What are the best online slots casino sites available to UK players?

What is a Payline?

Payline is a combination of symbols on an online slot machine which gets activated when you start spinning. It’s here to help the slots machine to work out if you’ve made a winning combination. In other words, whether you managed to compile a row of matching symbols.

If you have, a payout will be made based on the value of those symbols and the amount you bet on each line. And, depending on what type of reel you choose, the payline will always have to strike the same number of symbols. So, if you are playing on a 5-reel slot, the payline will display five symbols.

Slots Reels and Paylines: How Many are There?

The first ever video slot invented had only one payline whereas these days, depending on the game's developers, there can be as many as 50+. And those are not just horizontal paylines. Beyond the traditional, they come in many different shapes right across your reels: zigzag, trapezium, diagonal; you name it.

Reels too have evolved with time. The classic old school slots contain three reels while the contemporary slots games come in 5, 7 and sometimes even 9 reels.

Can You Choose How Many Paylines You Can Bet?

Yes. Most slots will let you choose how many paylines you want to bet. You can bet one or bet max; it’s up to you. Your paylines are numbered so you may have 1 up to 10 or 12 paylines to play, depending on the slot. Playing with more than one payline increases your winning odds, but it also requires you to spend more money per spin.

If flexibility in games is important to you, look out for variable paylines. Being able to adjust paylines is a big bonus, especially if you are playing with a limited budget. In this case, you can choose how many lines you want to bet on as opposed to fixed lines and get multiple wins from just one spin.

UK-Player Specific Bets

Before you start betting, ask yourself a question: Do you prefer expensive bets with more paylines, or are you after smaller ones? If you are after big wins, then maximum betting is your best friend. But, it will cost you more than choosing a smaller win.

Specifically, for UK players, the highest basic stakes tend to be £45 for Microgaming, £100 for NetEnt, £500 for IGT and £60 for WMS games.

A word of advice from us is also to check whether the game has a 'feature purchase' facility like Barcrest and especially Big Time Gaming slots such as White Rabbit. Here you can bet 100x the max £20 stake to buy into the free spins bonus which results in possible stakes of £2000 a spin.

The most volatile providers are generally Merkur and Big Time Gaming followed by Novomatic, but this is wholly down to specific games as they also produce low-medium variance games. A good example is Merkur’s Magic Mirror Deluxe and Knight's Life which are extremely volatile as is BTG's Donuts or Novomatic's Rumple Wildspins and Book of Ra Deluxe.

Remember, when playing games in demo mode at most casinos, the stake won’t normally show in pounds, but simply as credits. The currency only appears in real-play mode.

Scatter Symbols in Slots Games

Scatter symbols are the ones you want to look out for on the reels. They are less available on 3-reels slots machines but more common on the modern 5-reel slots. Are they important in your gameplay? Absolutely. They hide bonus rounds. If you are lucky to trigger a bonus round feature, that’s when you have a big chance to boost your bankroll.

To unlock a bonus round, which comes in the form of free spins or various mini-games, you’ll need to (usually) land three scatter symbols which only have to be on screen and not on paylines.

Multipliers in Slots Games

Not all real money slots come with multipliers, but those that do can be a goldmine. The main job of a multiplier is to increase your winnings by a pre-set figure. If you land a multiplier, you can expect them to double, triple, or even increase your wins up to 1000X.

The most common are free spins multipliers where you can choose your multipliers that are hidden underneath an icon. These types of multipliers can bring you substantial increases on wins.

In some cases, wild and scatter symbols can also double as multipliers. As you land them on the reels, you can create a winning symbols combination and that way also increase the value of that combination.