Free Slot Machines

Free slots are slot machine games you can play online without
risking any money. You won’t find these kinds of games in most
land-based casinos. In fact, we can’t recall ever being able to
play such a game without risking some real money. These are an
online phenomenon.

Our site features a number of embedded slot machine games you
can play for free. We include links to the most popular of those
games here. Those pages also include detailed reviews of these
games.

On this page, we also provide what we’ve learned about the
various kinds of risk free, play money slot machine games
available on the internet, as well as games we would recommend
that you can go and play for real money right now.

Free Spins at Online Casinos

One of the best and easiest way to play free slots online is
to find a casino which offers a “free spins” promotion. The way
these kinds of promotions works is that the casino has a
particular game they want to promote to new players. To
incentivize new signups, they allow a player a certain number of
free spins on that game. If the player has a positive bankroll
at the end of his session, he gets to keep the money.

These kinds of offers are great and risk-free, but keep in
mind that they are a means of getting you to sign up and deposit
real money at the casino. These offers also come with some
restrictions. For example, most of the time you’re not allowed
to “quit while you’re ahead” when you’re using these free spins.
You have to use all of them before cashing out.

Another common restriction is a maximum cash-out amount,
which is usually a relatively small amount—maybe $25 or $50.
It’s hard to complain about a restriction like this. After all,
you’re not risking any money, so free cash is free cash. And you
got to play the slot machine game for a while, too.

Some casinos also offer “no deposit required” signup bonuses.
Just for signing up and registering a new account at a casino,
you’re given a certain amount of real money to play.

Usually these no deposit bonus offers are small—less than
$50, and often less $20 or $10. But they do give you the chance
to try out the casino’s slot machine games without risking any
of your money, and you also have the opportunity to walk away a
winner.

Finally, all the online casinos we’re familiar with allow
players to try their games for free in “play-money” mode. You
get an arbitrary amount of chips to play with, and your bankroll
goes up and down. But this money is just “play money”—it has no
real world value.

Playing slots—or any other gambling games, for that matter—in
“play-money” mode is something that’s never made much sense to
us. It might be a good way to check out a casino’s software to
see if you’re going to like playing for real money there. But
that usually doesn’t take long.

We do know some players who do nothing but play the free,
play-money games at online casinos. They find the sights and
sounds of the gambling games entertaining or stimulating. We
don’t see much point in that, but if it works for you, great.

Free Slot Tournaments Online

You’ll occasionally stumble across slot machine sites which
offer free tournaments. These are “play-money” games, too, but
you have the opportunity of winning small prize amounts at the
end of the day or the week. These sites have leaderboards which
track your scores.

These free slot machine tournament sites make their money by
selling advertising. Since playing a no download game for free
in your browser creates a lot of page-views, sites selling
advertising on a cost per impression basis can make a lot of
money if they can get players to show up and play their games.

We’ve also seen free apps for mobile devices where you can
play free games that look and sound just like slot machines. The
rule of thumb with these kinds of apps is that you can’t play
for real money if you found the app through the Google Play or
Apple stores. Those companies have strict guidelines on what
kinds of apps can be sold there, and online gambling apps for
real money are on the forbidden list.

Moving Up from Free Slot Machines to Real Money Games

We don’t necessarily think everyone should play slots. But if
you’re going to play, we think you should at least consider
playing for real money. After all, the entire point of gambling
is to risk money with the possibility of winning money.

Making the transition from free games to real money games is
easy enough, too. All of the online casinos we’re familiar with
offer plenty of low-denomination slots games. You should be able
to find plenty of action on the Internet at just a penny or a
nickel per spin.

With stakes that low, even a gambler with a small bankroll of
$50 can play for hours on end.

The trick is tempering your expectations. If you’re only
wagering a penny or a nickel per spin, you can’t expect to win
the same size jackpots as the players who are wagering a dollar
or $5 per spin.

One of the benefits of moving up to real money play, too, is
the ability to take advantage of larger signup bonuses at the
casinos. We talked briefly about no deposit bonuses earlier, but
the more common offer on the Internet is where you deposit a
certain amount and get a percentage of that amount added to your
bankroll as a bonus.

These kinds of offers come with restrictions, too. They’d
have to, after all, or the players would walk away with all the
money, and the casinos would go out of business.

One of the first of these restrictions is that you wager the
deposit plus bonus a certain number of times before cashing out.
The higher this wagering requirement is, the less likely you are
to walk away a winner. That’s because any time you play a
negative expectation game, the longer you play, the more likely
it is that the house edge will be realized.

Let’s say, for example’s sake, that the casino above has a
35X wagering requirement. This means you have to place $400 X
35, or $14,000 in wagers before you can cash out.

If you assume that the slots at this casino have a payback
percentage of 95%, then the house expects to keep 5% of that
$14,000. That’s $700.

Since your bankroll is only $400 to begin with, the
mathematical expectation is for the house to win all your
money—in spite of the free money they gave you.

On the contrary, a certain number of players will always walk
away as winners with a promotion like this. We hit a $6000
jackpot on our 3rd spin once. Even after clearing all our
wagering requirements, we had over $2000 in winnings we were
able to cash out.

But casinos have another restriction, too, but it’s not one
that seems onerous to the readers of this page. Most of them
only count wagers placed on slot machines toward fulfilling
these wagering requirements.

That’s because most other casino games have a lower house
edge. And a lower house edge increases the likelihood of the
player being able to get a mathematical positive expectation
against the casino.

Blackjack is a good example. With the right rules and proper
strategy, the house edge is only 0.5%. That means your expected
losses on $14,000 in wagers is only $350. With a $400 bankroll
to start, you have mathematical expectation of finishing with
$50 in profit.

Casinos don’t stay in business by offering players the chance
to gamble with an edge.

Types of Free Slots

Almost any kind of online slot machine you can imagine is
available in a free version. One notable exception is the
progressive jackpot game, though. Because of how the progressive
jackpot is increased using a tiny percentage of each bet to fuel
it, it’s impossible to offer it in a free version.

Here’s a list of some of the different types of free slots
you can play online, along with brief explanations of each:

• 3-Reel Slots

These are traditional slot machines with 3 spinning
reels and (usually) one pay-line. The 3-reel slots often have
the best payback percentage in the casino, but they can seem
deadly dull when compared to some of the other games now
available.

• 5-Reel Slots

These are games with 5 reels and multiple pay-lines.
They can feature all kinds of bells and whistles like scatter
symbols, wild symbols, and bonus games.

• Video Slots

All online slots games are video slots by default, even the
3-reel slots. This is just a phrase used to describe a slot
machine that’s played on a computer monitor of some kind, with
animated spinning reels instead of actual mechanical reels.

• 3D Slots

These are video slots with 3D images and sound effects. Some of
the most interesting games visually these days are the 3D slots.

• Story-Based Slots

These are games which feature some kind of theme and
plotline. They’re becoming increasingly popular over time.

Example Games

Here are some of the most popular free slot machine games you
can play on our site along with brief descriptions of each.
Click on the link for each one to go to the page with the
playable version of the game:

Fruit Frenzy

Fruit has been a popular slot symbol since the
early days of the industry. At one time, slot machines were
illegal, and so they dispensed candy instead of money to get
around the laws. This candy was fruit flavored, and so the
symbols indicated which type of candy you won. Fruit Frenzy
takes this theme to an interesting conclusion, featuring lots of
reels and paylines. It’s an RTG slot machine available at
casinos like Slots.lv.

Naughty or Nice?

This is another RTG game. It’s a slightly
risqué Christmas-themed game with 5 reels and 50 pay-lines. The
symbols include Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus, and even some reindeer.
We enjoy holiday-themed slot machines in general and Naughty or
Nice in particular. It’s a fun game with a fun theme, and if you
like the free version, consider trying the real money version at
Ignition Casino.

The Big Bopper

RTG isn’t known for having a lot of licensed
slots. Licensing costs money, after all, and they’re the
lowest-cost provider of casino software on the Internet. They
probably just can’t afford to license anything that’s too
popular. The Big Bopper, of course, is a popular oldies singer
most famous for the song “Chantilly Lace”. It’s a cute song, and
it’s also a cute slots game.

Conclusion

You can easily find multiple ways to play free slots online.
You can take advantage of free spins bonuses at online casinos.
You can use their play-money games to try out their software.
You can even take advantage of signup bonuses that require
deposits and some that don’t.

What most of these free games have in common is that it’s
hard, if not impossible, to win any real money playing them. In
the case of play-money games, it is completely impossible to win
money—after all, you’re not risking anything. But even with the
bonus offers, the casinos have restrictions and math in place to
make it hard to win any real money.