Many of the online slots ideas came from ‘brick-and-mortar’ casinos, but took these ideas even further. We’re talking about things like progressive jackpots and tournament play.
Progressive jackpots were and are a very cool idea: take a little bit of the money that each player puts into the machine and let it add up to a tempting sum. Eventually, somebody will win a jackpot that is far larger than anything the individual machine could offer.
The only problem with progressives at land-based casinos was they they had to be very hard to get, because there were only a dozen or so machines on the progressive ‘network’ and the sums added up quite slowly. A progressive jackpot at an online casino, however, draws from a network that spans the entire world (minus places like Turkey and Kentucky, of course), so the jackpots build up quickly and pay out far more often.
Online slots offer different types of progressives, too; there are many that have a ‘random progressive’, where you can win any time that you play the machine (even if you lose that particular round, you could still win the big money!). Some have various levels of progressives, such as the Marvel Heroes series which offers a small, medium, and large jackpot (roughly, three, four, and five figures).
Slots tournaments add a competitive dimension to the usually-solitary pastime of slots. Your reward is a share of the ‘pot’ (usually provided by the online casino USA itself), and your ‘score’ is the amount that you win on the slot game. Instead of betting your own money on each spin, you typically pay an entry fee and get unlimited spins (or at least a large number of spins, with an option to buy more if you run out) on a specific machine.
One fun new wrinkle is that both slots tournaments and progressive jackpots are now available on the ‘mobile casino’ version of many major online casinos. This means that you can participate in tournaments and win progressive jackpots right from your cell phone (or BlackBerry, or iPhone, or iPad, or basically anything with an Internet connection).
If you keep your eye out you will surely find some hidden treasures when it comes to progressives & tournaments. If you find just the right progressive it is almost foolish not to play it. Once you have the improved odds of recouping your money with the progressive it seems like second nature to try your luck. The same thing goes for tournaments. In some situations it seems like the benefits outweigh the risk. Please remember that the games a plentiful & diverse. There is no need to jump right into the very first game you see every time you login.