Rival report - stay away?

[winbig]

I just finished an awesome run at one of the (unnamed to protect the guilty) Rival casinos. I took a $12ND bonus, just to see if anything's changed since I last played at one; before I deposited.

I'm glad I did.

Here's my report, along with an Excel spreadsheet detailing the spins.

To break it down, here's the facts and figures:

Starting balance: $12
Ending Balance: $0

Start time: 10:13pm
End time: 10:26pm (Minus 5 minutes to post in the "Screenshots that Suck" thread)

Total spins @ .20: 79 (Last spin was for .17 to zero out.)

Payout %: 75.94%

Highest paying spin: .48

Winning spins that exceeded original bet: 1

Winning spins that were less than original bet: 21

$0 spins: 57

Bonus rounds: 1 @ Western wildness - 10 spins @ 3x multi, generated 18 cents. Jacques Hot = no bonus.

For the longest time, I thought 3Dice was the highest variance slots around - boy was I wrong. I think Rival is giving them a run for their money.

Final thought: Stay away, unless you like super high variance slots. IMO, their slots are the worst around, because there's a great chance that even if you hit a bonus round you've got a 50/50 (less?) chance to win anything decent, let alone something that's over your original bet.

I'm not saying rigged by any means, because this sample size is only for 79 spins.

[debbiek]

It's interesting...I used to do that same type of analysis on the RTg slots in Excel. Found the same results, but usually the payout was something like 67%-72%. After requesting the results from these casinos, they were all the same.

For me, I decided not to play or deposit anywhere anymore. The online casinos have drastically reduced their payouts across the board regardless of software (in my opinion). I don't know if it's related to the US restrictions or what, but it's a reality. Don't waste your money.

[KasinoKing]

A year or so ago players were whining that Rival slots were too low variance and consequently quite boring to play. So they started introducing higher and higher variance slots to please the players and guess what... now the players are whining!

I don't have exact figures, but on the older Rival slots (up to about a year ago - Fantasy Fortune & Future Fortunes time), you could expect to hit bonus rounds once every 50-60 spins or so. Many of the bonuses were pretty poor (10 free spins winning $0 ), but you you could get reasonable line wins. These were definitely low variance.
The newer ones; Scary Rich, Hole in Won, Jacques Pot, are totally different - on these the bonus hit something like 1 in every 130 - 140 spins, but they have the potential for much bigger wins from the features. These are definitely high variance.
You can't have it both ways; the slots have to achieve their 96%-ish over all, so you get unexciting low variance; lots of not very big wins, or exciting (and bank roll decimating) high variance with occasional very big wins.

You pays your money & you takes your choice.

What would really help players decide would be for the casinos somehow rate & label each slot's variance - but I don't see that happening anytime soon...

I voted 3Dice because all except Squirrel Pike & Industria are high variance, whereas Rival have a broader mix for players to chose from.

My 1p.

[Zoozie]

3 Dice slot are generally much higher variance. Only a very few Rival slots
are high variance where "Scary Rich" is the most extreme, but also my favorite
Rival slot.

[gerilege]

Frankly sometimes it's really hard to see how Rival slots can pay back 96% on the long run.

Edit: hey stop for a minute, winbig's payout is 24%, not 75 So a chapter is deleted here.

I still have a lot of questions, and plan to have a deeper look on Rival slots to understand why do they feel like never paying out properly. Currently I believe that the most important reason is the high number of spins that return 40-80% of your bet. But that does not answer all of my doubts, so it would be terribly useful if someone could crack the reels of a standard 15line Rival freespin slot. To be continued...

[LaHutti]

What KK said ..
I sometimes wish people would understand, that for a slot to give you the chance of hitting BIG, there has to be a lot of losers to produce one big winner. That's the whole point of high variance machines. This is what happens in Scary Rich, and a lot of the newer slots at Rival, and practically all the slots at 3Dice, except for Industria, if you only play the colors. I've seen people hit $8000 win on Fortune Falls with a $10 spin...now how many losers does it take to make up for a win like that (Plus the 3-4% that HAS to go the casino) ? ) Personally I love Fortune Falls, because it gives me the chance of hitting big, but deep inside I know it'll probably eat my shirt AND my pants, before I hit it, if ever.
If and when 3Dice decides to have slots with low variance, we wil have people complaining about the LOW payouts, when they do hit the features, but that's what those slots will do !, and at least then people will have the choice.
On the other hand, if people don't like losing fast, and just want to have a lot of playtime, choose the low variance slots, they will give you a lot of bonus rounds, and low paying line wins, but you won't hit big. The bonus rounds on those slots, are there, just to give you longer playtime, not make you "rich"
Seems like either way, people complain. You can not have every1 win big all the time. You need to pick the playstyle that suits you, and if you can't find that, in any of the slots these casinos offer, you need to move on, and maybe look into table games instead. (I won't even begin to comment on the fairness of those, regardless of software, since I have no proof...just gut feeling, and a good laugh once in a while, cuz I stopped playing those with real money months ago, and only play fun mode....and man is it fun to see what happens just a little too often on those ).
I voted 3Dice, because all their slots are pretty high variance, and they don't give you a choice (yet). This doesn't mean I like 3Dice less, because I LIKE high variance slots, and 3Dice have cs, and payout times, that beat the snot out of most other online casinos.
Sorrry for rambling....and good luck

[chuchu59]

A bit of a derail but it is possible to hit big at a low variance slot. It's just that the big win is quite elusive. Take MG Skullduggery for example. It is a low variance slot but for a $0.09 bet I won more than $100. That's odds of more than 1100-1.

[LaHutti]

A bit of a derail but it is possible to hit big at a low variance slot. It's just that the big win is quite elusive. Take MG Skullduggery for example. It is a low variance slot but for a $0.09 bet I won more than $100. That's odds of more than 1100-1.

Sure you can hit "big" on some of those....when I was referring to "big" in this case, I meant the thousands hits...like in a load of money, that'll make you feel loaded for a while But I know what you mean.

[winbig]

Speaking of "Big".....is it only me, or does Rival's slots tighten up based on a higher bet size?

[Rusty]

Sorry,
but most of the people who put these sorts of results down to variance and higher jackpots simply do not properly understand the subject.
Almost all online slots are actually quite low variance for playability.

OK I am going to have to do a lot of generalising here but essentially there are some key ways to determine variance in a true random slot.

The amount of different symbols,the reel length, paytable structure,wilds and scatters,frequency of bonus rounds,bonus min/max payout etc
It is a bit like space and time, variance and RTP are inextricably linked

But for example lets take a slot that plays like a rival slot.
Very few winning spins with probably no higher than a 30% RTP through normal play and in my experience less.
Yet the paytables are comparable with other slot games on other software.
In fact if we take as the reels turn 3 as an example the lowest payout for 5 of a kind is 65 much lower than other payouts and the top 1000 again much lower than other payouts so the paytable suggests it is a low variance game.
Indeed there do not seem to be more symbols but less so winning spins should be more frequent than comparable slots on other software not less but that is another though important argument which can be made better when the reel layout is known.
Add to this the much lower frequency of winning spins and you are left with the bonus rounds and free spins to make up the RTP to 95%+
Thus, in a low variance games these should trigger very often with average returns or in higher variance less often with big returns.
I would guesstimate about every 50 spins in the first instance and every 200 in the second.
So is that we see with as the reels turn 3?
It appears the feature and bonus round together trigger once in around every 80 spins which seems to go with a low/medium variance model.
If this is so the average bonus/free spin round should pay an average of 65X bet or more.
All these are genralisations but I hope it gives some indication of how variance might work on particular slot and what typical results you should expect to see.
From this I hope those of you who do not have the time to analyze these things will be better able to make your own judgments on how a slot game plays whatever the software.

EDit:
There are no wild symbols on as the reels turn 3 so this in part explain fewer winning spin combinations.