A certain class of slot machines, such as Top Dollar (and its extensions like Double Top Dollar), and the newer Take It or Leave It by Ainsworth, give players the chance to accept an offer or try for another offer. When’s the right time to stop?
Playing Top Dollar, is there a good strategy when determining which offers to take? I rarely take offers without seeing the final offer. Thinking through all of my awarded choices I can only remember not seeing the final offer on the occasions I was awarded the top prize early in the offer set.
John H.
Top Dollar Slot Machine Tips
Brian has said in his videos for years to take offers of 35 credits or above. This seems to be a more accurate approach for the original Top Dollar vs. extensions like Double Top Dollar, where the game will on earlier offers recommend trying again if under 45 or 50 credits. Further complicating things is there’s multi-line versions with have different strategies than the original single line version.
There are generally two places you can look for advice on optimal strategy. The first, especially on the new class of Top Dollar machines where it’s a computer screen instead of glass, is going to be the pay table. The pay table breaks out at each offer when it’s better to take the offer or try again.
The second is during the bonus itself – since the beginning Top Dollar and its siblings have always advised on whether the offer you are seeing is better to be taken, or to be tossed out. The location on most versions is between the two buttons, but on really old versions the advice will appear where the credit display is on the bottom left of the machine.
Some players get confused as to what the advice will be. It’s not guaranteeing an outcome, but considering the mathematical possibility of whether you’ll improve the offer or not with the number of offers you have remaining. When holding it will be the best outcome more than half the time, it will recommend you keep the offer. When rejecting it will be the best outcome more than half the time, it will recommend you try again.
Of course, you can have an outcome that breaks against the odds – you can throw away a 30 credit offer at the beginning and fail to even reach that for the rest of the bonus. Or you could keep a 50 credit offer and it could’ve thrown the elusive 1,000 credit offer to you later.
There’s no way to know which offers you left behind, and some players, we presume like yourself, John, like the chase of the top offer so decent offers may get thrown away in pursuit of that chase.
But ultimately the game will be transparent about what mathematically is the right decision. And then it’s up to us as players to decide whether we want to accept the advice based on the math, or swing for the fences and a bigger offer!
For years Top Dollar was my choice about 80% of the time when at casino. Quarter denom, 50 cent and dollar denom, loved all of them. I usually went through all 4 offers, unless #2 was really big, #3 was usually the bummer, then had to go with final offer. I have won $1000 a handful of times. It has always been on the final offer. History showed me to stop at #2 for best payout, but I love going for that final offer.
We’re still waiting for our chance to see that top bill light up, but that’s exciting that you have!
So are we to read into this the machine is evaluating the probability of all amounts averaged together? Obviously the outcomes are heavily skewed towards the lower end of the range, but I would love to see the probability for each award.
Hey Tom – for various reasons the makers don’t tend to publish specific probabilities, but effectively when it tells you to take the offer, it’s running the odds of how likely you’ll improve your offer vs. how likely your offer will shrink, and if the odds of improvement are higher, it will suggest you try again. The actual outcome won’t be determined until you press the button to move on.