Games like Dancing Drums have offered players a tricky choice: Go for less spins and taller reels, which are harder to win on but offer bigger wins when they occur, or more spins with shorter reels, which tend to offer a more consistent bonus experience, on average.
The new Dancing Drums Link, a new three pot variation, takes it a step further, with the opportunity to win jackpots on the free spins, as well as win additional spins upfront on one of the versions. Brian showcases the various features here, but it’s the second bonus in this video that triggered today’s question:
If you get the more games and the jackpot pots to close together, wouldn’t it be better to choose the option with the most spins, so you have more opportunity to win jackpots? It worked out for you when you picked 10 games of course and got a retrigger. I love to see your big wins.
CobbManor on YouTube
Effectively your choice of more spins or taller reels is a volatility choice. The taller reels means more spaces available to land a jackpot symbol. By comparison, the more spins option gives you less spaces and more chances.
The long term payout of any of the options is the same, so they’ve balanced the two options out that you’ll see jackpot symbols a bit more often on the taller reels to make up for the lower spin count. And, with the taller reels, they have the space to do it.
In the long run, it balances out. In the short run, the less spins and taller reels option will be more all over the place – more likely to have a bonus that skunks you, and also more likely to have a bonus that outperforms, as you saw in the two examples in this video where both bonuses were over 100x his wager, but depended mostly on a single line hit.
The more spins and shorter reel options will tend to have less extremes in both directions, but will still of course depend on the spins that happen in the bonus. You’ll be less likely to be skunked, and less likely to win something massive, with the bonuses more likely to fall somewhere in between.
So in the end jackpot odds are in the long run going to be similar, but within a particular bonus you’re likely to see more consistency on how often you get jackpots, and which jackpots, in the higher spin counts.
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