Pragmatic Play · 2020 · tested 2026-09-26
Christmas Big Bass Bonanza
A 2,000x fish surfaced twelve times on the Christmas Big Bass Bonanza demo without a Santa to collect it, so this review's 96.03% RTP came from 84 ordinary free spins rounds.
Test card
10,000 spins · USD 2.00 bet · every request logged| Spins | 10,000 |
| Bet | USD 2.00 |
| RTP declared | 96.71% |
| RTP measured | 96.03% (approximate 95% CI 78.6–113.5) |
| Hit frequency | 13% · every 7.74 |
| Dead streak max / avg | 67 / 7.78 |
| Median hit | 2.00x |
| Max win (base game) | 72.0x · spin 8549 |
| Free spins, natural | 84 · 8.4 bHz · every 119 spins · mean FS-only payout 69.8x stake |
| Balance start → end | 100,000 → 99,206 |
each run keeps its own spin log, CSV and raw server journal with checksums; the figures on this card combine all runs
Play Christmas Big Bass Bonanza demo
PRAGMATIC PLAY · official demo · same math as real play
United States
Christmas Big Bass Bonanza available at Cafe Casino
Same reels, real payouts
Cafe Casino runs the same Christmas Big Bass Bonanza with the same math and adds a welcome bonus for players from the United States:
300% up to $2,000 + 150 FS 18+ · T&Cs apply · the demo stays freeBonus buy lab
50 buys × 100x · USD 200 eachmean 0.99x · median 0.235× price (USD 47.00) · 41 of 50 below price · best 17.46x · worst 0.02x
| Spins per bonus (avg / min–max) | 15.7 / 10–40 |
| Retriggered | 38% |
| Money-symbol collects, avg win | 192.12 |
| Bonuses that paid nothing | 0% |
A retrigger here is the fourth, eighth or twelfth Santa collected during a feature, each adding ten spins; starting awards of 10, 15 or 20 spins are not counted. In this journal 31 of 84 natural features and 16 of 50 tickets extended at least once (37 and 26 retriggers).
- Spent
- USD 10,00050 × USD 200
- Returned
- USD 9,89198.91% · approximate 95% CI 28–170%
- Net
- −USD 109−0.5 buys
- Break-even or better
- 9 / 5018%
- Paid 2× price or more
- 6 / 5012%
- Price in base spins
- 100natural trigger every ~119 spins
One ticket equals 100 ordinary stakes. Natural bonuses occurred once per 119 paid rounds in this sample. Stakes multiplied by this interval measure gross wagering, not the net cost of obtaining a bonus. Purchase returns above include the complete purchased round and are divided by the ticket price.
Risk profile
how much bankroll this run needed| 50 bets | bust at spin 58 |
| 100 bets | bust at spin 172 |
| 200 bets | bust at spin 1744 |
One run, one bet size. A different session can bust earlier or never; treat this as a measured example, not a rule.
How it plays
6 rules screens from the game
Ten paylines are fixed on a 5x3 grid, paying on adjacent reels counted from the left. The Christmas bauble tops the table at USD 400 for five on a line at the USD 2 stake and still pays USD 1 for a pair; rod, sleigh and tackle box follow at USD 200, USD 100 and USD 100, the fish at USD 40, and A through 10 close the list at USD 20 each. Nothing cascades, so every spin is settled once.
The Santa-hat bass is the Scatter: three anywhere start ten free spins, four give fifteen and five give twenty. Fish and the loose money symbol carry values of 2x, 5x, 10x, 15x, 20x, 25x, 50x or 2,000x the total bet, and in the base game they pay only as ordinary symbols. Santa is the Wild and appears only inside the feature, where every Santa on screen collects every money value showing at that moment.
Each Santa is kept on a bar above the reels. The fourth, eighth and twelfth Santa each add ten further spins, and the collected values are multiplied by 2x, 3x and finally 10x for the spins that follow; after the third retrigger the bar stops. The bought feature costs 100x the stake, USD 200 here, and opens with the same ten spins as a three-Scatter trigger.
Declared RTP is 96.71% for both the ordinary game and the purchase, the rules page calls the volatility medium, wins are capped at 2,100x the bet, and the stake ladder goes from USD 0.10 up to USD 250.
Free spins
Retrigger
Wild symbol
Scatter symbol
Multiplier
Bonus buy
Bet range USD 0.10 – 250 per spin · payouts read from the game's paytable at bet USD 2.00
Gallery
12 frames from the test
Verdict
Santa collects, the fish waitAgainst the declared 96.71%, the demo closed at 96.03%, with an approximate 95% CI of 78.6% to 113.5% for the series mean. The base game is thin: 12.92% of spins paid anything, the best base hit was 72x at round 8549, and the balance sat 798.5 bets under its start at round 7698. Everything that mattered happened inside 84 natural features, which delivered 61.1% of all ordinary-series payouts at a mean of 69.8x and a median of 52.3x.
Length decided the money. Fifty-one features that ended at ten spins averaged 45.1x; the twenty-three that reached twenty spins averaged 82.9x; the six that reached thirty spins averaged 240.1x and included the best round of the run, 359x at 7742. Not one natural feature reached the fourth stage where the 10x multiplier lives, and across the whole ordinary series the 3x stage produced only 7.5% of collected money.
Purchased entry ran fifty times at USD 200 and averaged 0.989x, yet the median ticket was 0.235x and 41 of 50 lost money; ticket #20 alone returned USD 3,492 after three retriggers, leaving the remaining 49 at 0.653x. The two tickets that did reach forty spins took 45.6% of all purchased money between them.
The finding is the fish nobody caught: the 2,000x value surfaced twelve times, ten of them inside features, and on none of those spins was a Santa on the reels to collect it. Santa's arrivals, not the printed fish values, made the return: 94.0% of every free spins dollar came through his collections and only 6.0% through paylines.
- 84 natural features in the series, one per 119 spins on average (8.4 bHz)
- Thirty-spin features averaged 240.1x the stake, and six of them landed in the run
- Purchase and ordinary RTP are both declared at 96.71%, and the buy sample closed at 0.989x
- Money values up to 2,000x sit on the reels in every mode, twelve sightings in the run
- Only 12.92% of base spins paid, and the best base hit was 72x
- 41 of 50 tickets finished under the USD 200 price, median 0.235x
- No natural feature reached the 10x stage, and 53 of 84 never retriggered at all
- Ten sightings of the 2,000x fish inside features went uncollected
- Drawdown of 1,168 bets from the peak at round 1876 to the trough at round 7698
Test record
10,000 rounds · 50 buys · open data · closed rigOne test run so far: a single session of the base game plus a separate series of bonus purchases on the official demo server, every request and response logged. When the game is tested again, the new run is added here and the figures on this page combine all runs into one sample.
- 10,000rounds logged
- 13%rounds that paid
- 359xbiggest round
- 1 / 119natural bonus rate
- 0.99xmean of 50 buys
- 67longest dry streak
01run
Run 012026-09-26
10,000 rounds at USD 2.00 · 50 buys · rig 0.6.0 · RTP profile 96.71%
measured return96.03%-0.7 pts vs declared
Run 012026-09-26
10,000 rounds at USD 2.00 · 50 buys · rig 0.6.0 · RTP profile 96.71%
- 95% band
- 78.6–113.5%
- rounds that paid
- 13%
- biggest round
- 359x · round 7,742
- longest dry streak
- 67
- natural bonuses
- 84 · one per 119 rounds
- bonus buys
- mean 0.99x · median 0.24x · 82% below price
- balance start → end
- 100,000 → 99,206
- deepest drawdown
- 1,168x
10000 ordinary paid rounds, including naturally triggered features, at a fixed USD 2.0 bet; 50 bonus buys at 200.0 each (100.0x) on the official Pragmatic Play demo server (jurisdiction 99, RTP profile 96.71%); every request and response logged; test run 2026-09-26.
The test rig plays the official demo build over the network and records every server round: bet, win, cascade steps, free spins, collect. Screenshots and video were captured in a separate browser session and are not part of the statistical samples. The text was read against the log by an editor before publication. How we test →
FAQ
6 questions · answered from the logChristmas Big Bass Bonanza RTP on the demo: 96.03% or the declared 96.71%?
96.03% over 10,000 ordinary spins at USD 2, against the declared 96.71%; the approximate 95% CI for the series mean runs from 78.6% to 113.5%, and without the best feature (USD 718 at round 7742) the remaining rounds returned 92.45%.
Paying USD 200 for the feature: did it work?
The buy sample of fifty USD 200 tickets averaged 0.989x, but the median ticket paid USD 47 (0.235x) and 41 of 50 lost money; one ticket with three retriggers paid USD 3,492 and carried the sample, leaving the other 49 at 0.653x.
Spins between natural triggers: how many?
84 triggers over the series, one every 119 spins on average or 8.4 bHz; the longest wait was 403 spins between rounds 3892 and 4296, and each trigger cost about USD 238 in turnover at the USD 2 stake.
Does the retrigger multiplier change much?
31 of 84 natural features retriggered at least once and six reached thirty spins, averaging 240.1x; the 2x stage produced 31.9% of collected money and the 3x stage 7.5%, while the 10x stage was reached only by two purchased tickets, which took 45.6% of all purchased money.
Santa or the fish: which one pays the feature?
94.0% of the USD 11,732 paid inside natural features came through Santa's collections and 6.0% through paylines; the 2,000x fish appeared twelve times in the run and was never collected.
Can I play Christmas Big Bass Bonanza for free?
The demo on this page runs the same build with USD play money at a USD 2 default stake; the base game paid on 12.92% of spins, so a 100-spin session shows about thirteen paying spins and a feature roughly once per 119.
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Field notes
0 notes