There seems to be a love of high volatility games on the casino floor right now. Many games have strong potential, but you have to work for them. It’s not impossible for your bankroll to be eroded heavily while just trying to make something happen on many slots nowadays.
While many players who wish to avoid this will seek out older games, which as a general rule tend to be lower volatility than their modern successors, newly opened casinos may not have many of them since they don’t have the machines to run them, while casinos that have been open awhile may be replacing older slots due to nearby competition, which has been the case in Connecticut, for instance.
So I’m happy to share a modern low volatility slot that I played heavily on my recent trip to Las Vegas, which is the Quick Spin series of games by Ainsworth, which I mentioned in two other articles earlier this week, and as you can therefore guess has been top of mind.
I will be using some of the tips I’ve shared on how to spot slot volatility in the past, will walk you through how you can tell this game is a low volatility winner.
Understanding the Game
Quick Spin is a 5×3 reel set with 50 cent bet increments. It’s a 40 line game and as such the extra 10 cents goes to covering the wheel spin payouts.
There are three themes of the standard Quick Spin game available, but they all play the same, so I’m treating the series as one game for the purposes of this article. I did spot a version of Quick Spin with progressives at New York-New York while in Las Vegas, but that is a different version of the game and not covered in this particular write-up.
An initial sign that the game is low volatility is the small set of symbols on the reels. Higher volatility games like Buffalo Gold have more than 10 symbol possibilities, which can make it more difficult for things to line up. Quick Spin has only 7 regular symbols, plus the wheel symbol and the bonus symbol.
Three of the six symbols, the three bar symbols, pay in mixed configurations, and the seventh of the base symbols is a wild that pays with everything. As such, things tend to line up quite a bit, and offering some sort of payout.
Many spins pay less than the bet, and another chunk will pay 1-5x, which in combination tends to keep you spinning. While it is possible to get ahead significantly off of reel spins, the reality of the game is many times the base game keeps you steady or on a very slow decline.
This makes the game a good coin-in game if you are trying to complete a tier or get some additional play on the board at a casino, because it’s pretty reliable as a whole.
Free Spins Bonus
Get the Bonus symbol on reels 1, 3 and 5 to get paid 3x your bet as a starting point and get 8 free spins. The free spins works just like the base game spins, and getting three bonus symbols during the bonus will give an additional 8 spins.
Bonuses tend to not pay a huge amount, but again are designed to keep you going in the game.
Wheel Spins
Getting 6 or more wheel symbols will trigger a wheel spin. You can earn a multiplier of the wheel spin for each additional symbol above the 6 you get:
- 7 Wheel symbols: 2x
- 8 Wheel symbols: 3x
- 9 Wheel symbols: 4x
- 10 or more Wheel symbols: 5x
The top prize on the wheel is 200x your bet; with a 5x multiplier that means the top prize you can possibly win on the game is 1000x. The top prize being 1000x is another example of how the game is a low volatility game; with the top prize not enormous (compared to a $10,000 grand on many of the link games, for instance), it can put more into the wheel spins and base game pays.
Can you get the top wedge easily enough? During my recent Las Vegas trip I managed 2 wheel spins with the top wedge on 50 cents, one at 2x and one at 3x, so $200 and $300, respectively. A friend I was traveling with got his own $200 spin, betting $1 (so it was a 1x spin).
That could’ve been a fluke, but I got some other mid-tier wheel wedges while playing the game extensively on this trip. Wheel Spins come a lot, and so you are more likely to get a 5-10x hit on the wheel most often, but it definitely isn’t out of the realm of question to get a sizable hit on this game.
The thing that made this game remarkable for me is that I more than once could get 1-2 hour sessions betting 50 cents on $20 or $40. A couple of good wheel spins, base game hits or bonuses can refuel the tank for awhile.
This can matter when you are trying to grind out tier credits to finish up a tier, for instance, or get some additional coin-in to show the casino you put in the required time/effort to get comped. So if you’re looking for a slot that will give you a good time on device, even if you can’t get a five-figure jackpot on a low bet, Quick Spin may be the game for you.
Watch and Learn
Watch Diana Evoni play Quick Spin in this video:
And here’s a video from The Slot Cats:
I play mostly to walk out with more money than I had entering the casino. I have found that I could always walk out on the plus side only when I know when to cash out for good. This is my favorite game to play.