How I almost burned it all at Slott Casino

So here's the story of a week that was supposed to be ordinary, like work and sleep, and in the end became a saga of spins, bad food and crazy emotions. I'm writing really late, it's like two in the morning, my coffee's cold and my cat's half-asleep on the keyboard. I don't even have the courage to let him out, anyway, he's been sulking ever since I yelled at him during a failed jackpot.

🤑 Rain, poker and losing (again...)

At first, I was just digesting a crappy poker night I'd wasted in Marseille. No sun, only water, and I decided to try Slott Casino. I was in a bit of a rage, I wasn't even looking to win anymore, I just wanted to see if the machines were going to make me laugh or make me go crazy. I signed up without reading the conditions, and frankly, I clicked everywhere like a moron. The interface is better than some stuff in France, well it's not Vegas either but it does the job.

First spin on "Book of Ra" straight away, because I was told it's legit, you can smoke big bonuses if the goddess is willing. Spoiler: The goddess doesn't give a shit about me. I blew my 20 EUR entry fee over 10 minutes, got zero interesting combos, just little wins that make you believe for a moment in a miracle, just to suck you in even more. At one point, the cat starts howling because it wants its food, I'm annoyed, I type an auto spin, bam the cat jumps on the keyboard, unintentionally pausing in the middle of the bonus. The machine freezes, my heart stops, I see the book symbol (it's the bonus, like the bell in Mario, you know?), and then everything starts again, except my stress.

I started again on a machine like "Fruit Party", because the visuals are definitely less creepy than all that Egyptian or vampire stuff. Here, I got the combos: you have to line up the fruit as if you were shopping at Lidl, and if you have enough strawberries or oranges, BAM, it explodes (but not for real, alas). The animations kept me glued for ten minutes, I forgot to eat, I wasn't even thirsty anymore, I was too focused on the melon. You've got it, the little watermelon is like the queen, if you catch it you can make the meter go up like crazy, except that it's always the strawberry that comes out of the crumbs.

♠️ Roulette: my specialty for losing quickly (but with panache)

So roulette isn't quite the same as slot machines. First of all, you have to choose: do you want to bet on red, black, a number to flambé, or just hope it lands on that damn zero (which oddly never comes up when I need it to). Personally, I'm always a bit stressed in front of the roulette wheel - the sound of the ball spinning makes me sweat. One evening, I bet on 17, because my buddy swore it was his lucky number, but I burnt my ticket in three spins, and the only 17 that fell was the one on the next table, which was a real bummer... On Slott Casino, the roulette is clean, there's even a version with flashy lights, but I didn't stay long, the virtual croupier put me in a cold mood, like you're talking to yourself on your screen. Honestly, if you're going to give it a try, be careful not to get carried away, because your brain thinks it's seeing patterns where there's only chance, and in the end you end up making bogus calculations between two glasses of wine, and spoiler: you lose everything just the same.

🎁 Bonuses, or how to still believe in Santa Claus

Well, that's when I said to myself, okay you've got to scratch for bonuses or you're going to end up naked. Slott Casino throws promos at you all the time, and obviously, like the gogo that I am, I jumped at every offer. There was a promo like "50 free spins for new players", and everyone thinks they're going to break the bank. Not at all, 50 free spins means 50 chances to take mini-gains, like 0.25 cents, and you'll walk away with 17 EUR after 40 minutes, but my brain was like "Yeah man, you're in the green here!

I tried a cashback bonus, and it's as if the casino took pity on you. You lose 100 EUR, they give you 12 balls back to keep you feeding the beast. It worked, I put the money back on a "Big Bass Bonanza" machine, the one with the weird old fisherman. You have to catch fish, and if you ever get more than 3 fishermen on the grid, it triggers a bonus level where you have to catch big wins. Here, I swear, I was this close to opening some wine, I put my glass down, and my elbow hit the keyboard during a round bonus... The glass almost saved, but my laptop didn't quite. A little stress, but the machine doesn't care, it's still running, all I can do is squeeze my buttocks.

Some nights I've activated all the bonuses, I've caught free spins, hidden mini games, like a wheel where you win spins or cash. The wheel was a total scam, except once when I got a 5x, I screamed like a moron and my neighbor banged on the wall. I was hot, ready to burn it all down, but my luck ran out just like the atmosphere in a club at 5am. Beep, no more credit, I had to top it up with my credit card, the shame.

♦️ Symbol fetishes, idiotic superstition and the rage to lose

I've developed a real weird relationship with symbols. There's the wilds, the jokers, like the casino logo or random bugs, which replace everything to make you believe in a miracle. For me, it's the scatters, like books or chests, that drive me crazy. As soon as I see two of them on the grid, I make incantations (yes, I've really been mumbling nonsense, I think the coffee has destroyed my neuron).

On "Sweet Bonanza", it's the candies, like if you line up the multicolor bombs, you can PKR several times your bet. But the bombs never come out when you have +20 EUR, just when you've bet the min. I'm convinced that the machine is stalking and trolling me.

I also love the machines with the little critters, like "Dog House", you have dogs everywhere, you have to line up the kennels to get free spins. I had 3 kennels, I thought I was going to end up paying rent for the week, but in the end I took 8 EUR on 45 spins. The dog looks at you with his "too bad, you played wrong" face, so I threw a cushion at the screen.

There are a few symbols that don't work, like the 9 and 10 on classic "Starburst"-style stuff. You see them a lot, but they're like the bread and butter of machines, nourishing but not at all satisfying.

💥 Strat delusions and real FAILs

Well, let's face it, strategy-wise, it's complete freestyle. I tried the "little spin little spin big spin" technique, where you vary your spin to disrupt the algorithm (yeah, I still believe in that myth). I did a "cycle", like 10 min spins, then 2 max spins, a coffee break, then a raise after insulting the machine. As a result, you burn through your bankroll even faster.

I've watched forums, where people advise "never leave a machine after 20 losing spins, it will spit". Personally, I lost 40 spins in a row on "Fruit Party", nothing but an old 0.80 bonus. I wanted to change slot so badly, I ended up burning everything in one session on "Reactoonz", which is full of weird little monsters zigzagging all over the place. My brain melted and so did the coffee, so I bet everything I had and watched the bubbles pop like Cartoon Network. BIG FAIL, nothing won.

I've also tested the "night" technique, where you launch the machine at 2am, because apparently the servers are in loose mode. Total bullshit, you're just left with exploding eyes and a jelly brain. The only really good moment is when you manage to pause before losing everything, like REMAIN man, go to bed, start again tomorrow.

A word of advice if you're reading this far - set yourself alerts, like, "Stop at the next bonus". Otherwise, you're in a black hole, spinning and spinning and inventing strategies that never work. Anyway, the real tryhard is just having fun and sometimes winning peanuts.

I had two or three little sweats: once, the cat did a reboot in the middle of the win, and I thought I'd lost the bonus, except that Slott saved the game. Nice, but you can't put a price on fear. And another time, I spilled wine on the trackpad, the right click was KO'd, I ended the session with the space key to do everything. I really need a waterproof mouse pad, or just stop drinking while playing.

So, I'm still checking out the slots right now, I've got a playlist and I've got some crazy ritual to get the symbols to come out. Sometimes I put on a lucky hat, I've even tried to play with a lucky sock, result: NOTHING. You have to accept that there's randomness everywhere, and that the casino likes deconstructed players like me. But at least I've got spin stories to tell and, sometimes, the cat wins more than I do by triggering bonuses unintentionally.

Go ahead, I'll go back to making coffee, or sleeping, depending on what the next machine decides.