How to play
Bosphorus Catch has five reels, three rows and only 10 paylines, half the count of most of our video slots. The symbols come from the strait: the Maiden’s Tower, Galata Tower, gulls, a simit and plenty of bluefish.
Pick a Coin of 1, 2, 5, 10 or 20. That coin is your line bet, so the total stake is coin × 10: 10 credits at the smallest coin, 200 at the largest. Press Spin. Lines pay left to right from the first reel, and the Pay table button opens the full list of symbols at your current coin.
When a spin wins free spins, the big button changes to Free spin and the coin locks until the feature is over. You start with 1,000 virtual credits. If they run out, a button offers another 1,000 for free.
Bluefish values
Every bluefish lands with a number printed on it, a cash value measured in coins. The values are not equally likely. Out of every 100 bluefish, about:
| Value on the fish | How often |
|---|---|
| 1 × coin | 40 |
| 2 × coin | 25 |
| 5 × coin | 15 |
| 10 × coin | 10 |
| 20 × coin | 7 |
| 50 × coin | 3 |
That averages about 5.5 coins per fish. In the base game the numbers are only a preview and don’t carry over: a bluefish there is a normal mid-paying line symbol. The values matter once the ferries arrive.
Ferries and the fisherman’s haul
The ferry is the scatter. It pays wherever it lands, counted once per reel: three ferries pay 2× your total bet and start 10 free spins, four pay 10× with 15 spins, five pay 50× with 20 spins. Each reel carries just two ferries, so three on one screen shows up roughly once every 57 spins on average. More ferries during the feature add spins to the count.
Inside free spins the fisherman wild changes job. Each fisherman on screen collects the value of every bluefish on screen at that moment. Two fishermen collect the whole board twice. The haul is paid on top of any line wins.
The game also keeps a tally of every fisherman that lands during the feature. The multiplier for a spin depends on the tally before that spin:
- fewer than 4 fishermen so far: collects pay ×1
- 4 to 7 so far: ×2
- 8 to 11 so far: ×3
- 12 or more: ×5
Each time the tally crosses one of those marks, you also get 10 extra free spins. Three steps is the most, so the feature can grow by 30 spins. A fisherman with no fish beside him still counts toward the tally. The tally resets when the free spins end.
Pay table
Line wins are paid in coins (multiples of your line bet). A, K, Q, J and 10 are the low symbols.
| Symbol | 3 | 4 | 5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fisherman (wild) | 98 | 490 | 1,960 |
| Maiden’s Tower | 59 | 245 | 980 |
| Galata Tower | 49 | 196 | 588 |
| Bluefish | 39 | 147 | 588 |
| Seagull | 39 | 147 | 392 |
| Simit | 29 | 98 | 294 |
| A | 20 | 59 | 196 |
| K | 20 | 49 | 147 |
| Q | 10 | 39 | 118 |
| J | 10 | 29 | 98 |
| 10 | 10 | 29 | 78 |
The fisherman substitutes for everything except the ferry. Each reel strip holds only one, so a five-fisherman line is very rare.
The return
Collecting fishermen make an exact formula impractical, so the return was measured by long simulation: about 95.5% over the long run. Most of it comes from free spins; the base game is fairly quiet.
Strategy
Nothing you choose changes the odds. The coin size scales every win and every loss by the same factor, and the reels don’t remember past spins, so “due” features don’t exist.
What you can control is how long your credits last, and this machine pays in bursts:
- With 1,000 credits, a coin of 1 gives you about 100 paid spins, enough to see the feature once or twice on average. A coin of 5 gives only 20 spins, and you could easily miss it entirely.
- Watch the tally line during free spins. Once 8 fishermen are on the tally, every later collect is worth three times the early ones. Sticky Respin Stars gives its wild a feature in the base game too.
If you enjoy Bosphorus Catch, try Boule or Briefcase Offer next.
