Some slots feature a bonus round where you get to pick from a number of options. An example of this is Dancing Drums: You get four choices that have a set reel height and spin count, and a mystery that chooses spin counts and reel heights at random from the four possible choices.
A player was curious about those choices:
If you hit a bonus and have to pick a bonus game, Will you get the same payout on both choices? Or could one option potentially pay a lot more?
Stephanie H.
In a scenario like this, your choice generally does matter, in that the bonus is not predetermined upfront and you are therefore selecting based on your comfort level for volatility.
Here’s an example of a pay table explaining that there’s three choices, but the return to player (RTP) is the same. Some players get confused and believe if the RTP is the same, the bonus will pay the same, but RTP is over the long term, not an individual bonus.
What the volatility choice generally means is this:
- Bonuses with more spins and smaller multipliers and/or shorter reels are less volatile – the results will be more consistent from bonus to bonus, although you can certainly have good and bad bonuses within that range.
- Bonuses with less spins and larger multipliers and/or taller reels are more volatile – you can have a crazy good bonus or a crazy bad one, and often not much in between.
So in that sense your choice does matter on an individual basis. But if you play the game enough to get tons of bonuses, over time it will slowly average out, just like the payback on a slot overall.
So sometimes you might already be having a good day and want to take a swing at an exceptional bonus. Or you might have been getting beat up and you want a less risky bonus to try to claw some money back. Or you might be the other way around – you want a hail mary bonus when on a bad streak or a cherry on top with a more steady bonus when you’re already winning.
That choice is entirely up to you, and does matter in terms of what you’re hoping out of anny single bonus. But in the long run, the payback will converge regardless of your preference, so in the long run it will even itself out.
