Online slots is a game of slots played over internet. When traditional (brick & mortar) slots playing houses like casinos and slots houses, which were not always in the best location to visit, became reluctant to promote slots due to dwindling profits (some estimates show the slots contributes only 1% of the total revenue), online slots venues picked up.
เว็บสล็อตอันดับ 1 apart from being dramatically cheaper due to much smaller overheads also allows players to play for low stakes, thereby bringing in new and/or less wealthy clientele. On the flip side online venues can be may be more vulnerable to frauds related to internet.
Free online slots were started in the form of IRC Slots as early as the late 1900s, with Planet Slots being the first online card room to offer real money games in 1998.
The introduction of the sites:
Online slots sites offer varying features to attract players like to offer tournaments called satellites giving winners entry to real-life slots tournaments. Some of the early winners of the World Series of Slots came through the tournament on Slots Stars. Notable players were Chris Moneymaker and Greg Raymer.
What are the stakes in the game?
Online slots space saw many acquisitions and takes overs in the following years. In 2004 Sporting bet, the then world’s largest publicly traded online gaming company acquired ParadiseSlots.com, one of the online slots industry’s first and largest cardrooms. Through new companies coming into and by merger and acquisitions the industry kept on growing. By 2010 there were approximately 545 online slots websites. SlotsStars.com emerged as world’s largest online slots site by number of players on site at any point of time, and in 2014 it became the world’s largest publicly traded company with revenues near $5 billion.
The year 2011 wasn’t a good year for the industry. The US Department of Justice seized domains of many sites including Slots Star and Full Tilt & Absolute Slots in this year, also infamously known as Black Friday, effectively freezing their player base, and sites were fined heavily.
The 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic has given a massive boost to online slots traffic. The sudden closure of almost all other live entertainment options due to widespread closures and lockdowns across the world, people flocked towards online slots sites in hoards.
Should you play the game?
Online slots are legal and regulated in many countries like United Kingdom and the Caribbean nations.
Online slots sites earn their revenues via four methods.
- Rake – a fee paid to the site for hosting the game
- Entry fees – an entry fee to the tune of 5-10% was charged for the impromptu tournaments
- From offering some side games like blackjack, roulettes
- By investing the money, the player deposit
Cheating being a perennial problem in slots, many sites employ the services of reputed audit firms like PricewaterhouseCoopers to review the fairness of the random number generator, shuffle, etc.
