How do Fixed Paylines Work for Real Money Slots
The very first slot machine featured three reels and a single fixed payline. You pulled the game lever and crossed your fingers that three Liberty Bell symbols would appear on the little screen. Fast forward over 100 years later, and the slot machine is completely digital, making it possible for people to play anywhere they have an internet connection.
The slots features and format have evolved over the years, including the use of paylines. When multiple paylines were introduced, they were not fixed; you chose how many you wanted to activate for the round.
New slots have fixed paylines or no paylines at all. With fixed ones, every line is active for the session. We still have real money slots in Canada with variable paylines, where you get to manually select how many paylines you want to play with. But keep in mind, the more paylines you have, the higher your shot of landing a payout.
What is a Payline?
When you look at a slot, you can see the reels and the symbols, but you can’t see the paylines. These elusive lines are pathways that move from the first reel to the right. A simple way to think about paylines is with a 3-reel, 1-row slot game, where there are only three spots for icons to land. Technically, those three spots are the horizontal payline.
As slots expanded their reels and rows, paylines expanded too. Games began to feature 9 of them, then 20 or 25. Later on, games with 50 or 100 paylines became available.
When you play online slots for real money, you can check the paylines by pulling up the game menu. They are displayed on one of the final pages in the menu. There, you’ll see horizontal paylines, diagonal paylines, zigzag paylines and more. Matching symbols must follow these paylines to trigger a win. We’ll discuss each type.
Horizontal Paylines
The most basic ones are horizontal paylines. These run a straight horizontal line from the first reel to the last. There’s typically one horizontal payline for each row.
Vertical Paylines
Vertical paylines aren’t completely vertical, since they need to be spread over all of the reels, but they can form a flattened “S” shape that covers the middle spot on the grid of 5-reel slot games.
Diagonal Paylines
Some paylines move diagonally and are known as diagonal paylines. For 3-reel slots, they create a perfect diagonal line, but for 5-reel slots they come back down after reaching the peak to create a perfect “V” shape, or an upside down “V”.
Zigzag Paylines
Zigzag paylines can be included in 5-reel slots and are simply paylines that go up and down, up and down, starting on the first reel and moving right.
How do Paylines Work?
Triggering payouts on a slot game requires a minimum number of matching icons to land, but it’s not enough for them to land anywhere on the reels; they must land on a payline to be considered a win. They dictate the pathway that the matching symbols must adhere to. For example, a simple horizontal payline means the matches need to land next to each other on consecutive reels, beginning with the first reel.
As you play, you’ll come across games that have special rules for paylines. In 21 Wilds for example, paylines pay left to right (the default) and right to left for double the payout possibilities.
Other slots don’t use paylines at all; these can be Megaways slots or “ways to win” slots. Both of these types of slots require matches to simply land on consecutive reels, beginning with the first reel; they can land anywhere on the reels, as long as there are no gaps between them.
The Difference Between Variable and Fixed Paylines
Slots with paylines (also known as win lines) have one of two types of paylines: fixed or variable. More common in older slot games, like Shopping Spree, variable paylines are manually adjustable. At the start of a round, select how many paylines you want to activate and you pay a bet per line. When you play, only the selected paylines lead to payouts should matching symbols land on them.
Fixed paylines are more common than variable paylines now. With fixed, all of them are in play all of the time. Instead of paying a bet per line, you pay a total bet per spin—an amount that can be customized. Using every possible payline maximizes your odds of landing a payout, which is why fixed paylines have become the preferred format.
Next time you want to play real money slots, compare the paylines included in games. The more paylines included, the more ways to win (however no paylines leads to the greatest number of win possibilities). For a fixed 100-payline slot session with a solid 97.10% RTP, try BGaming’s Fruit Million.