Advantage Slots

Whew, that’s a lot of similar games and I know I’m missing a few. Some are clones of Scarab, such as Diamond Mania, and all of them borrow from the model of collecting wilds and releasing them on the final spin of the cycle.

But what does the game even look like?

Like this! If you look in the bottom-right corner, this example shows it’s at game nine of 10. On game 10, all of those glowing ovals will turn wild, netting you a nice win 100 percent of the time on that board.

But that’s a dream find. You’ll maybe find one that loaded up once a month.

So when does it become profitable? Well, like many slots, this one needs more emphasis on the left side than the right. On spin 10, those glowing ovals will become wilds, but if you have no connecting symbols on the left side, having a bunch of wilds in columns four and five won’t matter. As such, you want more of a build in the first three columns.

You’ll also generally want at least one glowing oval for each game when you’re early in the spin counter. So if you’re on game four of 10, you’d want four or more glowing ovals, with most on the left side of the board.

The later you get on the counter, the more you won’t need to follow this line of thinking. For instance, if I’m on game eight, I’ll play with much fewer than eight ovals, especially if they appear in the first three columns.

You’re more likely to be in a situation like this:

I’d pass. The board is iffy, with the ovals in columns four and five. Sure, since it’s only game two of 10, you could make a case for taking one spin and hoping for improvement, but this looks like a loser to me more times than not.

How about here?

Three seem good for game one. But wait, they’re all the way over in column five. Here, I’d go for one more spin and hope for some improvement; if nothing happened, I’d move on. Some pros wouldn’t even play this for one spin, and I couldn’t fault them.

Unlike a lot of advantage plays, this game sometimes presents tricky cases. Because of that, let’s take a look at one more example:

I’d finish this play out (just two more spins, since it’s game eight of 10). I may not have tons of ovals in that one, but the placement is encouraging, with only two bets needed for them to turn wild.

You’ll often find Scarab on bar games and it’s a great one to look for, because not everyone who knows slots takes the time to seek these out. On such newer bar games — they sometimes have a curved screen, but not always — scroll down to “slot,” and you’ll see Scarab to the right of Golden Egypt, which, coincidently, is another game you’ll want to check and will be explained in-depth soon:

Be sure to check each bet and denomination for this game (notice the 1-cent, 2-cent, and 5-cent denominations above). You should do that for every game. Not every game will offer different denoms, but every game will at least have different bets with different boards.

Most times, the game will read “game 10 of 10” in the bottom-right corner. When you see that, don’t spin at that bet, as the wilds already triggered the previous spin. Once you get proficient at checking games, seeing “game 10” will be an easy and quick indicator to move on.

If you’d like to see step-by-step breakdowns for Scarab, they can all be accessed below.