When you picture casino slots in your mind, you more than likely picture the old Vegas staple: rows and rows of brightly lit, raucously noisy machines, jingling and jangling, the sound of coins and the whir of spinning reels – all with a single player feeding coins and pulling the lever.
Slots are usually solitary games where you take your chances against a random outcome based on the where the symbols land on a spinning reel. Modern slots take away any bias by using a Random Number Generator, a specialised software programme that generates millions of random numbers a second to instruct the game on where and when to stop.
It can seem impersonal and a little “anti-social’ – unless you know the secret to what makes slots quite the challenging and social game:
Slot tournaments.
Land-based, online, and mobile casinos are always looking for more and better ways to engage with players. And slot tournaments are one of the bigger drawcards to thrilling play where you not only take on the game, you take on other players as well.
Slot tournaments are slot game events where you play against other players to collect as many game points as possible within a set time limit.
As you play and collect points, you make your way up a leaderboard.
At the end of the tournament, the number 1 position on the leaderboard is declared the winner.
Time limits differ for different slot tournaments. Sometimes they can be quick tournaments that last only a few hours (very popular in land-based casinos) and sometimes they can go on for days.
Online casinos are famous for offering tournaments that stretch out over weeks to give as many players as possible the best chance possible to join and play when they have spare time.
The leaderboard is where players can see where they stand and who is in the leading position or positions during a tournament.
The player with the most points sits at number 1, with each subsequent player with diminishing points totals taking up the next places.
Depending on the tournament rules, a leaderboard could have the top 5 players or the top 20 players or even, especially in online tournaments, the top 150 players or more.
It depends on the rules of the tournament. There are tournaments where the top player gets the lion’s share of the prize and then the follow-up players take a consolation prize.
Online casinos tend to have quite substantial prize pools which allows them to reward a lot of players starting with a big prize amount for number 1, lesser for number 2, even smaller for number 3, and so on all the way down to the player in 150th place for example.
The higher your position on the leaderboard, the richer the reward.
It’s all about access. A land-based casino needs players to visit their physical building and take their place at a limited number of machines. Online and mobile casinos have (theoretically) unlimited ‘seats; and players can hop on to play whenever they want from wherever they are so they can extend the times for as long as they like.
This is one of the reasons that online and mobile slots tournaments are so popular – you can play whenever you have a spare few minutes, you can hop on and hop off the games whenever you feel like it and keep adding to your points, you know you will always have an opportunity to play because there will always be a ‘seat’ open, and you aren’t limited by having to travel at specific times to make it to the tournament.
At land-based casinos you will normally need to be invited. Due to the restrictions on times and machine availability, land-based casinos usually only invite players that are regulars and a part of their casino loyalty programme. You can always ask the managers about their tournaments and get invited that way.
Online and mobile casinos advertise their tournaments regularly and anyone who is signed up at that casino is eligible to join and play.
Entering is as easy as clicking a link and following the entry requirements.
These change from tournament to tournament but in general:
These tournaments have no entry fee so you can play without having to buy in. Prizes from these tournaments tend to have quite strict wagering requirements and are similar to Free Spin bonuses.
These tournaments require the player to make a deposit in order to get entry. They tend to have better prize pools that free to play tournaments in that the more players, the more money is available to the pool.
One thing to remember in a slots tournament: every player, whether it’s a free tournament or a buy-in tournament, gets the same number of credits when they start the game. If reloads are allowed, the player starts with the base number of credits and zero points in their new round.
Again, it depends on the tournament rules, but points are generally awarded based on certain goals like hitting bonus symbols or making the most money over the tournament period or your win multiplier.
The awesome range of ways you can participate and earn points is what makes every slot tournament unique and thrilling.
And, of course, taking on the other players and winning big prizes!
Tournaments are tied to specific games so that the casino can track players’ progress. In a land-based casino it will normally be linked to a specific game over a specific time. At virtual casinos it can be linked to a specific game or series of games, the games can change every week or month for longer tournaments, and there may be more than one game on offer.
It’s not a strategy as such but there are tips to getting the most out of a slots tournament. Remember, every player has the exact same number of credits and the exact same timeframe to play in.
Your favourite online, mobile, and land-based casinos will always offer slots tournaments but, for the CasinoPlay crew, our top reviewed online casinos are the places to play – and our favourite absolutely-can’t-miss-a-tournament, regular provider of the thrills of social slots have got to be:
