When you’re playing a slot, there are many things that can go wrong. You might get distracted by the other people around you, or your phone may ring. Even though you can’t control what happens during the spins, there are a few things that you can do to increase your chances of winning.

For starters, you should learn how to read a pay table. This will help you understand the game better and make smarter decisions. If you’re not familiar with pay tables, they show how much you can win based on the symbols that appear on a particular slot’s reels. They also include other information, such as how the game’s bonus features work and how to trigger them.

The coloured boxes in the pay table example above display where the symbols need to land to trigger a payout. This is important because it shows you what probability each symbol has of landing on the reels and how to form a winning combination. You can access a pay table by clicking an icon on the bottom of a slot machine’s screen or by using its ‘i’ or help menu.

In electromechanical slot machines, the pay table was printed on the machine’s face. Nowadays, however, they’re usually found on a help screen or as a separate document. The latter option is often easier to read as it’s split up into different slides or pages. This makes it easy to scroll through the entire document or just read a few pages at a time.