If you like slot machines, then you probably know the Bally name. This iconic brand has had a presence in the American casino and gaming industry since the 1930s.

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Some of the best free slot machine games without downloading or registration to play for fun include More Chili, Wheel Of Fortune, Centurion, Fireball, Wizard of Oz, Monopoly. Free slots are a broad category of online games that are available to gamers at no real cash cost. Slot machines with progressives are programmed by random number generators to give out a higher number of symbols and winning combinations than non-progressive slot machines. This means that when you play a slot game without a progressive jackpot, you have more odds of hitting a winning combination and pocketing real money. Play progressive slot machines where the progressive jackpot is approaching its maximum value. First, players can attempt to win jackpots of less than the maximum size on progressive slot machines using the winning strategies I have and will be discussing shortly for non-progressive style slot machines. Get My Free Report Revealing.

It provided the slot machine designs that changed the way people play, and the company had a hand in the historic spread of casinos across the United States.

While Bally has had its ups and downs through several mergers and acquisitions, the brand survives to continue its mission of providing entertaining and innovative machines.

Where to play slots like Bally

Free to play Bally slots online

Most Popular Bally Slots

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It shouldn’t be surprising that Bally has a large catalog of slots available, given their time in the industry. Many of their classic Atlantic City slot machines have been made into online games. These five favorites are a great place to start.

• Quick Hit Super Wheel Wild Red – This mouthful of a machine features 5 reels and 30 paylines along with a lot of features and bonuses. While the design is inspired by traditional slot machines, the gameplay is completely modern. Lucky players will get a chance to spin the Super Wheel to unlock instant winnings, multipliers, wilds or loaded free spins. There’s also a range of Quick Hit jackpots on the line for every spin.
• Triple Cash Wheel – Another machine that mixes a classic design with a lot of modern bells and whistles. This slot machine plays three separate games simultaneously for a total of 15 reels and 60 paylines. On top of the exciting base game, Triple Cash Wheel includes a big bonus game that lets players earn instant credits or free spins with big multipliers.
• Lucky Tree – A fun Asian-themed 5-reel slot machine game with 30 paylines and several bonus rounds. The titular Lucky Tree adds a little excitement to each spin, with the potential for a breeze to send extra wild spaces tumbling down onto the reels. Lucky Tree also features a free spin bonus round and a special pick bonus round, which lets players turn over mystery tiles to try and create matching sets of animals for big bonuses.
• Acorn Pixie – A beautiful slot machine that brings an enchanted forest and its pixie inhabitants to life. The 5-reel machine with 30 paylines includes a touch of magic, which can flip losing spins around with a lucky 2×2 cluster wild that can appear to fill gaps. The bonus round is based around an extended version of the game, with 6 rows to fill and permanent wild spaces that branch out from the bottom to help fill out the reels with winning paylines. Players can choose to skip the basic spins and simply pay to play a number of free spins in the bonus round.
• Fu Dao Le – A very popular Asian-themed slot machine that features numerous ways to win. This 5-reel game doesn’t use traditional paylines, instead it allows any one of 243 potential left-to-right combinations to trigger a win. The game also includes 4 Red Envelope progressive jackpots that can be won with a lucky spin or through the Match-3 bonus game. There are also free spin bonus rounds, multipliers, stacked wilds and mystery spaces.

Mobile Gaming – Bally Slot Apps

Players interested in Bally games should be happy to hear that their interest in technological innovations extends to making many of their games available for play on mobile devices. This includes all of the top 5 picks listed above. While Bally does not have a dedicated slot game app, players should be able to find their slots listed on several different apps for iOS and Android phones. Free apps usually provide some free coins each day with an option to buy more for anyone who wants to play a longer session. Locations that allow players to bet real money on online slots should be able to find Bally machines on casino apps.

In general, Bally online slot games should play well even on mobile devices. Their clean designs scale well with smaller screens and should be easy to read, although games that use expanded reels may get a little cramped during the bonus round. Certain features such as the U-Spin wheel may not be fully supported on mobile apps. Players may have to settle for just pushing a “spin” button instead of actually spinning the wheel. It should be a small price to pay for the convenience of playing these great games on-the-go or at home.

Bally’s Innovations & Features

Throughout the company’s history, Bally has been a leader in general slot machine innovation. Aside from their historic contributions, they continue to provide improvements such as larger screens in cabinets and faster software. These important technological developments have been accompanied by some fun gameplay innovations too.

Following the merger with Alliance Gaming, Bally’s slot design shifted to focus on providing an engaging and fun experience along with the thrill of gambling. Its primary competitor, IGT, felt that gamblers didn’t want more complicated systems.

This directly led to innovations such as their Thrillions system, a twist on classic linked progressive jackpots. Beginning with their classic Betty Boop, Popeye and Blondie themed machines, the rollout in 1999 put the focus on smaller jackpots that were triggered more frequently.

Running off of the same philosophy, players will probably notice the common Quick Hit feature on Bally slot games. This non-progressive jackpot system provides a full range of payouts with frequent minor pots and rarer, proper jackpots for the big strikes.

Bally hasn’t forgotten the joys of large community-linked payouts though. Players looking for larger more traditional progressive jackpots in modern machines can stick to the Red Envelope series, which includes fun games such as Fu Dao Le, Heavenly Riches and Super Rise of Ra.

The U-Spin bonus game is probably Bally’s most visible success. Starting with the Cash Spin slot machine, this eye-catching innovation provided a thrilling change to the typical bonus round format.

Lucky winners get to actually spin the digital wheel at the top of the machine for a chance to win large credit payouts, free games or even progressive jackpots. The real thrill comes from the built-in gesture control, which reacts to the speed and direction of the player’s swipe. The U-Spin wheel adds the fun of a game show to basic slots gameplay.

In general, players will see that Bally’s attention is focused on providing interesting and exciting bonuses. Bally slots can include large, expanding reels that provide more ways to win, or even simple money bag bonuses that let players pick one of three mystery bags with the chance of a big payout.

The introduction of the Buy A Bonus feature in the recently released Acorn Pixie machine clearly shows where future development is headed. The option for players to just pay for one last shot at the bonus round before they leave shows Bally’s commitment to a fun experience.

The Winding Tale of Bally

The actual Bally company began not as a slot machine company, but as a pinball developer. Raymond Moloney founded the Bally Manufacturing Corporation in 1932 in Chicago. The name came from its first product, the Ballyhoo.

The Ballyhoo pinball game was an early coin-operated piece that filled bars across America. In 1936, Bally used its experience and connections to expand into the growing gambling industry by creating the Bally Baby, a small mechanical slot machine.

Bally would mostly cease production of gaming machines during World War II to provide manufacturing power for the war effort. This didn’t slow down their product development though, with their tall “Hi-Boy” model releasing after the end of the war in 1945. This iconic design, while very basic by modern standards, created a look that would inspire the one-armed bandit for decades. Raymond Moloney’s death in 1958 triggered a rough patch for the company, with Bally almost falling into bankruptcy before a buyout and revival in 1963.

The revival was built upon the release of Money Honey, an innovative electromechanical slot machine. Featuring an electric hopper, the machine was able to handle larger and more complex payouts than purely mechanical machines. This raised expectations for slots and set up Bally as a market leader. By the end of the 1960s, it was estimated that Bally controlled nearly 90% of the worldwide slot machine market.

The 1970s and 1980s would see Bally use its profits to grow into a large umbrella company. Bally built the Park Palace Casino and Hotel in Atlantic City in 1979 as its first foray into casino operation.

Its electronics division attempted to enter the home video game market with the ill-fated Bally Professional Arcade.

Their acquisition of Midway Manufacturing in the 1960s would bear fruit as it dominated the arcade and home video game markets through its distribution of hits like Pac-Man and Space Invaders.

By the end of the 1980s, Bally owned the Six Flags chain, a set of health and fitness clubs and multiple casinos. This expansion proved to be draining. The Bally parent company would begin to separate and sell off its diverse divisions in the early 1990s to avoid financial hardship.

The slot machine division, now a subsidiary branded as Bally Entertainment, would be acquired in 1996 by the Alliance Gaming Corporation.

Founded in 1968, Alliance had its own long storied history. It began as Advanced Patent Technology, with a focus on developing new electronics and medical products.

Starting in 1979, the company tried to enter the rapidly growing gambling industry by buying the United Coin Machine Company and developing the Colorado Belle casino near Las Vegas.

Its 1985 merger with Omega Gaming allowed it to enter the video slot market. The next decade would see more property development, several rebrandings and a few mergers until it settled as the Alliance Gaming Corporation in 1994.

The merger with Bally Entertainment was a somewhat messy affair. Alliance Gaming hoped to compete for space against the dominant IGT in the newly developing riverboat and Native American casinos by joining with the still powerful Bally in 1993.

Early negotiations failed though, as Bally Entertainment ultimately sought a merger with WMS Industries. After a few lawsuits and a hostile takeover attempt, Alliance Gaming won out in 1995 with the merger completing in 1996. Bally ultimately became a subsidiary called Bally Gaming and Systems.

Following the merger, Bally grew and adapted to the changing markets by innovating gameplay. They focused on building more entertaining machines and providing powerful systems for casinos.

In 2006, it would go through its final name change, with Alliance Gaming renaming themselves Bally Technologies. After 8 years, Bally Technologies would be bought out by Scientific Gaming in 2014.

Scientific Gaming made its mark on the gaming industry with innovations in instant lottery games, including development of online lotteries and a mobile gaming app for retail lottery games. Somewhat poetically, this brought Bally under the same umbrella as WMS, which had been also bought by Scientific Gaming.

The Bally legacy lives on today as a leading slot machine developer and brand within the Scientific Gaming powerhouse.

If you want to play progressive slots, this post will explain how. In fact, it probably won’t be the longest post in the world, because playing progressive slots is no harder than playing any other kind of slot machine. You put your money in, you press the spin button, and you hope for the best.

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But what I’ve tried to do with this post is give you enough information about how progressive slot machines work that you can be an educated player.

And you can check our complete progressive jackpots guide to find out even more.

Not all these tips will apply to you, but I suspect most of them will, no matter your level of expertise.

Let’s go ahead!

What Is a Progressive Slot Machine and How Does It Work?

Most people know what a slot machine is, but if you’re completely new to the subject, here’s a quick description of slots games in general.

A slot machine game is a gambling machine with spinning reels. Each reel has symbols on it, and the point at which each reel stops is determined randomly. Specific combinations of symbols across a payline result in payouts.

The simplest version of a slot machine has three reels and a single payline horizontally across the middle of the machine.

Modern slot machines are often more complicated than this. They might have five reels, and the paylines come in a bewildering array of patterns. You have to place a separate bet on each payline, too.

The easiest way to describe paylines is to compare them with variations of bingo. They always run from left to right, but they sometimes come in a zig-zag pattern. You also have symbols that land on the rows above and below the center payline.

Originally, slot machines were powered by metal reels, springs, and gears. Now, the reels are just for show. A computer program called a random number generator (RNG) determines the results, and the probabilities are programmed into the RNG.

This enables the slot machine manufacturers to make bigger machines with more possible symbols and different probabilities for each symbol. This process is called “weighting.”

On an old-school, mechanical slot machine with 10 symbols on each reel, you had a 1/10 probability for any given symbol to show up.

But with weighting in place, some symbols might be programmed to come up more often and others programmed to come up less often. You might have some symbols which come up as often as 1/5 of the time and others which only come up as seldom as 1/20 or 1/50 of the time.

And, of course, the probability of getting multiple winning symbols to line up is calculated by multiplying the probability of getting that symbol on each reel.

Understanding this part is important because it makes it clear how the casino is able to offer such large jackpots without losing money. For the casino to make money from slot machines, they need a statistical advantage. They get that advantage by paying out at odds lower than the odds of winning. The difference is their long-term profit.

To offer a 6-figure or 7-figure jackpot, they need to be able to get odds that are 6 figures or 7 figures to 1. You can only do that if you weight the symbols so that they come up less often than they would on a mechanical reel.

I’ll have more to say about probability and odds in a bit.

A progressive slot machine, though, is a game where the jackpot gets bigger over time — as it gets played. A small percentage of each bet goes into the jackpot.

You’ll find three different kinds of progressive slot machines.

• The first is a standalone progressive. This is a game where the jackpot is exclusive to that game. Every bet fuels the jackpot just for that machine. The ticker doesn’t move unless someone is playing on that machine.
• The second is a local area network progressive. This is a game where multiple slot machines in the same casino share the same jackpot. If anyone is playing any of the machines in that network of games, the jackpot is growing for all those machines.
• The third is the wide area progressive jackpot. This is a game that’s networked with multiple slot machines in multiple locations. These jackpots grow huge because so many people are playing them.

Once someone wins one of these progressive jackpots, it resets to whatever its starting value was, and it starts growing again.

What Is The Best Progressive Slot Machine To Play

Where Do You Find Progressive Slot Machines?

You can find progressive slot machines at almost every casino in the world, although slot machines are more popular in the United States than in Europe. You can also find progressive slot machines at online casinos. The games available online vary based on what kind of software the casino is using.

You can find these games by looking for the games with a progressive jackpot ticker at the top of the machine. This is a digital display of the size of the jackpot. With wide area progressives, this number changes (grows) almost constantly, which adds to the excitement for prospective players.

If you’re having trouble finding a progressive slot machine in a particular land-based casino, just ask one of the employees there for help finding them. They’ll know where they are. Don’t forget to give the staff member who helped you at least a $1 tip for helping you.
You’ll get better service in general if you become known as a generous tipper. And casino employees talk.

Odds, Probability, the House Edge, and Payback Percentages

The method most gamblers and casinos use to measure the odds in a slot machine game is the payback percentage. This is the statistical average of payouts on that machine expressed as a percentage of each bet that should be paid back to the player in the long run.

Since the payback percentage is almost always less than 100%, it’s clear to see how the casino makes its profit.

The lower the payback percentage is, the faster you’ll lose your money when playing the machine. The payback percentage is just a function of how much you’ll win for each combination multiplied by the probability of hitting that combination.

The machines aren’t programmed to run in cycles or to start losing after a certain point to guarantee a certain payback percentage. The payback percentage is strictly a function of the probabilities and payouts.

You might have a slot machine that pays out some kind of prize 45% of the time. The size of those prizes multiplied by the size of those prizes is what determines the payback percentage.

One way to think about it is as if you were playing a simple gambling game where you’re flipping a coin and guessing which side it will land on.

If you win, you get 50 cents. If you lose, you lose 55 cents.
Half the time, you’ll win, but the other half of the time, you’ll lose a larger amount. Over time, you’ll lose all your money.

That’s how the math and probability behind all casino games works.

Most slot machines have a payback percentage of between 75% and 95%. Lots of factors determine the payback percentage for a specific machine. At more competitive casinos, you’ll generally see a higher payback percentage. At airports and bars, you’ll see payback percentages on the lower end of that scale. At casinos on the Strip in Las Vegas, you’ll see payback percentages at the higher end of that spectrum.

At casinos in less competitive locales, like Oklahoma, the payback percentages are generally lower.

Also, the denomination of the slot machine is a factor. Casinos make more money from a player betting $3 per spin than they do from someone betting 75 cents per spin, even if the payback percentage is better on the $3 per spin player.

Look at the math.

• 600 spins per hour at $3 per spin is $1,800. With a payback percentage of 95%, the game pays back an average of $1,710. The player loses $90 in an hour, on average.
• 600 spins per hour at 75 cents per spin is $450 per hour. With a payback percentage of 90%, the game pays back an average of $405. The player loses $45 per hour.

Even though the house edge is twice as high on the lower-stakes game, the casino makes less money per hour on average.

You’ll also want to keep two things in mind about the odds and probability as they relate to progressive slot machines.

The first is that the tiny percentage of each bet that fuels the jackpot comes directly off your payback percentage. It has to.

So a game that would otherwise have a 95% payback percentage would only have a 94% payback percentage once you account for the contribution toward the jackpot.

The second is that the payback percentage assumes that you’ll sometimes win the progressive jackpot. But in reality, you probably won’t ever hit that jackpot. The bigger the progressive jackpot, the less likely you are to win it.

This means that a 94% payback percentage might only be 90% after you account for never hitting the progressive jackpot.

For this reason, the odds and the payback percentage for a progressive slot machine are always worse than it is for just a regular old slot machine game.

You should also take advantage of any kinds of comps and freebies the casino is willing to offer. Those only amount to between 0.1% and 0.5% of your action, but you should get as much action as you can for your money. This includes taking advantage of the free drinks at the casino.

Of course, none of that applies at online casinos. Keep in mind, too, with online casinos, that many of them limit their payouts to their players to a specific maximum dollar amount per week. Winning $100,000 is a lot less fun if it takes you 100 weeks to collect.

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Playing Tips and Tricks

I don’t have many tips and tricks to offer a progressive slots player other than this.

Make sure you’re betting enough to be eligible for the progressive jackpot. Some games don’t require you to bet the max to qualify, but some do. It’s up to you to read the pay table to tell the difference.

If you’re not going to bet enough to win the progressive jackpot, find another machine to play.

Other than that, try to spin the reels more slowly. The more spins you pay for, the more money you’ll lose over time, on average. If you make 300 spins per hour instead of 600 spins per hour, you’ll probably lose half as much money on the slot machines over time.

Also, you should never play with money you need for something else. If you think you’re going to get lucky and solve all your problems with a progressive slot machine jackpot, you’re delusional.

An Easier Way to Win a Life-Changing Jackpot

Michael Bluejay wrote a great page about how you’re far more likely to win a million dollars by parlaying your winners on a table game.

In other words, you might bet $10 on a single number at roulette, and you’d win $350. Then bet the entire $360 on a single number again. This time, you’ll win $12,600.

Bet the entire $12,960 on a single number again, and you’ve won $453,000+.

The odds of winning these three bets in a row?

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Those sound like terrible odds, and they are.

But they’re still far better than the odds of winning that progressive slot machine’s jackpot.

Conclusion

That’s it, really. Playing progressive slots, like I mentioned at the beginning, just isn’t hard to do. You put your money in and hope to win enough money to retire for the rest of your life.

I don’t generally play progressive slot machines, myself. I don’t like the odds.

But I’ll play some of the time just for grins, and I think that’s the best approach. People win progressive slot machine jackpots every day, and you have just as good a chance of winning as anyone else.

The only strategy you really need to remember is to make sure you’re betting enough to win the progressive jackpot. Some games don’t allow you to win the big jackpot unless you’ve bet the max number of coins.

Other than that, these are games of luck. Treat them as such.

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