Big Bass Day At The Races

Theme and Design

Big Bass Man Hits The Racetrack For a Big Day Out!

Your favourite fisherman has ditched his waders and put on his best tweeds to hit the racecourse, full beard all present and correct of course. Maybe there just aren’t any good bass-fishing locations left to mine, or maybe its off-season. But whatever, this is a slightly odd detour for Pragmatic Play. Design is rather simplistic with its broad green track area in the background under blue skies, all viewed from the main stand, with the reel set taking centre stage.  It’s far from the exotic sites of Amazon Xtreme on which the gameplay is based, but it serves the purpose. For continuity, a variation on the twangy banjo soundtrack accompanies your spins, interspersed with brief sounds of whinnying horses.

RTP and Variance

Like most Pragmatic Play slots we see nowadays, Big Bass Day At The Races comes with three possible RTP settings – 96.07%, 96.08% or 94.05%. It will be at the casino operator’s discretion which rate to set the game to. There isn’t much between 94.05% and 96.07% and you wouldn’t notice the difference, but every little helps, so try to play at the optimum rate if you can. You can check the rate on the game info screen once you’ve loaded up the slot.

In my experience, MrQ from Lindar Media consistently runs games at maximum RTP.

Like all the other Big Bass slots, Day at the Races is a high volatility one, so keep that in mind when choosing your stake. It can go pop at any time but it can also grind your balance down pretty fast.

Maximum Win

The max win in Day at the Races has been set to 10,000x. That is higher than most of the other Big Bass games including the original Big Bass Bonanza game which came in at 2,100x, and the recent Floats My Boat which maxed out at 5,000x. If you like high max win slot then I also recommend you read our article on Pragmatic Play’s highest payout games.

Symbols and Paytable

The simple Big Bass format is retained with 5 reels, 3 rows and just 10 paylines.  The objective is to land 3 or more identical symbols across a line from left to right, starting at the left most reel, to score a win.

There are 5 low value symbols and 4 premiums in the table. Low value ones are the cards, 10, Jack, Queen, King and Ace. These are valued at from 0.2x for 3 10s up to 10x for 5 Aces. Premiums are the binoculars, pint glass, picnic basket and champagne. These are valued at from 2x for 3 binoculars up to 200x for 5 champagnes.

There is a Wild, represented by the bearded man with his race cards. He only appears in the free spins feature where he can substitute for any pay symbol to complete a payline. He has no value on his own.

Features and Gameplay

The setting might have changed, but the features have a familiar ring, albeit without a fish in sight! 

Money Symbols and Multipliers

Rather than bass, horses now represent the money symbols. They drop on any spin, taking on a random value when they do: 0.2x, 0.5x, 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, 10x, 15x, 20x, 25x, 50x, 200x, 250x, 333x, 500x or 1,000x.

A money symbol won’t pay out every time it lands. Instead, the value of money symbols is randomly collected on some spins. When that happens, a random multiplier also comes into play: 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, 10x, 10x, 30x, 40x or 50x.  This multiplier is applied to the total of all the collected coins before the win is paid out.

Free Spins With Pick Me Round, Wilds and Multipliers

Things get considerably more interesting in the free spins round.

First of all, you need 3 or more scatters to land in the base game to trigger this feature. This can happen in one of two ways. You may just land 3 scatters on a lucky spin OR you may land two and a third may be introduced like this:

• If the two scatters can drop a row each without leaving the reels then they do so then lock in place whilst the others re-spin to see if a third comes up.
• A lasso appears in an overlay on top of the reels before randomly adding a third scatter.

Before the round starts you get a pick me game where each pick will reveal a modifier to be used in the free spins feature. The picks continue until no modifier is picked. These are the possible modifiers:

• Up to SIX extra free spins
• Up to THREE + 1 Fixed Horse symbols. Each one gives you one GUARANTEED money symbol per free spin
• Up to THREE Wilds in the collection before the round starts. This is important because collecting wilds during the round unlocks more features
• Up to TWO removals of the lowest value money symbols (2x then 5x) from the table so that higher value ones land in the round

Once you’ve made your picks, then the round starts.

During free spins, when a Wild lands, it collects up the value of all money symbols on the reels. And all Wilds are then collected too.

This is the basis for the game, but it gets better as you collect more wilds. Every 4^th Wild you collect gets you 10 more spins and increased the multiplier applied to money symbol collections to 2x, then 3x, then 10x, then 20x, then 30x, then 40x, then 50x.

At 50x, there are no more extra spins and the game ends when your spins are all gone.

And finally, Pragmatic Play have added some more random events to the free spins round.

• If there are Wilds but no Money symbols after a spin, money symbols may be added to the reels at random. OR a stampede occurs in which horses race across the screen and all symbols are changed EXCEPT For the Wilds.
• If there are Money Symbols but no Wild symbols after a spin, the lasso may appear to randomly add Wilds.
• At the end of any spin the lasso can appear and pull Wilds and Money Symbols onto the reels from the bottom of the screen.