How to read a paytable and paylines
What the symbols, lines and numbers on a machine's information screen mean, explained without jargon.
Why the paytable is worth a minute
Every Orbitpop machine has an information screen, usually called the paytable. It lists what each symbol pays, how lines are counted and how the machine's features work. Reading it will not change any result, since every spin is random, but it does make it much easier to understand what you are looking at when the reels stop.
If you would rather see a machine in motion first, its free animated Preview shows the symbols and features without using any coins or needing an account.
Symbols and their values
Paytables usually list symbols from the highest-paying to the lowest. Next to each one you will see how many play coins it returns for three, four or five matching symbols on a line. Those figures are normally shown as a multiple of your stake, or worked out for you at your current stake.
- Lower-value symbols appear more often and pay less.
- Higher-value symbols turn up less often and pay more.
- Wild symbols stand in for other symbols to complete a line.
- Scatter symbols usually pay or trigger features wherever they land, rather than along a line.
Changing your stake changes the size of play-coin payouts, but not how often anything happens. The odds of each outcome stay the same at every stake.
How paylines are counted
A payline is a path across the reels, one position per reel. On a classic payline machine, a win is counted when matching symbols land side by side along a line, starting from the leftmost reel. The paytable includes a small diagram of every line so you can trace them.
A few points that often confuse new players:
- Symbols must usually start on reel 1 and run left to right without a gap.
- Only the highest combination on each line is paid.
- Wins on different lines in the same spin are added together.
- A line that zigzags across the reels counts just as much as a straight one.
The figures at the bottom of the screen
Many machines also show a return figure and a hit rate on the information screen. These were measured by running each machine's own code for millions of spins. The return figure describes how many play coins come back on average across that enormous number of spins; the hit rate shows how often a spin returns something. They describe long-run behaviour and say nothing about your next spin or your next session.
Some machines use mechanics that change how a spin plays out, such as cascades, respins or expanding wilds. The paytable explains each one in a few lines, and our separate guides cover them in more detail.
Putting it together
Next time you open a machine, try this: watch the Preview, open the paytable, find the top symbol and the wild, then look at the line diagram. After that, the reels make far more sense. You are not learning a way to beat the machine, because there isn't one; you are simply learning to read it. Results are random, coins have no value, and the paytable is there to explain rather than to promise.