Slot Tournaments

Invitational Slot Tournaments

Online casinos reward their slot players for their real-money action, giving them access to a loyalty club of some sort immediately after they open accounts and start spinning the reels for real cash. Loyalty programs are multi-tiered, with each subsequent level offering bigger and better perks such as comps, free spins, and invitations for exclusive slot tournaments.

It makes sense tournaments in this format are not open to all members of the respective casino. Customers with qualifying loyalty status are invited to partake via email. Participation is either entirely free of buy-in charges or at a discounted fee, depending on the invited player’s current VIP status.

These events start at a scheduled date and time during the month. Taking the smaller number of entries into account, invitational events come with quite decent prizes for top-paying positions.

Buy-In Tournaments

Most scheduled tournaments require participants to pay a buy-in fee upon registration. Part of each player’s buy-in goes toward the prize pool. The casino also collects a portion of the entry fees as a means of compensation for hosting the tournament.

Let’s say you decide to register for one such tourney where the buy-in condition reads “$50 + $2.50”. This is to say each player contributes with a $50 fee that goes toward the prize pool while the gambling operator collects the other $2.50 for the trouble of organizing the event.

The cool thing about the buy-in format is that it allows the prize pools to grow quite large, with some tourneys boasting pools that reach the six-figure and even the seven-figure mark.

Here it is important to mention that once they buy in, each participant gets a fixed number of credits to play with in exchange for their entry fee. The casino keeps track of each player’s credit score to determine their position in the leaderboard.

Much like poker tourney events, the winnings you register during the tournament are not yours to keep. The prize you potentially collect is determined by your position in the leaderboard. Only the top positions pay, which is another thing to keep in mind.

Freeroll Tournaments

Many online casinos host freeroll tournaments where spinners are not required to contribute with buy-in fees to participate. There are two main types of freeroll tournaments.

Some freerolls lack any entry fee whatsoever, which means any member of the respective casino can join for the chance to win a slice of the prize-pool pie. This works to the advantage of rookie players as it helps them build a slot bankroll.

Of course, you need to be a registered member of the online gambling operator in order to gain access to this type of free tourney. In landbased casinos, new players are generally requested to sign up for the operator’s mailing list before they are allowed entry into the free competition.

One shortcoming of this entirely free format is the ratio of prize pool to registrants. Since there are no entry fees of any kind, hundreds and even thousands of entrants are competing for a share of the prize pool. The latter is usually around a couple of hundred dollars, sometimes even less.

The second category consists of freerolls where you buy your way in with the comp points you have accumulated through real-money play. Such competitions are understandably more exclusive because not all slot players at the casino would have collected the number of points needed to enter the event.

With fewer participants in the freeroll, the prize-pool to participants ratio is better. Yet, there is a catch here as well because you need to spend real cash to accumulate enough points to become eligible. The point accumulation rates differ from one online casino to the next but many operators offer a point per every $10 you play on the slots.

Re-Buy Tournaments

Events that utilize this format are also knownas “reloader” tournaments. This is pretty much the re-buy option some poker tournaments offer. As the name of the format suggests, here players are granted the chance to re-enter the race if luck turns against them and they suffer a bad streak.

We can distinguish between two sub-types of tournaments that utilize this format. With standard re-buy tourneys, you can pay the entry fee again but only on condition you have lost your entire stack of coins.

More often than not, the re-buy fee is to the same amount you have bought in for in the first place. In some tournaments, you can re-enter the contest a limited number of times. Others allow for unlimited re-buys. Once you buy-in, your original score is completely erased and you start afresh.

The second sub-category consists of the so-called “add-on” tourneys. These have a different structure. The participants again pay an entry fee in exchange for their starting stacks but their original scores are not erased after they buy-in but add up, hence the name of the format.

The number of add-ons is limited and is stipulated in the tourney’s conditions. Let’s say a given tournament allows for six add-ons at the same fee. Smart spinners will calculate their investment at 7x their buy-in fee so they can purchase all allowed add-ons.

Players who get far ahead in the race sometimes decide to do away with their remaining add-ons. However, this is not a smart move because the add-on fees are typically much smaller than the prizes in the leaderboard.