Best Slot Machines to Play

The best slot machines to play are the ones that match your personal goals.

There’s no such thing as an objective list of the Internet’s top slots. I know which Web-based slots match my personal goals for play, but without learning a little about your personal preferences, it’s impossible for me to tell you which of the thousands of online slots are “the best.”

To help you figure out your own favorite slot game, I asked myself: “What is it about slot machines that I enjoy?” Based on those answers, I came up with four categories anyone can use to find the best slot machines for them to play.

Why Play Slot Machines?

I know that big jackpots exist, but I play slots to have fun.

Are you looking for a few hours of fun or a big payday?

There is nothing wrong with gambling in the hopes of winning a big prize, it’s just not how I do things. My goal isn’t to win millions of dollars on a $0.25 bet, though I wouldn’t turn it down. Instead, I try to get the largest amount of entertainment for the smallest outlay. In my eyes, my biggest slot machine win ever was playing It’s Good to Be Bad for two solid hours and finishing up by $30. To me, that’s like getting paid to watch a movie – try that at your local cinema.

If your preference is income rather than entertainment, you might look into progressive jackpot games. CasinoListings.com maintains a useful list of available online progressive jackpots, updated regularly enough to be useful. At the time of this review, the biggest online progressive jackpot in the world was on Microgaming’s Mega Moolah Mega slot – $6.2 million and counting.

Don’t forget that these two options are not mutually exclusive. There’s no reason for me to think that I won’t someday hit a big jackpot playing “just for fun,” and I don’t have any reason to suspect that jackpot-chasers aren’t also enjoying themselves. Still, understanding your ultimate goal in playing slots will help you find a machine that better fits your particular needs.

I don’t have a huge budget, so I play games that allow me to wager about $0.25 / spin.

Do you have a strict budget or a lot of wiggle room?

When I wrote that I prefer to bet about $0.25/spin, I don’t mean that I only play machines that use a quarter as a denomination, or only play machines where “$0.25” is the maximum bet. What I mean is that I look for titles that allow me to place a decent wager for not much more than twenty-five cents per spin.

I’ll use a favorite game of mine as an example – BetSoft’s Good Girl, Bad Girl. BetSoft allows wagers of up to $1/credit, which would be way out of my price range because I tend to bet the maximum number of lines on any game I play. By choosing to play at $0.02 / credit, I can still wager on every available line and keep my betting to just $0.30 per spin.

I’ll play just about any game provided I can bet on all paylines for a price within ten cents of $0.25/spin. But plenty of slots fans operate differently than me. Most of you guys probably have a bigger bankroll than I do. I have no problem with people who want to spend a little more than me, provided you’re doing so safely, not gambling with the rent or your kids’ college money.

There are tons of ways to play slot machines these days, but I prefer to play mobile slots.

Do you have a platform that you’d prefer to use?

My obsession with mobile slot sites and apps is relatively new. I spent the first eight years of my online gambling hobby playing exclusively at desktop sites, but now that mobile technology has improved (and now that I have a baby at home that keeps me up at odd hours), I find myself playing at mobile casinos more than any other venue.

Prefer a desktop casino experience? That’s certainly available. Mobile gaming is still a relatively young industry; rudimentary mobile games first appeared less than a decade ago. That means most online slots are still available to desktop customers. Another advantage of desktop casinos – they tend to have a bigger variety of better-looking games. The entertainment value of Web-based slots is probably a lot higher with desktop titles, for the time being.

Bells and whistles are fun, but I tend to play slot machines with simple layouts and rules.

Do you like a lot of fancy effects or are you more of a traditionalist?

Your answer may be more important than you think. Though it’s impossible to find specific payout percentage details about online slot games, we know some things to be generally true. The fancier a slot game is, the lower its payout percentage. That means there is a mathematical advantage to playing the fruit machines and single payline slots that I gravitate towards.

What got me started with simple slot machine games was my laziness. I didn’t want to spend the time learning multiple paylines, bonus games, and other features. I just wanted to kill some time. Things have changed a bit since then, and my stable of preferred slots includes plenty of more complex games. But I’m still naturally attracted to classic slots.

People who prefer multiple bonus rounds, scatter symbols, wild symbols, and other fancy game features have plenty to choose from – online slots are way more likely to use these gimmicks than to resemble an old-school fruit slot. And don’t get discouraged by the fact that complex slots tend to have lower payout percentages – they also offer much larger jackpots, so your potential reward is a lot higher than mine.

It’s impossible for me or anyone else to tell you what the best slot machines to play are. My hope is that your answers to the four questions above will help you figure out what slot machines will work best for you. Once you’ve figured out that you like desktop games with special video and audio effects and progressive jackpots, the pool of potential titles for you to play is significantly smaller.