Bonus Wild Games Best +EV

I was wondering what the best EV is for the bonus wilds when hit. They usually give you 3 options. They include ONE WILD or TWO WILD or 3 WILD. But they obviously lower the free games as the more WILD's you get.

My assumption is either they are all the same EV (with obvious different variances). If not then my 2nd guess would be the 3 WILDs would have the best +EV.

Thanks for any help.

Quote: WilburKookmeyer

I was wondering what the best EV is for the bonus wilds when hit. They usually give you 3 options. They include ONE WILD or TWO WILD or 3 WILD. But they obviously lower the free games as the more WILD's you get.

My assumption is either they are all the same EV (with obvious different variances). If not then my 2nd guess would be the 3 WILDs would have the best +EV.

Thanks for any help.

My opinion only, becaise I'm not a math guy. There are several variations of this type of bonus. I'm not sure there is a single mathematical answer to the question available, unless you have access to proprietary information about how the reels are formed.

However, on some games it's very important to consider re-triggering more games during free games.

Example 1. Buffalo game (or similar), where you're trying to gather gold buffalo's to change other symbols to buffalos during free spins. You will want the most games possible, because the more you spin, the better chances you have to get 2 or more coins that will add free games. That game pays best with lots of buffalos on the screen, and if you get a lot of spins that will change several symbols, you will have several jackpot screens in a row at the end of your free spins, along with beefed-up spins along the way. Any machine that builds towards a target like that, take the max spins. (note: I'm not sure there's a Buffalo variation that gives you the spin/wild/multiplier option, just using the symbol substitution example).

Example 2: the 4-play Tower slot has a Dragon game that offers games vs. multiplier values. I find that the multiplier values are most generous on the 20 or 15 games (range is 25 to 5 games with different multiplier values). However, if you get the supergames, I think you always want the 25 games, even with the lowest multipliers, because you want every chance it will retrigger while playing the tower, and the best chance of getting to the top of the tower.

In non-supergame selection, or other games that have this feature, I multiply the top multiplier by the number of games offered, and select thE highest option, with some consideration for the under-mults if there are some. Might be a bad way to do it, but I'm not aware of a better one.

Example 3. I think on the games with 1, 2, or 3 reels randomly wild during spins, unless you have a lopsided reason (as in 1 and 2 above) to want retriggers, you should take the 3 wild reel games. Most games pay multiples for the same symbol win 3, 4, 5 in a row. Like 3 in a row pays 1x, 4 of the same 5x, 5 in a row 25x your line bet. So you want the best possible chance of getting to 5x on a lot of lines, even if you get less spins. Again, I could be wrong.

Example 4. If you are offered the choice between a variable cash out and x number of free games, I'm told you should always select the free games.

Good topic. I'll be interested to hear what others think about this.

In my experience designing games we were never concerned with them having the same EV. Every game could be different there is probably no correlation from one game to the next.

In games where the option is to take a fixed credit win (ie. 600 coins), my experience says that it is better to take the option to play the bonus as it will generally be higher EV.

Wouldn't a game designer have to be concerned with the EV for the 3 bonus options since it affects the overall payback of the game?

If they want a game that returns 90% for example then the 3 bonus options would have to be equal or at least very close. Otherwise if the player always chooses the correct option the game might return 92% or even possibly 88% if they choose the wrong bonus option.

Thanks

Generally when a person designs a game the return posted is the highest theorhetical payback. So whatever the best choice of the bonus options is what is listed for the payback.

Casinos will never complain if the game is over holding by 2%.

Yeah that makes sense. Casinos are like that. Thanks