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If you enjoy playing the slots, then you should think about participating in a slots tournament. Casinos that host them will be more than glad to put you on their mailing list, so you’ll be notified when they hold their next event.

For the tournament an area of the casino is set aside slots strategy, with the number of reserved machines corresponding to the number of players who have entered. You give the tourna-ment an entrance fee—which can range anywhere from $25 to $400, depending on the size of the event.

You then don’t have to put any money into the machines. Modern slots are used and are each set with a predetermined number of credits, so each player starts off at the same place.

The event is then held in “sessions,” which are 15- to 20-minute stints during which you play on one machine and try to accumulate as many credits as you can playing slot machines. Players at the tournaments never use the handle, but rather keep their fingers steadily pressing at the spin button in order to spin the reels as many times as possible during the session.

Those who accrue the highest number of credits move on to the next session. Players continue to be eliminated un= til there is a winner, who receives the grand prize.

Before you play the slots on the Internet, there are a few things you’ll want to determine. (Actually, many of these tips hold true for any Web site that requires your credit-card number.)

How attractive is the site? A fly-by-night operation will often have a fly-by-night look. Are there warnings and assurances regarding the confidentiality of the information they’re requesting from you? There should be.

Is it easy to contact the proprietor of the site? Is there a phone number? An address to write to—one that isn’t just a post office box? Are they e-mail accessible? If so, write them a note and see how quickly they answer. In other words, make sure someone is home.

And finally, if you plan to put any money at all into online slots and you have the slightest doubt about the site at which you’re playing, call the Better Business Bureau and make sure everything is on the up and up.

A Slots Player Card is usually made of plastic and slips into your slot machine as you play it. In this way you can accrue premium points on your card, depending on how much you play, and earn gifts and perks from the casino. A light player might earn a T-shirt. A heavy player might get free dinner for two. The highest plateau gets a free room at the hotel.

Of course, the card comes with a downside. If you’re working a system that you don’t necessarily want the casino to know about, having a Slots Player Card could ruin your day Tomb Raider Video Slot. The card keeps track for the casino of which machines you’re using and when, along with how much money you’re playing, and winning, at each machine.

Also, be very careful to reclaim your card when you leave a machine.

Finally, if the person tugging the handle next to you is trying to make you believe that you win more if you use the card, don’t believe it. You will win, or lose, precisely what you would have won slots tournaments or lost without using the card. However, the card almost always comes with perks for those who play a lot. In this sense it’s to your advantage to use the card. If you aren’t concerned with your privacy, why not take the perks?

There are slots players who will only play on mechanical slot machines—machines that have no element of computer programming. I asked one slot machine player why she preferred the mechanical machines to the modern ones with computerized payoff rates and video screens.
“I believe in being ripped off honestly,” she said. “The mechanical machines are random. You can tell. They stop where they stop. With the computerized game I always get the impression that the machine knows whether I’m winning or losing. It can count. It’s not that I don’t trust the machine. I just don’t trust the man back at the factory who is programming those things.”
As for me, it isn’t that I don’t trust the computer slot machines. I suspect that the same guy who programs the computer games is calibrating the mechanisms of the mechani¬cal ones.

If any evidence exists that computerized slot machines have a worse payoff rate than mechanical slot machines, I don’t know about it. You can get a good or bad machine in both categories, and the range of payout rates inside each group is wider than any difference between the two groups.

So if you prefer modern technology and computers and the like, it’s no longer necessary to play a real slot machine. You don’t have to pull a handle. Video slots take your coin and then show you a video of a slot machine. You win some, you lose some—but somehow you’re missing out on the actual movement, the spinning, of a real slot machine. It’s not the same.

The video machines don’t offer just slot action, however. A variety of games, such as blackjack, keno, and poker, is offered. Still, why play a machine that simulates poker when a real game of poker is 50 feet away? Maybe that works for really shy people, but not for me.

Video slots are nothing new, so I guess they’re here to stay. Video slots, in fact, first appeared more than 30 years ago. Though a prototype for a video slot was built in 1966, the machines didn’t take off in popularity until the 1980s, with video poker being the most popular.

(If you do play video poker, by the way, lay off the double-or-nothing option after you win. It’s one-card draw for all the marbles. The machine draws first, and it seems like it always puts up a King or an Ace to beat in Admirals Inn. You get a Three.)

If you’re going to play video slot machines that simulate the rules of other casino games, always be sure that you’re familiar with the rules of the particular game before you use that machine.

In other words, don’t play the poker machine unless you know how to play poker, don’t play the keno machine unless you know how to play keno, and don’t play the blackjack machine unless you know how to play blackjack. You’ll be called upon to make the same sorts of decisions while playing the video game that you would if you were at an actual gaming table playing the real thing. Thus it’s your skill at the particular game that will help determine whether or not you go home a winner.

The world’s largest slot machine is 10 feet wide, 9 feet tall, and 5 feet across. It resides at Bill’s Lake Tahoe Casino. Built by Bally, the humongous slot machine takes silver dollars. It was originally named Big Barney but changed its name and gender in 1987, becoming Billie Jean.