An overwhelming majority of the games at online casinos are pokies. Online pokies are games based purely on luck. Your choices cannot influence the outcome of any spin. However, you do make certain choices that determine the level of your playing experience.
Upfront is the choice of the online pokie itself. The critical factor that you must understand in this regard is the variance of the online pokie. Some pokies will deliver payouts quite frequently, but these will be smaller amounts. Such pokies have low variance. Other online pokies deliver payouts infrequently, but these can be very large amounts. Such pokies have high variance. You have to decide where your objective lies and select accordingly.
The problem arises because the variance of online pokies is not specified in the public domain. You have to make that assessment from the payouts. Progressive jackpot pokies have the highest variance. In other pokies, if the highest payout is far above the rest then the variance is likely to be high. Another indication of high variance is fewer paylines.
In all of the older online pokies and some of the new ones you will be asked to select the number of paylines. The choice in this case is simple and inviolable. You always activate the maximum number of paylines available. This is because if combinations of like symbols appear on paylines that are not activated then no payouts are made.
A very important choice that you have to make is the bet amount. Responsible gambling practices require that you wager within your means. So you have to work out your bankroll and then select a bet size that will give you a reasonable playing time. In general, the bet amount is the product of the coin size, the number of coins and the number of paylines. There will be online pokies in which some of these parameters will be set by default. If you are playing progressive online pokies in which the jackpots are randomly triggered then you must keep in mind that larger bet sizes give you greater chances of hitting the jackpot.
Many online pokies offer a gamble game, also referred to as double up option. You have to choose whether to go for it or not. If the total win in the spin is more than the total bet then you should give this option a skip. Otherwise you may try to recover your bet amount through this game.