When you start playing online slots, or even land-based slots for that matter, you’ll quickly notice that all games have a different number of paylines. But, what are paylines and how do they change the amount of money we can potentially win.

Today, we’re going to look at paylines and evaluate whether more paylines equals more wins. Ready to take your slot game to the next level? We know we certainly are!

What are Paylines?

Let’s start out with the very basics. Paylines are essentially preset lines that run across the reels and when you land enough symbols on that line, it counts as a winner. Paylines zigzag across the reels, giving you more ways to win. The more paylines there are, the more ways you can land a winning combo. You can get one payline games and you can get hundreds of thousands of paylines, so fully understanding how paylines work is pretty essential if you’re going to be a big winner at the slots.

But Surely More Paylines are Better?

You’re probably sat there thinking, if more paylines means that it’s easier to get a win, then surely more paylines are better? On one hand, you’re right, but on the other it’s actually the opposite. You see, to get the max win in a game, you will need to play with the max number of paylines. Let’s take Royal Masquerade for example. If you play with max paylines, you can win €250,000. But, in order to win that much, you need to play €50 spins.

Now, if we take it all the way down to one payline, the max bet you can play is €5 and the max win is capped at €50,000. If you do the math, cutting it down to one payline reduces the max win pay by 5x, but the max bet required to win the max amount is reduced by 10x. So, as you can see here, playing with less paylines actually increases your profitability by a great deal. You cut your expenditure per spin by 10x but only your max win potential by 5x. In our books, that’s a huge win and a massive saving!

It’s All About the Math

This is just one example of how it actually pays you to play less paylines. There are many games where it’s quite the opposite and less paylines will actually harm your win potential in the long-run. Our best advice is to do your research and pick slots carefully based on the max win using the Single Line strategy compared to the max bet.

Now you’re armed with this knowledge, you can rumble the reels in epic fashion and show off to your mates, proving that you’re the king of the slots!