The following applies to online gaming and may not be relevant to bookie FOBT’s.
Its random, that’s it, its all based on a series of random numbers.
The bigger the X value of the max win, the more losing (less than you paid for it) bonuses there will be to compensate for the occasional insanely big win.
For a simple example pick a random number between 1 and 10.
Its 10 p per play
If it picks 1, pay back 90p
Any other number you win nothing.
This makes a machine with 90% payout. Very simplified of course but that’s it.
If you want a £1.80 jackpot but keep the play at 10p you have to pick a number between 1 and 20, if its 1 it pays back £1.80 any other number, no win.
So now there are 19 losing numbers instead of 9 in the previous example.
If this was a bonus buy game there would now be even more losing buys.
This ignores the concept of reels but its just a highly simplified demonstration of randomness.
The real machines are handling millions of spins every few seconds, they might be played in real time but I believe the games or spins are pre generated and when you press spin it just pulls the next precalculated spin from the massive queue of spins.
All you are doing is getting lucky that the spin you ‘chose’ based on the exact micro fraction of a second that you hit spin, was a good hit, or more likely getting unlucky.
They are ‘rigged’ in the sense that overall they pay out less (~96%) than is put in overall.
But they are not compensated like pub fruits are / used to be.
They are not in a good or bad mood, you literally get lucky or unlucky.
My suggestion to Bandit if he reads this is to play on free play or a low stake and do a boat load of bonus buys on a single game to see how usually bonus buys normally play on that machine. Or just keep doing whatever you want to do, play how you want 🙂
But in general the lower the X of the max win, the better the bonuses will play more often.
Low X games like Hot Cross Bunnies Loadsa Bunny, or Time is Money (250x) will pay jackpots fairly regularly.
High X Games like San Quentin, Mental (150,000x) will hardly ever pay a jackpot and there’ll be a lot mor elosing spins (and bonuses) to compensate.
In a similar fashion megaways games tend to have more losing bonuses than their non megaways counterparts (but larger wins).
Edit to add: UnluckyBloke’s post wasn’t there when I originally replied as I was typing my post already, but what he said is on the money.