Advantage Slots

Is there an advantage game worse than the Buffalo Big Three? Enter Whales of Cash Ultimate Jackpots.

I almost didn’t include this game because of its volatility and the difficulty in targeting just one number when part of your bet is filtered to five different numbers — sort of like the problem with Regal Link Lion and Regal Link Raven — but if you’re chasing only inflated minis and minors, you usually don’t get obliterated.

Here’s what the game looks like:

It’s so big that I couldn’t even fully fit the bottom section that shows all of the numbers:

That $3.50 mega at 1,184 games stands out from the pack. In fact, it’s even lit up and to be fair is damn high. But if you start chasing something like that, you better bring over $10,000 with you on a $3.50 bet.

The mini (bottom number for each bet) resets at 40 games. The minor (next one up) resets at 80. If I see the mini around 110 or the minor around 200, I play until they’re hit. Some grinders are looser: around 80/160.

Having 200x for the mini and 400x for the minor should normally be enough. That means if you’re betting $3.50 per spin, $700 for the mini and $1,400 for the minor. And that’s “normally,” as sometimes you’ll need even more.

I’ve chased maxi-major combos, but that’s a big-time gamble. For now, stick with only chasing minis and minors. Sure, if you see a maxi at around 600 or a major around 800 (rare), you have a lot of money with you (let’s say 2,000x the bet), you care about comps, and you want to gamble, it’s worth sitting down. But that’s a lot of ifs.

For the bonus, you need bonus symbols on reels one, two, and three. The whale symbol substitutes as a bonus, so any combo of whales and bags of money in the first three reels gets you to the bonus.

Sometimes you also just get a random bonus without what was referenced above.

What’s annoying with this bonus is even when you trigger it and spin the wheel, you’re not guaranteed a color (much like with Buffalo Diamond on lower bets). You often land on free spins or the mini, which is why I’m fine with chasing the mini and sometimes the minor but get jittery when trying to harpoon an inflated maxi or major.

Once you land anything — free games included — you have five options. Suppose you really luck out and hit a major with 437 free games. Your options look like this: 437 free games on 3X5 reels, 188 free games on 4X5 reels, 116 free games on 5X5 reels, 64 free games on 6X5 reels, or 29 free games on 8X5 reels.

Over a large sample, these all yield the same result. But short term, going with fewer free games on a bigger board is the high-risk, high-reward move. So it all depends on if you’re feeling lucky, punk. The safest pick would be 437 free games on 3X5 reels. In fact, in the YouTube video I’m watching on this from TheBigPayback, the 29 free games on 8X5 reels option even warns “danger, high risk.”

With the Buffalo Big Three, you’re looking for a bunch of sunsets in the bonus, as those act as multipliers. Here, it’s, you guessed it, whales. And like with buffalo, Whales of Cash can be a classic one- or two-spin game, meaning you could brick out for 114 spins and have two spins loaded with whales and make a killing. Or you could fully brick out and make very little on what you’d think should be a huge bonus.

The range of payouts in the bonus and the amount of time it sometimes takes to even hit a bonus make this game very risky. Here’s my video for Whales of Cash: