Ask the Slot Expert: Bao Zhu Zhao Fu firecrackers -- real or window dressing

Question: I have read some of your articles on slots and they are quite informative. You definitely are worthy of the guru title.

I have a couple of questions regarding the Bao Zhu Zhao Fu slot machine. Is the status of the firecrackers real? In other words, if there are more lit, are your chances of activating them higher?

If so, does it make sense to use a penny denomination to get it nearly all lit and then switch to 10 cent denomination to burst it resulting in greater rewards?

Answer: Thanks for the kind words.

A few days ago, I was losing my shirt playing Quick Hit Blitz trying to requalify for Boyd Emerald status for next year. For those following my struggle to requalify with a reasonable amount of play and without going broke, on our last episode I had settled on playing Everi's Wild Wild Gems multi-line three-reel machine to earn tier credits.

One of my reasons for choosing this game is because it's a quarter-denomination machine, so it could have a higher long-term payback than the "penny" denomination machines. Although the long term isn't really a factor given the number of spins I need to play to requalify, I wrote a few weeks ago that old habits die hard.

More importantly, I hoped that the machine would have a high hit frequency. The lowest-paying combination is a push. That's good for hit frequency. The highest multiple on a wild symbol is 2. That's not so good for hit frequency, but it's much better than having 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, etc. The top jackpot pays a little over 1100 times the bet. That's a bit higher than I'd like to see to indicate high hit frequency. Suncoast has many quarter machines, but the ones I saw all had wild symbols with high multipliers, so I figured Wild Wild Gems was my best bet for hit frequency.

My last session on the machine started off well. I didn't hit anything big, but I was hitting. I will easily be able to play the number of points I wanted to play before exhausting my bankroll for the day if this trend continued.

Well, it didn't. I ran out of cash long before hitting my goal. Maybe I should reconsider playing Quick Hit Blitz (QHB).

One strike against QHB is that it's a "penny" machine. I put penny in quotes because even though the denomination on the screen says "1¢", the minimum bet is 50 cents. In the last century, wouldn't this have been considered a half-dollar machine and been given a long-term payback commensurate for a half-dollar machine?

Another strike against it is its bonus round. As much as I love playing the bonus, I'm not earning any points while playing the bonus. Worse, you can log a sizable loss if you don't hit your share of bonus rounds.

On the plus side, the machine can and frequently does pay back less than a push. That's great for hit frequency.

QHB it is for my next session. It went well. Having a profit doesn't seem to be an option for my lately, so I was happy to get to my point goal and still have money to spare.

There were people playing some of the other machines in the bank on my next visit. That's good, I thought. More people contributing to the Quick Hit progressives on the bank.

Then I realized that it's also bad. More people competing to win those progressives. I figured that the bottom line is that it's a wash. Sure, your play contributes to the progressives that other players hit, but their play also contributes to the progressives that you hit. In the long run, it's possible that the average values of the Quick Hit progressives that you hit is the same whether you play alone or with others.

In any case, I was quite happy when I hit some of the Quick Hit progressives when their values were high. And I was really happy with my $250+ bonus round. Once again I thought that I could hit my point goal with money to spare.

Nope. Still short of my goal, when I opened my wallet to get more playing money, the cupboard -- the section that I keep my bankroll in, that is -- was bare. Did I screw up and misplace some money?

Nope again. I checked my record for the session and I had already put into the machine all of the money in that day's bankroll. I lost the money, but I didn't lose it.

Although I did okay hitting Quick Hits, I hit only two bonus rounds in over 1000 spins. You already know about the nice $250+ bonus. The second one paid only $27.62. None only do you have to hit your fair share of bonus rounds, some of them have to pay well too.

There are two Bao Zhu Zhao Fu machines across a narrow gap from my machine. (I bet you were wondering whether I was ever going to get around to answering the question.) One of the times I fed my machine, I looked longingly at one of those machines. It seems like they hit their bonuses very frequently. The three firecracker strings were completely lit on that machine. Maybe I should cut bait on my QHB machine and try to snag those bonuses that look like they're ready to hit.

I decided to stick it out at QHB -- much lower bet per spin. A lady sat down at the machine that was ready to blow.

As a general rule, if the bonus indicator is countable and quantifiable, it is real. What do I mean by that?

Consider the rice bowl on other Chinese-themed machines. That rice bowl can be full to the brim, yet when another trigger symbol lands, the bowl is bottomless and there's always room for more.

About six months ago I tried a new Quick Hit variation, Quick Hit Fortunes Blitz. (I'm a sucker for Quick Hit machines.) Instead of triggering the bonus with three bonus symbols on the screen like other Quick Hit machines, this variation uses the random-trigger method. When the bonus symbol appears on the screen, stars fly from the symbol to the basket above the reels. No matter how full the basket is, there's always room for more.

I checked the help screen for this game. It said that any appearance of the bonus symbol could trigger the bonus. In other words, the basket is balderdash. The same is true for the bowl on the Chinese-themed games.These machines use a random trigger.

We can't count the number of items in the basket or bowl. We can't quantify how full it is: 10%, 25%, 50%, 90%. The bonus is triggered at random. The display is just for entertainment.

We can count the number of firecrackers that are lit and we can tell the percentage of them that are lit. I believe that the lit firecrackers do indicate how close you are to triggering a bonus. And I think that is the conclusion I reached when I played the machine about six months ago.

But now I'm not so sure. I think I saw the lady land a bonus symbol for one of the strings that was completely lit and the bonus wasn't triggered.

There was a machine and a narrow aisle between me and the lady. And, of course, I was paying more attention to what was happening on my machine than on hers.

I'm going to stick with the conclusion above and in my August 3, 2022 column: The firecrackers are accurate.

But I'm going to check the help screen. And maybe give the machine another try. I still need more tier credits.

Now, about switching denomination. Many (most? all?) machines maintain separate bonus-proximity indicators for each denomination to prevent someone from doing exactly what you're suggesting: running up the meter at a low denomination and then changing to a high denomination when the bonus is ready to hit. I played one single-denomination machine -- I don't remember which one -- that had separate counts for each bet level to prevent the play-low-bet-high-for-bonus strategy.

I'll check this out too and do a follow-up in next week's column.

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