Traditional slot advice suggested you should maximize your bet. In the days of single-line slots, this was sound advice. With multi-line machines featuring 9,15, 20, 25, 30, 40 and 100 line configurations -- betting the maximum is not an advantage.

First ... make sure you understand what it take to trigger the bonus round. There are two very popular ways bonus rounds are ofter triggered:

- Payline -- These are the bonus rounds where you need 3 or more symbols on one of the paylines you are playing. If you are playing a 15-line machine, but you are only covering 10 lines ... you might miss out on some of the bonuses you could have had. I see some people play 9-lines with 2 coins per line on a 15-line machine ... mathematically ... it is not going to make a difference in the payout --- however, you chances of hitting the bonus round are 2/5ths less (or almost half) because you are not betting on 6 of the lines you might receive a bonus on. On the other hand, if you do get the bonus symbols -- it will be twice as much (because the line bet is twice as much).

- Scatter -- This method is triggered when one or more symbols come up and result in a bonus round (scatter is also used on many mchines to provide a fixed payout). When a bonus round is triggered with this method, it doesn't necessarily matter if you covered all of the lines, because you get get the bonus round regardless of which lines you play. For games that result in free spins, only the lines which were played on the initiating spin will have the potential to win (eg. IGT's Cleopatra, WMS's Pegasus, Aristocrat's Sun and Moon, Konomi's Money in the Bank) in the bonus round. For games with regular bonus rounds, the lines played will not matter at all (eg. Konami's Billionaires).

Many games actually have more than one bonus round ... for example, IGT's Texas Tea has both types of bonus within the same game.

There really is no advantage on most multi-line machines for maximizing your bet. For older single line (or sometimes up to 5 lines) games, there is a premium (or a "kicker") for maximizing the bet --- otherwise ... think twice before you do it. If you can afford to maximize, maybe you should think about stepping up to a new denomination (see my TIP # 1 and 2).

/\/\/\/\ the Shamus /\/\/\/\