Last year, some notable online casino websites launched what is known as the richest online slots tournament ever, the SUMMER SLOTS SERIES, featuring a combined prize of $700,000 in cash. This online slots tournament was held on the whole months of June, July, and August 2009. The tournament was divided into three parts, allotting a month for each part, and a fourth part at the end of August that awarded special prizes to the players who had made the highest winnings.

And this year, the Summer Slots Series is back! The most notable online casinos that will feature this exciting online slots tournament are as follows:

• English Harbour »
• Millionaire »
• Silver Dollar »
• Super Slots »
• Caribbean Gold »
• VIP Slots »

The 2010 Summer Slots Series started last June 1, and will be held until August of this year. This tournament is divided into three main parts for each month and a fourth part at the end of August. The total accumulated prize pool for this tourney is a massive $500,000 which will be divided among the winners!

The only requirement for you to join is that you should have an account in any of the casinos stated above, and pay a buy in of $10 for an entry to the tournament. If ever you run out of credits while the tourney progresses, you can re-buy for $10. If you accumulated a total of 5 or more re-buys during the Part I of the tourney, you will be granted a free buy in entry for the Part II. Likewise, if you have 5 or more re-buys in the Part II, you will also be granted free entry to the Part III.

Summer Slots Series Part I

The first part of the Summer Slots Series tournament has started on June 1, 2010 and is scheduled to end on the 30th of June. This part of the tourney features the Funky Chicken video slots game, a 5-reel, 25-payline slots with a minimum bet of 1 cent and a maximum bet of $10 per spin. It accepts up to 25 coins per spin, and has a maximum jackpot of 5,000 coins, featuring a classic farm theme.

The prize pool for this part is $100,000. At the end of the tourney’s first part, the online casino will award prizes to the top 275 players. Following is the prize breakdown for the Part I:

• 1st – $50,000
• 2nd – $20,000
• 3rd – $7.500
• 4th to 5th – $2,500
• 6th to 10th – $1,000
• 11th to 20th – $500
• 21st to 40th – $100
• 41st to 100th – $50
• 101st to 150th – $25
• 151st to 275th – $10

Summer Slots Series Part II

The second part of the Summer Slots Series tournament is scheduled to start on July 1, 2010 and will be held until the 31st of the same month. The game that will be featured is the 5-reel, 25-payline Shaaark! video slots game, that accepts from $0.01 up to $10 and up to 25 coins per spin. And as the name suggest, the game theme revolves around a dangerous sea with sharks.

The prize pool for Part II is $150,000. The online casino will award 500 best players at the end of this part of the slots tournament. Here is the prize breakdown for this part:

• 1st – $60,000
• 2nd – $25,000
• 3rd – $10,000
• 4th to 5th – $5,000
• 6th to 10th – $2,500
• 11th to 20th – $1,000
• 21st to 40th – $200
• 41st to 100th – $100
• 101st to 200th – $50
• 201st to 500th – $25

Summer Slots Series Part III

The third part of the Summer Slots Series tournament will be held starting from August 1 up to August 31, 2010. Part III will be featuring the game California Gold video slots game, a 5-reel, 25-payline online slots game that has a theme of classical gold mining. It accepts up to 25 coins, from $0.01 to $10 each coin per spin, and it has a jackpot of 5000 coins.

The total prize pool for Part III is $175,000. The top 800 players will be rewarded by the online casino according to this breakdown:

• 1st – $75,000
• 2nd – $25,000
• 3rd – $10,000
• 4th to 5th – $5,000
• 6th to 10th – $3,000
• 11th to 20th – $1,000
• 21st to 40th – $200
• 41st to 100th – $100
• 101st to 200th – $50
• 201st to 800th – $25

Summer Slots Series Part IV

The fourth part of this tournament is called the Summer Slots Overall Prize, and it will be held at the end of August, after the third part of the tourney has been completed. It is more likely an awarding part. The player who managed to obtain the highest amount of balance combined during the course of the three parts of the tournament will be awarded with a massive prize of $75,000 cash!

I believe that you would not want to start the tournament just to be forced to leave because of some factors that requires your immediate attention. Thus, your initial buy-in will be forfeited, resulting to a complete waste of your time. Therefore, here are some tips that you may need and you can implement to avoid this kind of situations while you are playing on an online casino tournament.

Inform the people in your house that you are playing in an online casino tournament. Tell them that you don’t want them to interrupt your playing and disturb your game. Ensure that you will not be interrupted, unless the situation calls for an emergency. If you suddenly run out of enough time to play in the tournament and you have to immediately deal with these emergencies and other things more important than gaming, have someone that could step in and sit in front of your PC to continue the action that you had left.

Include some attention towards your own comfort. This can be included in your preparation before you participate in a casino game tournament online. One good preparation for your comfort is to make sure that you have some food and a drink beside you before you start playing in the online casino. And for an important measure, you have to visit the toilet first before you sit and play in front of your computer. Once you start the tournament, you can’t afford to leave your game to get food and a drink once you feel some hunger and thirst, or visit the toilet once nature calls while you are playing. Having everything prepared for your comfort will give you more concentration on the casino game tournament.

Set up a positive gaming environment. There are some gamblers who believe that setting a positive environment while playing in the online casino tournament can positively affect the results in your game. Though it seems quite questionable, this positive gaming environment while you are at the tournament will surely improve your playing experience, because you will be having much more fun. Things like playing your favorite music in the background or lighting some scented candles can help in setting up a positive tone for your gaming. Also try to make a peaceful spot around you that you will enjoy while you are playing. This can help you feel better if you end up losing in the tourney.

Keep a cool head and emotion. Probably one of the most important thing to take note is to have a relaxed mood and a cool head. Before you play, settle any emotional problems you may have and keep problems away from your games. If it is inevitable, then do not play. Also, try not to get too emotionally attached to the casino tournament results. Remember that the outcomes in tournaments are derived mostly out of luck than the playing skills you may have. If you are always keeping a cool mind, you will not feel too bad if you lose in the tournament.

VIP Slots Tournaments

Speaking of tournaments, first thing that will come to our minds is that this is a kind of contest that participants aim to be the best among the others. And when it comes to casinos, particularly in slots tournament, players can join and give their best plays in which the goal is to build the biggest chip stacks among the other players. There are some online casinos that require an entry fee for those who want to join the slots tournament, while there are also those who offer free casino tournament, considered as freerolls.

How to Play on a Slots Tournament

Online slots tournament is very popular these days. It has become an increasingly famous way of gambling online without risking too much money on the line, and there is no need for any special skills to be mastered. You just have to rely purely on your luck to make it to the top, the same as any slot machine games you play.

If you are already registered, then you can list your username as a participant in an upcoming online slots tournament. There are a number of ways a slots tournament can be played at an online casino. The most common way a slots tournament is run is as follows:

1. You pay a set entry fee of a nominal amount (typically between $5 and $30) this gets you $1000 of play money you use in the tournament so you do not have to risk your own funds.

2. You can play as much as you want either over a certain time period (eg from 1st August until 20th August). Or you can play as much as you want for a set time (eg 90 minutes, but you can stop and start as much as you want to thus you can play 15 minutes one day and another 15 the next and so on until your 90 minutes are used up).

3. Your aim is to win more than everyone else in the tournament (or to come in the top 3 or top 12 or how ever many they are giving prizes for).

4. You can stop playing when ever you want to and do not have to use up the full time allotment. There is usually a leader board so you can see how well you are doing (and thus you know when to quit while your ahead).

There are different slots tournament variation on each online casinos, in which it depends on what software is running the casinos.

Vegas Technology Slots Tournament

Online casinos powered by Vegas Technology software, such as SuperSlots, Crazy Slots, and English Harbour Casino, offer freeroll slots tournaments with real prize money. All you have to do is to just sign up as a real money player and then you can join the tournament for free. This is the most popular kind of slots tournament since players can win large prizes for free.

You just have to play 1 slot game in a week’s time, and after a week, players will be ranked and the top 300 players to win the most amount will win prizes. There can be 2 different ways in which the casinos can offer prizes for tournament winners. One is a real-money prize fund which you can encash directly, and the other is a bonus prize fund which can only be cashed out after accomplishing a set wager requirement. Basically, real-money prize is lower in value compared to the bonus prize fund. Sometimes, casinos offer both prizes to their tournament winners.

There are also slots tournaments powered by Vegas Technology in which they require a small fee, but the prizes are relatively higher than those of a freeroll.

Microgaming Slots Tournament

Microgaming-powered casinos offer 3 types of slots tournament: the Sit and Go, the Scheduled, and the Private.

The Sit and Go slots tournaments are those that start instantly as soon as the minimum number of players have registered. Players can play on this tournament at any time of the day or night. These tournaments are open to all players registered in any Microgaming casino.

They can be played at any time of the day or night, and are the slots equivalent of sit-and-go poker tournaments for those of you that play online poker. These tournaments are open to any player at any casino on the Microgaming network so you usually don’t have to wait long to start. It will start when 5 players have joined. Each player will be given usually 5 minutes of playtime, and the top 2 players win the prize.

The Scheduled slots tournaments in Microgaming are offered, both as freeroll and with fees, every 2 to 4 hours. So in total these casinos could have as many as 30 slot tournaments available to enter at any one time. From time to time these casinos also offer really massive slots tournaments.

The third type which is the Private, is only available to those players of a particular casino.

PlayTech Slots Tournament

PlayTech slots tournaments are classified as a Who Wagers the Most style, in which players are given a set time frame, usually one day or one week, to play on a range of games, and the top 60 players who wager the most on these games will win the prize.

There are other enchantment of online casino tournaments. Most of the tournaments are freerolls, which entails you that there is no buy-in. Despite the fact that these offer nominal prizes, they enable players to start a bankroll without investing their own funds. On the other hand, there are promotional tournaments that have glamorous cruises and other bumper prizes.

Most online casino tournaments are offered in slot games, but there are tournaments available in other games as well. Online casino tournaments are classified in many different ways.

Online casino tournament is a plain and sailin’ way of winning big without putting much of your bankroll at leap in the dark! The common and the most played online casino tournament variety is slots, however, several online casino also offer tournaments such as blackjack, video poker, caribbean stud poker, roulette and more of the table games.

HOW TO JOIN?

Once you’ve enter the tournament, you are given an amount of casino chips to start playing. You have a limited amount of time to try to establish an extensive chip stack by playing the tournament game. Some online casino tournament needed an entry fee, but there are also many free online casino tournaments also known as the “FREEROLLS”.

FREEROLLS

In the freeroll tournaments, players do not have to pay for the entry fees. Online casinos offer freeroll tournaments to allured players and to reward loyal players. Also, they’re offered freeroll tournaments so that they can take in the procedures and gain a comfort level without having to make an investment.

THE REWARDS

Some online casino tournaments have cash prizes. These are awarded to winners, may be issued by check or if deposited in the players’ accounts they can be immediately withdrawn.

Other tournaments have prizes as bonuses. The funds are transferred to the players’ accounts but the players need to meet wagering requirements before withdrawing them.

CLASSIFYING ONLINE CASINO TOURNAMENTS

Online casino tournamnet has tournament variations:

Sit and Go Tournament- Popularly in an online poker, players can fill up a space and as soon as the minimum specified places are filled the tournament starts. The scheduled tournaments are disclosed in advance and players may be needed to register before playing.

Single Table Tournament- From the word itself, single table tournaments are decided in one round.

Multi-table Tournament- A specified number of winners from the first round move to the second round. The winners of the 2nd round move to the 3rd round and so on to the final round.

Multi table tournaments have 2 or 3 rounds. Many multi table online casino tournaments have smaller prizes for the in-between rounds, especially in mega promotional events.

Rebuy Tournament- In rebuy tournaments players can pay the rebuy amount and take another go. If they play better the second time that performance is taken into account. Rebuy online casino tournaments id typically have an unbounded number of rebuys, however, each rebuy costs the player.

No matter what kind of tournament you choose to play in, you’ll always enjoy the advantage of a huge leverage. While the convenience of playing from home is always nice, in online casino tournament, you can play anytime and anywhere!