If you are about to spend a week playing at the casinos of Las Vegas for the first time, you would be crazy not to do a little research before departing on your trip. Every game offered by a casino has a built-in “house advantage”, commonly called the house edge, and knowing how each game works so that you can make the correct decisions at the right time can sometimes have a dramatic effect on the level of “house edge” that the casino has over you.
When it comes to playing at online casinos, you will usually find that the house edge of each game is smaller than those available at a physical, land-based casino. Almost without exception, choosing to play at an online casino will always result in the player getting higher odds, bigger jackpots, and much more playtime for their money.
If you enjoy gambling, there’s a good chance that you will also enjoy the entertainment aspect of a night out at the casino – but keeping such trips as special occasions and doing most of your betting on the web will increase your chances of making a profit more than any betting system could ever hope to do.
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Free Play Online Casino Games
You may have seen imitation casino games in the app store whilst using your smartphone; such imitation games have no relation to actual online casino games and many of them are outright scams. Never spend money on a casino game you found in the app store to purchase virtual coins – you could be using that money to gamble at a real online casino!
Sure, some of these games can be fun – they will deliver endless ridiculous jackpots of billions of coins, but it is all just a bit of fun.
You can also play the same games offered by online casinos in “free play” mode at some online casinos, although this functionality has been stripped away from many sites in recent years. Because of this, demo slots websites have become extremely popular amongst gambling fans looking to brush up on their skills or to play the latest online slots and games.
Why Play Demo Slots at All?
Some might ask why would you choose to play a slot in free play mode at all? After all, unlike Blackjack or Poker, most online slot machines do not require any choices to be made; you cannot affect the RTP of an online slot by making a poor decision like you can whilst playing blackjack.
Dig a little deeper, however, and this is not always strictly true – many online slot machines do present the player with choices, and whilst they may not directly influence the RTP of the machine, the different options may well have an enormous effect on the volatility or variance of the game.
In truth, there are many advantages to trying out a demo slot before playing the same game for real money – below, we present the five best reasons to play demo slots.
Discover Your Personal Preferences
The majority of online slots players probably chose the first few games to try based on nothing more than their name or theme. If you like Batman movies, why not play The Dark Knight slot, for example? There is nothing wrong with this, but something else that the majority of online slots players tend to do is settle into a pattern of always playing the same games – session after session, month after month.
There is solid psychological reasoning behind this – if you play a game enough, eventually you are going to hit a big win whilst playing it. That big win is likely to lure you back to the slot on a different occasion, and soon enough you are in a cycle of playing a handful of slots that your experience tells you are “generous”.
Playing demo slots lets you throw all of this out the window – you aren’t spending money, so why not play a game just because it looks a little bit quirky? Perhaps you like Western movies, but have never tried the game “Dead or Alive”? Give it a try – you aren’t spending money, after all!
Online slots can sport all kinds of features, bonus rounds, modifiers, different levels of variance, and progressive jackpots – if you don’t try out a wide range of games, how will you ever learn the types of features and games that you like best?
Knowing if you prefer high or low variance slots, for example, is likely to be a crucial variable that will determine whether you will enjoy playing these games over the long term. Do you like to win small amounts regularly, or huge amounts a couple of times a year? There are games out there to suit both camps, and if you don’t yet know which one you are in, then demo slots are definitely for you.
Explore Lesser-Known Titles & Developers
The big, well-known online casinos available today often sport thousands of online slot machines; one of my favourite casinos has more than 6,000 available to play on their site right now. You could not possibly give all of these games a solid try with real money, so you are likely to concentrate on franchises or software developers that you feel you know and trust.
For example, you had a huge win on a game with “Megaways” in the title last month – why not stick to just playing those games now? Or maybe you have always liked the look of games produced by Microgaming, so you will hunt out new games to play by that developer specifically rather than trying a game you have never heard of by a company whose name you can’t pronounce!
Whilst there is an argument to be made that we could have bundled this reason together with the previous one, there is also a strong case to be made that these two things are entirely separate. Sure, trying games at random is fun, but with thousands of games currently on the market, it doesn’t hurt to have an idea of where to start before looking for lesser-known games you are likely to enjoy.
Test Options, Features, and Bonus Rounds
This is a big one, and one of the most important reasons why I personally enjoy playing demo slots so much. When you are spending a bunch of money spinning a new game, eagerly awaiting a peek at a previously unseen bonus round, what do you do when the next thing that happens is a screen pops up asking which bonus round you would like to play?
Playing the demo slot of a game lets you try out all of the options as many times as you please without spending a penny of your own money. I like to go for the highest variance option wherever possible, but it isn’t always obvious which choice that may be. Do you want the sticky wilds feature? Or do you prefer the increasing-multiplier free spins? How about the mystery option, what does that do?
The game will likely only give you a few seconds to decide before making your decision for you, so many players will simply try each option in turn on subsequent entries to the bonus round. And it isn’t just about bonus rounds either – getting to know how a slot works can drastically increase your enjoyment of it when you begin playing for real money.
If you don’t know which symbol pays out the jackpot, how can you get excited when you line up the first four and are waiting for the fifth to finish spinning?
Play Your Favourites – Even When Cash is Tight
I truly hope you are reading this at a time when the worldwide economy has settled down, inflation has stopped rising at unbearable levels, and activities such as playing online slots aren’t quite as much of a luxury as they can seem at times right now. Whatever the current state of the world might be, however, there is no harm in having the option to enjoy your favourite slot machines without having to spend money.
Let’s say you have played through your gambling budget for the evening – what do you do next? You know that trying to recover your losses is a bad idea, so that’s out, but you were having a tonne of fun playing, too.
Demo slots can help here too – if your bankroll is empty, it isn’t your lucky night. Why not switch to playing the same game at a demo slot site instead? You can finish your evening’s slotting entertainment without spending any more money, and you still get to play your favourite games. It’s the perfect solution!
Just Because It’s Fun!
And finally, the shortest and simplest reason to play online demo slots – because it’s just really good fun! You don’t have to justify spending any money to enjoy playing demo slots. Maybe you just have some time to kill on the bus home from work one day…
Why not use the time to get more familiar with the features of a new game you have just started playing? Want to show a friend the bonus round in a new game you have just found? Why not do it for free instead of having to pay to spin until the bonus shows up?
Online gambling is one of the fastest-growing recreational activities in the world right now, and, for me, demo slots are an essential part of the experience of enjoying online slots.