Your Guide to Slots Tournaments, Live and Online
Slots and tournaments sound contradictory in many ways. Slots is a game which has been an individual playing at one machine for so long, that it takes a while to figure out how it could be possible to complete in a tournament format using these games. Well, slots tournaments are a very popular niche area, both live and online. This page gives you an insight into how these games came about and how they work.
First of all below I have described how a slot tournament works in general terms. After that live casinos are examined, and how you might gain entry to a slots tournament on your next trip to Vegas. After that you can find out how these competitions work online, where physical presence is not required. Finally I have outlined a little ‘strategy’ for these games.
General Overview of Slots Tournaments
The central idea is that you are competing against other people, and not just playing you against machines. Each person has the same amount of time and the same total number of credits to play with. The idea is to beat the other people in the tournament to the biggest total. If you win (or end up towards the top of a leader board in larger games) then you get a cash prize.
These games are a matter of clicking quickly and hoping that you get lucky. They are very entertaining, and with entry often given away for free to loyal customers – they can be a great way to top up your slots bankroll.
Live Casino Slots Tournaments
The live arena is where these games got started. The idea was simple, and turned out to be a win-win for both the casinos and the players.
Higher volume and value players started to get rewarded with entries into slot tournaments. Some of the prizes are several thousand dollars, making it worthwhile for people to enter. The casinos give away the money and organize the games. In return they get a bunch of their most valuable regular customers coming into the casino at a quiet time of the week and playing slots.
In a casino there will rarely be enough of one type of slots game to have everyone play at once. This means that the games are staggered, with a leader board updating to show the current positions. There is no particular benefit from going first or last, since you only get your allotted time at the machine once and that is all. Even when multi-game tournaments do run, there is so much chance involved that it is just a matter of turning up on time and tapping that button.
Since the days when these were simply set up as rewards, the genre has expanded somewhat. Nowadays you can find paid tournaments alongside the free ones. This is a fixed outlay for the chance of some big money, which attracts a lot of people looking for a different way of enjoying the casino experience.
Online Casino Slot Tournaments
The big advantage of holding these games online is that you will never run out of slots for players to enjoy at the same time. Since the machines are virtual, the kick-off can be at a set time, and the prizes given away as soon as the clock hits zero.
As with the live games, there are a lot of tournaments given away as cheap incentives and promotions. From the casinos perspective, they can get a lot of players to log on for a fixed outlay, and many will play other games once the tournament is over. From the players perspective, there is some real money at stake and the tournaments themselves are very entertaining, another win-win.
Paid tournaments also run online. The advantage of playing ‘virtually’ as opposed to at a live casino is that it can be cost effective to run these games from just a few dollars. In a live setting, the staff and opportunity costs of taking the slots out of action need to be considered.
More and more online casinos are offering slots tournaments as a part of their promotions package. If yours does not currently do this, then it is time to check out the competition.
Strategy for Slots Tournaments
Unlike poker, you cannot ‘outplay’ or out-maneuver your opponents in these games. The optimal strategy is very simple, you need to be ready at your slot (or computer) on time, then you need to keep clicking the ‘Spin’ button as quickly as possible. No celebrating wins, no pausing to take a drink or light a cigarette – if you want to maximize your chances then you have to focus on click-click-click.
The rest is chance, either the wins are going to come in for you that day or not. If you give yourself the maximum potential to hit by clicking fast, at least you will not be giving any ‘edge’ to your more focused opponents.