Players are always looking for an edge. Betting amounts seems to come up a lot, if our inbox is any indication:
Over time I have found that the higher the wager the less line hits and bonus the machine gives out. Also the percentage payout is not as high on a bonus as a smaller wager. Occasionally you do hit a good payout. In your experience is there a sweet spot?
Manny J.
Nope, there’s no sweet spot per se. What’s generally the most important is ensuring that your bet size makes sense relative to your bankroll.
What many players fail to factor into their higher betting strategies is that many games, especially multi-denomination ones, tend to reduce the line count as you go up in denomination (and often, bet amount). You might start at 50 lines on lower denominations but end up at 5 or 10 lines on a higher denomination.
That spreads the bet across less opportunities to win. Of course, the payouts when you do win are proportionally higher, since the money is concentrated in fewer opportunities. But it also can mean more dead spins, and less wins overall.
This is effectively a more volatile option. When you have your bet spread across 50 lines, you’ll pick up more smaller wins on a per-line basis that can help smooth the ups and downs out somewhat. This can explain why on bigger bets it can be harder to get line hits.
But the other thing players often forget to factor in is when you’re betting higher, even with the potential for a higher payback percentage on higher denominations, you’ve simply got less chances to make something happen.
If you have $100 and are betting $1 a spin, you’ve got 100 spins minimum, and realistically should have well more than that, to make it to a bonus or have something decent occur. Switch to a $5 bet and you’re down to 20 chances – not nearly as easy, and the money can disappear fast.
Add to that the fact that newer slot machines push bonuses out to be harder to achieve, but generally more lucrative when they do, and it really requires some thinking as to what makes sense for a session.
10 years ago we wouldn’t have much issue recommending people put in 50x their bet amount into a machine to have a reasonable chance of a big win or a bonus along the way. But now 100x even feels like it’s far from guaranteed, as games get more volatile overall.
So ultimately, the sweet spot is about how much you wish to put on the line, and making sure you’re not overbetting relative to your bankroll. If you’re hoping to survive 3-4 hours of gambling, it’s not unreasonable to suggest having 500x your average bet on hand. So if you’re planning on betting $1 a spin, $500 would be a good amount on hand to have a very high chance (although not guaranteed – gambling has risk) that you’ll still have money at the conclusion of your session.
Of course, if you’re doing well, or want to push it, you can always recalibrate and bump up your bet, but realize with many modern slots the swings are much wilder than they were a decade or two ago, and raising your bet just adds to that risk.
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I like that in your answer you highlight links to previous articles. It gives the answer to the current question more depth.
Thanks Chris! Now that there’s enough content on here it’s helpful to also link back for those who may simply have not seen those posts!