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The CMA guide to Club fruit machines
V1.9 All guides copyright Chris Smedley 1996 - 2006 Here you will find playing guides to over 100 different club fruit machines. The guides have been written by myself and they are all proven at the time of writing. However manufacturers do love to re-chip machines and so some guides may not always work 100%. The chances of this happening on a machine is however very remote. I have categorized these machines according to the companies that make them and how I rate their winning potential. Each machine has been given a simple rating to give you some idea of how good or bad it is. These ratings are as follows:
These are of course my opinions and you may think otherwise with your own experience of them. I STRONGLY suggest you stay with 4 and 5 star rated machines until you have built up your money and your confidence. Some basic fruit machine terms
Getting started This paragraph applies equally whether you play club fruit machines or pub machines. The first thing you should do is scout your area and write down all the machines you have found. Then you should disregard those machines with a poor rating or poor review, but remember to check back to places regularly, machines are changed every 3 months in most places. Once you have a concise list of places to go you need to learn the guides. If these places are clubs you will also need to sort out membership. Every pub and club is different. There will be clubs which have players who just takes small wins and very often the machine is just waiting for a pro to force out he jackpot. There will be pubs which are regularly visited by pro-players and you will find them to never be profitable, simply because a streak is always being forced out of a machine even if the player has to do it at a loss to prevent someone else having it. You will have to learn to select which places might be exclusive to you and offer the best winning potential. This can take a few months to achieve but worth it if you are dedicated. Several club members now make £700+ per week and this comes about from being very organised and moxt imprtantly – DISCIPLINED. You need to get to know machines well enough to know when to walk away. Some players find this difficult and that is why they will always be losers. If you put £5 into a barcrest and it is obviously playing awful then walk away, even if the machine is full. Once you have mastered the art of walking away you are already half way to becoming a pro. Most pro’s will tell you they play dozens of machines every day but the profit only comes from a few machines. To put this in simple terms, you might play 20 machines, on 3 of them you will make £50 and on the other 17 you will lose £5, your net profit is £65. This is of course simplified and usually a good player will win on a bigger proportion of machines than this. Some machines you can only expect to make £10 - £15 profit on, but then you should try to find as many as possible. BARCREST Club Royal Exchange (4)Quite an easy machine to read. There are a few obvious signs to look for. The first is the RED features. Any feature that lights up red on an exchange is super and most of them offer up to 80 quid wins. RED LOCOMOTION is a guaranteed jackpot and easy to hit. RED ROYAL EXCHANGE is usually £200. Once red features have been offered the best strategy is to just hi-lo the machine up the cash side. Once you get past £50 it will hi-lo out all the way. The other good sign, similar to Psycho, is flash holds on the bar wins. When it playing well use nudges to get 2 bars on the winline and you will quite often see £15 to £30 wins. Afterplay is limited, collect a few low features and play for flash holds still. But I wouldn’t advise putting more than £10 in. Club Psycho Cash Beast (4)This machine is probably the best club machine of the last few years. Barcrest have made it with the big player in mind. Play when its backing, REFUSE ALL WINS. Good signs are like the AWP version (Extra life/zones, super bonus and stroll on on the feature and seven/reel steppers and gteed wins on the reels). You will find normally you can only climb to the top zone normally with 6 knockouts - this is because the machine blocks all wins above 50 pound normally. Once you have made the machine happy and refused a few fifty quid boards you will get the invincible feature (the logo flickers)! Collect your 250 whilst laughing... After the jp the machine will still be 50 pounds happy for your afterplay. Exchange as low down as possible to try and get the invincibal. Points to note... 1. If you nudge in the 50 pound win, gamble to 75 and exchange you can utilise your taxi bonus to get to the 100 pound win but obviously don’t collect if you are forcing for the jp! The machine will kill you before you get the other knockout you need. 2. The program has a bug whereby you sometimes get told you are getting something next spin and the machine fails to award it - sort it out barcrest! 3. You can get the jackpot from a non-invincibal feature so always play it to the top. Watch your nudges and learn the reels. The jackpot symbols and treble bars are on either side of the reels so this might help you using STEP TO NEAREST WIN. You can nudges to improve this feature. Club Monty Python (4)The usual rules apply, must be full etc. I understand there is a rechip for this machine but only because the first program had a habit of dropping jp's quite close to each other, in particluar my club's machine dropped jp then 60 quid later did it again then the following day gave 200 from cash knockouts! Anyway I'm assuming the machine I play is the latest. The first thing to look for is the cash going up to the 10 - 16 quid level and the features close to Pick-A-Win, at which point there is an obvious block. Each time you hit a ? and got an extra bonus, use the STOPPA straight away. So the first good sign is most features going to the 20 cash region. You are now waiting for one of two things. A feature which takes the cash up to 40 with 1 or more cash knockouts or the invincibal mode. The first will often preceed the latter. Afterplay is minimal, just use what credits you have left in the machine and take any cash win around 10 pounds. Club Dracula (4)The best sign that this is about about to pay is when you get to the position 4 bonus and you are awarded STOPPA which then gives you the best feature start SUPER DOUBLE. When the feature awards are doing this you are often less than £50 away from getting the jackpot either from the hi-lo gamble or from the feature game. The first thing you should do is check the program version. If the version is 0.1 then there is potential for you to take out a lot of money. Hi-lo any cash wins until it lets you up to 200 (on a 250 machine) and collect. There seems to be a bug when you take this. The next feature will offer you 50 or 60 cash in afterplay. Play on after this. Very often within 10 quid it will roll in a large win. The first time I had this it gave me the 200 on a 1 and the second time the 150 on a 10 (which I collected). You are most likely to find the version on your machine is 0.7 or above. You can check the program number by looking at the back of the machine through the glass above the reels. It is written sideways on an orange sticker (THIS APPLIES TO ALL BARCREST MACHINES). When you play a 0.7 you are still looking for the same signs, such as BOOST / SELECTOR / STOPPA giving the top feature start. Just play to force the jackpot out then play on for up to 60 in afterplay. Super Blackjack (4)This is simply one of the best machines ever made. By checking the basics mentioned earlier you should not have any problems. There are many simple ways of getting the gamble up. The first is to take the second feature up on the ladder. This is a simple reel match that offers up to £6 if you can hit all four plums though usually you will only be offered an orange which will give you a £2 gamble for hitting the fourth one. The gamble principle is very simple - keep doubling on red - black - red until you reach £128 and then hit x1½ for £192. If the machine is playing well you should get a gamble up to £32 within your first £20 or so. You often find the gamble loses on £64 or £128 but it usually gambles out shortly afterwards anyway. I have had many of these machines pay the jackpot for under a couple of pound. Another way is similar to the first except you climb further up the ladder to SUPERNUDGES and collect a larger win. The most common is £10 but this feature can offer up to £100 when the machine is ‘ON THE BRIDLE’ as we say. The £10 gamble involves doubling to £80 with red - black - red and then hitting x1½ twice for £180 (slightly better than doubling to £160 and just as likely to come in). The other two features which you can gamble are Loot Shoot which is a skillstop feature and the 3 grapes which pay £2. Things to watch out for: First, you need to establish how well it is playing. You should be able to tell within £20 whether it is worth continuing. This machine likes ‘flashholds’. These are wins after losing nudges. When a hold is offered do not hold anything, just press start and a win corresponding to the win line will roll in, or you will get a feature if you have two or more aces on the win line. If you have ever played an £8 machine you will understand all this anyway. When you are getting flashholds for small wins this is a good sign. It may also offer you feature chances by telling you to ‘HOLD ALL REELS’ which will sometimes step the feature in or offer you 1 nudge for it. When it is offering these regularly it is playing very well. Another peculiarity is the ‘flashing card’. The gamble is achieved by stopping a moving card in the area corresponding to the gamble you have selected, but occasionally the machine will give you a hint with ‘LOOK NEXT CARD’. If it flashes a 2 then the best you can do is gamble RED x2, but it can offer you the KING and ACE. Flashing an ace means you are guaranteed a x12 win. You do not have to gamble your current win (which may be a cherry), collect the small win and try to get a larger one but do not take a feature as this cancels a saved card. It is quite common to get good flashholds with a high card banked. A flashhold on two single bars will spin in £6 and if you have an ACE banked you are guaranteed £72 ! And on a final note, if you get a SUPERSTART feature which starts you higher than the SUPERNUDGES feature, you might as well try to climb the cash pot out since you must not take any of these features. You will also find that a £200 gamble usually follows a cash pot that has been climbed out. A cash pot which simply rolls in has no effect on the machines state of play - it is a bonus ! There is no difference between a 10p or 20p machine. The method of playing is exactly the same. If you do play a 10/20p machine, play it on 20p play obviously ! NOTE: There are several versions of Super Blackjack around. The most common and the earliest is version 2.0 and the above method will work very well. I am aware of three versions after this: 3.0, 3.1 & 3.2. On these you will find that the x2 gamble is not effective when you get to £64, £102.40 and £96. You will however find that the x3 and x6 gambles are ok so try try to get £32 x 6 or something similar. In addition to this the gamble will not be available immediately after a cash pot. It seems the software has been programmed not to let a gamble go until the reserve pot gets to at least a fiver. Blackjack (3)This is the predecessor of the Super Blackjack. It was also a good gambling machine. I used to play one with a £150 jackpot and I would get the gamble by gambling a win to £1.80 (two x1.5 on 80p) and then x3 to £5.40 then again to £16.20, again to £48.60 and lastly to £145.80. The machine used to gamble out easily because most punters would play for the features and not consider a gamble. One useful piece of info: if you take the Jackpot by climbing to the top of the feature ladder you can still gamble the jackpot out afterwards. This is called ‘TAKING IT OFF THE TOP’ and there are a couple of newer machines which treat the jackpot as ‘FREE’. This machine never really showed any ‘signs’ of playing well, but I wouldn’t consider it a dangerous machine for gambling, in fact it was one of the first machines I really understood. I would often get the jackpot very cheaply just playing it at weekly intervals. Club Fortune (3)This is a very simple machine to play. Gamble everything ! Wins are achieved by getting 3 or 4 feature symbols in the reel window which will then give you a win amount on a central grid of wins. You then gamble these wins on the Hi-Lo reel (which goes from 1 to 12) until you reach the top or decide to collect good profit. I say this because I have lost going from £150 to £200 and it can have a bad effect on the machine, taking some time to recover and climb back up. This is not common and usually it will gamble to the top. Things to watch out for: the signs of this machine playing well are simple. It will offer you lots of flashholds for the feature and flashholds for wins on the line. Any 4 of a kind win is a sign that the jackpot is just round the corner. You also get a lot of good numbers on the gamble and even the bad ones (5,6,7+8) tend to win. Another good sign is the ‘CHANGE IT’. This is often activated when the machine is playing well and enables you to swap a bad number for a good one on the Hi-Lo reel. It is a good idea to use the ‘CHANGE IT’ as soon as possible. Do not be afraid to take a £20 or £30 win if you are on a bad number as this machine does have blocks on the gamble. It will usually gamble out when it is just happy enough. By forcing the machine it can get too happy and appear to play awful. Once the blocks are off it will gamble easily. It also pays to get the jackpot as there is usually some afterplay. This will probably be a gamble between £30 and £75 and will be fairly soon after the jackpot. As far as I know, there is no way of forcing the cash pot out of this machine. Remember: on most BARCREST machines the cash pot is free. It is usually paid out randomly. If you should win it then it is a nice bonus. Another tip is to try all these machines on the smaller jackpot versions so you can get used to them. This does not apply to all machines by the way because on some machines the wins are not reduced in proportion to the change in stakes. example: Cops&Robbers. Crown Jewels (3)This is a very popular machine for the small gambler. The jackpot can be won in three different ways. The first is for it to roll in - 3 x 3 red 7’s (jackpot) or 3 x 3 blue 7’s (cash pot). The second way is to gamble up the money ladder on the right to the jackpot. This is the way I always play it. The last way, and the most hurtful to the real gambler, is the feature. This is what makes this machine dangerous and it is wise to learn the machines history before playing. The jackpot can be won by gambling from any of four feature bars which increase as you move around the board. I have found this machine to be quite difficult at times and I now play it just one way. I have noticed that if you are offered a 7’s win (a multiple of £10 or £20) then the gamble up to £100 is usually available. I will of course gamble further on good numbers. Be careful, this machine thinks nothing of losing on a 2, 3, 10 or 11 on high win amounts. Things to watch out for: Look out for anyone collecting a £10 win for three blue 7’s, this should tell you the machine is playing well and there is a possible gamble in it. When you play it you will find that if the jackpot is available you can climb up to about £8 or £10 on the ladder easily and fairly regularly. The climb to the top will follow. Once again, the cash pot on this machine is free and does not affect the machine’s state of play. To summarize, you must get a feel for this machine. I have won more times playing it with my gut feeling but most of all you must learn the history and if it hasn’t paid out for a while - give it a go. Useful Hint: On all fruit machines that have cash pots, use their amounts to give you a guide as to how much it has been played. You can soon judge for yourself when it might be ready next. When I used to do the clubs, 9 days was a good time to leave a machine. The reasons being 1). you often see different staff and different players on other nights and 2). in most clubs this was the right amount of time for cash pots to be ready again. If you can find 15 clubs to tour around over 9 days and keep a log of each one, you will soon be earning good money. You need to be busy every day if you want to stay ahead of everyone else. There is also a Crown Jewels II but the program is almost identical. The only difference I have noticed is it’s reluctance to climb to £100, you always seem to get a bad number on £50. Road Hog (3)This is another gambling machine but with a slightly higher risk potential. Thegamble is either LOSE, x2, x3 or x4 and the problems arise when you are forced to bank some of your gamble in order to gamble the rest. This problem occurs on a few machines and usually leads to a difficult decision, unless you have got a big win for little outlay. It is most important to remember that a little profit or a quits venture is better than a loss. This machine offers flashholds. Do not play the feature. Gamble everything. Things to watch out for: This machine is at it’s best when the gamble is offering x4 consistently. If no-one goes for the gamble on this machine it will save one up. Do not go for it again too soon - you will get hurt. Club Vegas (3)This is a difficult machine for winning the jackpot. Generally the gamble is difficult to get. I have forced the jackpot out by playing the feature until the number of chips offered is nearly 12, it then rolled the jackpot in because it was very ‘happy’. This is not a machine I would recommend putting a lot of money in to. I only play these now to get a quick feature. If you know what the features pay you can put in a couple of pound and show a small profit. The features are found in the SHOWTIME boxes. Multiplier is one of the best. Andy’s Big Time (2)This is a new machine. When it is playing well it will offer you flashholds and medium sized wins to gamble. You can easily tell when it is playing well, so gamble all and as before - don’t take the feature. The biggest win I have had nudge in is £30 but that has lost on a 2! I have gambled it out once but otherwise I would rate it the same as Club Vegas. For feature value you should try to climb to the top. A number between 1 and 12 will determine which feature you get - 11 or 12 are ok. Adders & Ladders (3)This machine has been around a while and is not bad for a gamble. Ignore the feature or collect something small when you are forced into it. To play this you must play for flashholds and straight wins. All of these can be gambled on a DOUBLE OR NOTHING gamble. Usually you will gamble a cherry or other small win up to the £200. Once you can get a cherry to go past £6.40 you should be on your way. Hyper Viper (2)This is a clone of the machine above and plays almost the same Club Connect (4 if you are good! 2 if you aren’t). This is an older machine that requires a great deal of skill. The feature to take is FRUIT MATCH which is a third of the way up the ladder. This feature has the ability to save up BAR wins, and every once in a while it will throw in a single, double or treble bar. You are given two BARS and must match the other two by stopping the spinning reels. The first is easy but the second is very hard as the reel is going at about 1 revolution per second. By the time I was able to hit these there weren’t any machines left ! Great fun and a test of nerve when the fourth treble bar is the difference between £20 and £150. It is however a genuine match and will stick to what you hit. Club California (3)Club Tropicana (3)Night Spot (3)These machines are ok for a small win. Your objective is to climb to £12 and exchange for ‘Pick A Win’. You then hope you are offered a higher feature. I used to win up to £30 on them. There is very little risk but little to gain also. Fruit Full (3) Fruit Link (3)There is not much risk if you play this simply to climb up to the CRAZY REELS feature. It usually pays between £5 and £15. If it goes past £20 then it will stop at £50, £100 or £150. I have played them to get the gamble with varied success. I do not play these for anything but fun. Millionaires Club (3)One of my old favorite machines. It has an all or nothing gamble up the right hand side which progresses from 20p to £150. The first way to play it is to go for the gamble which I have done many times successfully. The other way is to take a quick SURPRISE SURPRISE feature which pays up to £25. You have the option of buying a feature which starts at various places on the feature ladder depending on how much you pay. You can exchange £1, £2, £5 or £10. You can often climb back up to SURPRISE SURPRISE for more. An interesting point is that the feature exchange is the same on all versions of this machine. If you find a £75 machine you have found great value. You only need to get a £10 win and the exchange is usually on the MIX & MATCH feature which can easily pay £50 or £75. I found one recently and they got an engineer in to change it! It was that simple. Jackpot Jump (3)Another old favorite. I just play this to climb to the Win repeater feature near the top. You find this pays up to £35. When you climb you will nearly always be on a 5, 6, 7 or 8 when you get this feature. This is because the feature afterwards can pay the jackpot. I have only ever seen it reached once out of many attempts. Play for fun. Club Pontoon (3)An old machine which allowed you to gamble wins on the feature wheel. If it let you get to GRAPE PICKER or DOUBLE BAR PICKER regularly you could bet there was a jackpot gamble in it. These machines are still about and are worth a go. Not much advice to give on these, just make sure the money is falling to the bottom and gamble everything. I used to gamble £10 x3 x3 x1½ = £135. There was one amusing little trick a mate of mine used to do. When collecting DOUBLE BAR PICKER you will get either 3 or 4 bars. Usually you will get just 3 worth £10. Sometimes if you gamble this on red you will lose and the losing number will be on the fourth double bar (the hi-lo reel is the the fourth reel). He then used to go to the bar and show them that there is a hundred pound win on the line but the machine had not paid out. The beauty of this was that he would get his money and be able to carry on gambling. This only worked because this machine did not say lose anywhere when the gamble lost. Club Celebration (3)This machine is of a similar style to Club Pontoon. They are simple in that when they are playing well they will climb to good features and it is just a matter of time before you get a high gamble from them. Club Take Your Pick (3)This machine is based on the £10 AWP machine and is little bit better. In my experience of playing it, it is not difficult to climb to the Bank Buster feature (the biggest prize I have seen is £100, but usually the the most is £40) but it is difficult to climb up the jackpot. The Hi-Lo has an annoying habit of winning on the middle numbers and then losing on 10’s and 3’s. Exchanging keys for shots at either a cash amount or a feature is usually a non-event. The best cash to hit is the £10 repeat which, I am told, usually pays £40 and this seems to be the biggest win you can get from this machine unless it decides to bung you the jackpot, which is paid out at a randomtime. As with most Barcrest machines you cannot force the cash pot out. I have played this machine in test mode and found that the program probably does not usually let you climb to the £250, though I have seen it gambled out once, all on middle numbers. The simplest tip for this machine is to try a fiver in it. If you are offered 3, 4, or 5 pound wins it is likely it will not cost much to climb to the bankbuster. Regarding the gamble, occasionally this machine will nudge in £50 or £75. My advice is always gamble to the jackpot, I have never seen the gamble lose from here. The numbers on the hi-lo reel are irrelevant at this time. Club X (4)The method of playing this is simple. If it is genuinely full then play for the jackpot in a similar way to Bellfruit’s Grandslam. It is virtually impossible to lose. Club Lucky Strike / Club Calamari (4)Club Calamari and Club Lucky Strike must both be played the same way. Obviously the machine must be full and probably should have taken at least 300 into the cashbox since the last jackpot. This means it should have filled itself up from the last payout and made some good profit for the club. The technique is very simple. Ignore the feature game completely. Just play to turbo gamble all wins up the cashtrail on the right hand side. After about £50 to £100 (usually less) the machine will be boosting up to £40 regularly. This is the block. When the turbo gamble loses you usually end up with a couple of quid at most so you do not set the machine back. Once you get the gamble to go through the block to £100 it is all over (as they say!). If you don't get to the top on this gamble you will get it soon on another. There is also afterplay on this machine. It will easily pay about £20 from a feature on nudges etc. Costa Del Cash / Bank Roller (3)Only play when full. If you have a refill-key then use this. A full hopper should contain 350 quid. There is only one good sign that the jackpot is close and that is the machine offering a full stack for 50. In most clubs this will be collected. If you see this then wait for the machine to be full and force it. Do this by refusing all wins until the feature loses or pays 2 full stacks. It can be expensive to force the jackpot out. There is afterplay also. Collect small wins until the machine plays awfully. You can usually expect to get one full stack for 50 in afterplay if you put about 20 back in after the jackpot. This happened to me 75% of the time on the machines I played. Bell Fruit Machines There are many Bell Fruit Machines and they are among the best for value. The only way to play them is to go for the cash pot (with exception to the machines without a cash pot!) since this is usually ‘FREE’. This means that if the machine was playing well before you got the cash pot it will also be playing well afterwards. You may not get a jackpot out but you can usually get a large portion of your stake back. Each machine varies in the amount of knowledge you need and the skill you require. I have not listed them in any particular order, but most are common in clubs today. One important factor is your chances of getting the cash pot before you start. Unfortunately, it is possible for most BFM’s to be ‘switched’. This is a dipswitch inside (no. 7) which sets the cash pot frequency to “LOW”. What this really means is “EXTREMELY UNLIKELY” and more often than not you have a done a load of money before you realize what is wrong. Switch 7 is not common in clubs but has been known on the ferries. Clubwise (4)This is an early machine which allows you to climb the cash pot out. It is a simple matter of climbing to the top. If you find that you have climbed to the nudge feature before the cash pot a few times and each time it has lost, then it is probably switched. I have only ever found one that was switched and usually these machines climb out easily. If you feel inclined you can climb out the reserve also, though this is not recommended because you will have a much longer wait for the machine to be ready again. The afterplay can be obtained by taking a high feature but the best way is to take REEL MATCH. This involves stopping the left reel on a fruit and then matching the fourth reel for a ‘four of a kind’ win. If you practice you may be able to hit a Bell for the jackpot but I prefer to take the melons as they are easier to hit. The size of the fruit on the reel does not reflect its size in the machines program. You must practice your reel match skills until you can hit at least half of the melons you attempt. To aid you, you will find an ‘OPTO’ or black line on the left reel. This is normally opposite the melon on the reel. If you miss the melon the next fruit is a pear followed by a grape and both are good for a gamble. Temptation (5)A similar machine to Clubwise with the same principals. It is usually straight forward to climb the pot out and the reel match feature is lower on the climb. It is possible to hit a bell after you have won the cash pot, but once again, you must practice this as the bell is a very small timeslice on the reel. Do not take other ‘four of a kind wins’ while still trying to get a bell since other wins will soon stop the bell from being available. It is possible to speed up the potting process by reversing the hi-lo reel near the top but I have found this unnecessary. Club Attraction (5)What a clever little chestnut this machine is! If you have one of these in your area then you have some great value indeed. I have placed this machine in the highest category because I have never lost on one though it is possible if you hit one after a refill - but unlikely. Usually when you find one of these, both pots are on the maximum. This is because the cash pot must be reversed out. If you play with the odds on the Hi - Lo reel you will nearly always be faced with a 5, 6, 7 or 8 when gambling for the pot. If you reverse the climb two features before the pot you will climb it out easily. It may seem daft going lower than a two or a three, but believe me it comes in ! Once you have got the pot you have a hard choice to make. Do you take the other pot out as well ? That’s right, the second pot will come out as easily as the first and usually within a couple of features of it. The only problem with this is the amount of time you may have to wait before both cash pots are high again. I prefer to take just one pot and about £50 in afterplay (this can come from reelmatching or exchanging across for the cashtrail feature) since most people do not believe you can win as much as you can from this machine. I had a £75 jackpot, 5p play machine in my local football club last year and it was quite easy to take £200 out of it for about £30. Club Explosion (3)This machine is also similar to the ones above but perhaps a little more erratic. I have taken the cash pot out of these a few times but with less confidence. If I play these nowadays it is usually to get a quick £50 from the melon on reelmatch. Funhouse (4)In my opinion this is the king of all BFM’s. I have spent many hours playing this machine with much success. The cash pot will climb out normally on the Hi - Lo reel and the afterplay comes from reelmatch. The best fruit you can hit is the melon. My best single result came from one of these machines once when I had the £200 cash pot and £170 afterplay for just £20! I took all the money from the machine and more as well, lovely! Generally you will put in less than the cash pot value to get it and the afterplay is a bonus. There are different chip versions around with varying degrees of potting ease, but the most common ones shouldn’t cause you any problems. If you find hitting a melon on reelmatch difficult try hitting the pineapple. It is just above the ‘OPTO’ on the reel. If the machine is happy enough to climb to reelmatch there is usually a pineapple in it. It is just as easy to get your afterplay by hitting pineapples a few times. This machine is quite common, just look for the big clown on the front! Superbells, The Ritz (3)It is very unlikely you will find either of these. They were both very entertaining machines which involved climbing to the top for the SUPERBELLS feature. They also had very fast filling cash pots which could usually be taken out after the jackpot. If you find one, play it just for the entertainment value! Count Cash (3)This is one of the more difficult BFM’s to take the cash pot out of. I used to play one on a ferry regularly and it would always cost me about £150 to get the £150 cash pot. The afterplay was very good though, sometimes as much as another £150. This comes from exchanging the feature across to a ‘snake’ which moves around a money grid. The speed of the snake is an indication of how well it is playing, the slower the better. If you are prepared to see it out you then have a high chance of potting it but there will be few times when you wish you hadn’t started. There is always a chance of getting the jackpot on the nudges feature. I believe it is this feature that makes the climb so difficult. You can put a lot of money in and not even climb pass the 6 NUDGES feature but this machine is very unpredictable. I have had the £150 on nudges after the cash pot. Nearly always you can ‘buy’ the cash pot and make your money on the afterplay. You must be prepared to put in at least as much as the value of the jackpot and therefore if you do play one you must be in a club which will do a refill because the total you can take out is more than it holds. But remember, if you do get the cash pot cheaply it is unlikely there is much afterplay. 65 Special (4)This is one of my old favorites. If you have a few hours to spare then this is the machine for you. The game plan is simple - get wins in on the line which can then be staked on three more reels to increase the win. Once you have a win in the top money bank you can spin the top reels for a chance of another win at the cost of £1. It is possible to play it on lower stakes but it isn’t worth while. The aim is to build up the bank until either the total reaches the jackpot amount or the 3 bells roll in. Generally if your first good climb is around the £50 region you will win good money. Sometimes the money bank can be on a single climb for several hours and it is a good idea to jam something like a piece of card into the start button to stop your arm aching! If the machine is backing from the start it is very unlikely you will lose, I never have. This machine does not have a cash pot so it really is a matter of timing. There is a small amount of afterplay by playing the top reels on a smaller stake (60p or 40p). I have even known of another jackpot paid out this way. Cashino (5)This is a much better version of the machine above. If you find one of these you need to establish roughly how much the cash pot and reserve are on when the cash pot is paid out. Usually the £200 machines can be left until the pot is on £200 and the reserve is about £100. In this case you are playing for the cash pot first and the jackpot afterwards. To get the cash pot simply hold all the bells on or above the winline and eventually it will nudge in. It can be paid with the ‘STOP’ button. If the nudges let you bring in two bells on the winline, the machine will spin in all three when this button is lit. Try to avoid nudging in wins as you do not want to be involved in playing the top reels at this stage. Three bells are the cash pot on the lower reels but the jackpot on the top reels. The cash pot is completely free so once you have it you have the option of going for the jackpot in the same way as playing the 65 SPECIAL. This machine can be excellent value but you must play in a club which will do a refill or pay out shortages. It is not unusual for the jackpot to pay out shortly after the cash pot, especially if the cash pot was expensive. You must also remember that a lot of time should be allowed - get to the club when it opens. Grandslam (3)This is an exact clone of the 65 SPECIAL but with a greater jackpot. The only slight difference is that 3 strawberries on the upper reels pay £5 instead of £10 on the original. If you can get the climb to go over £70 in your first £20 or £40 then you should be looking at a healthy profit. Just occasionally this machine does go ‘cold’ so be careful. When you get the jackpot (say £150 for £250) carry on playing but switch to the lower 40p. If it climbs up to around the £30 region it is quite likely it will do the bells on this stake (£150). Sometimes this machine can get too happy. You may find the climb has gone to £170+ and then back down again. This machine can take hours when it is in this state. One trick is collect win the money is at £100. Very often you will get the bells within the £100 you have just taken out. I have taken £300 out of this machine several times with this method. Cash on the Nile (4)There is a knack of playing these machines. They can appear to be playing awful just before they do the jackpot. I call this ‘the calm before the storm’. To make steady money from this machine you need to keep records of when it last paid out and an a rough idea of when it will be ready again. I have played these machines for the past 3 years with many excellent results. The positive signs to look out for are: 1) it will climb easily to £15 but always loses. 2) most features are ‘CHOOSE A WIN’ 3) ‘CHOOSE A WIN’ will offer you 6 choices. 4) it is NOT nudging in 3 of a kind wins. 5) it is NOT offering many ‘STOPS’ If these apply then generally you can expect the machine to ‘roll’ to the £200. This means that when you climb the Hi-Lo the only numbers you will see are 1, 2, 3, 10, 11 and 12. This is called NILE ROLL. This is not strictly true because it will occasionally throw in a middle number to confuse you. Just go with the odds and it should go back to the good numbers. Sometimes you may find that you have played it too soon and the result is you get to the £100 and it gives you a bad number. Unfortunately you should take this as the jackpot is unlikely to be available, but you can take a little more out of it on the features. To get a feature you must get 4 mixed bars on the winline and press the correct barcode. The features to practice on this machine are CASH EXPLOSION (1-2-3) and STOP A SNAKE (3-2-1). Quite often you will find this machine is not ready but there is good value to be had playing the features. I have often taken a quick £50 from these smaller features. Both involve a skill stop on a money grid the same as on COUNT CASH. The slower these features are the ‘happier’ the machine is. With some practice you can still win money when these features are fast. Other features to watch out for are CASH FALL (2-3-1), REEL MATCH (3-1-2) and WINNING SPINS (1-3-2). The latter is generally the best with the usual amount around £50 though it can pay as little as £20. Reel match is a four of a kind match on the reels, the machine can often ‘roll’ from this feature. Choose a Win (1-3) is what you take when forcing the gamble out. Pharoah’s Gold (3)This is the latest £250 clone of Cash On The Nile. It much more difficult to get the jackpot but I find it is much easier to get a £150 win. The sign to look out for is plenty of barcodes. Unlike the Nile there is no afterplay/barcodes after a £150 win. A £250 ‘roll’ is most likely to occur when many small wins have been rotated through the machine. The ‘roll’ is the climb only offering 1, 2, 3, 10, 11, or 12. It may throw in another number but unless you are on the £150 carry on gambling up to the £250. A climb to £150 is very possible on bad numbers. Club Typhoon (3) This a clone of the CASH ON THE NILE but it tends to be a little harder. The signs are not as consistent and you are more likely to see bad numbers on the climb. The features are all the same so if you are not going for the jackpot then the value is as good. Chinatown (3) This machine is of a similar type to the above two but the features are different and they are not as good. The principle is the same - your aim is to get it to ‘roll’. It can often be stubborn and ‘roll’ to £50 and keep on giving you a bad number which will always lose. You can change this by rotating small wins - that is to take £10 and put it back in and so on. Often this will get you nowhere. The signs to watch for are plenty of nudges and small wins. Watch for sequences of good numbers and four of a kind wins. The features on this machine are not as good. King Cash (4) This is a clone of CHINATOWN but perhaps a little easier to tell. I play a £100 machine locally and the signs are simple. Watch for plenty of nudges and 3 of a kind wins. Check the money is falling down the back from the beginning and gamble everything until it ‘rolls’. One way of testing this machine to see how ready it may be is to take the ‘DOUBLE OR NOTHING’ feature and see how far it will go. This feature can be exchanged across from a £1.60 win. If it goes to £6.40 or £12.80 then loses you will find the jackpot should be fairly cheap. As with most machines the main thing is not to collect any small wins but to make the machine ‘happier’ until it does what you want. The last four machines work on this principal alone. There is no cash pot so your aim is to make the machine ‘happy’ enough to ‘roll’ to jackpot. Unlike the Cash on the Nile the block on the gamble is £50 on £100 and £200 machines. Cops & Robbers, Public Enemy #1 (4) These machines are both very similar and both very common in the clubs. They have a boardgame style feature which involves accumulating money or collecting a feature. This feature will not pay the jackpot or cash pot unless you advance to the ‘Millionaires row’ which is another board with higher win amounts. You can also get into this by exchanging a high gamble (£15 minimum). Generally you will lose if you play for this feature but occasionally it will go to the jackpot, and you can take it for a quick bit of profit. The problem with playing machines like this is that they usually force you to take something and this sets the jackpot or cash pot back. The only way to play this style of machine is when the cash pot is at the maximum and the reserve is at least half of it. You must not collect any features (just collect 20p if the feature is started). Hold all the cash pot symbols on or just above the line. The machine will usually pay the pot when all four cash pot symbols are within four nudges. They may be in range several times before it nudges. The cash pot is not available when a jackpot has paid out and less than a few hundred pounds has gone back in the machine. When the cash pot is available you will notice that a lot of cash pot symbols appear in the reel window. This method also means that you will get a lot of afterplay if the cash pot was expensive. signs to watch for: 1. Watch for cash pot symbols on or above the line. 2. Watch for 4 of a kind wins - the machine is VERY happy. 3. If it offers 3 cash pots - the cash pot may not be available. 4. If the gamble goes past £50 it will pay the jackpot. Usually on this gamble. Hint: If the gamble does go past £50 you might be better off forcing it to lose. The jackpot or cash pot will follow soon. If you get the jackpot from the feature or the gamble there will be no afterplay. It can be worth carrying on for a little while to try to get the cash pot because the afterplay will probably account for most of you profit at this stage. If you wish to play for a quick win then the best feature on the board game is probably Capones Caper (Great Train Robbery) which pays about £20. If you refuse this feature the next one is also good, it involves taking your pick of three swag bags which scroll acroos the screen. Another method for a quick win (which worked particularly well on the ferries) was to gamble up to £15 and exchange for the Millionaires Row. I would then collect the cash when it reached about £30. When playing the Millionaires Row you must watch out for it paying the jackpot. On Cops&Robbers if it goes past £80 then it will go all the way to £200. On Public Enemy it must go over £100, I have been fined £40 when I was up to £97 - ouch! I have had the jackpot out these many times this way. If you have decided that the cash pot is not going to pay and you take a feature after filling the machine up (without taking a win) you often find that you have forced it to pay the jackpot instead. There is one difference between these machines worth noting. On Cops&Robbers, if you get into the millionaires row naturally (by getting 3 keys) and the cash goes over £50 then it will definitely go to the jackpot. This rule does not seem to apply to Public enemy #1 as I have heard stories that it can fine you at any point, but you can be rest assured that you will usually get the jackpot anyway. Premier Club Manager, Gameshow, Make A Million (3) These are clones of the above machines with different types of boardgame features. The method of play is identical. You should always play these machines the way I have described. Club Football (3) This is another clone of the above machines. It is almost identicalto Premier Club Manager but the jackpot goes to £250 and the name is different!! It irritates me that Bellfruit claim to be putting a new machine on the market when all they have done is changed a bit of artwork, but one benefit is that you can my information on the earlier clones. Golden Casino (3) This is another clone of the above machines. Play until you get a feature which has the cash pot within 20 nudges otherwise collect the smallest win. Wild West (3) I like this machine a lot though many people do not. It likes to gamble up to the £50 or £75. On the ferries these gambles were easy pickings. The hi-lo goes from 1 to 6 and the reels do a ‘third hold - spins in’. One useful tip when playing for the cash pot. The cash pots actually get nearer the winline as the machine gets closer to paying it. You then get a feature when about 5 nudges are required and you will get it off the feature game. If you try to force the cash pot out and find it is not forthcoming, sometimes when you take a £50 or £75 win the cash pot is available afterwards - very rewarding. There is always good afterplay from a forced cash pot. If ever you land on Winspins collect. Very often 4 or 5 spins will be between £50 and £100 pounds. If you collect spins and they are all small wins then the machine is playing terrible. I never bother collecting cash pots unless it offers loads of them. The features are pretty rare on this machine and do not tend to last very long and do not offer much. I recommend only ever playing when the cash pot is at the max and the reserve is high. When on the ferries the gamble to £50 or £75 was excellent profit in the long run. Treasure Island (2) The only thing I can say about it is that the music is good but even that will get on your nerves if you are on the machine for more than 10 minutes. There is no cash pot on this machine. So why play it I hear you ask? Exactly, there is no point in playing it. Features are commonplace but a waste of time. Most times you will be going around the island collecting features, nudges and win spins. It goes without saying that the treasure chests that are not lit are the ones that fill up first. Very occasionally you can get into the central island. I am going to put my neck on the line here and say - once the money goes above £75 it will continue to the £250 (or jackpot setting). I saw a guy collect it at £200 because he was worried he was going to lose it all, don’t twitch, have your £250. This machine is similar to other board game style machines from Bellfruit but the lack of a cash pot makes it very unexciting. One for the grannies. One interesting point about the feature game: if your first move is a 4 landing you on a Treasure Island + 1 square and you also land on the next Treasure Island + 1 square on your first time around the board then you will definitely get all five and go into the middle. Club Firecracker (3) The feature on this machine has 4 main options : Cash, Features, Nudges and Choose-a-Wins. You want to play for Choose-a-Wins or Nudges as these allow an 'all or nothing' gamble once you collect the best win offered. If you are given Cash or Features then either collect a low amount or gamble until you lose (on Features you can collect 'Catherine Wheels' as this allows a gamble afterwards). I would suggest that no matter how many Shots you have on the feature, that you collect what is offered on the first shot. This is because it can force you into the 'Big Shots' feature (which is accessible at the top of each Feature trail). If you do not have many shots then it can force a sizeable win on you and set the machine back. Once you have got the 'Choose-a-Wins' or 'Nudges' then collect the best win offered and then try and Hi/Lo to the JP. Beware if you get a bad number at 50ukp as this is the bar - if it's going to go then you usually get good numbers for the last few gambles. Good signs - the best sign I have noticed is if it spins in ANY win without you holding any reels. If you see this happen then the JP is not far away. Also, if it is continually landing you on the bonus 8 (and letting you into the feature) or spinning in a lot of high numbers then it is happy. It should also be offering you Choose-a-Wins more often than the other features. Any 4 of a kind win offered on Choose-a-Wins is also a good sign. Very Rich Geezer (4) after many painful sessions on this machine the definitive method to win has been acheived. When this machine gets jackpot happy it will offer you the TRUE SKILL bonus. A sign that it is VERY happy is any four of a kind win, usually shown on nudges. Originally I thought you should select FEATURE because RICH PICKINGS can often pay 100. If you haven't put much in you might want to take this and see but then if it is playing this well you might as well take the jackpot. Instead you should take EXTRA LIFE. Once it has given you this you should be able to hi-lo nudges close to a 4 of a kind win. This is the block on all the features where it will kill you if you need one more nudge. The EXTRA LIFE will ensure you get the machine past this block. You are now waiting for RESPIN REELS as the bonus. Holds any reels with bells on or above the winline and hopefully the others will respin to within 14 or 16 nudges. The feature which oftens gives the jackpot will offer more than one TRUE SKILL bonus so you should take EXTRA LIFE and SUPER FEATURE. SUPER FEATURE lit makes it climb close to the top. There is no afterplay on it. Crazy Fruits
(3) The first attempt was based on the
fact that the machine had been in my club for a week and had loads of money
stuffed through it and it did not seem to want to pay a win over £30.00.
I forced it, refusind the features (and collecting £1.00 when a feature
rolled in), and only holding Bells on or above the winline. After putting
£80.00 I managed to get 3 bells on the winline and after a hold the other
one dropped in for the jackpot. The past week was pretty much the same with
machine just sucking people dry of their money and offering very little
entertainment to the average joe. I played the same way gambling all wins on
the hi-lo until they lost and just holding the bells. After putting in
£120.00 it climbed out on the hi-lo. This is the hi-lo in the middle of
the feature board, not the gamble on the win amounts on the right (like on
other BFM machines). It mainly gave me quite nice numbers up to about £10
but after that I was getting a lot of 5,6,7,8 numbers until I got to £50
(one before the jackpot) and it gave me a 1, so I couldn't lose. So in two
attempts I am £300 up. Money To Burn (2) by Arran H. Club MTB (250.00) version is to be avoided. DO NOT try to force a JP on this machine. I've tried unsuccessfully several times. Try taking Money Multiplier for a quick profit. Can give £27.00 or £30.00. Money Belt is £5.00 or occasionally more Double or Nothing is Nothing - Unless you collect something very small. Hot Slots 3-Kind usually offers bars for £7.00, Catherine Wheel is the WORST feature I have ever seen - for a 25p 250.00 Jackpot. The MOST I've ever had is £2.00. Heat Seeker is random - up to £30.00 (but rarely this high) Thermometer is like a rise+fall feature a number goes up and down - you stop it - that's what you win (usually £10.00). Fired up is like a choose a win over the whole board - not good. Hot Slots 4-Kind - obvious - has never offered me more than £25.00. Stop-a-Win. Will line up £30.00 or £40.00 win on the reels - then roll them quite slowly. If you hit it you get it. If you miss the win goes down 1 until you do hit it. Otherwise you get £10.00 for 3-bells. Red Hot Roll - Good for anything between £26.00 - £100.00 Reel Blasts - Give 3-kind on outer board (very occasionally 4-kind up to £30.00). Reel Blasts - Give 4-kind win on jackpot trail - I've never had enough to hit a bell. Of the Jackpot trail features only reels-on-fire is worth taking - Valued £25.00 - £100.00. The machine has a gamble block at 75.00 - if you can pass this you will get the jackpot. The machine will only land on the £100.00 square in the Jackpot Feature if no reel skill is lit - and a JP is due. I've never seen the JP fail after landing on this square. If you can get a JP Trail feature with the reel skill on - use the reel skill and go for a quick £50.00 and run. If you're trying to force it (only do this if you've seen around £400.00 go in) make sure that reel skill is NOT lit as you approach £50.00 win. It seems to screw you if reel skill is lit. Hope this helps - it's cost me enough! JPM machines Most of the early JPM machines were as good as you could hope for. Nowadays it seems that they have lost much of their value and appeal. Of the latest machines (Wild King, Outlaw) the ‘fun factor’ is low and so is the chance of you winning the cash pot. They tend to stay with the cash pot and reserve on the maximum for a long time. In addition to this, the cash pots fill very fast so the novice player usually sees the machine and thinks he has a chance. The early machines, on the other hand, tended to be very predictable and hence easy to win from. Wall Street (4) There are several types of this machine about. The first is the original program (7.2) and this is the important one. The second is a little more difficult to play since it tends to cause the cash pot to roll in on unusual amounts and is much more erratic on the feature climb. The original program is probably still about. The method of play is very simple. When the cash pot is at the maximum and the reserve is at half the amount then you should climb the pot out. The climb is usually consistent and once you have climbed to the top Wall Street cash feature several times it will eventually give you the pot. It is quite possible to tell roughly how much money the cash pot will cost you from the numbers on the reels when you get a DIGIT ACCOUNT. This is a bonus numbers feature which occurs when a question mark is on the winline. If it shows four 1’s then it is not very happy and the chances are the cash pot will cost about what it is holding. If the machine is doing 2’s then it is happy and the cash pot will cost you about £50 less than it is showing. If it shows any 3’s then you can expect the cash pot to be fairly cheap. Once you have climbed the cash pot out it is a formality to climb back up to the CRAZY feature and take another £40 - £70 afterplay. If the cash pot is not ready, force the machine to climb to a CRAZY feature anyway. The other option when playing this machine is to go for a gamble. My way of getting this is to double a cherry to 80p and then keep gambling on x3 to £194.40 on a £200 machine. I have taken the gamble out of many machines and gone back a few days later for the cash pot. As long as the digit account is showing 2’s there should be a gamble available. Hells Bells (4) This is a very similar machine to the Wall Street but you do not have the option of getting a gamble. It is just as easy to get the cash pot followed by a CRAZY feature. I have found one machine that was easy to pot but had no afterplay in it. The afterplay is normally immediately after the pot so if you have not had a high climb within £5 then give it up. Trailblazer (5) There are no good features on this machine. This is another machine which is almost guaranteed. I used to play a £200 machine in my local CIU club. Whenever the Cash pot was on £200 and the reserve was over £100 it would cost about £100 to get it. As long as I was prepared to invest £100 and climb the cash pot out it was always £100 profit. There is no afterplay following the cash pot. There is another way of getting the cash pot and that is by taking the second feature. This gives you a skillstop on a fruit grid and if you hit the cherry in the bottom left corner you may get all four for the cash pot. I remember doing this several years ago when two friends and I had just £5 between us. We took the £200 to Dover and turned it into £700 over night - not a bad nights work! Casablanca (5) This is a category 1 if you can get the club you are in to do a refill. The simple way to play it is to wait until the cash pot is on £200 and the reserve is up to about £120. All you do is play it until the cash pot is offered. This usually happens from a respin which offers you one nudge but you need four for the pot, and it always lets you gamble to the four nudges. Playing this way there is usually a small amount of afterplay. You will notice when playing it that you can gamble up to high amounts very regularly. If for example you have put in £80 (without collecting anything obviously) you can get the gamble to £48 consistently, even to £96 and then lose. After more money it will let you gamble higher. The second way is much more entertaining but you must be sure the club will do a refill and does not mind you taking consecutive jackpots. The method involves getting the gamble up to the value of the cash pot. Of course you must not get the gamble to £200 as it will be collected. When you get the gamble to go to £192 exchange £40 a time across to the CASH BONANZA feature and try to climb the pot out. Soon it will climb out. The cash pot will have cost you about £200 at this point, but by climbing it out you get it for free. Your next gamble will then go to £192. You can take the gamble to £120 and exchange for 3 cash bonanza features which should pay the £200. There is value in this machine because you can use this method when the pots are lower. For example if the cash pot is £130 and the reserve £50 you can ‘buy’ the pot for about £130 and then get most of that back on a gamble afterwards. A £100 machine has plenty of value because the club should not need to do a refill, it should cost about £100 for £200. This second method often means the cash pot will be offered to you a few times while you are trying to get the gamble high. If your investment is low then take it otherwise nudge it away. It will scramble people watching you to see you lose so many big gambles and ignore the cash pot! I used to play this machine with the first method because clubs do not like people taking two jackpots, winning just one jackpot is quite acceptable. Night Club (2) This is a machine which will only ever offer you a percentage of what you have put in. The only reasonable win is the cash pot. This cannot be climbed out so you must be on the machine when it rolls in. It is unusual that the cash pots get high but if they do then it is worth playing. Just simply keep collecting small wins and rotate them back through the machine. You will get the cash pot eventually. The pots fill up fairly fast on all JPM machines and it is worth paying particular attention to the reserve pot because this can be a guide as to when the cash pot will be paid. So, unless the cash pot is very high, say £170 on a £200 machine and the reserve is over £50, do not bother playing this machine. Hi Lo Climber (3) This was another simple gambling machine which involved a grid of fruits. The fruits would light up matching the fruits on the reels. The sign to look for was the regularity of getting a x6 gamble in. If you could gamble a cherry to £14.40 the gamble would usually be available for good profit. A common gamble would be 40p x6 x6 x6 x1.5 = £129.60 High Roller, Strike It Rich (5) These are possibly the two easiest machines to play for consistent profit. To judge whether it is worth playing, see if the Hi-Lo climb will go four or five positions up the ladder. If it does, play to climb the jackpot out. You will always make profit. The climb is quite long and involves bad numbers all the way up the ladder. If you see someone climb to £10 and take it, get on the machine. After putting the tenner back in it should cost no more than £20 to gamble the £100 out. There are £150 machines about but £100 is more common. The beauty of this machine is the bad numbers on the climb which frightens the average player into collecting. I have had the jackpot for £5 more times than I can remember! Clockwise, Pick of the Pack, Top of the Shop and Reel Bingo (3) These machines are less common now but I remember them being good gamblers machines. If you have seen one of these you probably already know how to play it! They follow the same rules as any other gambling machine - you must not collect anything. The only thing that makes these earlier machines harder is you are often forced into part collecting your win so that you can gamble the rest for the jackpot. This is very painful if the remainder loses. Machines like Top of the Shop and Play Bingo can be played for the cash pot. They often have a cash pot which pays out when it reaches an approximate amount. Sometimes the reserve follows quickly too. It is important you know the history before playing these machines - unless you find the machine is gambling well from the start. Fairground Attraction (2) I have seen a few versions of this machine. Some pay the cash pot once the reserve is high enough and others require you to skill stop it out with the CAROUSEL feature. This is like a reel match but you must match the first three reels with either a cherry or cash pot symbol on the fourth reel. I have also played £100 machine which nudges the cash pot in randomly. I do not recommend this machine. The only time to play it is when the cash pots are at the maximum and it is climbing up the gamble ladder well. Once you reach £75 it will not lose from here. You can also get £75 after the cash pot or the gamble. I used to play a £100 machine for the gamble, once it passed £30 it would not lose. I probably won as many times as I lost. Wild King (2) This is a new £250 machine. In my opinion it is very difficult to play. The cash pots stay high almost permanently at the maximum, the gamble is difficult to get and the game play is not very exciting. It is almost impossible to tell if the machine is playing well or not. I have had a couple of gambles out by going x6 on £32 but only to get my money back. The ‘four of a kind’ wins and win series are very rare, as is the cash pot. I am awaiting further instructions on this machine and also on JPM’s Filthy Rich. There is some good information on this machine. Outlaw (2) This machine rates almost as difficult as Wild King. The good thing about this machine is it has more playability. The board game style feature can offer a couple of good features. MAVERICK involves skill stopping the Hi-Lo reel for a win amount which is then multiplied by an amount in the money window. I have had £44 (11x4) a few times from this feature. A large win can sometimes make this machine temporarily happy and it is not unusual for a four of a kind win to nudge in afterwards. The other feature is GOLDFEVER which pays about £20 and offers a repeat - which is very rare. The game play is very predictable. If the machine is playing well it will constantly offer you small wins and features. The gamble is very poor. The jackpot is paid out rarely by the four treble bars rolling in - not the kind of machine for a good gambler. If the money is falling down the back of the machine there is usually about £40 to be won. Hint: This machine has a ‘STOP’ feature after losing nudges. It will often offer you nudges for £1.00 or £1.60 which usually lose on the gamble anyway. When possible I refuse these wins and try to nudge in bigger fruits on the win line. Quite often you will see the machine offer you one nudge for £1.00 and all you needed was two nudges for £15.00. I nudge in the wrong cherry and often get the £15.00 from the ‘STOP’. Club Rollercoaster (2) The best features on this machine are Cyclone and Shockwave. Cyclone gives you a 4-of-a-kind win which guarantees you at least £15. Shockwave is at least £20. Climbing to the top of the feature board seems to be fruitless. Each time I have seen it done it has paid £15. The Big Money feature which is awarded for getting a 3,5,7 9 and 11 on the Hi-Lo is also sad, I saw it for the first time recently and it paid £3! But occasionally it will pay £50 and repeat 4 times for the jackpot. So ALWAYS TAKE IT. Win spins can pay between £5 and £60+. Several times a win spin has thrown in a 4-of-a-kind win. Another feature which can pay well is the nemesis. You climb hi-lo up the win ladder and each time you guess right the amount is added to the bank. Once you have got up to the £3 mark it is likely it will go quite high. I have seen it pay as much as £175 on this feature. A sign that this machine is going to pay the jackpot/cash pot is that is will start to offer ‘Roll Up’ and ‘Super hold’. These are normally very rare as is landing on a ‘skill’ square. Club red Alert (3) Red Alert - Try to get a large amount of nudges, to get a small win, say 3 or 4 pounds. Then, work your way BACK OVER to the nudge column again - this time the win will be MUCH bigger as the reels will be in a better position for bigger wins - and you will have 8, 9 or 10 nudges probably resulting in 75 or £100 win. Royal Flush (4) The prerequisite for playing this machine is it must be backing, that is the coins must not be going into the hopper for you to make maximum profit. You play to get to the 25 winspins which pay between 75 and 110 (so far on my machine anyway). Extra lives are gained by landing on the Royal Flush squares, you have no control over this but when the machine is doing this a lot then it is a good sign. Unlike CASINO CRAZY there is only a double up which is activated by lighting all five cards in the middle of the board. This is not really an indication of how well it is playing but you should wshould watch the SPINS c that if you are offered any bonuses you can leave an even number of steps to the 25 spins other wise the machine cannot land on a SPINS square without giving the jackpot. It goes without saying that if you reach 25 spins and you still have an extra life then carry on. I have had the jackpot a couple of times this way. The cashpot is not forceable but like GIVE US A BREAK I expect it alternates with jackpots like JP, JP, CP, JP, JP, CP.. etc. There is afterplay in this machine after the jackpot and cashpot.
You will have to put in about 40 pounds and the machine will appear to be
playing absolutely awfully but then you will get a good feature which will
offer you 25 spins. The last one I had paid 80. The jackpot had cost 100 so I
made 190 profit. I expect this is a similar method to those who campaign on
CASINO CRAZY alot. CASINO CRAZY / CAESARS PALACE by
Mark Woodruff (3) ACE machines Generally speaking ACE do not make very many ‘easy’ large jackpot fruit machines. I think I have won more money out of their £6 machines ! Here are four that I have played and my opinion. Grand National (2) I have not played this machine seriously myself but I have witnessed friends of mine playing it with very little luck. It is easy to get an amount to gamble, but very difficult to get it to gamble anywhere reasonable. Club Premier, Big Break (3) These two machines are ok. I play them for a SEVEN’S WINNER feature and a gamble. The gamble is £40 x 1½ x 3 for £180. It is not a good idea to double to £80 because if this loses it can put a block on the gamble. A friend of mine has lost £1300 in one of these because he did not know this. They tend to show good numbers on the climb when playing well and often the cash pot can be climbed out. If you are playing for a quick profit then collecting any of the top 3 features can pay £40. These machines are dangerous to even the best players. Play it again Sam (5) I don’t imagine there any of these about anymore. It is rated (5) because it would pay the £150 cash pot immediately the reserve reached £150 also. I would wait for the reserve to be on £145 and play it for an hour rotating small wins through it until it paid the pot. It must be one of the easiest machines around ! MAYGAY MACHINES Generally MAYGAY machines are played just for fun but there are a couple that can be alright. They usually have high playability but pay jackpots and cash pots infrequently. Here are a few I have played and my comments. Mike Reid’s Big Night Out (2) This is rather a sad board game style machine. I have only played it once and I got the jackpot from the nudges feature. I would not bother playing it again. It is similar to some Bell Fruit Machines but not as good. The cash pot is paid randomly so there is little point in a serious gambler playing it. Cluedo (1) This is similar to the last one. Fun to play but difficult for a gambler. Ceasars Palace (2) This machine never had any real value. It would only ever climb to £25 on the gamble and the cash pot was infrequent. Just for fun I used to try and get a £3 or £4 win up and gamble it on the horses at 7 - 1 or 9 - 1. This often paid a quick £30 or so. Not to be confused with the recently released ACE machine! Instant Millionaire (4) This is a great MAYGAY machine which is fairly common in the clubs with £250 jackpot machines. It is the sort of machine that will easily let you win some of your money back but it is very hard to get in front unless you play it my way. In fact this is one of the easiest machines to play. The key is to force the gamble out - DO NOT COLLECT ANYTHING. Anyone who has played this machine will know the feature climb is difficult - it loves to lose on 2’s and 11’s. When you get a feature always exchange to the money ladder. Gamble with the odds. If the machine is ready to pay you can force it to climb to £30 easily. This next gamble is the key - if it wins taking you to £50 the Hi - Lo will not lose and you will climb to the jackpot. This jackpot appears to be ‘free’. If it costs you £150 to get the £250 you can expect to get about £100 out afterwards in small wins. The beauty of this machine is that your risk is very small, if you think it will not go after putting in £100 you can get about £70 of it back. Not a bad gamble. I was sorry to see it leave my local snooker club, we called it the cash point. It does help if you know how much money has been put through it. Remember, if you see someone else force the gamble out then you may get their after play for a small investment. You probably won’t find one now that is unchipped. Maygay got this book!! Lottery Millionaire (1) This is a clone of the above machine, but there is a block on the gamble at the £50 and it will not gamble the jackpot out. Club Monopoly (3) I have only played this once and on first impressions it looks ok. It offered me £25 for three nudges on the feature and I took it having found out it had paid a jackpot that same day. The feature board works on the same principal as the original game whereby you keep going around the board collecting properties and hopefully sets. I’m not sure if this machine has a habit of rolling in jackpots haphazardly, a trait of MayGay machines. Mega Money can pay the jackpot but more often it will be between £20 and £50. It may be better to keep gambling for the bigger money once you have reached the first exchange. I find this easiest when the exchanges are on £5 and £15. Club Trivial Pursuit (3) As with many MayGay machines there is a block between £25 and £30 on the gamble where you will notice you are always given a 5,6,7 or 8 on the hi-lo. On any machine of this type all I can suggest you do is play for one of the better features and hope it goes to the JP. MegaCash is a good feature for about a £40 win. I have been told that if the feature game starts with the symbols on the reel matching those on the feature game panel then you are guaranteed the jackpot. Club 21 (3) This guide is written from a few personal experiences. Play is similar to Super Blackjack by Barcrest but the signs that it is buzzing are not so obvious. I like to use the x3 and x4 gambles. If early on you can get a gamble up to 50 ish then it is close to be jackpot happy. The way I have forced mine is pump a hundred in without collecting any features. The last time I had to bail out cos time pressure so I took RED OR DEAD and it went to JP but this is not an 'all or nothing' feature so if you are forcing it for the gamble and you get on the feature board I would take 'SUPERDICE', this you can play for all or nothing and it does pay the JP. In fact Strutter tells me that is the only way it has come out in Southsea. Another good sign is it holds the win after the gamble loses, if it sins in the 4th fruit it is very happy. You will also notice that anaverage machine will only let you gamble up the feature trail one or two places before losing, on anything but a 2 or A. If the machine is happy it will climb much higher. CRYSTAL LEISURE Crystal Leisure build machines that were ‘rebuilds’. That is, they use ideas and mechanics from other fruit machine manufacturers to construct new machines. Many features of their machines come from Barcrest and JPM machines. However, in the last few years they have produced some of the most entertaining machines that appeal to all gamblers. The playability tends to be very high with a variety of different features for the small gambler. In addition to this most wins can be gambled - this appeals to the bigger gambler. I have listed these in order of increasing popularity. These machines are very common in clubs and learning to play them properly is a must. It is quite common to get a Crystal machine ‘too happy’. This happens when a large gamble is lost and afterwards the machine appears to be playing very well but it will not climb the feature ladder or gamble any wins. The beauty of all Crystal machines is the Hi-Lo feature. A middle number seems to have the same chance of winning on the Hi-Lo as a good number. It is easy to climb high up the feature trail on middle numbers. Most players are inclined to collect on a bad number hence a good feature or a jackpot can be ‘saved up’. Club Diamond (2) This is the Crystal version of WallStreet. The features are all the same and it plays very similar though the program is obviously different. I have climbed the pot out occasionally but I have never made much profit from it. Five Alive (2) I have only played this machine a couple of times. I was once offered a £100 on it and gambled it. Unfortunately it lost and did not return! I must be honest and say I do not fully understand this machine. But I know enough not to play it. Around the World (2) I have had many people ask me how to play this machine. Sadly it appears to be a poor relation of Bellfruit’s board game style machines such as Cops&Robbers. I have played it many times and had a mixed bag of results. I have gambled the £250 out on the dice Hi-Lo, but only once! I have also nudged in the cash pot for £250 and then got another £250 in the ‘Worldwide flights’ game about £60 later. On other occasions I have lost. This machine is very unpredictable and therefore I cannot recommend a definite playing strategy. It is similar to many other new machines in that the cash pot tends to be hard to get and this means the pots are very often both full - the result is that this attracts people to play it. Crazy Climber (3) This is a machine I have at a local golf club. It is an old machine based on a similar idea to Hi-Lo Climber. There is one simple sign to tell if it is worth playing and that is the gamble. The gamble is a WIN/LOSE type gamble. When you press the gamble button and WIN is lit the machine will stop on x2, x3 or x4. As long as this gamble stops on x4 a couple of times while you are playing it (not necessarily in the same gamble) there is almost certainly a jackpot gamble available. Crystal Lottery (3) This is a new machine which allows you to gamble all wins. I have played it and found the gamble is a little bit harder than most crystal machines. The game play is very simple and involves numbers filling up lottery cards. These wins can then be gambled on a x1½, x2, x3, x6, x12 gamble. I have only played it a handful of times and do not have any ‘helpful’ info. High Flyer (4) This is the first machine that Crystal made which I really enjoyed. The first thing to look for is the signs that it is playing well. A good sign is that it regularly offers you Skillstop, Boost or Respin to get the feature. Check that the feature climb is progressive. This means it will climb higher on each successive feature. If you cannot climb past the Pick-a-win feature (about 4 features from the top) then it is probably not playing very well. There are three ways to play this: The first way is to try to climb to the top feature ‘Jackpot spins’ which will pay either £50, £100, £200 or the cash pot. This can sometimes be expensive and frustrating. It is quite possible to get there and then only get the £50 or £100. Should this lose on the gamble you will find it takes about £40 to get back up the climb again with the possibility of the same thing happening again. This method is dangerous but can be very rewarding since it may climb to the top on your first feature! Once you have got Jackpot you can quickly climb back up to the ‘Hi-Lo Winstreak’ feature for your after play. This can pay between £30 and £90 - don’t bother gambling it. The second way is to climb to ‘Hi-Lo Winstreak’ and gamble what it pays you. I used to play this machine this way with considerable success. I did not always gamble for the jackpot, sometimes it is better to take the quick profit than get involved. You must decide whether it is worth gambling - if your investment is big then obviously you must. A big gamble will usually let you climb back up again for your after play. The third way is my favourite. Play the machine when the cash pot is at £100 and the reserve is fairly high. Play it on 10p play and climb to the ‘Jackpot spins’ feature. Usually this will pay you the cash pot. If it pays £25 or £50 you must gamble it. If it pays the cash pot or the £100 then you must switch to 20p play for your after play. You can climb to ‘Hi-Lo Winstreak’ and take your afterplay as before. Your investment is smaller for a reasonable sized return. Bags of Cash (5) This was the next crystal machine I played and another of my favourites. Play this on 20p play when the cash pot is at £200 and climb to the ‘Jackpot spins’ feature at the top. You will often be amazed at how easy it is to climb to the top on this machine. So many people believe that a bad number means you must collect. On all crystal machines the number on the Hi-Lo is irrelevant - the machine has already decided how far it will let you climb. I have had dozens of big wins from this machine within my first pound. I have even climbed the cash pot out with the REFILL warning light on. I once played one in a club in Maidstone and climbed to the cash pot while the barman was pouring two cokes! The climb was there for anyone who was prepared to climb the ladder on bad numbers but none of the members had a decent climb in them! Simple information like this is invaluable. Remember: MANY MACHINES LIKE TO CLIMB UP THE FEATURE LADDER ON BAD NUMBERS. The afterplay is the same on all these machines - climb back up to the ‘Hi-Lo Win series’ and collect what it offers you. Club Paradise (4) I only ever play this machine on 10p play for the cash pot. I then switch to 20p play for the ‘Hi-Lo Crazy’ feature. I have never seen the jackpot gambled out. On a £200 machine it seems you can only gamble to about £100. The reason for this is that many Crystal machines get very happy if you gamble them out from wins on the reels. Hence the next machine is very special indeed. Rags to Riches (4) This is another fine machine. I have played it using the method mentioned above but there is an added bonus. I always gamble cherries and other wins on the line as near to the jackpot as possible. If you get a large gamble from it, it will nearly always have a jackpot climb available. On 10p play for example, you could get a £96 gamble. You would then find that you can climb to the £100 jackpot (the feature above ‘Jackpot Spins’) at the top and then climb back up to ‘Hi-Lo crazy’ (the feature below ‘Jackpot spins’) for more after play! On 20p play this is all doubled !!!!! Make sure you are in a club that does not mind paying double jackpots... Of course if you do not get a gamble then you should still be able to climb to the cash pot and then switch to 20p play for the ‘Hi-Lo Crazy’. Club Elite (4) I have only played this machine a few times. It seems that the ‘Hi-Lo crazy’ feature at the top has more value than the earlier crystal machines. Each time I have played this machine it has cost me about £30 to climb to this feature and it has paid about £100 (on 20p play). There seems little point bothering with the cash pots when you can call back every few days for this feature. Club Bullion + Club Buccaneer (4)This is the latest of Crystal’s creations. It has a high playability similar to it’s predecessors but the game play is different. The feature involves going Hi-Lo around a board. To get the feature you must get a cherry gamble to at least 1.20 or fill the feature trail letters. You can land on either a CASH square which totals up in the bank, a NUDGE SPIN square which gives you the number of nudges shown, a feature square which advances up a ladder on the left hand side or you can land on a GOLD BAR square. Before you play this machine you must have a clear objective. You can play to get a ‘Four of a kind Win series’ feature and collect for a small profit. You can play for the jackpot by collecting NUDGE SPINS. When you collect this the reels spin and the best nudge win is shown. You can respin the reels at the cost of one nudge. To get the jackpot you can only collect this when you have at least 24 nudge spins offered. I have found that when this feature tempts you with £125 refuse it because the £250 will follow at about 20 nudges, but this also seems to vary slightly between machines. The GOLD BARS are an insurance feature. When you gamble on the Hi-Lo and collect at least 3 gold bars you are guaranteed a gamble when the feature loses. Or alternatively, you can collect a feature and the value of the gold bars is added to the bank also. Once you land on a FEATURE square this is the only opportunity you have of collecting that feature. You will often find it is quite easy to climb as high as GOLD BAR BLITZ. This feature offers you a Hi-Lo gamble to add gold bars to the ones you may have collected. It is common for this feature to pay nothing. When I play this machine I play it for 24 or 25 nudge spins. If the nudge spins go higher than 25 but you cannot land on them then this is an indication that they will not pay the jackpot and your only winning chance is a gamble. There are 3 symbols which pay the jackpot, STARS, CASH POTS and TREBLE BARS. If you get any of these on nudge spins you can get after play. Within one or two features you can collect ‘Four of a kind Win series’ which will be about £50. It is worth noting that on this machine that gambling the GOLD BAR BONUS to £200 or more seems to leave the machine very happy. I have had over £50 out after the jackpot this way and just recently I had a second jackpot - a total of £450 out of one machine! Collecting any feature on this machine will set the feature back to playing badly. Collecting or gambling gold bars does not affect how well the feature game is playing. Another point: on the latest Crystal machines the pots are paid out rather infrequently so it is a little harder to tell how much money has gone back into a machine. An important poiut about Buccaneer. This machine does not tease as much as the Bullion. Generally you will find when forcing it that the nudges will suddenly jump to over 17 or 18 and it will not be many features before you are offered 25 nudge spins. This is usually enough for the jackpot. This is a very good machine to play in CIU clubs and consistently earnt me a lot of money. Club Carousel (4) This is the latest clone of the above machines. The game play is slightly different. You must play for ten PICKS. When you get to 10 you have ten shots at the features on the feature wheel. You must try to get either the 4-of-a-kind win series or the jackpot spins. The latter can pay either £50, £125, £250 jackpot or Cash pot. I have had the cash pot and found that there is a gamble in the machine afterwards. One way is to get the 4-of-a-kind and gamble, e.g. £60 x 3 for £180 afterplay! Remember, if you see someone win a cash pot or jackpot on a GOOD crystal machine and walk away, then GET ON IT! To get started you must find some of the higher rated machines in this book. You only need to find 1 or 2 to recover the cost of this knowledge and you will soon be making a steady profit for yourself. Watch out for some of the older machines with lower jackpots (£150) in British Legions etc. Snooker Clubs and Golf Clubs tend to get all the latest machines (£250). You should expect to start winning in your first week if you have access to some of the high-rated machines. Remember to keep this knowledge to yourself because everyone you pass it onto will enjoy a slice of your profit. As far as I am aware I have not infringed any copyright or trademarks. I have passed this knowledge on to the best of my ability. I am not responsible for any loss or damage you may incur from reading this book. This knowledge is non-refundable and there can be no compensation for any losses. As a final note. Many manufacturers continually change machines and chip-changes are common. Always try to find the history of any machine you play. Good Luck!! copyright 1996 - 2006 |
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