Bonus rounds: who pays for the extra spins

• Machine A Machine A hands back 28.00% of everything staked through its extra round, and Machine B hands back 4.00% through its own.
• Machine B Machine B hands back 88.00% of everything staked through its paying lines and leaves only 4.00% behind its extra round.
• The same on both — they return the same percentage The share that comes back is the same on both machines. Where that share reaches you is not the same, and the pay table is where the difference is written.

Both pay tables add up to 92.00%. Machine A parks 28.00% of everything staked behind a round that starts once in 125 spins; Machine B pays almost all of its share out as the reels stop.

• Nothing — the return is wherever the pay table puts it A machine without an extra round pays the same percentage through longer, flatter lines. The split moved; the total did not have to.
• It returns less, because there is no round to pay you Then every machine without a round would sit below the floor, and none of them would be approved.
• It returns more, because nothing is held back Nothing is held back on either kind. The extra round is a place the money comes from, not a toll on the way.

A pay table can reach the same total a hundred ways. What an extra round changes is how much of the evening you spend waiting for your share of it.

• No new bet is taken for them That is the whole of it, and it is why they are called free rather than cheap.
• They cost the casino nothing The extra spins cost the room 28.00% of everything staked on the machine, out of the 92.00% it hands back altogether. No other line on this pay table costs it as much.
• They are a gift for playing a while Nothing was given. The spins that reached them were paid for at full price, one at a time.

Free describes the bet, not the cost. No money goes in during the round because the money went in before it.

• The pay table, which the machine has to show you before you bet Pay table awards, game rules and feature information all have to be reachable before a bet is committed.
• Ask an attendant They may well know. The machine is still required to tell you itself, and it does it in the pay table.
• Nowhere — you find out by playing Playing to find out is how the wait starts before the decision does.

Everything you need to choose this machine over the next one is on the screen before the first bet. The pay table is the one screen worth opening.

AGCO · Minimum Technical Standards for Gaming — 11. Game Behaviour, 11.1 Rules of Play and Information Display · read 2026-09-24

• Whatever those ten spins land — the average is over many rounds Some rounds pay nothing at all and some pay many times the average. The average is the only figure a pay table can honestly carry.
• Exactly 35 bets Then the round would be a refund with a light show, and there would be no reason to watch it.
• At least 35 bets An average with a floor under it is not an average. Half the rounds have to come in under it for the other half to come in over.

An average describes a long run of rounds, and you are about to see one single round. The gap between a long run and one round is the whole subject of the next level.

• Which machine, what to bet, and when to stop All three are settled before the reels move, and all three change what the evening costs.
• When to stop the reels The result is picked when the spin starts; the reels are showing you a result that already exists. Lesson 2.4 is about that picture.
• Whether to go for the extra round Nothing on the machine lets you go for it. You can only keep paying for spins until one arrives.

Everything a person actually decides at a slot machine happens before the first spin or after a payout. Which machine to sit at and how long to wait are the two decisions that settle what an extra round costs you.

• 60 spins About half of waits are over by spin 87, so a fair number of evenings reach it. Most do not.
• 125 spins — the average wait 36.64% of 125-spin stretches bring no round at all. The average is the number you are most likely to overshoot.
• 300 spins Nine waits in ten are over by 287 spins, so this covers almost all of them — at $2.25 a spin, and about 28.7 minutes of sitting.

Any of the three is a decision. What makes it a decision is that it was made now rather than at spin 180, with the round still not arrived.

• Not unusual: it happens on more than a third of such stretches 36.64%, from the same enumeration that produced the 125.
• Very unusual — it was due by now Nothing is owed. A machine cannot adapt what it pays while you sit there, and it keeps no tally of what it has not paid.
• The machine is set differently from what the pay table says The pay table is the machine. A stretch this long is what the same pay table looks like a third of the time.

“Once every 125 spins” is an average over many stretches. This one is the commonest kind of exception there is.

• Exactly like the first hundred and twenty-five did 36.64% of bringing no round, the same figure as on spin one. The machine has nowhere to write down what has happened.
• Better — the round has to arrive eventually Eventually is not a schedule. Every spin is drawn from the same pay table, and drawing from it many times does not empty it.
• Worse — this machine is running cold Cold would need a memory, and there is not one. Lesson 2.8 takes that belief apart properly.

The wait resets on every spin because nothing carries over. Why that feels so wrong is the subject of the myths lesson, not this one.

• $281.25 $2.25 multiplied by 125 spins. That is the money the extra spins are paid for with.
• $2.25 That is the cost of the one spin that happens to start the round, not of the wait that reached it.
• Nothing — the round is free The round takes no new bet. The spins that reached it took one each.

Every dollar the round hands back was staked on one of the 125 spins in front of it. There is no other money in the machine.

• 12.5 minutes on average, and 28.7 minutes for the slowest tenth 125 spins and 287 spins at 600 an hour.
• 12.5 minutes, and that is the whole story It is the average. One wait in ten runs more than twice that long, and those are the waits people sit through.
• There is no way to work it out There is: the round starts on 1,000 of 125,000 combinations, and the machine turns spins into minutes at a known rate.

“Just until the bonus” is 12.5 minutes on an average evening and more than twice that on one evening in ten. Both numbers were knowable before sitting down.

• Stop where you said you would The number was decided when nothing was at stake. It has not become a worse number since.
• One more hundred — it has to be close now It is not close: 36.64% of the next 125 spins bring nothing either. Closeness is the feeling this machine is built to produce.
• Raise the bet so the round is worth more when it lands A larger bet does not make the round arrive sooner. It makes every spin of the wait cost more.

A limit that moves when it is reached was never a limit. This is the moment it gets rewritten, and the only defence is having written it down first.

• Nothing at all A gamble feature has to hand back everything staked in it, 100.00%, and the coin it tosses is exactly fair: a house edge of 0.00%.
• Half of the 40 credits, because you lose half the time You also double them half the time. Averaged, that is the 40 you started with, which is what a hundred per cent means.
• The same 8.00% the machine takes on everything This is the one place on the machine where it does not. The offer is a coin, and the coin is fair.

This is the only bet on a slot machine that takes nothing from you on average, and the machine has to offer you the choice rather than take it for you.

• 6.25% A half of a half of a half of a half. The amount is sixteen times larger when it survives, which is why the average never moves.
• 50.00% That is how often one gamble is survived. Four gambles in a row is 50.00% multiplied by itself four times.
• Almost never — four fair coins is close to impossible It is one run in sixteen: 6.25%. Rare enough to notice, common enough to happen on an ordinary evening.

Every step keeps the average exactly where it was and doubles how far the two ends are apart. That is the entire trade.

• 92.00% — exactly what it returned before Re-enumerate the pay table with a fair coin bolted to every payout and the total does not shift by a hundredth of a point.
• More — a hundred per cent bet has to pull the average up It pulls the average towards itself, and it is already sitting exactly where the payout it doubles left it. Adding a fair bet to an unfair one leaves the unfair one where it was.
• Less — every extra bet costs something Not this one. It is the single exception on the machine, and it is exact rather than approximate.

A fair side decision does not make the game around it fair. The machine keeps the same share of everything staked either way.

• How far one evening travels: 14.90 bets a spin becomes 21.09 1.42x the swing, for the same price. That is what the button is for.
• How fast the evening goes A gamble takes a second or two. What a gamble changes is how big each step of the evening is, not how many steps the evening has.
• Nothing at all — it is a decoration It is not a decoration. It genuinely changes the shape of the evening; it just does not change its cost.

Bigger swings in both directions, at no charge. Whether that is worth having is a question about you rather than about the machine.

• No — it changes the ride, not the price Both machines charge the same share of everything staked. Only the shape of the evening differs.
• Yes — a hundred per cent bet is the one to look for It returns a hundred per cent of what you put into it, and what you put into it is money the machine has already paid you.
• Yes — it doubles what the extra round is worth The round is worth 35 bets on average with or without it. A fair coin does not change an average.

No feature on a slot machine is a way of doing better at a slot machine. The gamble is worth understanding because it is the one thing on the glass that is exactly what it says it is.

• Where you are in a count, and nothing else The machine has to show you your place in a count it is keeping. That is the whole of the claim.
• That the round is close Three symbols away is not the same as soon. Each of the three arrives at its own rate, and the meter cannot speed any of them up.
• That the next spin is likelier to pay The next spin is drawn from the same pay table as the first one. A display that meant otherwise would not be allowed to say so.

A meter is a required display, not a promise. It says where you are; it says nothing about where you are going.

• A count the machine was keeping, built out of spins you have already paid for Free games and feature prizes can be triggered by the accumulated result of a series of plays. The series was paid for as it went.
• A round the machine owes you Nothing is owed. Each of those spins was settled the moment it stopped.
• Nothing — the meter is a picture On this kind of machine it is a real count, and the person who sits down next may finish it. What it is not is a debt.

The count is real and it carries over. It is still not a claim on the machine, because every spin that built it was already paid out in full.

AGCO · Minimum Technical Standards for Gaming — Glossary · read 2026-09-24

• The spins that came before, one bet at a time $281.25 through the machine, on average, to reach one round at $2.25 a spin.
• Nothing — that is what the still meter is showing The still meter is showing that no bet is being taken now. It cannot show you the ones that were.
• The casino, out of what it keeps What it keeps is 8.00% of everything staked, and that share is the same whether the round happens or not.

A still credit meter is the clearest picture of the whole thing: money is going out of the machine and none is going in, because the money going out went in earlier.

• What those ten spins pay Ten spins is a length. What they hand back depends on the same reels as everything else, and the pay table has to be read again to find out.
• How often the round comes That part is on the line above it: three BONUS symbols, 1 in 125 spins.
• How much the round costs It costs nothing at the moment it happens. Its price was paid over the spins in front of it.

“10 free games” is a count of spins and nothing more. On this machine those ten are worth 35 bets on average — and that figure is the one the pay table is quiet about.

• They pay less Machine A’s commonest line pays 5 for 1 where B’s pays 8.75 for 1. That gap is what bought the bigger round.
• Nothing — the round is added to the lines Then the machine would return more than its stated figure, and the figure counts the round already.
• There is no way to tell from the outside There is, and it is printed: two pay tables, two splits, one total. The arithmetic only goes one way.

A stated return is a fixed amount of money divided up. Give more of it to the round and there is less of it for the reels, every time.