Australians are known for their love for gambling, but no game attracts the attention of the Australian gaming-lover as much as Pokies. In Australian casinos, you will find that pokies machines make up as much as 75% of the total games available. In fact, major casinos list the number of their pokies machines as a thing of pride.
There are sports inspired slot games available in most online casinos. Casinos should be about variety and excitement; and sports themes are a pull for the sports-mad Australian population.
What are Pokies?
Foreigners tend to wonder what Pokies are, seeing as this is not a term you will find much outside Australia and New Zealand.
Pokies are the name that Australians use for your regular slot machines, or fruit machines. Poker variants carry regular cards where you have to make winning hands, with rarer winning hands paying more. The lingo in Australia has evolved so gaming machines tend to be called pokies, rather than the term just referring to poker machines. Pokies are a game of chance and require little or no strategy. Pokies can be a thrill and it is possible to win as well as lose if you get in and out at the right time.
How to Play Pokies
Unlike a lot of other casino games that require strategy and planning, Pokies are quite easy to play and have no learning curve. All you need to do is insert your money into the machine, pick how much you want to stake per spin, and activate the spinning reels using the user interface on the machine screen. When the reel ends, if you are lucky enough to have landed a winning combination, the machine will either reward you with the amount you won or credit your winnings to your account.
As you can see, playing Pokies is quite easy, although some modern versions of the games have a lot of complexity, such as those with extra features like progressive jackpots, wild and scatters, and bonus rounds.
Even though the games were invented in America sometime in the late 19th century, it is safe to say that Australians have adopted pokies as their own, with the population being fond of this jackpot-style game for more than a hundred years.
Playing Pokies on the internet
As the internet got popular in Australia, business minded people saw the lucrative prospect of setting up online casinos as an alternative to regular in-house casinos. The Gaming Club was one of the first online casinos in the country and it helped spearhead the rise of online gambling in Australia.
A few years down the line, in 2004, an online version of Pokies was introduced into the country. Since then, many versions of the game have been made available online and every imaginable device in the Australian market. It is very easy to find different versions of online pokies on gambling platforms and to play them online for real money.
Getting lucky on Pokies
Most Pokies players swear by a particular casino, pokies machine or online platform. In fact, if their lucky machine is in use or unavailable, they might prefer to wait or not play at all. For online players, it might either be a lucky platform, lucky chair or lucky t-shirt. Unfortunately, there is really no such thing as a lucky machine or lucky Pokies accessories. Every game, regardless of the version, is designed the same way, and your likelihood of winning is down to the payout percentage. If a machine or casino has just paid out a large amount it’s likely it will be in “recoup” mode for a while. Luck is all in the timing.
There is not much you can do to influence the outcome of a Pokies game whether you are playing on an in-house casino machine or online. You cannot change if you will win or lose, all you can control is the amount of money you are betting and how much you are willing to lose or win before you quit for the day. Some offline players watch the machines and gauge when people have put a lot in, and the machine might be ready to turn to a payout cycle. Online casinos may give you some indications too, such as a rising progressive jackpot.
Back to the National Teams Newsfeed