If winning on a poker machine is fun, it stands to reason that winning ever more will only multiple that enjoyment. That’s the theory behind multiplier symbols, which increase your winnings every time you hit them. While these symbols can be hard to hit, you’ll always be happy to see them, as they can double, triple, or quadruple your winnings—and sometimes, the multipliers grow even bigger.
A multiplier is any symbol that multiples the amount won on a payline or a spin. Typically, multipliers will be given a designation of something like 2x or 5x: meaning that they would give players twice or five times the normal winnings on a given combination, respectively.
Depending on the machine in question, the multiplier may act as a sort of wild, combining with any winning combination to provide bigger winnings. At other times, multipliers have been known to affect an entire game: all of your winnings might be increased by the multiplier, or it might last for multiple spins (particularly during free spins games and bonus rounds).
The most basic type of multiplier symbol is the one you’ll find in the main part of a game. These are common in three-reel pokies, though they’ll occasionally make appearances in five-reel poker machines as well. These symbols usually feature only a small multiplier, such as 2x or 3x, and typically only impact a single payline (or, in a game with lots of paylines, only the lines it appears on).
In these cases, the multiplier is almost always a wild symbol. This is really the only way for a multiplier to work in the basic gameplay: that way, it can fit into any winning combination and provide the multiplication bonus. Sometimes, hitting more than one of these multipliers on the same payline will stack the multiplication process: two 3x multipliers might turn into 9x, for instance. Note that not all machines stack multipliers in the same way, or do so at all, so your results may vary!
Multipliers are more often seen as parts of a free spins round. In this case, you might not see any particular multiplier symbols on the reels: instead, you may simply get a winnings multiplier throughout the whole feature. This is obviously much more valuable that your typical wild symbol: rather than worrying about hitting a specific symbol and hoping to win a few extra coins, all of your winnings will be increased instead on every free spin.
Sometimes, multipliers will be a part of a bonus round instead. You might have to randomly choose between different multipliers, or play a mini-game to determine just how big a multiplier you’ll get during an upcoming group of free spins. Other games will add big multiplier symbols to the reels for a set number of spins as part of a bonus reward.
This is an easy question to answer: yes! There is virtually no downside to multiplier symbols, which is why they can be found on so many pokies. They fit seamlessly into most games: it’s easy to take a game that already was going to use wild symbols and just turn them into multipliers instead, and bonus rounds with free spins (easily the most common and simplest bonus features around) can also easily be modified to include a multiplier component as well.
In fact, the only complaint that can really be made about multipliers is that they aren’t all that special anymore. If you’re a gambling veteran who is looking for something new on a pokie, a multiplier isn’t likely to excite you: at this point, you’ve already seen multipliers a hundred times or more.
But that doesn’t mean that multipliers aren’t still a great pokies feature. There’s never anything wrong with winning a little extra money, after all, and with so many games using the multiplier as an added feature, you’ll be sure to find plenty of online pokies with multipliers that you’ll enjoy!