Usually, there’s no skill for playing online slots, but if you know how some parts of these game works, it will be pretty easier to win. Maybe, the most important feature is the slots paylines. In this post, we will help you to understand how it works.
Simple puts, paylines are the series of winning combinations that criss-cross the slots reels. Because of that, they are also knowing as betting lines or winning lines. The number of it was changed during the years. The first slot machine had jus one payline, but now there are slots multi payline games, referred to as video slots.
Today, we have slots with up to 1024 paylines and the number of paylines is written on the paytable.
How Slots Paylines Work
Paylines can be simple and straight and also can take zig-zag shape, and run across reels. They also can be horizontal, vertical, or diagonal. Whichever the case, a winning payline will always pay if and only if you’ve bet on it. To win at some online slot you’ll need to land matching symbols on those paylines. Symbols that don’t land on an active payline won’t pay.
You can, if you want, select any or all paylines manually. Just click on the numbers running up the side of the reels. You might select 2, 5, or 12 paylines to play. As you change the paylines, your bet size will also go up. It’s easy to conclude that for the maximum possible winning potential you should play with all the paylines active.
One more important thing to know is the winning direction of some video slot, respectively on which direction paylines will payout. Typically, paylines run from left-to-right and in that case the winning combination begins with Reel 1 on the left, which connects to a symbol on Reel 2, Reel 3, and so on. Payouts are usually made by connecting at least two symbols. Also, there are video slots with the right to the left winning direction or those where pay both ways. Some slots have all ways pays paylines and the most common one is 243 ways to win.
Fixed vs. Variable Paylines
Paylines come in two varieties: variable and fixed. Fixed paylines means you’re restricted to playing all the lines in the game. They commonly feature in multi-way slots with many hundreds of ways to win.
With variable paylines, you get to pick the number of lines to bet on before you hit the “spin” button. As you select paylines, they will highlight across the screen horizontally.