How Hold and Spin Slots Work: Respins and Free Games

Hold & Spin usually keeps prize symbols in place while other positions try to fill. Free games continue a version of the ordinary reel game without another stake. When both appear, check whether one can start inside the other and which awards receive any multiplier.

Aristocrat describes Dragon Link as building on Lightning Link’s Hold & Spin approach with recognizable orb triggers. Silk Road combines it with free games using large symbols for wild reel replacements: a real example of both bonus types together. Aristocrat’s Dragon Link and Silk Road description.

Orbit Orchard is an original LearnTheOdds practice game with its own probabilities and fixed prizes. The six-pod trigger, 9% respin chances, and Harvest Pulse boosts explained here describe Orbit Orchard, not Dragon Link’s mathematics.

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Locked prizes, Harvest Pulses and free games

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$1,000 practice bank · Free play · No cash value

The ordinary reel game

Orbit Orchard displays five reels with three cells each. All 20 paylines are active. Total bets are $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, and $50; each line receives one twentieth of the total. A $1 spin therefore has a $0.05 line bet.

Match three, four, or five symbols consecutively from the leftmost reel along a listed line. Starcore Wild substitutes for regular symbols and has its own awards. Only the highest eligible payment on a line counts. Add payments from different lines.

The 15 cells are independently drawn, rather than neighboring stops on fixed reel strips. The weights add to 107; each cell’s symbol probability is its weight divided by 107.

Symbols, weights, and line pays

The numbers in the last three columns multiply the line bet. Seedvault Scatter and Prize Pod have feature roles but no ordinary line payment.

Symbol	Weight out of 107	3 matching	4 matching	5 matching
Moon Lemon	15	21×	58×	184×
Twin Orbit Cherries	14	21×	58×	184×
Comet Strawberry	12	26×	74×	236×
Rocket Pear	11	26×	74×	236×
Glass Berry Vial	9	32×	92×	289×
Orbit Watering Can	8	42×	118×	394×
Solar Sunflower	6	53×	158×	525×
Greenhouse Capsule	5	66×	197×	656×
Ringed Peach	4	92×	263×	919×
Orchard Bot	3	158×	473×	1,969×
Starcore Wild	3	184×	525×	2,625×
Seedvault Scatter	3	-	-	-
Prize Pod	14	-	-	-

At a $1 bet, three Moon Lemons on one line return $0.05 × 21 = $1.05. Five Orchard Bots return $0.05 × 1,969 = $98.45. Five wilds return $131.25. Wilds cannot replace scatters or pods.

If a $1 paid spin returns $1.05 overall, its net profit is $0.05. The stake is not added to that return again.

Six pods start Harvest Hold & Spin

Land six or more Prize Pods anywhere on one reel spin. Their displayed values lock into a 15-position grid and the feature begins with three respins. Pods appearing on separate reel spins do not accumulate toward the trigger. Fewer than six do not pay their displayed values.

On each respin, every empty position independently has a 9% chance to receive a new pod. Occupied positions keep their existing values and do not spin again.

• No new pod: subtract one from the remaining respins.
• At least one new pod: reset the counter to three, regardless of how many arrive.
• All 15 positions filled: finish the feature.
• Three consecutive respins without a new pod: finish the feature.

Counters can move 3 → 2 → 1 → 3 if two respins miss and the next adds a pod. A success resets the counter to three; it does not add three to the existing number.

At the end, collect the sum of every locked pod once. Filling all 15 positions also awards Supernova, a fixed 250× the triggering total bet. A $1 trigger means a $250 Supernova on top of the pods. Ordinary paylines are not evaluated on the Hold & Spin grid.

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Pod values and Harvest Pulse

Each pod’s starting value is drawn independently from 10,000 equally weighted value outcomes:

Pod value	Outcomes out of 10,000	Probability	At a $1 trigger
0.5× total bet	5,000	50%	$0.50
1× total bet	3,000	30%	$1
2× total bet	1,400	14%	$2
5× total bet	450	4.5%	$5
10× total bet	120	1.2%	$10
Mini, 20× total bet	20	0.2%	$20
Minor, 50× total bet	8	0.08%	$50
Major, 100× total bet	2	0.02%	$100

Mini, Minor, and Major are fixed value categories, not shared progressives. Supernova is the full-grid award and is not one of these random pod draws.

Each pod newly added during a respin also receives an independent 5% Harvest Pulse chance. The original pods that triggered the feature do not carry Pulses.

Every Pulse adds half the triggering total bet to every occupied pod, including itself and every other pod that arrived on that same respin. The game first resolves all new arrivals, then applies the top-ups. Two Pulses mean two top-ups per occupied position. An old Pulse does not keep firing on later respins.

Suppose six locked pods each hold $0.50 after a $1 trigger. A respin adds two more $0.50 pods, one carrying a Pulse. All eight now receive $0.50 extra, leaving $8 in locked value. It has not been paid yet; collection happens when the feature ends.

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Seed Vault free games and feature order

Seedvault Scatters count anywhere on the reel board:

Scatters on a paid spin	Free games awarded
3	8
4	12
5 or more	16

During a free game, three or more scatters add four games. Consume the current free game before adding that award: eight remaining becomes seven, then eleven if it retriggers.

Free games use the same symbol weights and ordinary line payments. Their special benefit is 2× pod values, including Mini, Minor, and Major, when a free game triggers Hold & Spin. Newly added pods in that Hold & Spin also use doubled values, and each Pulse adds a full triggering bet per occupied pod instead of half a bet. Line wins are not doubled. Supernova stays 250×.

Thus the eight-pod Pulse example becomes $16 when its Hold & Spin originated in a free game. A $1-trigger Major starts at $200, while Supernova remains $250.

If a paid spin awards both bonuses, its line wins settle first, then Hold & Spin plays with ordinary pod values, then all awarded free games begin. If Hold & Spin triggers within free games, the remaining games pause and resume after collection. A simultaneous free-game retrigger is retained too.

All awards use the original triggering bet. Additional games and respins cost nothing, and the bet stays locked until the full sequence finishes.

The probabilities behind the triggers

A cell has a Prize Pod probability of 14/107, about 13.084%, and a scatter probability of 3/107, about 2.804%. These are different from the separate 9% empty-position chance inside Hold & Spin.

Because the reel cells are independent, exactly k pods on a spin has probability:

C(15,k) × (14/107)^k × (93/107)^(15-k)

The combination count C(15,k) includes every arrangement of those k pods. Adding the results for six through 15 gives a Hold & Spin trigger rate of about 0.87177%, or one per 114.71 reel spins on average. The rate applies to paid and free reel spins.

Similarly, use 3/107 for scatters and add counts three through 15. Free games trigger on about 0.77869% of paid spins, averaging one per 128.42 paid spins.

A board can qualify for both, although a cell cannot simultaneously be a pod and a scatter. Counting that overlap once gives a paid-spin chance of either feature of about 1.64848%, or one per 60.66 paid spins. Do not add the two rates without subtracting their overlap, about 0.001984% of paid spins.

Why empty spaces change the respin outlook

With e empty positions, the chance of at least one new pod on the next respin is:

1 - 0.91^e

Starting with six locked pods leaves nine empty, giving about 57.21% for at least one arrival on the next respin. If all nine stay empty across three respins, the chance of that immediate ending is 0.91^27, about 7.84%.

With only one position empty, the next-respin success chance is just 9%. Given a fresh counter of three, the chance of filling that last position before the feature ends is 1 - 0.91^3, about 24.64%. Being close to a full orchard does not make the remaining cell more likely to fill.

The 9% check decides whether a pod arrives. Its value draw and 5% Pulse check are separate stages. With j new pods, the chance that at least one carries a Pulse is 1 - 0.95^j.

Building expected value one stage at a time

The mean starting pod value, before any Pulse, is the sum of value times probability:

0.5×0.50 + 1×0.30 + 2×0.14 + 5×0.045 + 10×0.012 + 20×0.002 + 50×0.0008 + 100×0.0002 = 1.275 bets

Common small results and rare large ones both contribute. Six initial pods average 7.65 triggering bets before respins; an individual set can differ considerably.

Track occupied positions n and remaining respins r. Arrivals follow a binomial distribution across 15 - n positions, each with probability 0.09. Weight each possible arrival count j by its probability.

When j pods arrive, they add an average 1.275j bets in starting values. Their expected Pulse count is 0.05j. Since each Pulse boosts all n + j occupied pods by half a bet, the mean immediate Pulse addition is 0.025j(n + j) bets. Next continue from n + j occupied positions and three respins, or add 250 bets and finish if the grid is full.

With zero arrivals, move to the same n and r - 1; at zero respins, stop. Working backward from these endings includes every possible sequence and collects each pod once.

Starting with six freshly drawn pods gives approximately 22.74 bets in expected collection. The free-game version averages 37.27 bets, less than double because Supernova stays 250×. These averages include rare large collections and are not minimum payouts.

For overall game return, weight these Hold & Spin values by the chance of beginning with six, seven, or each larger number of pods. That contributes approximately 0.19946 bets per paid reel spin, and 0.32648 bets per free reel spin when pod values are doubled.

Ordinary line expectation is calculated separately: enumerate five-symbol sequences on a line, multiply their cell probabilities, apply only the best eligible award, and add the weighted results. With 20 equal line stakes, their combined expectation is about 0.68299 bets per reel spin. Lines can share cells; adding their expected awards does not require them to be independent.

Finally account for free games. The initial award averages about 0.06509 games per paid spin after weighting the 8, 12, and 16 awards by their trigger probabilities. Let q = 0.00778686, the chance that a free game awards four more games. Including those descendants gives:

expected free games per paid spin = 0.06509138 / (1 - 4q) = about 0.067184

Each free game brings both ordinary line expectation and the chance of doubled-value Hold & Spin. The complete model calculation is approximately:

0.68299 + 0.19946 + 0.067184 × (0.68299 + 0.32648) = 0.95027

That is approximately 95.03% expected return for the stated independent weighted model. Hold & Spin pauses do not consume extra free games. This is an analytical calculation, not a certified commercial RTP or a promise about a short session.

Simulation results and maximum-win claims

The October 2026 simulation completed every attached feature after 2,000,000 paid spins. It observed about 94.64% return, with a reported approximate 95% confidence interval of 93.88% to 95.40%. Its contributions were about 68.53% from paid-spin lines, 4.57% from free-game lines, and 21.54% from all Hold & Spin collections. Those are sampled results; the analytical averages above use the probability model.

The largest complete paid round in that run returned 426× the bet. That is not a theoretical maximum: a single all-wild reel board can return 2,625×. Free-game retriggers have no programmed count cap, so the model has no finite ceiling on a complete sequence’s accumulated awards. A fixed 250× Supernova is one component of an award, not the overall win limit.

Common questions

Are displayed pod values already in my bank?

No. Fewer than six reel pods do not collect. Once Hold & Spin triggers, its pods are collected once when the feature finishes. The summary does not pay them a second time.

Does a higher bet improve the bonus chances?

No. It scales pod values, line awards, Pulse amounts, and fixed prize tiers. It does not change the weights, 9% respin chance, or 5% Pulse chance. Quick mode changes animation speed only.

Are free games automatically worth twice as much?

No. Their line wins stay unchanged. Pod values and Pulse boosts double, while Supernova remains fixed at 250× the triggering bet. Some free games never trigger Hold & Spin at all.

Does a long bonus drought make the next spin better?

No. The next reel board uses the same independent symbol weights. Within an active Hold & Spin, the occupied positions and counter matter; previous unsuccessful paid spins do not alter those rules.

Educational explanation of an original practice game. LearnTheOdds uses virtual chips with no cash value.

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