If you were to look up tips for pokies or slots, you’ll find that one of the pieces of advice that is given most often is that you need to see whether or not the maximum bet is providing bonus multipliers – and play the maximum bet if it is.

But why?

What is it about bonus multipliers that make them so important in slots or pokies? Why are they so crucial that a lot of advice centers around them?

To understand the importance of bonus multipliers, the first step that you need to take is understanding the ‘scaling’ of payouts for slots!

Linear Scaling of Pokies Payouts

In pretty much every game of pokies that you download, you’ll find that the payouts are linear. What this means is that if you win a 2:1 pot and you’re playing with 1 coin, you’d win 2 coins in return. On the other hand if you were playing with 2 coins, you’d win 4 coins, and if you were playing with 3 coins, you’d win 6 coins.

The ‘scaling’ of these pots is linear, meaning that the payout goes up by 2 coins for every 1 coin extra that is bet. This is fairly normal and you’ll find it to hold true in pretty much every game of slots in every casino or online gambling website.

Bonus Multipliers are Outside the Linear Scaling

The reason why bonus multipliers are so important for pokies is that they lie outside the linear scaling of these payouts.

So for example, let’s just say that same 2:1 pot in a game of slots had a maximum bet of 4 coins. Under normal circumstances you’d expect that winning that pot when you bet 4 coins would give you 8 coins in return – right?

True. But what if there was a bonus multiplier of 5x for the maximum bet. As such, by betting 4 coins and winning a 2:1 pot you wouldn’t win 8 coins, but instead you’d win 10 coins!

In a nutshell, for absolutely zero additional risk you actually ended up getting paid out more – just because of the bonus multiplier.

Are you starting to see why this is so important in slots and pokies? Pretty much every casino and online gambling website out there has bonus multipliers for their games of slots to encourage players to play the maximum bet, and from a players point of view – it is certainly worth their while to do so.

Now that you understand the importance that bonus multipliers have in pokies, hopefully you’ll realize just how crucial it is that you find them and use them when you’re next playing slots in any casino.