Bonanza

What these figures mean for Bonanza

Big Time Gaming's own page for Bonanza publishes two numbers: a return of 96.00% and up to 117,649 ways to win. That is the whole of the studio's specification. No second RTP setting, no volatility rating, no maximum win. Everything else that circulates about this game comes from somewhere else — and the most authoritative somewhere else is Evolution, which lists Big Time Gaming among its brands and keeps its own page for the game. The two pages do not entirely agree, and the disagreements are worth knowing about before you take any figure on trust.

Where they agree is the return: 96.00% on one, 96.0% on the other. Where Evolution adds information, it rates the volatility High — the descriptive text on the same page goes further and calls it very high — and gives a maximum win of 26,000x. Where they conflict is the date. Big Time Gaming's page for the game is dated 7 December 2016; Evolution's lists the release year as 2019. Both cannot be right, and the studio's own record is the one we use on this page. The same Evolution page also gives the ways count once as 117,649 and once as 117,469 — a transposed pair of digits, harmless, but a reminder that even official pages are typed by people.

The single return figure is the part that matters most to a player, and it is worth being precise about what it does and does not tell you. At 96.00% the house edge is 4.00%: on £1 a spin, an average of 4p kept per spin, £40 over a thousand. That puts Bonanza level with Karen Maneater and a few hundredths below the rest of the Nolimit City games here. What the single figure does not tell you is whether a casino can run the game at a lower setting. Push Gaming and Hacksaw both publish their alternative configurations; Big Time Gaming's page publishes none, so there is no list against which to compare what a lobby shows. That is not evidence that alternatives exist — it is an absence of evidence either way.

The 117,649 figure has a tidy origin: it is seven multiplied by itself six times, which is the count six reels of up to seven symbols produce when every left-to-right path is counted. The number of ways changes on every spin as reel heights change, and the maximum is a ceiling rather than a typical value. More ways do not by themselves mean more money back; the return is fixed at 96.00% however many paths a particular spin happens to offer.

Evolution's description of the bonus is where the game's character comes from. Collecting the four letters of GOLD awards 12 free spins, every additional scatter adds five more, and a win multiplier starts at one and goes up by one after every reaction — every time winning symbols clear and new ones fall into their place. No limit to that multiplier is stated. Long chains of reactions in a single free-spins round are therefore where large results are made, and spins that produce no chain contribute almost nothing. That is the practical meaning of a High rating here: a lot of quiet, interrupted by rounds in which the multiplier keeps climbing.

Two other details on Evolution's page are relevant to British players. It warns that bonus buy and jackpot features may not be available in every jurisdiction. And it gives a maximum stake of €100, a figure that does not apply in Great Britain, where the Gambling Commission caps online slot stakes at £5 a spin for players aged 25 and over and £2 for those aged 18 to 24.

Before playing at a UK casino, then: open the game's help or paytable and look for the RTP it states. If it reads 96.00%, it matches the only figure Big Time Gaming publishes. If it reads anything lower, you are on a version the studio's own page does not describe, which is worth knowing before you put money in. Treat the 26,000x as Evolution's figure rather than the studio's, and as a ceiling with no odds attached.

What remains is a game whose famous mechanic is described in more detail by its parent group than by its studio, with one agreed return figure and a scatter of unverified details around it. The agreed figure is the one to hold the casino to.

How Bonanza 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.