2 Way Pay Slot Feature

Sometimes, the symbols on a slot machine just don’t fall right where you need them too. Those big money wilds might appear on the last three reels instead of on the left side of the screen, and you suddenly feel as though you’d be much better at these machines if you could just play them in reverse.

As it turns out, there are times when this is possible. On two-way pay slots, you can win moving either way on the reels, giving you twice as many chances to score a big prize. It’s the kind of feature that will remove a lot of the frustration that comes with hitting symbols that don’t fit just right on your paylines. But just how good is it for the player? Let’s take a closer look at these 2 way slots.

How it Works

The mechanics of a two-way pay machine are rather straightforward. In almost all respects, the gameplay is identical to a standard slot, and you don’t have to do anything different to take advantage of this feature.

Each time you spin the reels, you will win as normal when you make winning combinations from left-to-right across any paylines that are active for that spin. However, you’ll also be able to win if you make any right-to-left combinations starting on the final reel on that same line. In most cases, the payouts are exactly the same regardless of which way you win.

The key thing to note here is that the lines aren’t mirrored or changed in any way when you score the right-to-left wins. You’re playing on exactly the same paylines; it’s just that you can start from either end in order to hit your wins. The symbols must still be consecutive in order to count as part of a win.

Benefits

The main benefit of this feature is simple: two ways to win are better than one! Having a 2 way feature on a slot machine allows you to score wins that wouldn’t earn you a single credit on a normal game, greatly increasing the number of wins you’ll see on the reels.

Of course, the odds of a machine are designed to reflect this change, so the odds with wins that go both ways may be better, worse, or the same to a similar “one-way” machine. But the biggest difference is that you’re likely to avoid much of the frustration that can come from near misses in more traditional games. If you’ve ever hit four big money symbols in a row, but failed to have a match on the first reel, you’ve certainly experienced this feeling before. With a two-way game, this close call instead becomes a four-of-a-kind match, and potentially a very big win.

Finally, adding this to a game keeps players invested for longer in each spin. Normally, you might know you have no chance to win right after the second reel locks into place. If it is possible to win in reverse, you will never be completely out of the game until the fourth reel is in place, and you’ll usually have something on the line right up until the final symbols stop.

Drawbacks

If there is a downside to this feature, it’s that it can be a bit misleading to players, and the result can be a game that feels a bit boring at times. Obviously, game designers have to account for the fact that players are much more likely to win thanks to the action move both ways, and they can adjust for this in a number of ways, none of which are particularly fun. They can make wins smaller or make it harder to find matches at all, for instance.

It’s also worth remembering that this feature won’t actually double your ways to win. In most cases, you can only score one win per payline, which means that lines that complete five-in-a-row combinations will only be counted once. In addition, lines with wilds towards the middle may also award only the larger of two prizes you might earn. These events are rare, but they do diminish the value of the 2 way feature somewhat.

Who Has Them

Pay both ways or win both ways slots are a relatively new addition to the ever increasing number of innovative features found in online slots. The two main developers who offer these games are Microgaming and Genesis both of whom offer a number of these games.

Similar Features

While only a limited number of online slots allow you to win in both directions, there are many others that offer ideas for avoiding those annoying near misses. One of the most popular is the “all ways” system, in which every right-to-left combination of symbols on the board can win, essentially eliminating the idea of paylines altogether.

Other machines will let you win right-to-left, but do so by making some of the paylines flow in that direction. This isn’t really different from just adding extra lines to the machine, but it can still be a fun gimmick that keeps you interested in a machine even if the first two or three reels don’t look promising.