Introduction
The Wild Wheel Big Money video slot, from Push Gaming, brings you a host of exciting bonus features, including free spins, a locked reel element and nudging wilds. The maximum bet in this game is 100.00, and coins begin at 0.01 with a total of 20 paylines available.
Special features
Two wild elements are featured in this slot and the wild symbols substitute for all regular icons except scatters. The wilds can not only, appear stacked on all reels, but they can become the nudging wilds too, as wilds can nudge up or down a reel if only one or two appear on it, resulting in the entire reel being full of wilds.
The Wild Wheel feature is activated when nine wilds appear on reels 2, 3, and 4. The player reward will be determined when the prize wheel stops spinning. In addition to free spins and instant wins, players can also upgrade their wheel. In the case of an arrow, the wheel upgrade is activated and you could win anywhere between 10x and 25x your stake in an instant win. Activate a prize wheel at one of three levels for a chance to win bigger prizes at each level. The top cash prize on level 3 is 1500x your stake.
The wheel may also trigger free spins. It depends on where the wheel stops as to how many spins are awarded but the average number of free spins seemed to be 7. Free spins have three identical symbols locked together on three reels which results in a chance to land several big money symbols simultaneously on a payline.
The player also has the choice of taking or leaving free spins or an instant win if the wheel lands on them. The wheel can then be spun again if you discard the reward you won.
Loosely based on the non-fiction bestseller ‘Stung: The Incredible Obsession of Brian Molony’, written by Gary Ross and published in 1987, Owning Mahowny is a 2003 drama directed by Richard Kwietniowski. The late Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as the eponymous Dan Mahowny, a soft-spoken, generally unremarkable banker who, nonetheless, suffers from an insatiable gambling habit. Deeply indebted to, and temporarily cut off by, his bookmaker Frank Perlin (Maury Chaykin), Mahowny resolves to embezzle sufficient funds from his employer, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, to clear his debts.
However, Mahowny soon progresses to stealing larger sums and flying to Atlantic City, where unscrupulous casino manager Victor Foss (John Hurt) is only too happy to facilitate his habit. Mahowny, though, has no interest in the perks typically offered to high rollers. Luxury suites, fine dining and top-shelf drinks, not to mention prostitutes, merely serve as distractions from the task in hand. He gambles recklessly, giving little or no thought to winning or losing, but driven solely by the overriding compulsion to get his money – as much as possible – on the table.
Unsurprisingly, Mahowny continues his downward spiral, ultimately committing the largest one-man bank fraud in Canadian history by defrauding his employer of a total of $10.2 million over a two-year period. Inevitably, his wrongdoing is discovered and Mahowny is arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned. However, viewers can take a crumb of comfort from the epilogue, which explains that Mahowny, or Molony, subsequently gave up gambling and married his long-suffering fiancee Belinda (Minnie Driver).
Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post wrote of Owning Mahowny, ‘The filmmakers have taken a bet that an unsexy, unpretty and unconventional movie about bank robbery and gambling can be as captivating as its flashier mainstream counterparts, and they’ve won.’
Released in 2014, The Gambler is crime drama written by William Monahan and directed by Rupert Wyatt. It is actually a remake of the film of the same name, written by James Toback, directed by Karel Reisz and released in 1974. The original drew its inspiration from a novella of the same name by celebrated Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, which was first published in 1866.
Jim Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) is a talented, no-nonsense literature professor at an unnamed Los Angeles college. However, despite his privileged background, Bennett is consumed by self-loathing and self-destructive tendencies, which manifest themselves as desire to fritter away bundles on blackjack and roulette. At the end of the film, Bennett says, ‘I am not a gambler’ and he is not, at least not in the traditional sense of the word.
Bennett does take significant risks, such as offering his own life as collateral for $50,000 he borrows from ruthless loan shark Neville Baraka ( Michael Kenneth Williams) in a vain attempt to recoup the $200,000 he already owes to Korean crime lord Mr. Lee (Alvin Ing). Insightfully, Baraka tells Bennett, ‘I think you’re the kind of guy who likes to lose’, and his gambling habits – continually doubling up bets, chasing his losses and so on – do little to suggest otherwise.
Increasingly desperate, turns to another loan shark, ‘Little’ Frank Brie, and then to his wealthy mother, Roberta, for the money to pay off his debts. Roberta agrees, but Bennett takes the money to a casino and loses it all. Bennett finally manages to pay off Baraka with his winnings from a ‘fixed’ college basketball game and in a last, desperate spin of the roulette wheel, wins enough to pay off his remaining debts.