Penny Slots
July 16, 2019
What are Penny Slots?
Not all players are high rollers. Not everyone is destined to conquer the Las Vegas Strip by paving all 4 miles of it with gold. In fact, about 99,99% and counting of players, are ordinary folks who like to play for the thrill of the game, for the fun of it, (but never allow gambling to take center role in our lives).
So, not all players are high rollers, but there a lot of players out there who are low rollers. In fact low limit slots and, ultimately, penny slots were introduced in order to cover exactly this need – sometimes financial, and sometimes psychological. Stay with us and read our article about penny slots, see all the pros and cons and decide for yourself whether you should play them or not!
History of the penny
There are pennies and pennies. The penny, whose origins go as back as the 7th century AD, is the lowest denomination of currency in almost all the Anglo-Saxon world. It is presently, the formal name of the British penny and the informal name of one American cent and one Canadian cent.
RIP dear Penny
There are still pennies minted in the United States but production of pennies in Canada ceased in May 2012, after 154 years of consecutive minting (1858 – 2012). Moreover the Royal Canadian Mint ceased the distribution of pennies in February 2013, although the coin remains legal tender.
History of slots
Since we delved into the penny lore and learned its origins, we might as well look into the history of slot machines (we confess we do love it when King Billy blog readers become mobile Wikipedias after reading our articles). So, going back, not to the 20th century, but to the 19th, which to modern users may seem like dinosaurs timeline, we discover that the first gambling machine was developed in 1891.
It contained drums, five of them, had a total of 50 card faces and was based on poker. The machine even had the lever which ought to be pulled, and which later led to the notorious name “one-arm bandit”. A little bit before the turn of the 20th century, horseshoes, diamonds, spades, hearts and bells appeared – and they are still around today.
Money Honey
And in case you are wondering about the first ever electromechanical slot machine, it came out in 1963 by the American company Bally and was aptly named Money Honey. The technology of the time had matured enough that Money Honey could pay out automatically up to 500 coins without the help of an attendant.
Penny slot machines
Although, as we saw, the first ever slot machines operated on nickels, the penny slot ones soon appeared in order to cater to players with smaller budgets. Actually, penny slots became canon and dominated the market for decades. Of course, it is not, and has never been, a strict rule that you play “one penny per round” as most penny slot machines allow players to bet more than one penny per line.
You can still lose
One would think that penny slot games and penny slot machines are ideal for the players who do not like to lose a lot. However, nothing could be further from the truth! Players should never assume that playing for such low stakes as a penny can guarantee the longevity of their bankroll – it does not.
Wheat and chessboard problem
It has long been a myth around chess. It is said that the inventor of humanity’s most beautiful game presented to his King (not King Billy!) the game of chess. The King was immediately mesmerized and asked the inventor for his reward. The investor just asked for one grain of wheat, doubled for every chessboard square.
Although the ruler laughed this off, as a too meager prize for such a brilliant invention, his laughter soon stopped when the court treasurers reported that the final number of wheat grains would far outstrip all the Kingdom’s resources (versions differ about the fate of the inventor)!
The penny equivalent
Since our article is about penny slots, we can also give you the equivalent of the above myth, in today’s pennies. The question goes like this: “Would you rather have one million dollars or the sum of a penny doubled every day for one month?” Most of us would jump to the one million dollar fortune, compared to the petty cash, left on the table, right?
Wrong. If you double one penny, every day, after 4 days you will have still have only 15 pennies. But actually, since our series is geometric, at the end of a, let’s say, 30-day month, you will get 1,073,741,823 pennies, which is almost 11 million dollars. And even if the month was a 28-day February, you would still get more than 2 million dollars!
Beware of how you spend
All of the above are illustrations of how small numbers can add up to becoming really big numbers. Penny slots and penny slots machines can gobble up one’s budget much sooner than one realizes. And of course, there is also the payout percentage which is much lower, and understandably so, on the penny slot machines.
Penny slots online
As technology advanced, so did slots. After the advent of online gaming, a brand new world of slots became available to the average, every day player, and frankly speaking, more slots started to come up than a player could consume. Among them, of course, a fair number of penny slots.
Micro betting in the casino world
There is a process known as “micro betting” in the sportsbook world, where a player wagers relatively small amount in various sports games, i.e. on the next serve in a tennis match being a fault or not. There have been actually voices from governments, recommending that this form of betting should be prohibited.
However, micro betting in the casino world, which is the digital age’s “penny machines” is a term used to cover bets made by players that cost less as a whole. There are slots out there, including awesome industry offers like Yggdrasil’s “Vikings go to Hell” which start from as little as 0.01 unit per line.
Of course, in today’s world with the several currencies available to the player, including cryptocurrencies (of which your favorite King Billy Casino brings you Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Litecoin and Tether) 0.01 unit per line does not necessarily correspond to a penny per line.
Furthermore, let’s accept reality folks. When the change of currency is just one click away, it takes more than an iron will to keep playing with such small sums as a penny per line!
Penny slots strategy
At the end of the day, we can substitute “penny slots” with “small spending” and have, practically, the same result. But, what is really the best strategy for the penny slots acolytes? Do they need to spend more when they lose or spend less when they win? And if the house edge is considerable larger with penny slots, what should one to do to have profit at the end of the day?
Define yourself, define your game
There are times when gambling can be a negative equity investment of one’s money. On the other hand, there is always the chance that you can make headlines, as a player, for having won a 7-digit jackpot. But it always boils down to what kind of a player, or you want to become.
Gambling is not poetry
Let us break it to you by using some lines from the eternal Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If”:
- If you can make one heap of all your winnings
- And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
- And lose, and start again at your beginnings
- And never breathe a word about your loss;
- Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
- And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son
We are afraid this is not the case with gambling, nor with penny slots, sorry Master Rudyard! What we propose to players, when it comes to penny slots gambling, is that you should train yourselves in two areas:
- a) Budget
- b) Time
Define your budget. Small as the spending may seem, it may soon put you in the red, if you are not careful. Treat every spin as a 100 dollar spin and not a penny spin. Set a limit, both for winning and for losing. Tell yourself that you will get up from your seat, or switch of your mobile at XYZ amount of your bankroll, both on the winning and the losing side.
Moreover, don’t lose yourself in time! Playing until the morning may seem cool in movies, but it will not add to the joy of the game, or to profiting from it. You are not yourself, when you are tired!
So, these are out thoughts and recommendation for the penny slots lovers. We have plenty of absolutely fantastic online penny slots at King Billy Casino folks. Enjoy them all and have a great time.
Play long and prosper!
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