Jack in a Pot

Jack in a Pot Slot Review

The pot of gold here isn’t at the end of anything. It’s already spilled – a tipped cauldron beside the reels with coins heaped at its base, cows grazing the green hills behind, a river winding off through the hedgerows. That’s the honest version of the leprechaun pitch, and the game plays the same way: instead of holding its tricks back for a bonus round, it puts a working leprechaun on the board and lets him meddle with the reels while you watch.

Red Tiger‘s cluster-pays game runs on a 7×5 grid with a 96.06% RTP, a hit rate of just over 60%, and a top prize of 1,743x the bet. Stakes run from 0.1 to 50 per spin. It shares its green-and-gold seam with Rainbow Jackpots Megaways and Golden Leprechaun Megaways. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, here, sits directly next to the reels.

How Jack in a Pot Pays

There are no paylines here. A symbol counts towards a cluster when it lands horizontally or vertically adjacent to a matching symbol, and five or more identical symbols in a cluster award a win. Diagonals don’t count. Winning clusters then disappear, letting the symbols above fall into place, so a single spin can chain several wins together.

The paytable splits into a high-paying row of four symbols and a low-paying row of five, and that split matters more than usual here: several of Jack’s features target one row or the other directly. The values below are as printed in the game’s paytable:

• Coin: 800 for 40+, 250 for 30+, 120 for 25+, 60 for 20+, 25 for 15+, 15 for 10+, 1.5 for 7+, 2.5 for 5+
• Boot: 250 for 40+, 75 for 30+, 35 for 25+, 18 for 20+, 3 for 15+, 1.5 for 10+, 1 for 7+, 0.8 for 5+
• Horseshoe: 100 for 40+, 50 for 30+, 25 for 25+, 15 for 20+, 5.5 for 15+, 2 for 10+, 1.2 for 7+, 0.6 for 5+
• Green Bow: 50 for 40+, 25 for 30+, 15 for 25+, 9 for 20+, 3.5 for 15+, 1.5 for 10+, 0.8 for 7+, 0.5 for 5+
• Heart: 35 for 40+, 16 for 30+, 8 for 25+, 5 for 20+, 2 for 15+, 1 for 10+, 0.6 for 7+, 0.3 for 5+
• Diamond: 30 for 40+, 15 for 30+, 7 for 25+, 3.5 for 20+, 1.8 for 15+, 0.9 for 10+, 0.5 for 7+, 0.2 for 5+
• Club: 25 for 40+, 12 for 30+, 6 for 25+, 3 for 20+, 1.5 for 15+, 0.8 for 10+, 0.4 for 7+, 0.2 for 5+
• Blue Circle: 20 for 40+, 10 for 30+, 5 for 25+, 2.5 for 20+, 1.2 for 15+, 0.6 for 10+, 0.3 for 7+, 0.1 for 5+
• Spade: 15 for 40+, 8 for 30+, 4 for 25+, 2 for 20+, 1 for 15+, 0.5 for 10+, 0.2 for 7+, 0.1 for 5+

Those cluster sizes are worth a second look. The jump from 10+ to 15+ symbols is steep, and the real money sits at 30 symbols and above. That’s exactly where Jack’s reel-filling tricks come into play.

With 35 positions on the grid, a 30-symbol cluster needs most of the board working together. Two of the wild features are built precisely for that: one turns whole reels identical, and another grows single symbols to 4×4 blocks. Neither is a small nudge.

Jack and His Four Wilds

Jack himself is a leprechaun who activates features to help you win, and his toolkit is a set of four wild scatters: Beer, Pipe, Rainbow and Hat. Each acts as a normal wild symbol, substituting for any paying symbol. Each fires its own feature when it forms part of a winning cluster.

The trigger is worth spelling out, because it’s the same for all four: a wild has to be sitting inside a winning cluster of five or more matching symbols when it lands. A wild on its own does nothing beyond substituting. The feature arrives with the win, not instead of it.

Magic Pipe

When the Pipe wild forms part of a winning cluster, Jack blows his pipe and one or more high-paying symbols expand into Mega Tiles at 2×2, 3×3 or 4×4 size. The high-paying symbols are the four in the paytable’s upper row: Coin, Boot, Horseshoe and Green Bow.

A 4×4 Coin tile is 16 symbols in one block. That goes a long way towards those 40+ cluster pays.

Beer Reels

The Beer wild sends Jack to the taps. When it lands in a winning cluster he takes a drink, and beer pours over random reels, covering each selected reel in identical symbols from top to bottom. A full reel of matching symbols does most of the work of a large cluster on its own, and with the cascade running afterwards there’s a chance of even more.

Hat Trick

The Hat wild is the tidy one. Jack’s hat sucks the low-paying symbols off the reels: the five symbols in the paytable’s lower row. What’s left behind is a board cleared of the cheap end of the scale, so the falling symbols can only build clusters from the more valuable half of the paytable.

Rainbow Swaps

The Rainbow wild is the fourth of the set, completing the quartet alongside Beer, Pipe and Hat. It carries its own feature in the same family as the others, triggered the same way when it forms part of a winning cluster.

Free Spins

A free spins clover icon sits in the interface, and a free spins banner appears on the reels themselves when the round arrives. It’s the one part of the game that keeps a low profile on the rules pages, which is a shame, because the base game’s four wilds build plenty of anticipation for whatever the clover has in store.

What the base game makes clear is how the round would work if the wilds show up in it. Mega Tiles, beer-soaked reels and a hat-cleared board are all cluster multipliers by another name, and a free spins round with those features in play is where the paytable’s upper tiers become realistic rather than theoretical.

Our Honest Verdict

Overall Rating: 7.6/10

This is a lively half hour. The reason to pick it over plainer cluster games is Jack himself: a mascot who actually earns his keep, grabbing the reels mid-spin rather than grinning from the sidelines while a bonus bar fills somewhere.

The four wilds are the best thing here, because every one of them visibly rebuilds the board instead of just paying out and disappearing. The ceiling is the letdown. At 1,743x, this pays like a cheerful workhorse, not a monster, and the free spins round is the least documented thing in the game – which stings when the base game is this well explained.

For players who like a board that changes shape spin after spin and wins that arrive little and often, it’s easy company. Chasers of the genuinely huge win will find the pot a little lighter than the artwork promises. Everyone else can happily pour a pint and let Jack get on with it.

Jack in a Pot FAQs

• How do you win in Jack in a Pot?

  Wins come from clusters rather than paylines. Five or more identical symbols appearing horizontally or vertically adjacent to each other award a win, and winning clusters disappear so the symbols above can fall into place for further wins on the same spin.
• What do the wilds do in Jack in a Pot?

  There are four wild scatters: Beer, Pipe, Rainbow and Hat. Each acts as a normal wild symbol and activates its own feature when it forms part of a winning cluster, from expanding Mega Tiles to beer-covered reels and the hat that removes low-paying symbols.
• What is the RTP of Jack in a Pot?

  The RTP is 96.06%.
• What is the maximum win on Jack in a Pot?

  The maximum win is 1,743x your bet.
• What is the grid size of Jack in a Pot?

  The game runs on a 7×5 grid using cluster pays rather than paylines.
• What is the hit frequency of Jack in a Pot?

  The hit frequency is 60.12%, so a winning cluster lands on roughly three in five spins.
• Who makes Jack in a Pot?

  Jack in a Pot is made by Red Tiger.
• When is Jack in a Pot released?

  Jack in a Pot’s release date is 15 November 2018.