
guilty as charged, I do agree the base game can be absolutely brutal and shred your balance; this happened to me recently at sky vegas and their version of the game doesn't have the pregnant pauses for the non winning drop downs and so feels very fast. But on the whole compared to a game like jungle spirit or a blueprint slot, bonanza's base game can be very kind and I think that is one of the big reasons for its success, not many games let you do a 100 spins for a minimal loss, so on average the base game wins keeps you going and playing the game for longer.
However putting my foil hat back on for one moment, I nearly always play at 20p and would not be so confident of a long session at higher stakes