If you're anything like me, you love playing games that have that something new or special about them.

When playing pokies at home, I always have the speakers turned up loud as a lot of the newer games have really great sound effects (including the ones in this article).

Expanding Reels is a fairly new feature in online pokies, and basically it means that when you have a certain reel symbol land on a payline (usually the middle reels), the rest of the reel above and/or below that symbol also fills up with the same symbol, 'expanding' across the whole reel.

This of course triggers more wins as they cross different paylines. More wins means more money or longer you can play!

The animation on some of these is astounding, take a look in the video below to see what I mean…

So why should you play pokies with Expanding Reels?

Mainly because they tend to have a higher payout freqeuncy. The expanding reels come up often and can turn an ordinary win into a pretty awesome one!

If you prefer games that pay out more ofte, but not necessarily big amounts, I'd give some of these games a go.

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[sws_pullquote_left] These are really great games to play [/sws_pullquote_left]

Ever wondered why the progressive jackpot is such a hard one to win in the pub or casino? Well, here's a little tip to help explain it a little better.

You see, the progressive jackpot system is a little computer that sits alone, independant of the machines. It has it's own RNG (Random Number Generator) and will generate a random combination that will trigger the jackpot.

This combination is then monitored across all the machines, and once the combination is struck on one of the machines, the jackpot goes off, then resets itself.

So for example, if the Progressive Jackpot computer decides that a combination of JAAKJ is the winning combination, it then monitors each machine in the progressive bank to see when that combination is struck on a payline that is eligable (ie the customer is playing credits on that line), then once it appears on one of the machines, the jackpot is then reset and a new combination is created by the computer.

TIP:

There is no way you can 'tell' when a Progressive Jackpot is going to go off, but when the jackpot amount is reaching close to it's limit, you can be assured that the jackpot will be struck soon, it has to. So when this occurs, you are advised to bet max lines, BUT only one credit per line. Remember, the Jackpot Computer doesn't care how many credits you are betting per line, it only cares that the combination has come up. This way you will cover your bases and won't blow your budget.

Online Progressive Jackpots

As there are usually thousands of people playing these online progressives at any one time around the worl, they tend to go off a lot more often. As with the advice above, identify which progressive jackpot is about to go off and then bet max lines on the game at the lowest possible credit amount permitted.

Many Australians and Kiwis have won online progressive jackpots in casinos like Spin Palace and JackpotCity. The three most popular progressive jackpots to play online are Mega Moolah, Major Millions and Treasure Nile.

The Mega Moolah progressive jackpot has four jackpot levels, the mini, minor, major and mega. The mega starts at $1,000,000! If you manage to strike a jackpot spin, the wheel will spin around and if you land on the white section, you have won a minimum of $1,000,000!

Online Progressive Jackpots

Even with a small win, the right WILD symbols can net some HUGE results!

Check out this video to see what I mean…

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Is it possible for casinos to set machines to only pay out small wins over a long period as opposed to letting it pay out big wins then small wins and so on? Wouldn’t it be better for the casinos to set them up to only pay small wins and keep the cash in their bank longer?

Jimmy T (address supplied)

Jimmy,

Basically if the paytable on a machine states that it can pay out 100 coins for a certain combination or 1000 for a certain combination, the machine legally HAS to be set to ‘possibly’ pay out that amount. The casino has very little to do with how the machines pay out. The software in pokies is designed in a factory and shipped with the machine, the casino can’t make any adjustments to the payout probabilities ‘on the fly’.

However, just because a payout is possible, does not necessarily mean it’s likely.

NO!

No matter how many times you may think the casino is tightening the machine because you are using your players card, it just simply isn’t true.

The casino has absolutely no control over the payouts of any particular machine, they are hard wired into the machine’s computer chips, which can only be changed after receiving adequate approval from the gaming agency of your jursidiction.

If you don’t believe me, try it for yourself. Try playing 1000 spins with your card in and record how many wins you get, vs 1000 spins with your card out. You’ll find that more or less the results will be the same.

The only advice would be to always use your card because you might as well get recognised for your casino play while you are playing the pokies. If you don’t use your card, you wont.

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If you are familiar with Aristocrat land based machines, then the ‘243 ways to win’ will be nothing new to you, but this is the first time we’ve seen it on an online pokie.

Burning Desire is what they describe as a ‘Payline-Less’ game, meaning that you can win no matter where the symbols fall on the reels, as long as you have a certain number of symbols on the screen.

You've probably play a 243 lines game in the casinos or pubs before, but this is the first ever ONLINE pokie to offer the 243 Ways to Win system.

The thing I love about 243 winning ways machines is the way you can just play without having to be too concerned with the lines. With the 243 ways games like Burning Desire, you win by simply having the right combinations of symbols across all the visible reels, provided you are playing all the lines.

3 Gold Coins will trigger the feature which gives you generous free spins (which can re-trigger) and all wins are x3 so it’s even more exciting!

Also keep an eye out for the Burning Desire logos, these act as WILD symbols, and on a payline-less game, this adds up to a lot of free credits!

Burning Desire is certainly one of the most realistic games to come out for a while and I suspect that we'll be seeing plenty more 243 win machines soon.

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