Pragmatic Play · 2019 · tested 2026-09-03
Sweet Bonanza
Candy-coated grind. The base game pays pocket change on nearly every other spin; the free spins carried the whole return, and buying them lost money.
measured over 10,000 spins · 50 buys
Is Sweet Bonanza worth playing?
quick answerTen thousand demo spins of Sweet Bonanza at 2.00 came back at 87.28% (95% CI 78.5–96.1%) against the advertised 96.49%. Something hit on 42.4% of spins, yet the typical win was 0.9x and nothing in the base game passed 28x; the 21 natural free-spin rounds, one every 476 spins, delivered 63.5x the bet each on average. Fifty feature buys at 100x came back at 0.86x of their cost, 33 of them in the red.
Test card
10,000 spins · USD 2.00 bet · every request logged| Spins | 10,000 |
| Bet | USD 2.00 |
| RTP declared | 96.49% |
| RTP measured | 87.28% (95% CI 78.5–96.1) |
| Hit frequency | 42% · every 2.36 |
| Dead streak max / avg | 20 / 2.38 |
| Median hit | 0.90x |
| Max win (base game) | 28.0x · spin 9369 |
| Free spins, natural | 21 · every 476.2 spins · mean 63.5x |
| Balance start → end | 100,000 → 97,456 |
Play Sweet Bonanza demo
same math as real play · demo balance
Bonus buy lab
50 buys × 100x · USD 200 eachmean 0.86x · median 0.65x · 33 of 50 below price · best 3.79x · worst 0.03x
| Spins per bonus (avg / min–max) | 11 / 10–20 |
| Retriggered | 16% |
| Multiplier total (avg / max) | 107 / 299 |
| Bonuses that paid nothing | 6% |
- Spent
- USD 10,00050 × USD 200
- Returned
- USD 8,62086% · CI95 65–108%
- Net
- −USD 1,380−6.9 buys
- Break-even or better
- 17 / 5034%
- Paid 2× price or more
- 3 / 506%
- Price in base spins
- 100natural trigger every ~476 spins
One buy costs 100 base spins; a natural bonus came once per 476 spins, so buying reached the feature about 5× faster. Natural bonus paid 63.5x of the bet, bought bonuses averaged 86x.
Risk profile
how much bankroll this run needed| 50 bets | bust at spin 326 |
| 100 bets | bust at spin 425 |
| 200 bets | bust at spin 1477 |
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
7 rules screens from the game
Wins in Sweet Bonanza are counted, not lined up: any eight or more of the same candy or fruit anywhere on the 6×5 grid pay, the paying symbols vanish, the gaps fill from above and the count starts again. A single spin keeps going until nothing new pays. The longest chain we logged in the base game ran 13 steps (round 1321), and the biggest base-game round, 28x on round 9369, was also a 13-step chain; every one of the 80 base-game rounds above 10x was a chain.
The bombs are a free-spins-only feature. Each carries a multiplier between 2x and 100x; once a spin's tumbling stops, all bombs on screen are summed and the total multiplies that spin's win. A bomb sitting on a screen with no paying combination adds nothing, and the log has several bought bonuses with bomb totals over 100x that still came back under the 200 they cost.
The lollipop is the scatter. Four of them anywhere start 10 free spins, three more during the feature add five spins, and the lollipops pay by themselves: four, five or six on screen are worth 3x, 5x or 100x the bet. Five of our 21 natural bonuses retriggered to 15 spins.
Two ways to change the odds: the ante option adds 25% to the stake and doubles the scatter frequency; the buy button starts the feature for 100x the current bet. The server reported 96.49% RTP for the build we played and lists a 96.60% profile as well. The advertised ceiling is 21,100x the bet.
Cascading reels
Multiplier
Free spins
Retrigger
Scatter symbol
Bonus buy
Extra bet
Bet range 0.20 – 24,000 per spin · payouts read from the game's paytable at bet 2.00
Gallery
14 frames from the test
Verdict
who it suits, who should skip itPlay it if you like constant motion and can wait for the feature. A hit landed on 42% of spins in every 2,000-spin block, but the hits were small: the median win was 0.9x, three base-game rounds cleared 20x in ten thousand, and the balance drifted down 1,272 bets by the end. Fifty bets lasted 326 spins, a hundred lasted 425, two hundred lasted 1,477.
What actually paid was the free spins. Twenty-one triggers, 63.5x the bet each on average, five of them under 20x and four above 100x: 268x on round 5959, 145x on round 5132, 124x on round 566, 109x on round 7304. All of it together was 15.3% of the game's total return. A trigger arrived every 476 spins on average, so reaching it by playing cost under five buy prices.
Skip the buy button. At 100x the bet, fifty purchases averaged 0.86x of their cost, the median was 0.66x, 33 lost, 21 lost more than half, and three paid nothing beyond the trigger spin. The best of them, buy 31, retriggered to 20 spins with a 198x bomb total and paid 3.79x; eight of the fifty retriggered at all.
- Something pays on 42% of spins; the worst dry spell was 20
- Free spins delivered 63.5x per trigger, with four rounds above 100x
- Retriggers happen: 5 of 21 natural bonuses, 8 of 50 buys
- Every round is in the downloadable log, so the numbers can be rechecked
- 87.28% return over 10,000 spins, nine points below the 96.49% on the rules screen
- The base game never passed 28x and bled 1,272 bets over the run
- Feature buys came back at 0.86x of price; three of fifty paid nothing after the trigger
- Bomb multipliers only count with a paying tumble under them, so large bomb totals often pay little
- Only one drought reached 20 spins in the whole series (rounds 6417–6436); the runner-up was 15.
- 28x was the ceiling of the base game: round 9369, a 13-step chain. Three base-game rounds in ten thousand passed 20x.
- Free spins showed up 21 times, about every 476 spins, paying from 4.7x (round 8216) to 268x (round 5959); five retriggered to 15 spins.
- The hit rate never moved, 41–44% in each 2,000-spin block, but the return slid from 95.2% in the first 1,000 spins to 84.3% in the last 1,000.
- Fifty buys averaged 0.86x of price with a 0.66x median; buy 31 paid 3.79x, buy 23 paid 0.03x, and bomb totals averaged 107x per purchase while mostly landing on empty screens.
Method & data
open data · closed rig10000 base-game spins 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 96.49%); every request and response logged; test run 2026-09-03.
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 come from a real browser session. A human editor checks the numbers and the text before publication. How we test →
| 2026-09-03 | 10,000 spins · RTP 87.3% |
FAQ
5 questions · answered from the logWhy did Sweet Bonanza pay 87% when the game says 96.49%?
Because 10,000 spins is still a sample. The 95% confidence interval for this run is 78.5–96.1%, so the declared figure sits just outside it. What the run does show reliably is the shape: a base game that hits often and pays little, and free spins that carry the return. A second 10,000-spin series would land somewhere else in that range.
Do the multiplier bombs help in the base game?
No, they never appear there. Bombs from 2x to 100x land only during free spins, and they only count when the tumble sequence on that spin actually pays. That is why several bought bonuses in our log carried bomb totals above 100x and still came back under the 200 they cost.
How long did we wait for the lollipops?
Four scatters landed 21 times in 10,000 spins, once every 476 spins on average, and the gap between triggers ranged from 13 spins (rounds 7242 and 7255) to 1,790. Five of the 21 bonuses retriggered to 15 spins. The best natural bonus paid 268x the bet, the worst 4.7x.
Is buying the feature at 100x a good deal?
Not on our numbers. Fifty buys at 200 returned 8,617 in total, 0.86x of their price on average, and 33 of them lost money. Three bonuses paid nothing beyond the trigger spin. The one that made the run look good was buy 31 at 3.79x, and even that is a long way from the 21,100x on the loading screen.
Can you win big without the bonus?
Not in this run. The largest base-game round was 28x on spin 9369 and only three base-game rounds passed 20x in 10,000 spins. Every round above 100x was a natural free-spins trigger. If you are playing the base game for a big hit rather than for the trigger, this log says you are waiting for the wrong thing.
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Field notes
0 notes