We all know someone who’s got lots of myths and theories around online gaming. Things like “once you’ve won, you won’t win again.”, or “you win on more spins when you bet more”, “the game knows what your balance is and doesn’t let you on the bonus”. Mix those with a little experience and you might be inclined to believe them… but how much truth is there in these myths? Let’s take a look at each of them now.
“Once you’ve won, you won’t win again”
Is that true? Well, no… and yes… but not for the reason they’re telling you. You see online slots use random number generators to decide which symbols will appear in the reels on each spin, this random number is generated by a licensed and regulated random number generator the very instant you click the “Spin!” button.
So, while it may seem like once you have a little, or bigger, win that the slot doesn’t pay out that’s simply not the case. It’s all based on luck. You may have had times yourself where the whole session is dry, few wins bigger than your bet, hardly worth logging in, but you may have also seen days where you’ve had a nice win, followed a few spins later by another nice win. It’s just coincidence. If you click a fraction of a second later, you’d get a different random number, which would’ve given you different reels, and that would’ve changed the entire outcome.
So, myth busted? Sort of, the machine doesn’t do anything to stop you winning, but winning is never guaranteed in any case.
“You win on more spins when you bet more”
Okay so this sounds plausible, pay more – get more, that’s how a lot of stuff works, right? Well, not in the case of online slots… at least, not unless they tell you that’s what happens.
So, if you’re playing an online slot machine at 40p spins, you may find that the win multiplier is lower than when you play at 60p spins, 80p spins and so on. That’s all that changes though, your odds of a win line coming up will not change if you increase your bet.
There is of course a couple of caveats to this. On some games, the higher your bet the more win lines you’re given, but that doesn’t change the odds of a winning pattern coming up in the reel. Let me give you a for instance: you could be paying 10p spins, you hit “Spin!” and your reels land, you don’t get a win, but if you’d been playing at 20p spins that same reel pattern may have given you a win. So the odds of the reels having a winning pattern didn’t change by you having a 10p bet, the odds of you having a winning line on a pattern were lower because the game mechanics gives you fewer lines with a lower bet. That’s not to say you should bet more and you’ll win more, don’t forget even if you were playing £10 spins you could have 2000 spins with no winning patterns, so only ever bet what you feel comfortable with.
Did we bust this myth? Yes, I think that’s an easy bust there. Your odds of a winning pattern never change, but game mechanics (that you have to be made aware of) can change how many chances you have to win.
“Games know what your balance is and don’t let you on the bonus if it’s low”
This myth suggests that games know what your balance is, and they use that to decide if, what and when they should pay out, or let you on their bonus features. This simply isn’t true. I hate to sound like Polly the Parrot but online slot machines use random number generators to decide what symbols, reels etc to show you. It’s all based on those random numbers, never on your bet, balance, time of day, which way the wind’s blowing or if you had chips for tea. It’s all random.
