Guide 02 of 04
The road that grows: free respins, explained
Why most roads stop at three reels and what a long road really means.
Long Road starts every round on three reels. Each spin that pays adds a reel and spins again for free, up to nine reels. It is a simple rule that produces a very uneven game, and it is worth understanding before you play it for long.
One round, several spins
You stake once. The first spin is on three reels. If it pays, the road becomes four reels and spins again, and that spin costs nothing extra. If that pays, five reels, and so on. The first spin that brings nothing ends the round. The returns of all the spins are added together and settled at the end.
Why most roads are short
A spin pays when the same symbol (or the signpost wild) shows on the first three reels from the left. On three reels of three rows that happens a little more than a third of the time. To reach a fourth spin you need two paying spins in a row; to reach a sixth, five in a row. In our simulation of a million rounds, about one round in eighteen reached a fourth spin, and a road that reached eight or nine reels came up about once in 126 rounds.
Ways, briefly
Long Road pays every way. If the first reel has two compasses, the second one and the third two, that is 2 × 1 × 2 = 4 ways, and the pay for three compasses is paid four times. Wider roads allow longer runs, and the pay per way rises steeply with length, which is why the right-hand end of the pay table looks so large.
Worth knowing: the road always starts again at three reels. A long road in the last round does not make the next one more likely to grow, and a short one does not make a long one due.
A good way to play it
Pick a stake you are comfortable seeing go round after round, because most rounds return little or nothing. If you set a round limit on Responsible Play, every round counts once, however many free respins it contains.
Glints have no cash value. Playing or success in these games does not imply future success at real-money gambling.
Next guide: Keep or roll: a short guide to poker dice