Slingo is an online casino game created in 1994 by New York property developer Sal Falciglia Senior. Its name tells you a lot about what the game involved – Slingo is a portmanteau of the words slots and bingo (okay, I could have used ‘blend word’ instead, which is another word for the same thing, but opted for portmanteau in a vain attempt at sounding more mysterious, exotic and perhaps even a bit smarter).
Most online casinos will host multiple variants of Slingo, which share the same core mechanic but have different graphics, themes, and (sometimes) features.
The first time you play Slingo, it might not seem obvious how to play it. With that in mind, this article will explain how Slingo works, the best way to play it to maximise your RTP, and where you can play it.
How Does Slingo Work?
Slingo games are all played on a numbered 5×5 grid that resembles a bingo card, because that’s pretty much what it is. Like bingo, the aim is to complete lines (called ‘Slingos’) by finding all the numbers on them or – the ultimate prize – complete the whole grid for a full house.
Slingo Layout
Here’s a screenshot of Da Vinci Diamonds Slingo in demo mode, which shows the basic features of Slingo. A €0.20 stake is used throughout the screenshots throughout this article:
The most important part is that 5×5 grid, which displays your numbers. To the left are the payout amounts for different numbers of winning lines. 1 or 2 lines pay nothing, but after that, you’ll win an ever-increasing amount as you complete more winning lines, up to a maximum of 12, which is a full house.
Immediately to the right of the grid is a breakdown of how much you’ll win if you get between 3 and 5 Wilds and/or Super Wilds on a spin. In the screenshot, you’ll win €0.80 if you get three wilds, €10 if you get four, and €400 in the unlikely event you get five.
To the right of this is the spin button, which starts a game of Slingo. Underneath this is the stake selection button. The stake is for the whole game of Slingo (assuming you don’t pay for any extra spins), rather than for each spin.
You start a Slingo game with 8 spins, but are sometimes given more if you get a Free Spin symbol.
Symbols
There are many versions of Slingo, and they tend to share common symbol types, although the actual name and design of the symbol varies from game to game.
Here are some of the symbols you’ll come across in Slingo:
Number Symbol
Most of the symbols you’ll get are number symbols. If you get a symbol that matches with one in the same column of your grid, you’ll ‘dab’ (mark off) that number.
Blocking Symbol / Devil
This symbol blocks that column for the rest of the spin, so you won’t get any more symbols.
Wild / Joker
The Wild or Joker is a powerful symbol that you can use to mark off any number in the column above on your grid.
Super Wild / Super Joker
Even more powerful is the Super Wild or Super Joker. This allows you to mark off any number on the entire grid.
Free Spin
This gives you an additional spin for free.
Coin Award
This symbol gives an instant cash prize. Da Vinci Diamonds Slingo doesn’t have an equivalent symbol, so the one below is taken from another Slingo game.
Breakdown of a Slingo Game
To start a game of Slingo, you choose your stake, then click the spin button. This is where the slots part of Slingo makes an appearance, as the winning numbers are revealed at the bottom.
If you get a Wild Symbol (called a Joker with some versions of Slingo), you can choose which number to select from the column above. In this example, you’re best to select the 39, as it’s the centre square (you’ll find out the optimum Slingo strategy in the next section):
There are also Super Wilds (or Super Jokers). With these, you can select any square on the grid:
In the example above, there’s a Wild symbol but all of the squares in the column above are already filled. If this happens, the Wild can’t be used to select a number.
If you get a full column, row, or diagonal, you get a Slingo:
Once you’ve completed all the spins, the game ends. If you have 2 or fewer Slingos, you can choose to ‘End Game’.
Alternatively, you always have the opportunity to pay more money for an extra spin. The cost of an extra spin varies significantly, and depends on how favourably the grid has been filled in, and the likeliness of completing Slingos.
In this example, the cost for an additional spin is €0.06 for an initial €0.20 stake. Since only two Slingos have been completed and it’s not that easy to make multiple additional Slingos, the additional spin cost is quite low:
After one additional spin, three Slingos have now been completed, so you have the option to ‘Collect’ your winnings:
If the grid is more complete, the cost for an extra spin increases, sometimes to many times your original spin stake. With Da Vinci Diamonds Slingo, a warning message is shown if the spin price reaches a certain threshold, relative to your original stake:
In the example below, the total amount staked is €18.09. This includes the original €0.20 stake and €17.89 in extra spins:
If you have 8 or more Slingos, you have the additional option to receive a smaller payout and also play the bonus round. For Da Vinci Diamonds Slingo, the value of the bonus round increases if you’ve completed more Slingos:
- 8 Slingos – 6 spins with a x1 multiplier
- 9 Slingos – 8 spins with a x2 multiplier
- 10 Slingos – 10 spins with a x5 multiplier
- 12 Slingos – 12 spins with a x10 multiplier
Incidentally, it’s impossible to have exactly 11 Slingos: to have 10 Slingos, there must be one unfilled square in the grid that isn’t on one of the diagonals, and this empty square will always be part of one row and one column.
If you choose the bonus round for Da Vinci Diamonds, it plays in a very similar way to the bonus round of a conventional online slot.
Here’s the bonus round if you end up with a full house (12 Slingos):
In this example, the bonus feature paid €48 and the 12 Slingos paid €15, giving a total win of €63:
As you can see, in this case, you’d have been better off just taking the €70 win without doing the bonus round. Obviously though, there’s no way to know which option will pay out more.
If you get three or more wilds, you’ll win an additional amount, as shown in the first screenshot. Here, there are three wilds, which gives a win of €0.80, in addition to any wins you might get if you get 3 or more Slingos:
Something worth bearing in mind is that paying for additional spins can be extremely costly, and you can end up paying far more in stakes than you can possibly win (assuming you don’t choose to do the bonus round and get very lucky).
In the screenshot below, for example, after starting with a modest €0.20 stake, the total amount staked has reached €133.53. Despite this, the amount that can be collected at that point is only €4.80, and the maximum payout for 12 Slingos is only €70:
After multiple additional spins, the total staked has reached almost €200:
For the purposes of making screenshots of the bonus round (and because I was playing the demo so wasn’t at risk of losing money), I went to the bonus round. After winning additional free spins on multiple occasions, a total of 40 spins were played:
The total win was €9.20, and these winnings were multiplied by 10, as it was the highest value bonus, to give total free spins winnings of €92. This was added to the €15 payout for 12 Slingos, for a total win of €107.
Despite the relatively lucky bonus round, with multiple additional spins, the amount won was significantly lower than the €198.93 staked.
In general, as you’ll see in the next section, you shouldn’t pay for additional spins. As well as risking losing a lot of money, paying for additional spins also reduces the RTP (Return To Player) of Slingo.
Optimum Slingo Strategy
Slingo is unusual compared to most online slots because the way you play affects how much you win, and your overall Return To Player (RTP). This is because you can choose where to use the Wilds / Jokers.
It’s important to know the best way to play Slingo, to reduce the house edge as much as possible.
The help section for Da Vinci Diamonds Slingo includes details of the best strategy to use:
To summarise this strategy:
- Place your Wilds and Super Wilds in the position that moves you closer to completing a Slingo (or better still, multiple Slingos).
- If more than one position gets you just as close to completing Slingos, choose the position that covers the most win lines.
Priorities of Positions
The grid below is coloured to show the relative importance of the different positions:
- Centre number – the most important square because they cover 4 win lines
- Diagonal numbers – these cover 3 win lines passing through them, and should be prioritised next
- Remaining numbers – these cover 2 win lines, so are the lowest priority
Should You Buy Additional Spins?
Although it’s very tempting to buy additional spins, there are a couple of very good reasons to avoid this:
- It lowers the RTP
- It can get very expensive and you can easily lose a lot of money relative to your initial stake
Because of this, our advice is to not buy any extra spins. If you run out of spins, you’re best to just take any winnings you might have, or stop playing even if you haven’t won anything.
RTP of Slingo
The RTP (Return to Player) of Slingo will depend on the version you’re playing, but tends to be around 95%. Here’s a screenshot showing various RTPs for Da Vinci Diamonds Slingo:
As shown, the highest RTP is achieved by playing the best strategy on the standard game (as opposed to the bonus game), without playing any extra spins.
Where to Play Slingo
Many online bookmakers and casinos host Slingo games. Here are a few places where you can play:
How to Win at Slingo
If you play optimum Slingo strategy, as outlined above, you won’t beat the house edge. All you’ll do is lower it and give yourself the highest RTP. In the long-term, you’ll still lose money (with a 96% RTP Slingo game, you’ll lose £4, on average, for every £100 staked).
The good news is that you can use Slingo to make long-term profits by using it to complete worthwhile casino offers.
To give you an example, here’s an offer on Oddsmonkey that uses Slingo:
Here’s the Oddsmonkey guide for the offer:
Doing the offer as described has a long-term positive expected value (EV) of £0.79. Here’s a breakdown showing where this value comes from.
- Average return on £5 cash wagering = 96.58% of £5 = 0.9658 x £5 = £4.83
- Average loss on initial wagering = £5 – £4.83 = £0.17
- Average profit on £1 bonus = 0.9658 x £1 = £0.96
- Expected Value = Average overall profit = £0.96 – £0.17 = £0.79
If you want to check the EV for yourself, or perhaps want to use a different version of Slingo, you can use Oddsmonkey’s excellent EV Calculator. Here it is filled in for this offer:
Conclusion
Slingo is a very popular crossover of online slots and bingo. There are many different versions of Slingo, which tend to share many common features.
Although you can’t ‘beat’ Slingo by playing with optimum strategy, you can minimise the house edge and give yourself the highest possible RTP (Return To Player) if you use your jokers in the best way possible.
One way you can give yourself the edge is by using Slingo to complete +EV (positive expected value) casino offers, like those offered by Oddsmonkey.
