Playing some slot games is a great form of entertainment, but have you ever stopped to consider whether the day you play them matters at all?
While online casinos now mean that you can play slots online any day of the year, we’ll have a look at which days might be better than others.
Your Chances of Winning
The first point to make here is that your chances of winning at slots are completely random. These games are controlled by technology known as a random number generator or RNG. This is a set of complex algorithms that ensure no one knows when the game will next pay out for how much.
Some players will tell you about hot and cold slots or loose slots, but the truth is that they don’t exist. Opinion is divided over whether or not it was possible to know this in the past with manually-operated slots, but the arrival of computer-controlled slots has made sure that it’s no longer even a debate.
This is good news if you want to find a way of playing that suits a busy lifestyle. For example, if you work long hours then you can be sure that you haven’t missed out on all of the prizes because you couldn’t play during the busiest times of day.
There’s just as much chance of winning a big prize at midnight on Sunday as there is on Tuesday morning or Thursday evening. Add in the convenience of online play and you can now simply work out when it suits you to play and do so without worrying about whether any money is left in the machines.
Do You Want to Avoid the Crowds?
Online slots let us play comfortably at home or wherever we go, but what if you want to go to a land casino? Many of them are open virtually every day of the year but perhaps you want to avoid going there when there are big crowds and you might have to wait to try your favorite game.
In American casinos, Friday and Saturday evenings tend to be the busiest times of the week. So this is ideal if you want to play in a lively environment but if you’d rather have the chance to stroll around and choose from any slot you like it’s not going to be right for you.
If it’s peace and quiet you crave, you probably need to go early on a weekday. Tuesdays and Wednesdays tend to be particularly quiet and if you get there before 8 or 9 in the morning then so much the better.
In these quiet times, you might see just 100 to 200 people across a big casino, so there’s plenty of empty spaces at the tables and at the slot machines. As we’ve already seen though, this makes no difference to your chances of winning.
In Macau, the big casinos are open 24/7 and many are part of a hotel complex, so you can expect to see people playing there most of the day. In Europe, the slots tend to be open most of the day, but table games might have shorter availability.
With the example of Baden Baden in Germany, the slots can be played from 11am through to either 2am or 3am, depending upon the day of the week. In the Monte-Carlo casino in Monaco, the games room opens from 2pm daily, but you can have a guided tour in the morning as long as you don’t want to play then.
Hunting for Progressive Jackpots
Progressive jackpots provide the biggest wins in the slots world and you might be wondering when it suits you to try and win one of them. To explain this fully, we need to see how these jackpots work.
The amount increases with each spin, until someone eventually wins the prize pot. This often happens on a random basis, but on some games you need to trigger a certain set of symbols to win the progressive prize.
What this means is that the amount in the pot will tend to increase rapidly when there are a lot of people playing. Even if the prize is paid randomly, the fact that more people are playing it increases the chances that someone will win the cash at a busy time.
Online slots make it easy for you to see the current jackpot levels. If you see a large amount waiting to be won, you might like to give it a try no matter what day it is. The number of people playing at the same time makes it more exciting, as the prize might climb rapidly or it could be won at any moment.
At quieter times, the jackpot is likely to climb more slowly but there’s also fewer people playing who could grab it before you. Therefore, you just need to take a moment to consider which approach suits you best.