Placement Of Wilds

This is more of an actual slot strategy than a bigger-picture casino observation, but it’s still general enough that I think it warrants a quick explainer. This is going to be about as brief as it gets, as I break down this concept in-depth whenever it applies to a specific game.

You’ll often hear me say something like, “You’ll want X number of wilds in the first three reels.” That’s the preference in a number of Scarab-type games and many others. Ones such as Star Goddess, Zodiac Lion, Wild Pirates, and plenty of others come to mind.

So while something like this would be just good enough, the next photo, which actually has more locked portals, would not be:

With three locked portals connecting horizontally in the middle of the screen, this Star Goddess play is barely good enough to play. But this one is no good:

Even though I have four locked portals on this Wu Dragon example, having a vertical build like this in reel one is not desirable. It’s often very important that wilds line up horizontally rather than vertically.

Why? Well, having wilds connect horizontally puts you in a much better position for line hits that reach those fourth and fifth reels, and that’s when you can make some real money. This concept carries over to many different slot machines, advantage or otherwise. Almost all slot machines pay left to right, meaning that if you don’t match any symbols up from column one to column two to column three, you often won’t win on that spin.

That comes up daily when I’m evaluating potentially close plays. Yes, I’ll say something like, “I want X number of wilds in the first three reels for this game,” but I’ll often caveat it with the strong preference for them to be building horizontally.

Also, don’t ask me why I can never remember the word “horizontally” in my videos: