In some cases regarding a picking bonus, slots will not show you the options you didn’t pick. That’s a sure sign a slot is predetermined, meaning the picking was for fun and did not influence the outcome of a slot.
What about the other way around, when it does show you the other items you could have picked?
On picking bonuses, if they show you where the items were after you are done picking does that mean you had a control of what was going to happen as opposed to as soon as you spun it knew you would end up with xyz. I’m thinking of say the Egyptian game, or deal or no deal.
Eric G.
Unfortunately this isn’t as clear cut. It used to be the conventional wisdom that if it did show you the other choices, it was a true pick, and therefore your pick had an influence on the outcome.
Unfortunately, we’ve learned of examples where this wasn’t the case. Smokin’ Hot Stuff Wicked Wheel and its siblings would reveal the other choices, but the bonus was predetermined – you could tell given all of the choices shown was only three of each progressive and three pitchforks (to remove the smallest progressive), but like most jackpot picks you didn’t have the same odds of getting the Grand as the Mini.
Our understanding is Nevada gaming rules changed somewhat recently to no longer allow a reveal of the other options if it’s predetermined (old games approved under the old rules were grandfathered in). Interestingly, in Nevada, the newest games in this series do not show you the other picks, but in other states that didn’t pick up this rule, it still does.
This also presumes traditional Vegas style slots. If you’re in a market where the games are Bingo, or Historic Horse Racing, or New York/Washington State where the games are more like pull tabs, the outcome of the game is determined outside the machine, and bonuses that might not be predetermined in Las Vegas may be so in those markets. But they may behave like their sister games and show the other options, whether or not your pick had any influence.
So all of that is to say that in many cases it revealing your other options means your pick had influence. And certainly the recent games coming out in Nevada since the rules changed would also line up with that. But it doesn’t mean it’s always the case.
If it helps, whether a bonus is predetermined or true pick, the mathematical structure of the game will still lead the game to pay out an expected about over time from the bonus. True pick games often have a lot of outs that can end the bonus.
Think of games like Jackpot Party, which might have 50-ish presents, of which about 20 percent are party poopers. Sometimes you can go on long stretches of successful picking, and other times wipe out instantly. Those extremes will average out over time, just like everything else.
So we encourage players not to sweat it too much – it can be fun to think about how our picking helped our bonus, or want to beat ourselves up over “bad” picking, but in the long run it all averages out.
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I’m glad to know this because I love to just swipe for the bonus picks and not have to sweat the small stuff or worry I picked wrong. (I live in Washington so I sometimes see what I didn’t pick and it just re-enforced the thought that I’m a terrible picker) lol
Absolutely Joy – it does sort of take the stress off a bit if you don’t have to worry so much about what the picking delivers!