For the love of slot machines: Gold Fish rules!

There's no need to torture me for the information, I confess: I love slot machines.

I love most types of slot machines, but I really go WILD for the ones that contain multiple bonus rounds and other special features. They are addicting to me, and I make it my personal goal to try and get every different type of bonus round on each new game I try. Sometimes I'm successful, and sometimes I'm not, but I have a lot of fun trying!

My absolute favorite slot machine at the moment is one called Gold Fish. It is one of the newer video reel slot machines, and nearly everything about the game is displayed using computer animation. There are no actual "reels" turning and locking into place; instead the game is played on computer-generated reels that are displayed on the machine's two screens. The main game is played on the screen directly in front of you, and all the bonuses are played out on both the main screen and a secondary screen above the machine depending on the type of bonus you get into. I think the secondary screen was probably developed so that people all over the casino can see what kind of bonus you're playing and entice them to come over and take a closer look. It works; I always find myself stopping my nearby game to watch other peoples' bonuses.

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I love this particular slot machine so much because an additional 10-cent "fish bet" tacked onto my wager gives me the opportunity to experience one of the six fish bonuses, and the machines are set so that these bonuses are triggered in a completely random manner. They are so random, in fact, that you don't have to have a winning combination (two matching symbols or more on most machines) in order to go into a bonus game. This is the biggest draw for me because so many of the slot machines out there allow you to get soooooo close to winning, but always seem to be one position off. Here I never know just when the next bonus will begin, so I can't get mad at the machine if I don't know how or when the bonus will be triggered (I know that's irrational, but I still do it).

The thing is, the bonuses can be fickle, and sometimes you can leave a bonus round with as little as 5 credits, which is certainly annoying when you can wait quite a while between bonus rounds on a "cold" machine. People who love and play Gold Fish regularly know the following to be true:

- No one wants to have to pick a bubble, because we always seem to pick the lowest amount.

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- When the pink fish shows up to spit out her numbers, it never fails that the "9", "3", and "0" will end up as "039" when they settle on the screen to award the credits if you've been doing badly before that bonus round.

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- Getting Goldie to pay you a visit with her free spin selections is cause for celebration every single time.

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- Everyone loves the kissing fish because we know that Goldie might kiss our bonus number and double it more than once.

There is an in-game bonus called "Fish Food", and it also leads to wild emotional swings. On the one hand, I can match every combination of fish food and get a really high score in the bonus round, or I can immediately get three turtles on my first three selections and pick the lowest bonus award right away. Nevertheless, I look forward to every bonus round with great anticipation, and they are what keep me coming back again and again.

Mentioning "cold" machines before, all slot machines go through cycles with their Random Number Generators (RNG), and you have to be patient and weather the cold spells until the next "hot" cycle with lots of bonuses come along. Still, I won't put more than $20 into any machine - even my beloved Gold Fish - if I'm not hitting any winning combinations at all, and I will move on to something else...even if it's another Gold Fish machine nearby!

The best non-bonus win I've gotten out of these machines was at Caesars Palace on a solo trip almost two years ago, soon after these machines were introduced in Vegas. Sitting with a nice Scottish couple (she and I got bonus rounds left and right; her husband sat between us and couldn't get a winning combination to save his life), I was actually chatting with them when the winning combination of five Goldies popped up on my screen. I had to stop and snap a photo because the 10,765 credits won looked so neat - even for pennies! High fives all around. I was playing the minimum bet for the maximum number of lines (plus the fish bet, of course), and still hit over $100 on that single spin. It just goes to show you that even penny machines can deliver some very nice wins. In the instance above, I was playing a penny machine with 20 lines + a 10 cent fish bet for 30 cents total - not a bad return!

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Next time you're in Vegas, give Gold Fish a try. More than one person of my acquaintance has come back as a Gold Fish addict based on that recommendation. Just be sure to leave some money there for my next trip, too!