What are pokies?
Pokies is just another term that Australian gamblers use to describe electronic gambling machines (make sure that you don’t confuse it with nipples poking through a shirt since those are also called pokies). Now, if you haven’t lived in Australia for some amount of time you might be wondering why Aussies call slot machines the pokies.
The reason for that is because they love to make things short. Instead of wishing you good day they will say g’day and turn Australia into more simple ‘Straya. The same thing probably happened with poker machines back in the days. When slots took over the casinos, Aussies decided to call them pokies too. After all, why complicate things? It’s actually important to understand these things so you don’t get confused thinking that casino with the best pokies has only poker machines.
Therefore, if you love to play slots, you will love pokies too, since it’s the same thing. Moreover, we would advice you to book a flight in Australia since it’s a real gambler’s heaven. In fact, this continent simply could be called a second Las Vegas due to a prevalence of pokie machines there. Just for your information: the Australia has around 200 000 of them!
Moreover, many gambling websites today offer various promotions that will allow you to multiply your deposit several times! So, if you miss pokies it’s definitely worth a try. After all why not to make your own Las Vegas right in the living room? It will be that kind of Las Vegas where nobody will disturb you from playing your favorite games.
What are the different types of pokies?
At the beginning, pokies were extremely simple and straightforward games. There was only one way to win and almost no features. But as the technologies advanced everything got a bit complicated and pokie machines didn’t make an exception to this rule. That’s how the first multi-line games were invented. These machines imply that your bets will be higher since you are going to wager on multiple lines instead of one, but it also will lead to more frequent wins.
Most of the pokies today have a layout of five reels and three rows with plenty of lines across them. The main downside of such games is that the more lines there are the more confusing it might be for the player to understand what is going on the screen.
This is particularly true for the novice gamblers. It’s not very interesting to play the game if you do not fully understand how the things work. For example, you can see five symbols land on the reels, but still didn’t get payout and be wondering why.
But it’s not the thing when we are talking about the all ways pokies. First introduced back in 2009 by Microgaming, this was the biggest milestone in the industry. The product was both complicated and simple at the same time. Things got more complex considering that instead of having, for example, twenty lines pokies now had 243, 720 and even some jaw-dropping 1,024 ways to win!
But from the player’s perspective, everything got much simpler because in these pokies all you got to do is to land matching symbols next to each other.
You don’t have to memorize all the line patterns there could be – the fact that symbols are in adjacent reels is enough for you to expect a payout. It’s much simpler to play such games, because in order to see if you’ve won something during the last spin all you will have to do is simply to look at the reels: if five symbols are present on all five reels then you know that you’ve just hit a five of a kind! As a pleasant bonus the payouts will occur much more often considering how many ways of wins are in those games.
You also will be able to win much more with the Wilds than you would in traditional multi-line machines: here you will be able to make way more winning combinations without even worrying are the Wild symbols landing on active pay-lines or no. But like we know, each coin has its’ own flip side and all way pokies aren’t any exception to this rule.
The main drawback when we are talking about all way pokie machines is their relatively modest paytable. While these games indeed allow you to have wins on more frequent basis, the payouts there will be smaller. Therefore it’s hard to advice such pokies to the players who like high-variance games. But they surely will appreciate progressive jackpot games – a type of pokies where some percentage of each wager goes to the pot that fortunate man or woman can later get.
What do pokies mean in Australia?
For Australians pokies is just a part of their lives. While in other cultures it’s very popular to shame gambling, in Oz it’s just one of the numerous activities like going to the cinema or having a bowling evening with your friends.
You can find punters of all ages and social statuses when you go to one of the Australian casinos. In Australia pokies are just like pop songs: they are been played everywhere you would go. You don’t even have to drive to some casino in order to find pokie machines there. You can simply go to the closest pub and you can be sure that there will be some games waiting when you finally will set their reels in motion.
The only difference here is that casinos usually offer more games due to a bigger area. But you don’t have to drive all the way long to the casino only because of that.
Today you can join some of the countless gambling platforms online to try your luck there. The game catalogue you will find online is the same or even bigger considering that iGaming venues don’t have to physically store the games. But as for the convenience, it’s on the whole another level. You can play pokies wherever you are.
As for the clubs and restaurants that usually come with the casinos, you can make your own disco right at your living room. Just order some pizza and turn on the Jamiroquai! In case if you are more introverted type of person and don’t like loud music and crowded places, then you will enjoy gambling online even more since playing pokies over the Web will allow you to isolate yourself from other players.
Moreover, you can even turn off all the sounds if they are irritating you for some reason! Can you imagine doing that in any land-based casino out there? You also can allow yourself to wear anything you like. You may even have no clothes at all while you are playing pokies online!
Do you know any casino where you could play naked? No matter how VIP you are, in land-based venues you will have to wear pants and you also will always need to have an ID with yourself in order to get inside. But in online casinos you can lay back and do whatever you like: scream at the top of your lungs, curse the dealer, run around naked every time you hit the big win, etc. As for the documents, no ID is required to start playing.
You will need it only when you will decide to make a withdrawal of your winnings. Last but not least: in online casinos you can actually record how you play pokies in order to share your winnings with friends.
If you will decide to do the same thing in some land-based places most likely you will be asked to turn off the camera the very first minute. So if pokies mean the same for you as they do for Australians, then you definitely should at least give a chance to the online casino gambling.
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