Pool Shark Slot – Free Demo
Provider:
Habanero
A Black Ball scatter opens 12 free spins with a multiplier that climbs from 2x to 5x, and on Pool Shark that round did nearly all the paying: my first one returned 417.50 at a 2.50 stake, while the base game spent 31 spins in a row paying nothing.
Play Pool Shark demo
Chalking Up Pool Shark
It's a moderate volatility slot. I played 310 spins at a stake of 2.50 from a starting balance of 2,000.00. It comes packed with mechanics such as doubling wilds and multiplier boosts, and the top win is capped at 12,548 times the stake. Any win can also be staked in a double-or-nothing gamble game.
Pool Shark takes wagers from between 0.25 and 125, arrives with an RTP of 95.84%, and its simple 5x3, 25 payline layout is not novel to Habanero. Magic Oak and Naughty Wukong are two other Habanero slots.
Cue Balls, Crabs and Cocktails
As you spin the reels you'll encounter chiefly A, K, Q, J, 10 and 9 symbols but also more lucrative symbols such as billiard balls, cocktails, crabs and the Pool Shark. Wins pay for matching symbols along a payline, and some symbols pay from just two of a kind.
There's a Pool Shark wild featured as well, which doubles any win it helps form and also shows on reels 2, 3 and 4 exclusively. It substitutes for every symbol except the Black Ball, which is the Scatter and pays anywhere on the reels.
The Black Ball Racks Up 12 Spins
The chief draw of this slot is the bonus, and to obtain entry, you will need to hit 3 or more Black Ball symbols. Three Black Balls also pay 3x the total bet as a scatter win, and the top scatter prize is 200x the total bet. These will proceed to award you 12 free spins. The round triggered twice in my session, on spin 52 and again on spin 243, 191 spins later, and neither retriggered.
The interesting part here is the multiplier. It applies to every prize paid during the free games. It rises by 1 after every third spin, moving from 2x up to 5x, and the pairing of doubling wilds and climbing multipliers is where the big wins sit. My first round paid 417.50, which is 167.0x the stake, while the second paid only 10.50, or 4.2x.
What 310 Spins at the Table Paid
Pool Shark is a fairly plain slot with strong emphasis on the free spins bonus and its rising multiplier, and as a consequence, you'll be dealing with a slot that can be a tad bit monotonous in the base game. The two bonus rounds paid 428.00 between them, 57% of everything I won across the session. It's missing potential as well as captivating mechanics. Only 55 of my 310 spins paid anything, and the longest run without a win lasted 31 spins, ending on spin 47. What I intend to say is, it's not as inventive or forward-thinking as I would have wanted it to be. Outside the bonus, my biggest win was 57.50 on spin 128, 23.0x the stake.
Our Minty Verdict: Overall, it's not a poor slot. Across 310 spins I wagered 775.00 and won back 756.50, a session return of 97.6%, leaving the balance at 1,981.50. But I have to concede that without the huge max win potential to lure me, there wouldn't be much else to draw me in.