Worst Slots to Play for Bankroll Management Purposes

Slot machines have never been the easiest games on your bankroll. They’re quite volatile due to their uneven payout structures and can put you through many dry spells.

Even when you’re winning with slots, you’re not always winning. Losses disguised as wins (LDWs), which are wins that pay back less than your bet cost, come up too frequently.

However, some distinction should be made between different types of slots when it comes to bankroll management purposes.

Certain types of games are more abusive to your bankroll than others. That said, I’m going to cover several types of slots that will test your mettle more than others.

Progressive Jackpot Slots

Progressive slot machines have been popular for decades. They feature a jackpot that grows by small amounts with every bet.

For example, a jackpot might start out being worth $10,000. However, it can grow to $100,000 or more if enough people play and it doesn’t hit.

The great thing about progressive jackpot games is that they can provide an opportunity to win life-changing money. Some of these slots even feature multimillion-dollar jackpots.

However, these massive prizes don’t grow out of thin air. Instead, developers must seed them with a large amount of money.

Microgaming’s Mega Moolah—the biggest progressive jackpot in the industry—starts out with a $2 million prize. Gamblers see this large amount of money and rush to play in hopes of living out their gaming fantasies.

The catch, though, is that these slots are also much more volatile than the average game. Both the developer and its casino clients need to win at a higher rate in order to pay for the original jackpot seeding. Simply put, the bigger the starting jackpot, the more difficulty you’ll have in earning short-term profits.

Megaways Slots

Big Time Gaming (BTG) invented Megaways in 2016. They’ve been so successful with this engine that other developers actually pay BTG to license it.

A Megaways slot features a set amount of reels and a varying number of positions in each reel. The most common setup includes six reels they can each hold between two and seven positions.

Once maxed out with seven symbols, these slots offer 117,649 ways to win. They truly live up to their Megaways name in such cases.

As you might’ve guessed, though, you’re not going to win through the vast majority of these ways. Furthermore, you’ll often be dealing with the lower spectrum of Megaways as well.

Sometimes, the reels will only hold two or three symbols. In this scenario, the winning possibilities are vastly smaller.

Even with lots of ways available, you’ll experience a large number of the aforementioned LDWs on these games.

Infinity Reels Slots

Infinity Reels are somewhat similar to Megaways in how the grid grows. But rather than seeing the reels grow higher, this mechanism adds extra reels to the grid.

Developed by ReelPlay, Infinity Reels can theoretically offer an endless number of reels. The grid starts at 3×3 and grows from there.

To keep the grid expanding, you need to get a win with at least one matching symbol in the right-most reel. As long as you keep landing matching icons in the right-most reel, then you’ll keep adding more reels.

Of course, the potential for these games is capped to some degree. As deemed by multibillion-spin simulations, the largest payout in one of these games is Odin Infinity Reels’ maximum payout of 25,000x your stake.

Nevertheless, the extra reels can lead to very large payouts. They also drive up the volatility due to the big win potential.

Any Game With Lots of Features

Most gamblers won’t play a slot unless it offers several features. They want action, and features provide this in spades.

Here are some of the bonuses that you can look forward to with modern slots:

• Expanding wild symbols
• Stacked wild symbols
• Random wilds
• Second-screen bonuses
• Free spins
• Win multiplier
• Mystery symbols

More features ramp up the excitement and give you a chance at larger payouts. But this is another case where more isn’t always better regarding your bankroll.

You’ll probably like slots with plenty of features regardless. But these games also put you through long droughts to cover for all of their large feature-based payouts.

Any Slot With a Large Top Prize

Earlier, I mentioned how progressive slots with big jackpots can be rough on your gambling funds. But you don’t have to play a game with a multimillion-dollar payout to deal with extreme volatility.

Nowadays, many real money slots list their top prizes in relation to your bet size rather than a singular jackpot. For example, you might be able to win up to 10,000x your wager with features included.

Here’s an example on how such a prize can pay off:

• You’re playing a Megaways slot and
• Bet $5 per spin
• The maximum payout is 10,000x
• 10,000 x 5 = 50,000
• Therefore, you can win up to $50,000 per round

$50k doesn’t quite live up to the top jackpots, which are worth millions of dollars. But it’s still a significant amount of money to win in a single round.

Most modern slots offer a top payout worth around 5,000x the stake. Anything worth 10,000x can indicate a very volatile slot.

Classic Slots

So far, I’ve discussed games that offer life-changing prizes, Megaways, Infinity Reels, and multiple features. These slot types are all part of the modern gaming industry. But you don’t have to play a game with 117,649 ways or a $3 million jackpot to experience volatility.

Instead, you can struggle to pick up wins in classic slots as well. A classic game is a slot with three reels and just one payline.

Some games are still considered classic if they have three reels and up to five paylines. But even in these cases, you don’t have many ways to win per round.

Therefore, you’ll experience many wins where you pick up nothing at all, not even an LDW. The fact that you’re not even getting small payouts makes these games feel boring. Even worse, these droughts will quickly reduce your bankroll.

Conclusion

Any slot game can be hard on your bankroll due to the volatility involved. But the types of games covered above are especially hard on your gambling account.

Infinity Reels, Megaways, progressive slots, and feature-filled games are all quite popular. They give you the chance to unlock many features and/or win huge prizes.

You may ultimately care more about the entertainment and excitement than detailed bankroll management. Then again, though, you’ll find it more difficult to hold onto your funds when playing slots with the most features or latest mechanism.

That said, you simply need to decide what’s most important to you and go for it. Are you obsessive over bankroll management, or do you mainly care about the best features, more ways, and big jackpots?