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Most people should have seen a slot machine by now and you should get the basic principles involved. The basic slot machine that everyone should be familiar with is the one pictured on the left. This is the standard bell slot machine.

Although the majority of this website will not consist of the standard 3 reel slot games. I prefer the newer 5 reel video slots to these older games. I will highlight the 3 reel slots later.

It is very important that you know how to play a slot machine before you risk your money. Each slot machine has different rules and payouts, so learning the tendencies of one particular slot game can be beneficial to knowing what to bet.

Video slot machines are easy to understand once you get familiar with them. There are several terms that you will have to know right away:

Reels - The vertical columns that spin and have icons on them.
Paylines - Horizontal paths across the reels for winning prizes.
Bet - The total amount that your are betting per line for a spin.

I'm going to use the slot game Cleopatra's Gold as an example to show you the basics of 5 reel video slot machines.

I've underline a couple of important details that Cleopatra's Gold has clearly labeled on the screen during play. This is one of the reasons I like RTG slots.

You can see that there is a total bet of $1.00 ($.05 per line) and this resulting spin won $1.90. The total number of lines bet was 20 (the maximum number of paylines). There were 4 paylines that won money. The amount you won on each payline cycles above Bet Per Line.

Let me explain how I won the $1.90. The Cleopatra icon is a substitute or wild card and can be substituted for other icons in order to complete paylines.

The paylines are completed from the left to the right. This means you have to match icons from the number 1 reel on the far left to the number 2 reel next to it, and so on across the 5 reels.

For this game, you need 3 matching Ace through 9 symbols or 2 matching ancient Egyptian symbols to win a payline. A multiple of the bet on each payline is won.

 Cleopatra can be used as any icon, so having her on the first reel is usually very good. The payline winnings are doubled for any payline that uses the substitute. In this case, all four paylines that won were doubled.

Here are the paylines for this game. The four paylines that won prizes were 1, 10, 18 and 19. Remember that each payline had  a five cent bet on it. Matching two of the golden cross symbols was worth a multiple of 4. That means that lines 1 and 19 were worth $.20 each. Payline 18 had three matching golden crosses (two of them are substitute icons) worth a multiple of 20. That payline win was worth $1.00. Payline 10 had three matching King symbols which is worth a multiple of 10, making its winning worth $.50.

That was a little bit long winded, but I just want people to get the concept and spelling it out kind of helps people out. I also want you to understand that winning on one payline does not mean you win on your bet overall.

This is a pretty easy example to understand. Only 1 payline had any winnings on this spin. Again it is two golden crosses matching, but this time the payout is only 2 times because Cleopatra is not present. This means that you only win ten cents on your dollar bet, or a ninety cent loss.

Substitute and Scatter Symbols

You've already seen one example of a substitute above with the Cleopatra icon. The rules for the substitute will change from one video slot machine to another. The one constant is that the substitute symbol will always be used to match any other normal icon on the reels.

The scatter symbol is special and almost never can be used with the substitute card. The scatter icon changes even more then the substitute between slot games.

The one thing that almost never change between slots is that the scatter doesn't need to appear on a payline to trigger a win. It can appear anywhere on the reels. Here is an example of a scatter icon:

The Pyramids icons are the scatter in this example. The thing that makes a scatter win special is that you will usually win a multiple of your total bet, in this case $2.00 on a $1.00 bet.

Usually it takes three or more scatter symbols to win one of two special features in video slots: Free Spins or a Bonus Round.

Free Spins and Bonus Rounds

Free spins rules differ greatly from slot game to game. The one thing that remains constant is that you will win a certain (x)number of free spins times a certain (y) prize multiplier. The winnings for the free spins is based off of the Bet Per Line for the spin that won the Free Game Feature.

Bonus Rounds are mini games that most often require you to make a decision whether to get one winning bonus amount or another. Its usually as simple as clicking on an icon to reveal a prize.