Home » Sweet Bonanza Xmas Slot Review

Sweet Bonanza Xmas has three published return ranges, 96.49 to 96.60, 96.48 to 96.51 and 95.45 to 95.50 percent, and the game information panel does not say which one applies to what. I score it 4 out of 10. The game is competent and the Christmas reskin is faithful. The problem is that six numbers describe one slot and none of them carries a label.

Those ranges matter because the gap between the top of the first and the bottom of the third is 1.15 percentage points. That is roughly a third more house edge, on a game where almost nobody checks which version they opened.

Everything below is arithmetic you can repeat yourself, built from what the studio publishes and from figures measured by third parties, clearly marked as such. No casino has paid to appear here.

Sweet Bonanza Xmas at a Glance

Read the attribution column as carefully as the figures. Several of the numbers people quote for this game come from measurement rather than from Pragmatic Play.

SpecificationSweet Bonanza Xmas
StudioPragmatic Play
Released19 November 2019
Return to playerThree unlabelled ranges: 96.49–96.60%, 96.48–96.51% and 95.45–95.50%
Maximum winAbout 21,100x the bet, with 21,175x also widely quoted and no single figure in a public data sheet
Odds of the maximum winNot published
VolatilitySources disagree, from medium to above average. No studio rating I could verify
Hit frequency42.9%, measured by a third party over ten million spins, not published by Pragmatic
GridSix reels of five, pay anywhere, eight or more matching symbols
Free spinsFour scatters give 10 spins, three more during the round add 5
Multipliersx2 to x100, during free spins only
Bonus buy100x the bet, and it is switched off while the ante bet is active
Ante betAdds 25% to every spin and doubles the chance of scatters
Bet range€0.20 to €125

The ranges, the buy price and the ante bet come from the game information panel. The hit frequency is a third party measurement over more than ten million recorded spins, which is useful but is not the studio speaking. The maximum win is the one figure I could not pin to a single source, and that is noted rather than smoothed over.

The Score, and What Went Into It

Four criteria, each out of ten, averaged and rounded, with a half rounding up. The rating method scores what a game costs and what it discloses, not whether it is enjoyable.

CriterionScoreWhy
Return to player5 / 10The best published figure, 96.60 percent, is good. The worst is 95.45, and the panel does not say which range belongs to the base game, the ante bet or the buy
Cost of reaching the feature4 / 10One hundred times the bet, which is twenty euros at the minimum stake. There is no cheaper door, only the ante bet, and the two cannot be used together
Volatility honesty2 / 10No hit frequency, no bonus frequency, no odds on the ceiling, and the ranges carry no labels. Even the volatility rating differs depending on who you ask
Session survivability6 / 10Twenty cents opens the door and the pay anywhere engine returns something often, which keeps a small balance alive longer than most games in this bracket
Overall4 / 10Average of 4.25, rounded

Four out of ten is not a verdict on the game. It is a verdict on how much of its price you are allowed to see before you pay it.

The Sweet Bonanza Xmas RTP Is Six Numbers, Not One

Three ranges appear in the game information panel: 96.49 to 96.60, 96.48 to 96.51, and 95.45 to 95.50. Six figures in total, and not one of them is labelled as belonging to the base game, the ante bet or the bonus buy.

You can reason about which is which, and most reviewers do. I will not, because that would be a guess dressed as a fact. What I can say is the spread: from 96.60 at the top to 95.45 at the bottom, the house edge goes from 3.40 percent to 4.55.

That is a third more cost for the same session on a game that looks identical either way. The same pattern runs through the original Sweet Bonanza, which publishes a range rather than a number, so this is a house habit rather than an oversight on one title.

What Changes Against the Original Sweet Bonanza

Less than the seasonal artwork suggests. The engine is the same pay anywhere tumble, the same six by five board, the same eight matching symbols to pay, and the same multiplier bombs from x2 to x100 inside free spins.

The maximum win sits in the same place, around 21,100 times the bet, and the bonus buy costs the same hundred times your stake. Candy canes and snowflakes replace the fruit, and the symbol values are arranged to match.

So the honest summary is that this is a reskin with the same price structure. If you prefer the Christmas version, you are not paying extra for it, and you are not getting a better return either.

The Sweet Bonanza Xmas Bonus Buy and the Ante Bet Cancel Each Other

Two ways in exist and you cannot use both. The buy costs 100x the bet and guarantees at least four scatters on the next spin, so at the twenty cent minimum that is twenty euros for one guaranteed round.

The ante bet adds 25 percent to every spin and doubles the chance of scatters landing. It is the slower road in, and the moment it is switched on the buy button disappears.

Which is better value is exactly the question the unlabelled ranges stop you from answering. One of those three ranges almost certainly describes the ante bet and another the buy, but the panel does not say, so the comparison cannot be made honestly.

How Sweet Bonanza Xmas Actually Works

There are no paylines. Eight or more matching symbols anywhere on the six by five board pay, the winners vanish and new symbols tumble in, and the chain continues until nothing new lands.

Four scatters open ten free spins. Inside the round, multiplier bombs land carrying values from x2 to x100, and at the end of every tumble chain every bomb on screen is added together and applied to the whole win. Three more scatters during the round add five spins.

A third party measured the hit rate at 42.9 percent across more than ten million spins, so roughly one spin in two returns something. Most of those returns are small, which is why the game feels gentle and still carries the edge it does.

Four Clauses to Check Before You Play It for Money

The game is the same everywhere. The terms wrapped around it are not, and that is where a session quietly gets more expensive. Four things are worth thirty seconds each.

First, the return printed in the game information panel, every time you open the game at a casino you have not used before. Plenty of slots ship in more than one build, and that panel is the only place the figure you are actually playing is shown.

Second, how the game counts toward wagering, and whether buying a feature voids an active bonus. Slots usually count in full, but feature purchases are excluded under most terms and some casinos cancel the bonus outright for one. The wagering terms are where both of those live.

Third, the maximum stake allowed while a bonus is running. It is commonly five euros a spin, and going over it once is enough for a casino to void everything the bonus produced.

Fourth, the cap on what you may withdraw from bonus winnings. A large maximum win means nothing if the terms stop your payout well below it, and that ceiling is printed in the bonus terms rather than in the game.

What an Hour of Sweet Bonanza Xmas Costs

The return on its own tells you nothing about a session. The price is the edge multiplied by everything you push across the table, and six hundred spins an hour is an ordinary pace once autoplay runs. With a published spread this wide, an hour has two prices.

Stake per spinWagered in an hourAt the best published 96.60%At the worst published 95.45%
€0.20€120€4.08€5.46
€0.50€300€10.20€13.65
€1.00€600€20.40€27.30

The house keeps 3.40 percent at the top of the published spread and 4.55 percent at the bottom. Six hundred spins an hour, the edge applied to everything wagered, using the same model as my cost per hour table. Averages over a very long run, not a prediction for one session.

Play Sweet Bonanza Xmas Free

The demo runs the studio default and needs no account. It is the right place to do one specific thing, which is to open the information panel and read the three ranges for yourself rather than taking my word for them.

While you are there, count the spins to your first free spins round. The pay anywhere engine returns something often, so the game feels generous long before the feature arrives.

Play the Sweet Bonanza Xmas DemoFree play money balance. No account, no deposit, no email address.

Where to Play Sweet Bonanza Xmas for Real Money

Every casino below was reviewed and scored before it appeared here. None of them publishes which range it runs, so open the information panel yourself at whichever one you pick.

Play Sweet Bonanza Xmas at 22CasinoAffiliate link. 7 out of 10 in my review, and the widest game library I have counted. 18+, play responsibly.

FAQ About Sweet Bonanza Xmas

What is the RTP of Sweet Bonanza Xmas?

Why does the game show three different RTP ranges?

Is Sweet Bonanza Xmas the same game as Sweet Bonanza?

What is the maximum win on Sweet Bonanza Xmas?

How much does the Sweet Bonanza Xmas bonus buy cost?

What does the ante bet do?

How often does Sweet Bonanza Xmas pay?

How do the multipliers work?

How do I trigger the free spins?

Can I play Sweet Bonanza Xmas for free?

Who Wrote This

Srboljub Simunovic, responsible editor at Casinos.si
Srboljub Simunović
Responsible editor, Casinos.si. Six years reviewing online casinos, based in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Most reviews of this game assign the three ranges confidently, one to the base game, one to the ante bet, one to the buy. I have not, because the panel does not say so and a confident guess is still a guess.

The same goes for the maximum win. Two figures circulate and I could not tie either to a studio document, so both appear above rather than one of them being quietly picked.

18+. Gambling can be addictive. A game that returns something on about half its spins still keeps between three and five percent of everything staked. The published figures describe millions of spins, not your session. If gambling stops being entertainment, stop and seek help.

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