A slots tournament? What’s that all about?
When you walk up to a slot machine in a casino or log into an online casino and play the slots, it’s an ultimate battle between you and the slot machine to see who comes out the winner. Actually, even if you’re a really very good player, the machine will almost always come out ahead over the long term. That’s the way casinos make profits. But for fun, you can sign up for a slots tournament where you’re playing against the other players. In the real world, one of the current tournaments is running at Cache Creek Casino in Brooks, for the next six weeks.
Like most real-world tournaments, the casino has corralled a number of machines and members of the local slots club are rotated in every fifteen minutes to play for three minutes. The player who racks up the biggest score in those three minutes will be the winner. The total prize money fund is $200,000 with everyone in the top fifty winning at least $1,000.
You can apply the same principles to the online tournaments. Whoever enters the tournament is given a preset number of credits and a fixed time. The winner is the one who has the biggest total at the end of the allocated time. The others have an entry fee. It is customary to return most of the stake money as prizes. This differs from the real world where the players may get other comps like drinks, meals or subsidised rooms in the hotel to offset any reduction in the prize money.
Obviously, if you have never tried a slots tournament, the best way to find out whether you enjoy one is to enter one that is free. The fact that you pay nothing up front and may still win a prize makes this format the most attractive for a beginner. The commercial rationale for the casino is that playing even a free tournament gets you playing in that casino. Once you are logged in, you are likely to play for real on either side of your allotted time, so the casino makes its money out of your other online time.