Slot Paylines – How Do They Actually Work?

A short discussion about paylines in slots and how to use them in order to get the most out of your slot game.

Whenever you play an online video slot, you are given a piece of info that may or may not impact your opinion about that game. This information is connected to the number of paylines included in the slot. So what are these paylines exactly and how to use them to increase our wins?

Truth be told, all desktop and mobile slots that you find on the web will offer a certain number of lines that can be anywhere from one to hundreds of thousands. Essentially, a payline is a line of rows which will be counted if you make a combo of symbols in that line. The first slot game had one payline as the reels structure was 3×1. Therefore, you were only able to receive three symbols of the same kind in order to create a winning combination.

However, this changed with time as the standard number of reels in a slot grew to five, and the number of rows to three. Therefore, the majority of slots nowadays are 5×3, which means that you can create additional paylines which can even go diagonally or even both ways.

Many slots offer you an option to choose the number of paylines that you want to include in your game. Many professional slot players agree that it is always better to include the maximum number of paylines for your spins as slots are usually meant to be played that way.

However, there are also many slots which have thousands of paylines, so how is this exactly possible? Well, some slots allow every possible type of combination and even allow cascading symbols, which are new symbols that fill out the reels once your previous symbols disappear after being a part of a winning combo. This paves the way for additional payment ways, which is why many online casinos call them ‘payways’ instead of paylines. In other words, paylines should be, well, lines and they can extend from left to right or from right to left (or both ways).

You should understand that more paylines doesn’t mean more rewards. Sure, you will be able to win more often, as it will affect the variance of the slot, but these would usually be smaller prizes.

If you understand how paylines work and believe you can play slots better now, you can always claim some lucrative mobile slot bonuses and start your online slot journey, gradually mastering this type of casino games on the web.