Sevens of Ra

Sevens of Ra is a three-reel, five-line slot in the old style: three matching symbols pay, the wild Sun of Ra doubles a line and two Suns quadruple it. We went through all 64,000 reel positions. It returns exactly 95.36%, pays something on 44% of spins, covers the bet on 23%, and its top prize is 200 bets.

Each reel is a strip of 40 positions: 20 symbols with a blank between every two, the way the reels of mechanical machines were laid out. All three reels carry the same strip — one Sun of Ra, two sevens, three triple bars, four double bars, six single bars and four ankhs.

Because of the blanks, a stopped reel shows either two symbols, at the top and the bottom, or one symbol in the middle. So on every reel either the middle row is live or the top and bottom rows are, never all three. Your bet is split over five lines — the three rows and the two diagonals — so at 100 debens a spin each line carries 20.

The Sun stands in for any symbol, bars included: a triple bar, a Sun and a single bar make “any three bars” with the Sun’s double, 10 line bets. The one exception is the short ankh pays. For “one ankh” or “two ankhs” the ankhs themselves must sit on the first reels of the line; a Sun does not count as one there. It does count for three ankhs, and doubles them.

Each line pays only its best combination, and the lines add up. An example at a bet of 500, where a line bet is 100: reel 1 has a seven at the top, reel 2 the Sun in the middle, reel 3 a seven at the bottom. The diagonal reads seven–Sun–seven, 200 line bets doubled to 400 — that is 40,000 debens.

40 × 40 × 40 = 64,000 equally likely stops. For each one we built the window and scored all five lines with the same function the server uses, then added everything up. That gives exact figures, not estimates. A check run of 20 million simulated spins landed on 95.31% ± 0.12%, as it should.

The 212-bet spin is a curiosity of the strip: right after the Sun comes a triple bar, so when all three reels stop with the Sun at the top, the bottom row shows three triple bars. That pays 1,000 + 60 line bets — once in 64,000 spins.

The humble ankh earns the most. A lone ankh on the first reel shows up on 0.45 lines per spin and returns 17.9% of everything you bet, 0.4 of a bet at a time. The Sun matters even more than it looks: 43% of all bets come back through lines it has doubled or quadrupled.

That is also why the machine feels generous and still keeps its 4.64%. Of the 44% of spins that pay something, almost half — 21% of all spins — pay less than the bet. The reels flash, the counter ticks up, and the purse is lighter than it was before you pressed Spin.

Low volatility here means a standard deviation of 5.3 bets per spin — the lowest of the three machines. We played 20,000 sessions with 10,000 debens at 100 a spin, each until the purse could not cover another bet. The median session lasted 595 spins, a quarter went past 1,579, and in 32% of them the purse doubled at some point before it ran out.

Those sessions still ended at zero, because we kept playing. Small house edges win by patience, not by speed. To see how a session moves spin by spin, try the simulator in RTP and volatility.

• The bet does not change the odds. The return is 95.36% at 100 debens and at 50,000. Choose a bet small enough that your purse holds at least a hundred of them.
• Read wins against the bet. A “win” of 40 at a bet of 100 is a loss of 60. The counter adds up what came back, not what you kept.
• Stop and Turbo change nothing. The stop positions are drawn on the server the moment you press Spin; stopping the reels early only shows you the result sooner.
• No spin is due. The reels have no memory. After 12,799 spins without three Suns, the next one still has a 1 in 12,800 chance.
• Let autoplay end the session. Set a loss limit in Auto, and the machine stops when you reach it, not when you get annoyed.