Type of Pokies Available at Online Casinos
You’ll see us throw around various terms when talking about online pokies. If you’re new to online casino gambling, you may not know the difference between a video pokie or a cluster pays pokie. That’s OK! We’re here to help.
Today, we will go over some of the most common forms of pokies you’ll find at Australian online casinos. This will help you figure out the types of games you’d like to play and help you navigate through the sea of pokie games at each casino.
3-Reel Pokies
The classic form of pokies is the 3-Reel pokie game. It is as simple as it sounds. There are three reels available to the game. Often, you’ll hear the term Classic Pokies thrown around with 3-Reel pokie games.
Many 3-Reel games offer a single payline while others will offer up to five paylines. Most 3-Reel games do not offer any form of bonus features outside of multipliers or wilds.
5-Reel Pokies
The most common form of online pokie you’ll see at online casinos are 5-Reel pokies. These games offer five reels of action and paylines are generally three, four, or five symbols. The number of paylines varies with 5-Reel games, but the most common is 20 to 25 paylines.
Most 5-Reel pokie games are video pokies, which will have video graphics and animation for the game. Most 5-Reel games will offer various bonus features. The most common bonus feature is free spins bonuses. Other types of bonuses include multipliers, cascading spins, expanding reels, and more.
Cluster Pays
Cluster pays work differently than other forms of pokies. Rather than having paylines of three or more symbols, this game pays out in clusters. These clusters generally need to be four or more. Unlike standard pokies, these don’t have to be on a single payline, but anywhere on the board.
Cluster pay pokies tend to be higher variance than standard payline games as they require that four to five symbols appear on the board. However, cluster pay pokies do have the potential to score larger wins when you get lucky and have a lot of the same symbol appear on the board.
Ways to Win
This type of pokie does away with the standard payline. If you have symbols that match anywhere on the first three reels from left to right you’ll get a payout. The fourth and fifth reel gives you additional payouts when land four or five symbols from left to right. This increases the ways to win to 243.
Other games will give you even more ways to win, generally in the bonus game. For example, in the bonus game, another row may be added to increase your wins to 3,125.
Then there are the Megaways series of games that start with six reels, giving you 117,649 ways to win in some games. Other games will give you 248,832 or even up to 586,971 ways to win in the bonus game.
Skill Based Pokies
A growing segment of online pokies is skill-based pokies. Instead of standard paylines, you are paid out based on achieving certain tasks. These skill-based games are more like video games instead of your average pokie game.
Fish Catch is a game you’ll see at many online casinos in Australia. The object is to catch as many fish as possible in a period of time. Each cast of the reel costs you a bet and you’re paid out based on how many fish you catch.
Skill-based games allow you to reduce some of the random variance that comes with playing online pokies. While the number of skill-based pokies is presently low, we predict this to become one of the most popular forms of pokie over the next decade.