When betting on a slot machine, there’s a couple of aspects to the bet. The first part is what you’re betting on. This could be one of two general ideas for the baseline game:
- Number of lines: The number of lines you bet is your baseline bet. Some games let you select the number of lines, while others make you bet all the lines.
- Game bet: Many newer games have an all ways pays format where you bet on the game as a whole. Some newer games like the 88 Fortunes series or Dancing Drums let you decide which symbols are upgraded and not, but regardless you’re still betting on all lines. Others, like Mighty Cash, may give you the ability to control the Mighty Cash bet, but the base game bet is still the same.
The second half of the wager calculation is today’s slot definition. You may see this termed in a few ways given the above being not one consistent model. You may here of a line bet, or a bet multiplier, but both are functioning identically, in that you’re multiplying your base bet by 1x, 2x, 5x, etc. to determine your total wager.
Let’s take a game that has 40 lines, and it costs one credit per line to play. That game would therefore have a 40 credit base bet to play all lines. However, you could choose to multiply that bet by 2, for a total of 80 credits, 2 credits wagered per line, and any wins would be multiplied by 2 accordingly.
Bet multipliers are the same – if you were to play Dancing Drums, and 88 credits is the cost for all gold symbols and all lines at a 1x multiplier, you could also wager 176 credits for a 2x multiplier, or 880 credits for a 10x multiplier.
This lets those who wish to play more aggressively, for the pursuit of larger wins, to do so, while letting more conservative wagerers still have an option that can fit their budget.
Betting higher will lead to bigger swings, profit or loss, because you’re betting more, so expect more wild swings in your budget if you’re betting higher than lower. You’ll likely know your comfort level, and that should be what drives any decisions on line bet/bet multipliers.
There were games in an earlier era that would let you choose your total wager, and you could have some lines with more credits than others. Take a 9 line game – you could wager 15 credits, and have 6 lines with 2 credits and 3 lines with one credit.
Over time games have streamlined to reduce the number of choices, in part to make them easier to follow but also encourage betting more.
