Technology in the noughties is all about finding new ways of making our lives much easier, more comfortable and more productive by wasting less time – after all, time is money! The same applies to the gaming industry as the birth of online casinos has brought gambling right into people’s homes (and laps) and with access from a range of technological devices with an internet connection. Nowadays all video slots have been installed with an autoplay feature in order to give players a seamless as well as exciting user experience.

How does it work?

The autoplay feature in itself is quite self-explanatory; it allows you to repeatedly play the slot game without manually having to activate any buttons, which means that you don’t have to hit ‘Spin’ every time. This enables you to check your emails, grab a bite to eat and pour yourself a glass of wine while you bag some cash prizes. Furthermore, this feature automatically speeds up the game, which is a plus for those of you who are a little impatient and don’t like waiting for a bonus feature to be triggered.

But, before you get all excited and hit that ‘Autoplay’ button, there are a few things you need to consider. To make things clear, switching to autoplay mode will cause the reels to spin over and over again with the same betting options. Therefore, you should think about the number of paylines you want to play on (it’s always best to activate them all, however, not all players may want to do so) and how much you wish to wager per line. Be careful, because if you turn on the autoplay feature while on max bet, you’ll go bust before you know it! You can also set a predetermined number of spins, which will help keep you from losing all the contents of your bankroll (the slot itself will give you a few options). To prevent this, there are plenty of games which have a safe gambling feature wherein you’re asked to set your loss limit before you begin playing. Furthermore, after you’ve played your set number of spins, some online video slots inform you that the feature has come to an end and give you the choice to reactivate it.

The Pros and Cons

The most pertinent advantage is that the feature saves the player time so that you can play a large number of spins within a specified period of time. Nowadays, even tablet and mobile slots have this option. However, there are some limitations to this function; speeding up the game also means losing out on all the great graphics, animations and sounds which game designers take months of hard work to create. In addition, if you’re in autospin mode and you want to use a betting strategy like the Martingale and Anti-Martingale systems which involve either increasing or decreasing the size of your bet after each spin, you won’t be able to do so in autoplay, therefore, you’re better off switching to manual play. Remember that autospins are not free of charge and credits are deducted from your bankroll for each spin as you go along. Once you trigger the slot’s bonus feature, autoplay pauses as it’s usually up to the player to make some options on how to continue. When the bonus round has ended, autoplay will resume. You can also activate autospin during a free spins round to get through the bonus feature faster.

Turbo Mode

The latest wave of games has seen the inception of a new button on the bottom bar of slots, dubbed Turbo. As you can guess, turning on turbo mode during autoplay will spin your reels even faster. This is an ideal feature for the devoted slots player who sits and spins for hours. One of the big providers, Playtech, for example, first came out with this feature in 2013 in their Wolverine slot. Since then, all their games exhibit this additional function.

Conclusion

I admit, hitting the ‘Spin’ button every time you want to play your bet can be a tedious affair, so I’m all for autoplay. However, it’s also true that you miss out on the top-notch animations displayed by the most current slots which bear a close resemblance to video games. Whether you make use of it, boils down to your reason for playing.