JL3 Scatter Symbol Meaning: Pays Anywhere on the Grid

Scatter symbol means something precise, and a loose reading of it causes most of the confusion that surrounds it.

Scatter symbol — A symbol whose position does not matter, since it pays or triggers a feature anywhere.

What Scatter symbol actually means

A scatter does not have to land on a payline, which sets it apart from regular symbols. Anywhere on the grid, a stated count of them usually sets off a feature round, most commonly free spins, and a direct payout sometimes comes with it. No convention decides the required number; the paytable for each game spells it out.

Using it in practice

Check the paytable for the scatter count and the award, since both differ from one game to another even when the games look identical. It takes no money to check, and doing so stops the commonest mistake in reading a spin result. It sticks more readily beside what wild symbol means, which tend to appear in the same group of terms.

Game pages on this site use terms such as Scatter symbol throughout; if the studio publishes no figure behind a term, the page says so and does not quote a comparison site’s number. The empty spots in several spec tables here exist because of this.

The common misreading

There is a common belief that scatters turn ‘due’ after a long dry stretch. They do not. How long it has been since the last trigger makes no difference to the chance of the next one, because every spin stands alone. Players chase a feature that has not moved any closer in an hour because this belief is the gambler’s fallacy applied to one symbol.

A scatter never substitutes for another symbol, because it is not a wild. The great majority of games will not trigger from two scatters plus a wild. Its role is not always to pay either, since on many games scatters set off the feature and award nothing directly.

A worked example

Suppose three scatters start the free spins and the chance of that on each spin never changes; having gone 200 spins without a trigger leaves the odds on spin 201 precisely where they began. The drought leaves no trace in the machine, which has no memory and no means of keeping one.

Checking Scatter symbol at JL3

1. Find the info or help screen of a game at JL3 after opening it.
2. Find the Scatter symbol there and use the definition above to interpret it.
3. Before choosing one to play at JL3, set it next to the same entry on another title.
4. Before the first round at JL3, note down your stake and the point at which you will stop.