before you play a slot, select your coin size, and if available the number of paylines you want to bet on. For example, if you select a coin size of $1 and choose 20 paylines to bet, your bet per spin will be $20.

When you tap the Spin button, the reels will spin vertically. The reels will come randomly to a stop. If matching symbols fall on a horizontal pay line, you will get paid. You will also find bonus symbols like wilds and scatters.

Scatters can also act as bonus triggers, activating a special feature like free spins or an instant win if enough of them appear on the reels during any spin.

Wilds act like jokers and will substitute for other symbols in the game. Wilds can fill in the gaps in winning combinations. A scatter is a special symbol that will pay a prize if it appears in any position on a reel. It doesn’t have to form part of any payline in order to award a prize.

Online slots work mostly in Adobe Flash or HTML5. This allows players to enjoy the same games whether they are on a desktop or mobile device. Most games can now be played through an HTML5-enabled web browser like Google Chrome. Flash-enabled slots simply require you to install an up-to-date version of Adobe Flash.