The 4 Best Advanced Slot Strategies To Keep The Fun Alive

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This casino post isn’t for absolute beginners. This article is for those of you who are just out of the newbie phase and are looking to change the way you bet on slots.

Even if you’ve been around for years there might be a couple of surprises – ultimately, playings slots online is meant to be fun, and changing up your betting strategy can increase that thrill if you know how to do it right.

Not all strategies work for all mobile slots, and not all betting strategies work for all players styles.

So read them carefully and keep in mind that these tips are meant to do one of two things: help you potentially get bigger wins or play for longer, rarely both.

Which slot strategy will help me win at slots?

Now that’s a loaded question. There’s no real slot machine secrets to expose to give you better odds of winning here, but instead we have a few tips for playing slots that can help your budget last.

There’s a reason why we used the word “potentially” up there – casino slots have randomly generated results so anyone who gives you a sure fire way of winning at slots is either lying or is rigging the game.

That said every slot player will have their own way to bet, and that’s great: there is no wrong way or right way to play slots for real money.

So you don’t have to follow these to the letter, and each has their own little variation, but they will help you get started.

They are theories we’ve come across whilst playing, and to be honest, we were first introduced to the math of them when we starting playing on Elk slot machines (more on those in a while).

We’ve broken up each strategy for playing slots in to how we think they are best used – that said you can try them all in free play and see how it works before you start on real money slots.

You basically have two types of advanced betting strategies

We are going to assume that you know the basics: play on games you love, use the tools available at the casinos to keep your casino bets in check, manage your budget, and stop when the fun stops.

If you don’t, maybe read ourbasic slot strategy FAQ first, because this might be a little dangerous for you.

Because ultimately, if you don’t use any of the methods below, most people fall into two categories.

1. You can bet aggressively and hope one aggressive bet will give you one big slot casino win.
2. You bet small, keep your spins lights, and hope that you can build a momentum of wins.

The first approach is better for volatile slot machines, whilst the second is better for casual gamblers.

The tips and strategies below will each suit one or the other type of player better, some might even suit both.

1. Change your % bet size as you win or lose

Don’t know where to start? This is the one that will work for pretty much everyone, regardless of whether you deposit £€$10 to £€$1,000.

That said it does require a little bit of math, or at least, a vague understanding of percentages. Worst case scenario, have a calculator or your phone handy.

The idea is fairly simple: you change the percentage of the amount you are betting depending on the size of your budget.

So before you do anything else, make sure the slot can accommodate your bet size, whether that’s looking at the minimum or maximum bet.

How to win at slots by changing your bet size:

If you are new to this, stick to a small percentage at first, like 1% to 3%.

So for example, if you have £€$100 to play on a slot machine, you’ll be betting £€$1 if you go for the smallest bet.

You would then set thresholds for yourself to change your bet level if your budget decreases or increases. Keeping to the example, thresholds would be:

• Change to 0.80 when your budget decreases to £€$80
• Change to 0.60 when your budget decreases to £€$60
• Change to 0.40 when your budget decreases to £€$40
• Change to 0.30 when your budget decreases to £€$30
• Change to 0.20 when your budget decreases to £€$20

Why do we do this? Because it basically stretches your budget to last as long as possible as you are losing so you get a chance to build up your stack.

You can, if you like, decrease and increase more than what we’ve laid out for you, but we’d find it annoying to change that often.

You also increase your bet as you win:

So if you start winning, you can then start changing the bets back up in the same way.

Those thresholds to increase the bets will vary according to how aggressive you want to be. You can stick to the pattern above: so 1.20 bet when your budget is at 120, 1.40 bet when your budget climbs to 140 and so on.

Or you can increase the percentage and be a little more aggressive to try and hit those bigger wins.

That said, we would rarely recommend you bet more than 10% of your budget at any one point – any more and you risk losing a lot and ending you gambling entertainment early.

Basically the bigger the percentage you settle on, the more aggressively you are playing, the higher the risk of going through your cash total quickly.

Which type of slot is this strategy best for?

The good news is that this video slot game strategy works for all kind of casino slots.

You can bet a lower percentage on all games to keep your balance steady or use the more aggressive method to try and hit a bigger win at a higher bet level.

The best games are probably medium variance slots like XX, XX, or XX. That way you can try the strategy and see which percentage you are comfortable betting.

2. Raising your bet when you are on a losing streak

Alright. This is a dangerous one, so it should come with a warning label, which is what we are doing: warning!

The logic behind this slot game plan is that as you are losing, when you do win, you want to win on a bigger bet level.

That way you can get back to your starting budget, or hopefully go even higher than that.

A 100x your bet win is more impressive if you are betting at 1 rather than 0.50, you don’t need to be a mathematician to figure that one out.

When do you start raising your bet if you lose?

So this game system assumes you have a bet level you are usually comfortable betting; whether that’s 0.10 or 100 a spin.

You can choose to raise your bet by as much as you want. We like to use the bet level of the slot machine – you go up by one or two levels everytime you have 3 or 5 losses in a row.

Again, the logic is that the longest a slot goes without giving you a win, the more likely it is due to give out a win.

After all, most games have a hit rate of between 20% to 30%, so you generally get something every 5 to 10 spins.

The idea is to then bring your bet down after a win so you don’t burn through your winnings too quickly, and then bring the bet level up again after 3 to 5 losses to try and climb back up.

Why is this a dangerous strategy for slots?

The reason this is dangerous is that those big wins may never come. Or worst, they come, but they are only small amounts and not enough to level back your budget.

If a game is low volatility like the famous Starburst, the wins will probably barely cover your bets, meaning you’ll basically just be losing slowly if you keep lowering your bet after a win.

But if you don’t lower your bet, you stand the chance of basically playing your winnings back into the game, and at that point, you are basically just chasing your tail.

So be careful with this strategy – probably one to be used sparingly for when you are short on time and want to just try and catch a win on the commute home.

3. Danger: Raising your bet EVERYTIME you lose

If the slot machine strategy above is dangerous, this one is the most dangerous of all, but we have to talk about it because it’s used and it’s one of the in built Elk Gaming slot strategies.

The idea is to increase your bet by one level every single time you lose.

So not just when you are on a losing streak, but just anytime you have a losing, so when you do eventually win its REALLY REALLY big.

But if you don’t win, what you lose its LOTS and LOTS of money.

So many warnings. The biggest warning. Beware.

If strategy 2 was dangerous, strategy 3 is for gunslingers, desperados and risk takers.

Are you the kinda guy/gal who loves bungee jumping? Then sure, you might find some big thrills playing this way.

You probably won’t be playing for long, but that’s not the point for these high stakes gamblers. These gamblers have a budget and just want to blow it fast, in the hope that one spin will get them earth-shattering wins.

If you are going to do this, don’t raise your bet above 10 times your starting bet. Just have a little common sense.

Because we are not saying this isn’t a legitimate way to get bigger wins, but it’s not going to extend your gameplay in any way.

Ultimately, this particular strategy walks a fine line between ‘having a plan’ and ‘chasing your loses’ – and that last one is one of the best ways to lose all your casino money.

4. Should I raise my bet when I win on slots?

This is a safer strategy because ultimately you are only risking money that’s not technically yours – at least not until you press withdraw.

We should be clear: if at any point you’ve got more in your balance than when you started with, and you feel like it’s a good time to withdraw – do it.

Don’t hesitate, don’t look back, don’t think that if you keep gambling you’ll win more; that’s not how gambling machines work.

Notice how we mentioned above that if a slot hasn’t paid in a while it might pay soon? Well, the counter theory to that is that if it’s starting to pay out, it’s going to keep paying out on a hot streak.

So which theory is true? Neither. Gambling slots are just as likely to go hot or cold at any moment.

Why am I raising my bet when winning on casino games then?

So, say you generally deposit £€$50 on a Friday night to play slot machines and you, unfortunately, spend it all. You call it a night and, as far as you are concerned, you’ve only spent £$€50.

But as far as the casino is concerned you’ve probably made around £€$150 worth of wagers.

Where did that extra money come from, and how come you didn’t cash out? Those extra wins are the small wins you accumulate as you play slots that keep your balance topped up.

They are the 10x and 20x your bet wins, which you put back in the game because they don’t make a massive dent in your budget.

These extra wins give you a chance to try larger bets

A good real money slot will have a max win of around 800 to 1,000 times your bet.

Some, like the amazing Thundercats slot, has a max win of 10,000 times your bet, but these are volatile, dangerous and rare machines.

The point is, the max win is the equivalent of winning the lottery. So if a game has 1,000 times your bet max win, getting a win of 500 times your bet is probably more likely, and still damn hard.

If you bet 0.10 a spin, that’s an £€$85 win on 500x. But if you’ve raised your normal bet level to 1, that’s a £€$500 win. Big difference.

You should only ever bet what you are comfortable losing

We are not saying to increase your bet every time you win. But if you do get a win of 10x your bet, maybe go up a bet level for 10 rounds and see if luck strikes.

Granted, this does mean you’ll go through those little cash wins faster, but the point is to try and catch those 100 or 300 times your bet win on a higher betting level.

Better yet, find games like Birthday! by Elk Gaming which has lots of frequent bonus features. When one gives you 20x your bet during the base game, increase your bet so you trigger one of the many bonus features at a higher level.

If you then get back to your balance before the win, lower your bet. Go back to spending your original £€$50 slowly and carefully.

You will go through your gaming budget faster

Look, there’s a reason why these are ‘advanced strategies for video slots’.

If we wanted to give you advice on how to play for as long as possible, we’d simply say ‘bet low, and keep betting low, till something magical happens’.

And that’s a genuinely good way of doing it. Just look at the Dead or Alive slot machine by NetEnt; it paid out €3,110 on a €0.90 bet, and then €2,136.80 on a €0.72 bet on May 9th at Casumo.

It can happen, and you don’t have to bet that big to get there – though if you don’t like volatile machines, you are probably better off trying a progressive slots with jackpots if you want to match those kinds of big wins above.

But if you want to try playings slots with bigger bets, do it with the wins you get from the games whilst playing so you have a chance at hitting those larger wins eventually.

Try Elk slot games with these inbuilt strategies on auto-play

This post was inspired by Elk Studios in built betting strategies, one of those up and coming software studios that make really interesting Android and iPhone slot games.

They have versions of all these online gambling strategies within each of their slot machines, which you can use with auto-play and will change your bet level according to what you want.

So they will automatically calculate the 1% or 10% of your budget to gamble on a spin, or raise on 5 consecutive losses, or raise on each win (then lower again).

Their slot games inspired us to write this gambling strategies post

Personally, we probably use the percentage strategy more often than the riskier ones, but that’s up to you.

However, it was the Elk Studios games that allowed us to put numbers to what we were already doing, and creating a logic behind it: a betting plan basically.

You can use it with all and any slot machine, but there’s a lot of changing bets, which is more or less annoying depending on what software you are using (Microgaming slots are particularly bad for it as you have to go to another screen each time).

Elk, on the other hand, makes it super easy to get started and try out a few.

Our favourite game of theirs has to be Ho Ho Tower slot or maybe Sam on The Beach, and both are a good place to start at one of our favourite Elk casinos, Videoslots.

They have one of the largest selection of slots online, so if Elk doesn’t float your boat, you’ll have thousands of others to choose from. They also give you live RTP values of how the slots you’ve been playing have paid out giving you even more insight in to which are the best slots to play.