Popular Slot Terms Every Slot Player Should Know
When you play online slot machines at fully licensed and regulated iGaming sites, you will often come across certain terminology, which is important to learn, especially if you plan on playing online slots using real money.
Let’s dive straight in to discover some of the most popular online slot machine terms every player should know.
What are the most popular online slot terms?
In the world of online slot machines, there are hundreds of terms and synonyms, and they are easy to learn. However, to make it more difficult, some software providers/game development studios have developed games using slightly different terms, although they mean the same thing.
Some of the most common online slot terms you are likely to come across today when playing slots on your desktop computer or mobile device are the following:
- Wild Symbols – these are the ‘mirror’ symbols that replicate other symbols to help form new winning combos for you. You can find many different Wild Symbol variations, some of which include multiplier wilds, expanding/growing wilds, shifting/walking wilds, and random wilds, to name a few
- Scatter Symbols – these are the symbols that often pay an instant cash prize when two or more land anywhere in view. Usually, landing 3 or more Scatter Symbols on the reels at the same time will trigger the free spins bonus
- Bonus Symbols – similar to above, but you often need two or three Bonus Symbols to land either anywhere in view or on certain reels to trigger the slot’s main bonus round
- Progressive jackpot – this is a jackpot that can climb to no fixed amount before being won and is often connected to a vast network of online casinos, which is why progressive jackpots often climb well into the millions before being won
- iGaming – this term relates to a licensed and regulated real money gambling site, such as an online casino UK, sports betting site, bingo and lottery site, or dedicated poker site
- Megaways – is a game engine that was made by Big Time Gaming. Megaways are the number of possible winning combinations each spin can have, usually anywhere from 243 up to 117,649
- Paylines – similar to above, but the number of paylines that the game has, where matching symbols must land in consecutive order across the reels to receive a payout
- Paytable – this area tells you everything there is to know about the slot, such as its average RTP% payout rate, the value of each symbol, how certain in-play features and bonus rounds trigger, and more
- Respins – a feature where one or more reels respin once or twice to help trigger a bonus or increase the current win value while the other reels remain locked in place
- Volatility – this denotes the win variance, in other words, how often the wins occur and how big or small in value the wins are likely to be (e.g., low, medium, or high volatility)
These are just some of the main online slot machine terms you will most likely come across when playing many of today’s best online slots.
What other popular slot terms are there?
Others include Win Both Ways, where the wins pay in both directions (from left to right and right to left, not just from left to right), RTP% payout rate, which tells us roughly how much you can expect to receive back in winnings roughly after spinning the reels X amount of times, and Random Number Generator (RNG).
An RNG is a sophisticated mathematical algorithm program that produces the computer-generated outcomes/results that we see each time the spin button is hit.
A multiplier will multiply the prize by a certain amount (usually 2X, 3X, 5X or higher), and the Max Payout is the maximum you can win on any spin. You also have a Fixed Coin Jackpot, which is capped at a certain amount, unlike a progressive jackpot.
Final note
When playing online slot machines using real money, never treat gambling as a job and always remember to gamble responsibly. Never chase your losses and try to take the occasional session break instead of playing for hours on end. Finally, remember to have fun.
