LONDON – LIVING – Walk into any brick-and-mortar casino – like the big ones in Las Vegas or Atlantic City – and you’re bound to be assaulted by the sights and sounds of hundreds of slot machines. Slots are alluring; the graphics are eye-catching, and the ching-ching of a win (even a modest win) causes adrenaline to surge. It’s no wonder that slots are the most popular game in casinos and that they take up the most floor space.
In online casinos, the situation is not much different. The biggest and best online casinos carry a full range of table and card games, such as roulette, blackjack, and baccarat. But their bread-and-butter offerings, the undeniable main attraction, are the slots. Online slots are virtual incarnations of land-based machines and, if anything, the visual appeal is heightened on a computer. The beauty of slots is that they require no strategy; they’re luck based and, as such, they’re more or less “no brainers.” What adds to the appeal, of course, is the ever-present potential of big money.
One of the lesser-known fact about slots – although it is clearly evident in land-based casinos – is that women make up the majority of slot players. Men are basically competitive, and they therefore opt for the player-vs.-dealer thrill of blackjack or the player-vs.-player excitement of poker. They gamble to win; making money is the goal. Women, on the other hand, enjoy the overall experience of playing casino games; they don’t need to “beat” anyone to have fun and it’s not even that essential to make money. Slots give them what they’re looking for: an entertaining experience; and if they happen to hit a jackpot, well, even better.
Most people – men and women – go to casinos as a leisure activity. If we take professional gamblers out of the equation, we’re left with men who are looking to spend a few hours at the blackjack table and hopefully make a few bucks in the process; and women who play slots online want to relax and just have a good time. For women, therefore, slots are perfect. They’re potentially lucrative, but, mostly, they’re pure entertainment – an amusing, lively, and distracting way to kill some time. Men prefer the instant gratification of fast games like blackjack, where skill and strategy come into play, and where control (a key word when differentiating between the sexes) is a factor. Girls? Well, girls just want to have fun, and slots give them exactly what they’re looking for.
