• Larry The Lobster Free Slot Game
• Lobersmania 3 Real Play

Lobstermania 2 by slot developer IGT is better known as Lucky Larry’s Lobstermania 2 and is an online derivative of the original Lobstermania slot which begn life in land-based casinos. For fans of playing lobster based slot games in order to win enough money to buy some lobster, Lucky Larry’s Lobstermania has a long history of filling that highly specific niche amongst avid lobster slot fans. Indeed, the franchise is several iterations of the idea with Lobstermania slot games numbering all the way to Lobtermania 4. Lucky Larry’s Lobstermania 2 video slot from IGT: is a 5-reel progressive slot which allows 40 wager paylines. Unlike the original, this slot gives you maximum 40 paylines plus an additional bet which totals 60 coins. Now all you need to do is set the coin bet amount and let the good times roll.

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For fans of playing lobster based slot games in order to win enough money to buy some lobster, Lucky Larry’s Lobstermania has a long history of filling that highly specific niche amongst avid lobster slot fans.

Indeed, the franchise is several iterations of the idea with Lobstermania slot games numbering all the way to Lobtermania 4.

For our purposes today however, we will look to the original game that first appeared in land-based casinos years ago and proved an enduring game favorite of casino players.

The popularity of the game has since extended to the internet with the free online slot giant, IGT, putting this top performer on a mobile platform. This means that Lobstermania slots are available for play regardless of where the nearest casino might be located.

How to Play the Lobstermania Slot

As one might expect from a slot called Lobstermania, there is also an accompanying nautical theme that runs throughout the game as you help Lucky Larry with his varying concerns while amassing big wins for yourself.

It turns out; helping nature can be good for your bank account which is good news in general.

Lucky Larry is Happy-Go-Lucky crustacean that knows how to have a good time with his friends. What is Larry’s passion you may ask? Playing poker.

Your role is to help him and his friends enjoy their aquatic pleasure dome. Whether helping Larry finds his cards, or helping his encaged crustaceous friends escape captivity, you will win impressive wins for your efforts. Keep your eyes open for such icons as:

• Boats
• Buoys
• Shipyards
• Lighthouses
• Fisherman

Lucky Larry likes to win and he likes his friends to win as well, so you are embarking to the very depths down to a high volatility game that features a 96% RTP. The two bonus rounds further ramp up the excitement.

Lobstermania Slot Bonus Round

Lucky Larry’s Lobstermania slots machine offers two ways to win big in the bonus round. The first, If that happens when there is a multiplier on reel 3 you may also win between 3x and 5x the original prize value.

Also watch out for the Jackpot Scatter Symbols which can also act as Wilds, however when they appear on 3 to 5 consecutive reels they will also award a jackpot.

3 symbols awards a Light Trap of 2,500 coins, 4 symbols awards a Full Trap of 10,000 coins, and 5 symbols awards the Mother Lode of 50,000 coins.

The second bonus is equally lucrative. If the player gets three lobster icons it will trigger the bonus game where the player has the chance to win great awards. This particular bonus round requires the player to help Lucky Larry’ friends escape. Players will have to free the lobsters during the bonus round.

Each lobster that is freed will add to Lucky Larry’s happiness which will multiply the bonus progressively. At the end of the round, the bonus winnings will be added to the player’s total.

Final Conclusions Regarding IGT Lucky Larry’s Lobstermania

I loved the game’s graphics and sound track and found my self comfortable ensconced on the bottom of the sea as I played. IGT delivers compelling games, and they hit this one out of the park when they opened up Larry to an even larger audience than he had before.

• Appendices
• Slots Analysis
• Miscellaneous

Introduction

In my continued effort to lift the veil of secrecy behind slot machines, I present the following analysis of the IGT game Lucky Larry's Lobstermania. The information regarding the design of this game is taken from the academic paper PAR Sheets, probabilities, and slot machine play: Implications for problem and non-problem gambling by Kevin A. Harrigan and Mike Dixon, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

The authors of the paper obtained par sheets for the game through the Canadian Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. I applaud the government of Canada for this release. The purpose of this page is to further the analysis of Lobstermania beyond what was presented in the Harrigan and Dixon paper.

It should be noted there are other versions of Lobstermania besides this one. As far as I can tell they differ by small changes to the pay table and details of the bonus round.

Reel Strips

Harrigan and Dixon give the symbol distribution for two Lobstermania par sheets, one for 85.0% and the other for 96.2%. Both are presented below. Notice how the 96.2% version has more high-paying symbols and that any given symbol is distributed more uniformly across the 5 reels. To illustrate that the distribution is more choppy in the 85.0% version, notice that the number of clams per reel on the 85.0% version is 10,8,3,4,7. On the 96.2%, the distribution is 6-6-5-6-6. However, the number of key symbols (wild, scatter and bonus) are the same in both games.

Lobstermania Symbol Distribution — 85.0%

Lobstermania Symbol Distribution — 96.2%

Harrigan and Dixon do not indicate the exact reel stripping. However, as long as the scatter symbols are not so close on the same reel that they can appear at the same time, the symbol order does not matter for this game, as well as for most video slots. The following reel stripping is hypothetical, based on the 85.0% version.

Lobstermania Symbol Distribution — 85.0% Reel Strips

The way the game would work would be to choose 5 random numbers, one for each reel, and map each random number to a position on the corresponding reel. For example, for reel 1 the game would draw a number from 1 to 47. For example, suppose this number were mapped to the symbol in the top row. If the random number for reel 1 were 37, then the symbols shown on reel 1 would be a Clam on top row, a Star Fish in the middle row, and a Boat on bottom row.

Pay Table

The next table shows the Lobstermania pay table. All wins must be left aligned. The wild symbol can substitute for any line-pay symbol.

Lobstermania Pay Table

Line Pay Math

There are 47 × 46 × 48 × 50 × 50 = 259,440,000 possible outcomes in Lobstermania. The following table shows how many of these combinations result in each possible win. These figures are the result of a program with five nested loops that tallied the total for each win for each possible combination.

Lobstermania Line Pay Combinations

The next table shows the probability of each possible win. This is the number of winning combinations for that win, shown in the table above, divided by the total number of combinations of 259,440,000. The total in the lower right cell reflects a hit frequency per line (probability of winning anything) of 3.25%.

Lobstermania Line Pay Probabilities

The next table shows the contribution to the return for each possible win. Each cell is the product of the probability, from the table above, and the pay table. The right cell shows a total return from line pays of 55.28%.

Lobstermania Line Pay Probabilities

Scatter Pay

The player gets credit for a 'scatter pay' symbol if it appears anywhere on the screen. Scatter pay wins are based on the total amount bet. The following table shows the number of scatters per reel, total symbols per reel, and the probability of a scatter on that reel, which is 3×(column 2)/(column 3). The reason for multiplying by 3 is there are three visible positions on each reel.

Lobstermania Scatters per Reel

Larry The Lobster Free Slot Game

The next table shows the probability and contribution to the return for 0 to 5 total scatter symbols. The lower right cell shows that the scatter pay feature returns 10.65% to the return of the game.

Lobstermania Scatter Pay Probabilities and Returns

Bonus

The player earns the bonus if he gets the bonus symbol on reels 1, 2 and 3 on any active pay line. The following table shows the probability of getting the bonus symbol on each of the first three reels. The lower right cell shows the probability of activating the bonus on any active pay line is 0.06%, or 1 in 1,730. If the player plays the maximum 15 pay lines, then the bonus probability per spin is 0.87%, or 1 in 115.

Lobstermania Bonus Symbols per Reel

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There are three parts to the bonus game, as follows:

• Number of lobster traps.
• Number of lobsters per trap.
• Size/win of each lobster.

There are three possibilities for the number of lobster traps, 2, 3 and 4, each with equal probability. Thus, the expected number of traps is 3.

There are two possibilities for the number of lobsters per trap, 2 or 3, each with equal probability. Thus, the expected number of lobsters per trap is 2.5.

The prize per lobster can be anywhere from 5 to 250. Each prize has an associated weighting, as shown in the table below. The way the game might work is it would pick an integer from 1 to 322 and map it to a weight according to this table. The bottom right cell shows an average win of 44.02 per lobster.

Lobstermania Bonus — Lobster Wins

The average win per bonus is (average traps)×(average lobsters per trap)×(average win per lobster) = 3 × 2.5 × 44.021739 = 330.163043. British airways 777x.

The expected return for the bonus feature is (bonus probability) × (average win per bonus) = 0.000578168 × 44.021739 = 0.190890.

Summary

The following table summarizes the three ways to win in the game. The bottom right cell shows an expected return of 85.012%. In other words, for every dollar the player bets he can expect to get back 85¢.

Lobstermania Summary

The Harrigan and Dixon paper mentioned they were given par sheets for seven versions of Lobstermania. The available returns were 85.0%, 87.5%, 90.0%, 92.5%, 94.0%, 95.0%, and 96.2%.

More Deconstructions

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• Deconstructing Lucky Larry's Lobstermania.
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