My year(ish) of slots mostly thanks to this forum

[2Slots]

I finally joined here to contribute if I can and post some of the highlights from my year. Many of them are due to this forum.

I only sports bet and have never had any attraction to casinos or slots in real life or online. The only time I played slots online was when the sites give you 5 or 10 free spins and they never did much. At the end of November 2024, for the first time ever, those free spins hit a bonus round and I ended up getting around 15 quid. I decided to use the 15 quid spin a few slots and thought that would be the end of it. Using that 15 quid on a christmas offer that I think I found a bit of a loophole in and then finding this forum ended up in me playing slots all year.

I disliked pretty much all the slots I tried but it's been a great way to pass the time in the evenings and I did find 2 slots (hence the username!) I really enjoyed and will still play for fun going forward. Ironically the 2 slots are basically the same game - DoA/DoA2(with Train Heist Bonus). There were a couple others I found from this forum that I enjoyed but they did have some negatives for me. Jack and the Beanstalk was probably the most fun bonus round for me but it will eat your balance to get there and the bonus rounds are nearly always poor. Funny thing is I had my biggest win on it. 4995x full screen of harps! The other is Piggy Riches. It had the most interesting base game with the 3x wild and I hit 5OAK on all the top symbols, with wilds on the cards and keys symbols. Again usually eats your balance and the bonus round doesn't generally pay much if it ever hits but that rich piggy wild animation makes me laugh everytime! I wouldn't have found those without this forum.

Luckily for me from very early last year I didn't care for slots from a gambling perspective but was enjoying playing away at minimum stakes out of interest. I've found that unless you hit some lucky big wins along the way, like I did, you will at best maintain your balance for a while or lose if you keep playing (just realised as typing I found exactly what I have seen written on here in loads of posts I read!). haven't got to that point but through the year I did stop quite a few times when it felt close but ended up reaching my final goal of playing slots all last year before hitting zero.

 

[TheAddict]

Sounds eerily familiar!
Being a gambler since 8 years old, I used to make sure to stay away from the online slots as I became older, knowing It's a losing proposition, while instead playing online poker & land based AWP fruit machines.
Coming across CM and then reading this site as a lurker eventually made me join up too, & then go on to dabble slots online at the low stakes .
My go to games, which I also enjoyed at the time, were also almost exclusively DOA, JATB and Piggy Riches. For years on end. I'd play almost nothing else, except Reel Steel for wagering purposes also.

Before long, with the ability to increase EV using bonuses at that time on many casinos, It ended up just being DOA, and then only the other 3 to help complete the wagering and to treat myself, once DOA would again cough up a whopper.

 

[Nate]

Sounds eerily familiar!
Being a gambler since 8 years old, I used to make sure to stay away from the online slots as I became older, knowing It's a losing proposition, while instead playing online poker & land based AWP fruit machines.
Coming across CM and then reading this site as a lurker eventually made me join up too, & then go on to dabble slots online at the low stakes .
My go to games, which I also enjoyed at the time, were also almost exclusively DOA, JATB and Piggy Riches. For years on end. I'd play almost nothing else, except Reel Steel for wagering purposes also.

Before long, with the ability to increase EV using bonuses at that time on many casinos, It ended up just being DOA, and then only the other 3 to help complete the wagering and to treat myself, once DOA would again cough up a whopper.

I can attest to having the same loadout - DOA, JATB, a bit of Piggy riches, and Reel Steal for good measure. DOA and DOA2 gave me my biggest wins in terms of multipliers.

When DOA was changed to HTML5, things seemed a bit offish. It was still playable and gave the odd wild line. Once Evolution took the wheel, the game died for me.

 

[2Slots]

Sounds eerily familiar!
Being a gambler since 8 years old, I used to make sure to stay away from the online slots as I became older, knowing It's a losing proposition, while instead playing online poker & land based AWP fruit machines.
Coming across CM and then reading this site as a lurker eventually made me join up too, & then go on to dabble slots online at the low stakes .
My go to games, which I also enjoyed at the time, were also almost exclusively DOA, JATB and Piggy Riches. For years on end. I'd play almost nothing else, except Reel Steel for wagering purposes also.

Before long, with the ability to increase EV using bonuses at that time on many casinos, It ended up just being DOA, and then only the other 3 to help complete the wagering and to treat myself, once DOA would again cough up a whopper.

Most I could do during the poker boom was the sit n go cash games. I'd get bored in the tournaments after an hour. Would always be amazed when I'd speak to my mates the next day and some of them had sat up til the early hours grinding away.

Pubs and snooker clubs only ever had at max a few fruit machines and they were always taken by the regulars or your mate. If you did get the chance to have a go those same guys would ruin the experience over your shoulder "hold that one, nudge that, it's going to hit let me do it I know the trick". Even worse because they were compensated if you won your mate would go on about it because it really was his money you just got out!

 

[2Slots]

I can attest to having the same loadout - DOA, JATB, a bit of Piggy riches, and Reel Steal for good measure. DOA and DOA2 gave me my biggest wins in terms of multipliers.

When DOA was changed to HTML5, things seemed a bit offish. It was still playable and gave the odd wild line. Once Evolution took the wheel, the game died for me.

I first found DOA when searching for 0.10 slots in Feb last year. When I first played it I wrote it off because at that time I was just spinning games until the bonus round and I must have played it when the base game was a bit dead and as everyone knows the bonus round generally doesn't hit. Same with DOA2, I played High Noon and wrote it off then read comments on here about Train Heist and never looked back.

I only came back to DOA in the last few months as I forgot it existed. By then I had a 20x loss limit approach to the every slot and DOA can take forever to hit that point so I enjoy it even more than DOA2 tbh. I don't even find the bonus more volatile than Train Heist, I've had a lot of dead ones on that and my max win on it is around 530x. DOA is around 300x and I haven't played it nearly as much.

These games must have been even better before HTML, I've read that a lot on here. As I don't have any experience of pre-HTML I can't comment but these two have been the best slots for not being annoying and actually giving a lot of game time.

I found JATB late because I never searched the actual names of the slots when I would see them on here. Then around October I was running out of slots to play that I could tolerate and searched old netent slots. That was on there with the full name and it was still available. Same happened with Piggy Riches a little while later.

 

[TheAddict]

Jesus, @Nate
I'm sure it hasn't been missed by most that I also ranted over the html change on DOA, and then went ballistic on numerous occasions in response to Evo's version which killed it off completely. Yeah, I don't play it anymore either. Best minds must indeed think alike

 

[Nate]

Jesus, @Nate
I'm sure it hasn't been missed by most that I also ranted over the html change on DOA, and then went ballistic on numerous occasions in response to Evo's version which killed it off completely. Yeah, I don't play it anymore either. Best minds must indeed think alike

I'm pretty certain that many here have had the same experience.

I used to play DoA II feature buy quite a bit. Then, recently, the feature tease (2 scatters) changed to having a 'flame effect' on the reels. It never did before... So it was clear this was an update or 'enhancement'.

I played it like I usually did and soon realised that it did not play the same anymore and bigger hits were much much harder to come by. I am not referring to massive wins, but just the bread and butter wins that kept your balance afloat.

If you have been playing slots for years and are accustomed to good and bad runs, you tend to have a feeling of how the slot behaves. Not an exact science, but a general feel.

After playing it solidly for 2 to 3 weeks, it was evident to me, it didn't behave the same way and I binned it.

The RTP of the game is the same. I can only assume the variance changed in some cunning way.

Why would a slot provider waste time changing the animation on scatters and nothing else?

Nate

 

[2Slots]

I'm pretty certain that many here have had the same experience.

I used to play DoA II feature buy quite a bit. Then, recently, the feature tease (2 scatters) changed to having a 'flame effect' on the reels. It never did before... So it was clear this was an update or 'enhancement'.

I played it like I usually did and soon realised that it did not play the same anymore and bigger hits were much much harder to come by. I am not referring to massive wins, but just the bread and butter wins that kept your balance afloat.

If you have been playing slots for years and are accustomed to good and bad runs, you tend to have a feeling of how the slot behaves. Not an exact science, but a general feel.

After playing it solidly for 2 to 3 weeks, it was evident to me, it didn't behave the same way and I binned it.

The RTP of the game is the same. I can only assume the variance changed in some cunning way.

Why would a slot provider waste time changing the animation on scatters and nothing else?

Nate

I do find DOA2 to be very different to DOA. I started sticking to DOA towards the end of the year because DOA2 is just very patchy in comparison. The base game plays dead much more often than DOA and the bonus rounds are much less frequent on average. Also DOA will throw in plenty of 2 scatters before hitting a bonus round whereas on DOA2 plenty of 2 scatters seems to indicate you're not getting a bonus round.

Part of why I like them both is that 2 scatters pay 2x. That's better than most games win lines and I can tolerate a session full of teasers as I just view them as a win.

 

[Nate]

I do find DOA2 to be very different to DOA. I started sticking to DOA towards the end of the year because DOA2 is just very patchy in comparison. The base game plays dead much more often than DOA and the bonus rounds are much less frequent on average. Also DOA will throw in plenty of 2 scatters before hitting a bonus round whereas on DOA2 plenty of 2 scatters seems to indicate you're not getting a bonus round.

Part of why I like them both is that 2 scatters pay 2x. That's better than most games win lines and I can tolerate a session full of teasers as I just view them as a win.

They are both awesome games. If only you had the privilege of playing the flash version...

 

[2Slots]

One of my odd regrets is not playing when those 4 games were at their peak. Back then slots were always marketed as a gambling activity and as a sports bettor the odds of slots were just dumb tbh. Win 20,000x to find its at million odds is just a terrible gambling option when sports pay exactly what the odds state. What could have been if they promoted the fun aspect too!

Still my new year project is going to be to focus on those two when I play and see what happens. Still waiting on 5 scatters and DOA wildline! Ironically I hit 5 scatter on the DOA2 demo when i was testing it so I'm convinced I've jinxed that one.

 

[TheAddict]

I hit over 100 wild lines on the original flash version through the years.
Evo version dropped 5 scatters after a few sessions and then decided it wanted to hoover up over 10,000x stake without a wild line or 5 scatters , something which never happened to me once between the 100+ lines I'd hit on the original flash.

But, good luck!

 

[2Slots]

I hit over 100 wild lines on the original flash version through the years.
Evo version dropped 5 scatters after a few sessions and then decided it wanted to hoover up over 10,000x stake without a wild line or 5 scatters , something which never happened to me once between the 100+ lines I'd hit on the original flash.

But, good luck!

Thanks. I feel DOA has a better chance of 5 scatters than DOA2 on the new ones. I've played DOA2 solidly for 8 months only had a few 4 scatters but i've already had that many on DOA after a few months.

100 wildlines is a lot! I've had two 5 extra spins on DOA but they weren't in a line. Also a few 4 in a line but the first reel wouldn't land. Are you the guy with that 13 wilds screenshot I've seen? Or is it fake!

 

[TheAddict]

Thanks. I feel DOA has a better chance of 5 scatters than DOA2 on the new ones. I've played DOA2 solidly for 8 months only had a few 4 scatters but i've already had that many on DOA after a few months.

100 wildlines is a lot! I've had two 5 extra spins on DOA but they weren't in a line. Also a few 4 in a line but the first reel wouldn't land. Are you the guy with that 13 wilds screenshot I've seen? Or is it fake!

No, I'm not Brianmon, the 13 wilds guy.
Tbf, I was grinding deposit bonuses when I hit those lines. Back then you could find many decent offers and Dead or Alive wasn't banned from promotion play at most casinos, like it is now.