Online slots are literally the most popular casino game ever in terms of sheer quantity, with hundreds upon hundreds of them gracing the front page of even the most basic online casino. There’s so many that you could literally be playing a different one every day and you wouldn’t have tried all of them in a year in your average casino! It’s nuts! Unlike blackjack and roulette, which only have a couple of versions with very clear differences between them (protip: French roulette is best roulette), you’d have more luck counting a Yeti’s butt hairs than all the different versions of slots! Sure, you could try playing them all one by one until you found something you like… But ain’t nobody got time for that! So how are we supposed to find the best online slots in the shortest amount of time?
Well, I did some research, and honestly, most advice that sites give is extremely useless. “Check the slot’s RTP” is a common one, which would typically be good advice if it wasn’t for the fact that almost no slots openly display their RTP within them, so unless your casino is one of the few that displays individual RTPs for their games plainly, you’ll need to look that up. Another advice I really love (and by “love” I truly mean “laugh harder at”) is “Play the slot for a while and take a note of your winnings”. I can’t even begin to list all the things wrong with this statement, so let’s just caaaaaaarefully push it as far away from us as possible and focus on things which are actually feasible, alright? Now, listen carefully – I’m going to teach you how to tell if a slot is worth playing at a glance. You can load it, look at it, spend maybe 10-15 seconds on it and then decide if it’s worth a shot. Sounds good? Let’s get started.
First and foremost – graphics do matter! Slots typically have very tight budgets, so a slot that actually looks great despite that will undoubtedly fare better than ones that look like they were drawn by a kindergartner. If the graphics look terrible to you, you’re better off staying away and finding yourself something else to play. Second – paytable! The paytable (which you can often access by clicking the “Info” button, or its counterpart) gives you plenty of info on the slot – bonus games, extra features, jackpot, etc. The more extra stuff there is, the bigger the paytable. As a result, you should try to aim for slots which have really big tables – slots with one or two pages, or without any at all, are typically not worth your time. And last, but not least, make sure that you’re actually able to play the slot when you start it. What I mean by that is that you should always check the values of the bets that you’re allowed to make on. Some slots have crazy expensive requirements (also known as “high roller”), and others may not quite go as high as you want them to. Make sure the values are satisfactory to you before you play!
Checking those 3 things takes maybe a couple of seconds, once you learn how to do it quickly. If the slot passes the initial tests, then you can look up its RTP online and give it a couple of spins to see how it holds up. If not, the search keeps going!