WILL THE QUICK SPIN FEATURE SURVIVE THE GAMBLING ACT REVIEW?

The year 2020 will see the Gambling Act that first came to light in 2005 undergo a major overhaul to bring it in line with the huge advancements in technology that we have seen. Specifically the dramatic increase of use in mobile devices, and the ease of now being able to access an online casino through them.

We have already seen the UKGC take action and ban the use of credit cards, with this coming into effect in April 2020, and with a potential maximum stake of £2 also being brought into play for online casino games, we decided to look at another area of slots that we feel may also change under the gambling act review.

THE QUICK SPIN SETTING OPTION

SHOULD THE QUICK SPIN FOR ONLINE SLOTS BE REMOVED?

It's only fair to say that not all slot providers include a quick spin setting option on their slots, but there are still hundreds of games out there that do allow you to change a setting which enables the reels to spin and stop at a far greater speed than the normal default setting of the game. Or alternatively double tapping on the start button can also cause the reels to start and stop at an extra fast speed.

Why do slots have a quick spin setting?

I'm sure it would depend on who you were to ask this question as to what answer you would get, but all slot players are different in their style of play. Whilst some will happily sit there and activate the auto play and watch the game in action, others will want to trigger the in-game features and modifiers as quickly as possible. This is where the quick spin setting comes in to its own, as it enables those players to get to the action in the fastest possible time.

So why do some slot providers leave this feature out?

I remember a couple of years ago I saw an interview that Nik Robinson from Big Time Gaming gave, where he said that BTG slots would never have a quick spin option added to them. This was because he thought that it devalued the experience of BTG slots and all of the joys and entertainment that came with playing them. I actually thought this was an excellent answer and agreed with him 100%, slots should be a form of entertainment and once you are consistently quick spinning it's as though the joy of playing has gone, and it's manifesting into something potentially dangerous.

What difference would it make removing the quick spin setting?

I highlighted in the article about the £2 maximum stake that it is still a huge amount of money to be playing at, and when you put that stake alongside a setting such as the quick spin the reality of how much money you can lose is highlighted very quickly. The best way to demonstrate this is through a little case study, so I decided to complete one below.

PLAYING WITH QUICK SPIN ENABLED VERSUS PLAYING WITH AUTO PLAY

PLAYING WITH QUICK SPIN ENABLED VERSUS PLAYING WITH AUTO PLAY ON BOOK OF DEAD

Firstly I'll just explain that this is a test done through demo play on the Book of Dead. I chose this slot as it's quite popular among players and one that everybody can relate to. The test will be playing Book of Dead on a £2 stake for 5 minutes with quick spin enabled, versus a £2 stake for 5 minutes with just the autoplay enabled at default speed.

The test was completed 5 times for each setting as to gain an average and it was all pure base game play. At no time on any of the tests did the feature trigger, so there is no interference in the results with how long each spin was taking due to waiting for a bonus game to play out.

Obviously in real play circumstances the bonus would trigger to alter these results, and the RTP is of course calculated over 100,000s of spins, so the loss amount could also alter drastically over more tests. The main aim however is to see what the difference is between the two settings with regard to spinning time, so let's get into the results.

QUICK SPIN RESULTS

TEST 1 - 217 Spins - Loss of £265 in 5 minutes.
TEST 2 - 209 Spins - Loss of £206 in 5 minuets.
TEST 3 - 208 Spins - Loss of £236 in 5 minutes.
TEST 4 - 201 Spins - Loss of £203 in 5 minutes.
TEST 5 - 199 Spins - Loss of £206 in 5 minutes.

This averages out at 205 spins every 5 minutes at a loss of £223.20.
Further broken down to 41.12 spins a minute at a loss of £44.64.
Finally ending at 1.45 seconds a spin at a loss of 0.74p a second.

AUTO PLAY RESULTS

TEST 1 - 97 Spins - Loss of £128 in 5 minutes.
TEST 2 - 92 Spins - Loss of £98 in 5 minuets.
TEST 3 - 95 Spins - Loss of £108 in 5 minutes.
TEST 4 - 94 Spins - Loss of £146 in 5 minutes.
TEST 5 - 87 Spins - Loss of £67 in 5 minutes.

This averages out at 93 spins every 5 minutes at a loss of £93.
Further broken down to 18.6 spins a minute at a loss of £21.88.
Finally ending at 3.23 seconds a spin at a loss of 0.36p a second.

As we can see from the results there is quite a difference between the two settings. Taking the losses out of the equation, it's possible to spin just over twice as many times per minute when the quick spin function is enabled on a slot. So even with a £2 capped stake it is still possible to rack up big losses when playing slots that include this feature.

WHAT COULD HAPPEN IF THE QUICK SPIN OPTION IS REVISED

With all of the recent changes to regulation it's hard to see the quick spin option on a slot surviving the year 2020. The powers that be may decide that they not only want to remove the choice for a player to fast play, but to also slow down the speed of the default setting on a game. Although the little test performed in this article isn't over 1000's of spins, it does show that you can still lose money very quickly, and at over £20 a minute it's unlikely this will go unnoticed.

Whether making changes like this would open up a potential minefield who knows, but anything and everything seems open to change at the moment with regard to the gambling act. This is an area we will be keeping a close eye on to see if it falls under the hammer at any stage this year.