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Is it the bright flashing lights? Or the ambient dissonance of spinning and winning? It could be Las Vegas where the classic 'one-armed bandits' have become synonymous with the casino capital and the numerous movies and TV shows featuring them. Whatever image your mind conjures, slot games are always popular. As times change, so do players' habits and the shift from real casino play to online slot machines continues to gain momentum.

CasinoCircle is here to steer you through that heavy stream of UK online slot games and help you find the best ones to play.

Slots history

The precursor to the modern slot machine was created by Sittman and Pitt of Brooklyn, New York in 1891. The machine had five drums and 50 card faces as a solo version of poker. The basic premise involved sticking a nickel through the slot, pulling the "arm" and trying to get the best poker hand you could. But as you couldn't gamble for money, winners were awarded certain prizes in exchange for good hands.

German-American Charles Fey improved Sittman and Pitt's model and created what we know as the modern slot machine. He reduced the amount of reels to and changed the cards to symbols, using horseshoes, diamonds, spades, hearts, and a Liberty Bell which gave the machine its name. This simple format still exists today. The symbols often change but classic slot games still use the bell from the original.

From there, slot machine manufacturers tried to avoid US gambling laws against illegal cash prizes by offering chewing gum in exchange for wins. Fun fact: the Bell-Fruit Gum Company used on some old slot machines is where the BAR symbol comes from. By the 60s, the first fully electromechanical slot machine was developed and a decade later, the first video slot was made. The rest is slot history!

Terminology

Slot game or slot machine are the general terms used globally but there are some words used in different countries.

• The term "slot" in slot machines refers to the money slots where players insert their coins before pulling the lever or pressing the Spin button.
• In the UK, "fruit machines" are the physical variant named after the fruit symbols you'd find on the spinning reels: usually lemons, cherries, oranges, grapes, and watermelons.
• Scotland refer to them as "puggies", possibly related to its use as term for the kitty in card games and, later, a slang term for a cash machine or ATM.
• In Australia and New Zealand, they're called poker machines or "pokies".
• Japan call them pachisuro or pachislo which is a combination of pachinko and "slot machine".

Online slot games today

Slot games are very popular, arguably more than the machines "in the wild". That's why major corporations have jumped in with licenced games for the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Guns N' Roses, Vikings, and Jurassic Park. But why? Well, there's the variety. Here at Casino Circle, we provide all kinds of UK slot games, in 2D and 3D, with set jackpots and progressive jackpots, classic and new. There's no need to leave the house as you can play on any device with internet access. And you don't have to break the bank to start. If luck is on your side, you could win millions from a spin worth less than £1. That's a better return than the National Lottery!

Going back to those game types, here is a brief summary of what they are:

• CLASSIC SLOT GAMES - Essentially the same format as the original Liberty Bell slot machine: standard 3x3 reel
  • FRUIT MACHINES - A thematic variant, with fruit symbols instead of card symbols
  • VEGAS - You would have seen the slot machines from Vegas with the giant level - those but in an online form
• VIDEO SLOT GAMES - The possibilities are endless with video slots. The paylines are increased as well as the effects and bonus games
  • 243 PAYLINE - 243 payline slots offer the most paylines out of any slot on the internet
  • PROGRESSIVE - The big winning slots - this is where the jackpot grows and any player has the potential to win million

Payouts

With all the talk of winning millions, it's important to know how much slot machines are likely to pay out over time. Old slots had 3 reels and 10 symbols which gave 1000 possible combinations. As the chance of any combination was 1 ÷ 10 x 10 x 10 = 0.01%, jackpots were lower and became boring after a while. Now, most video slot games have 5 reels and certain symbols are weighted in their probability of appearing, increasing the combinations and allowing for bigger jackpots.

UK slot machines are programmed to pay out a certain percentage of money put in. For slot games we feature, that percentage is usually between 88%-97%. This is called the RTP or "return to player". We calculate them slightly differently. We take the RTP away from 100% and that is called the "house edge", as that's the "edge" the "house" (ie. casino) gets back. Anything over 5% for a house edge is considered "high" and means you'll need to put a lot in to get it back over time.

Example: Millionaire Genie has a house edge of 4.98%. If you were to place a £1 bet for 100,000 spins, you would win back £95,020 on average, and the casino would keep the remaining £4,980.

Probabilities of certain symbols falling on the paylines are determined by PRNGs or Psuedo Random Number Generators. More sophisticated PRNGs continue to generate different combinations even when the game isn't running to prevent players from predicting the next spin outcome.