without starting some kind of big ruckus here (just stating some points, the sample is way too small, but correctly calculated)....skip to the end if you don't like numbers
for the first time in my life, i asked for game logs starting the day after Christmas because of what i thought was a significant change of play pattern. the game logs gave me data for about 20000 (19406 to be exact) spins for a particular game, not much, but enough for me.
my return for the week after christmas was just under 83% for these 20000 spins, a loss of $2189.57 on this game with an average bet of .62 (i mistakingly wrote .68 in another thread.). unfortunately for me, the 2599 spins at a higher wager (1.05) returned 54.5% (majority of my loss) while the 15000 spins at .45 and .75 earned 82% and 83.6% respectively.
this leads me to believe that this particular game is set to payback at about 83-84%.... at least for these 20000 spins. the odds of hitting a bonus was about 1 in 190 at .45 and .75, for a bet of 1.05, it was 1 in 325.
the average bonus was, interestly, right at 100x the bet at .45 and .75, 68x the bet at 1.05. you can expect at least one retrigger during the bonus 30% of the time.
during these 20000 spins, the longest streaks without a bonus was 822,780,647,575,455,453,416, and a bunch at 300-400 spins. during the 822 spins without a bonus, the payback was 26.1% (did not calculate the other streaks.)
at .45, the biggest bonus paid just over 500x
at .75, the biggest bonus paid about 350x
at 1.05, the biggest bonus was 200x
my conclusion? i had really crappy luck the week after christmas...that's it.
the only reason i was interested in the logs was because, like katodog, before christmas, the games seemed really different. but i think the games weren't really different, i was just unlucky. and also the possibility that the games are not only high variance, but also have lower payback %'s.
i quit playing because this kind of bad luck is no fun and it continued from the day after christmas all the way to last week, so i keep these stats posted next to my computer because i seriously doubt my next 20000 spins are going to be that much different, lol.
my recommendation is to keep your bets really low. also, keep in mind that you can get lucky streaks just as wild as the bad ones... just be prepared if you don't. and always remember that if you do hit a big one, you'll get paid lightning fast!!
ps. i've had these stats for a while... just didn't think they were too relevent because of the sample size. they only prove i had some bad luck.