I received a rather straightforward question to the site recently that I realized I had never tackled before. So here it is:
Question: Do bonuses come more often with bigger bets or just pay higher amounts? I see quite a few nice bonuses on both.
It certainly seems like there are players who bet big and win big a lot. But then you see those 50 cent Grand Progressive Jackpots on Lightning Link floating around. So does betting bigger drive more bonuses?
STATUS: As a general rule, your chances of a bonus are maintained regardless of bet level. However, certain games are designed to let you bet more for more bonuses.
Most slot machines are designed so that higher bets are simply a line multiplier over smaller bets. There are more complicated betting schemes to some, but the basic idea is there.
But not all slots are created equal, and there’s a few classes of slots where your wager can contribute to the possibility of more frequent bonuses.
The most obvious is the one popular with WMS games, which feature more/better wagers that unlock more frequent and better features for bonuses. Each spin, you’re wagering more, with the hopes of getting a bonus that will be stronger/more lucrative than a base wager. Your line bets don’t increase in pays one iota – this additional spend is all about bonuses.
If you find bonuses the fun part of slots, this may be for you – but if you have a drought of bonuses, it’s just that much more costly over the baseline wager.
Similar to this is games with separate feature bets, like Konami’s Treasure Ball series, which is one of a number of Konami add-ons that feature a separate wager for the bonus chance. You can decide how much weight you wish to give to the bonus, and that wager is added to your line bet choice.
You can find the same games without this jackpot chance on the casino floor, so your only reason for playing these over them is to have a chance at both the base game pays and the features.
A more recent development, which I’ve so far only noticed specifically with Aristocrat, is an escalating bet pattern which isn’t a clean incremental step between line bets. Based on a read of the pay table of games like Buffalo Chief, which have this, you are effectively putting more of your wager into the bonuses and features. It’s just a bit less obvious that it’s happening at a glance.
Even with all these examples, this is a minority of machines on the casino floor, so the answer is largely no, your bet chances are usually the same, but casino games are evolving and there are games where your chances do change. But in each instance you’re paying for it in the form of an additional wager, meaning the bonuses are that much more important when you do get them.
