Big Bamboo

What these figures mean for Big Bamboo

Big Bamboo carries the lowest headline return of the six Push Gaming games on this site, though not by much: 96.13%, against 97.03% for Wild Swarm and 96.40% to 96.83% for the other four. Push publishes a second figure for it as well, 94.13%, and warns that the RTP can differ from one casino to the next. Those two statements together set the frame for everything else on this page.

Start with the pair. Exactly two percentage points separate them. As a house edge that is 3.87% against 5.87%, so the lower configuration keeps about half as much again per pound staked — on every £100 that passes through the game, roughly £3.87 against £5.87. That is a narrower spread than most multi-build studios in this catalogue publish: Play'n GO's Book of Dead runs from 96.25% down to 84.25%, and the Hacksaw games all have a floor near 88.3%. It is still two points paid for nothing, since the game looks and plays the same on either setting.

Then put the top figure in context. At 96.13% Big Bamboo sits just above the nine Nolimit City games here, which cluster between 96.00% and 96.09%, and below the 96.27% to 96.38% of the Hacksaw flagship builds. In other words, on its best configuration it is an ordinary price for a modern high-volatility slot; on its weaker one it is noticeably dearer. Nothing about the panda or the bamboo changes that. Measured against the cheapest Push configuration in this catalogue, Wild Swarm at 97.03%, Big Bamboo's best build costs an extra 90p for every £100 that goes through it.

The ceiling Push gives is 50,000x, and the wording is "highest observed win" rather than maximum. Two other figures on the same page sit beside it: instant prizes in the Golden Bamboo feature that go up to 5,000x, and multiplier symbols that go up to 10x. Those two multiply out to exactly 50,000x. The page does not say that is how the observed figure came about, and we will not claim it did, but the coincidence is a useful reminder of where results of that size have to come from: stacked features, not ordinary wins. There are no published odds for any of it. Among the six Push games here, only Jammin' Jars 2 shares the 50,000x figure.

The part of the design that deserves the most attention is the gamble. When free spins are awarded, the player is offered a choice: take the spins and symbol conversions on offer, or gamble them on a wheel for a better package. A gamble of this kind does not create value out of nothing; it swaps a known outcome for a chance at a larger one and a chance at a smaller one. Whether that swap is fair — whether gambling is worth the same on average as collecting — depends on odds that Push does not publish. What can be said is what it does to a session: it widens the spread of results without telling you whether it moves the average.

That choice is also close to the situation the Gambling Commission describes in its guidance on the online slots stake limit. Its worked example is a player offered a prize who can accept it, ending the game cycle, or turn it down for a chance at something larger, and the point the regulator makes is that no extra money is being staked. As long as the wheel only puts at risk what the spin has already awarded, it fits that example rather than counting as a second bet against the £5 limit, or £2 for players under 25.

Two further features shape the base game. Mystery stacks can turn into wilds, paying symbols or the golden bamboo symbol, and the golden bamboo triggers a single respin in which instant prizes, multipliers, collectors and scatters can land. The free spins themselves are reached either through the gamble scatter, which appears only on reels two, three and four, or through a free-spins prize inside that respin. Push also lists a bonus buy, with no statement of its price or return on the page.

Before playing, three checks are worth the time. Read the RTP on the loading screen or in the user panel, where Push says it is displayed: 96.13% is the better of the two published settings and 94.13% the worse. Decide in advance whether you will use the gamble wheel, since the decision is easier to make calmly before the bonus than in the middle of it. And treat the 50,000x as the edge of what has been seen, not as a target — the game publishes nothing about how often anything near it happens.

On balance, Big Bamboo is a game whose best setting is average for its type, whose weaker setting costs two points more, and whose distinctive feature is a choice that makes outcomes more extreme without the studio saying whether it makes them better. That is enough to decide how to approach it, and not enough to call it generous.

The RTP you get depends on the casino

Push Gaming publishes 2 different RTP builds of this game and each casino chooses which one to run. Most review sites print a single number; these are all the builds the studio publishes for Big Bamboo, highest first. Push Gaming names no default among them, so the figure at the top of this page is simply the highest it publishes.

On £100 of turnover the gap between the highest and lowest build here is £2.00. A casino is not obliged to tell you which build it runs, so treat any single RTP figure — including ours — as the best case until you have checked the game's own info screen in the lobby.

How Big Bamboo compares with the rest of our catalogue

Against every other game here whose studio publishes its maths.

Volatility as the studio states it — what the index measures.