We get a lot of people curious about what this action or that might do to their spin or bonus. Here’s an example of such a question:
Does the outcome of a bonus change if you hit the spin button at any time during the bonus?
Margaret D.
Given that many slot machine bonuses are based on the random number generator and the moment an event happens, it’s quite possible that you did change your bonus outcome. You just won’t know if you helped or hurt it.
First off, if a bonus is predetermined or not isn’t always obvious, especially when it comes to things like free spins, as it doesn’t specifically say in the pay table if those are predetermined or not.
With picking we get some context clues; games where the remaining picks aren’t revealed at the end is a sure sign the bonus is predetermined.
But many games that have free spins use the RNG to determine the free spins. And you’ll never know whether you improved things or made them worse. That’s because we never see what the outcome we gave up by moving it along would be, and so we have incomplete information.
In the long run, like a bad Blackjack player taking what would have been the dealer’s card, it should even out, so it’s effectively a neutral thing, and not something we encourage players to stress too much about.
However, we do think it’s not the worst idea to let the bonus run its course. The main reason for this is the longer you’re in a bonus, the longer you’re not having to spend your money to see the reels spin and to pick up wins – and in that way you’re slowing down your spending.
Since every wager is putting money against the house’s long term house edge, speeding through a bonus just gets you back to a place where they’ll make money in the long term, vs. letting the bet you already made run its course.
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