All 11 Symbols Ranked by Max Payout When Expanding
- Rich Wilde — 5,000x stake/payline. Best case maximum. Rarest reel presence.
- Pharaoh — 2,000x stake/payline. Strong premium, pays from 2 symbols.
- Anubis — 750x stake/payline. Solid mid-premium.
- Horus Falcon — 750x stake/payline. Equal value to Anubis.
- Book (wild/scatter) — 200x stake/payline + wild substitution. Unique as expanding wild.
- Ace — 150x stake/payline. Most common premium symbol.
- King — 150x stake/payline.
- Queen — 100x stake/payline.
- Jack — 100x stake/payline.
- 10 — 100x stake/payline. Lowest value but highest reel frequency.
Why Card Royal Expansions Still Pay Well
A card royal (e.g., Queen expanding) appears much more frequently on each reel than Rich Wilde. When Queen expands, it covers reels more often per bonus round. At $1 bet with 10 paylines, a full-screen Queen expansion pays 100x × 10 = 1,000x total = $1,000. Not as dramatic as Rich Wilde's $50,000 potential, but far more likely to occur in any given free spins round.
Expected Value: All Symbols Are Equal
Play'n GO calibrates the reel strip so that each symbol contributes approximately equally to the game's overall RTP when weighted by its frequency and pay value. A Rich Wilde expansion is rare but massive; a card royal expansion is common but smaller. The math balances out. You cannot improve expected value by wishing for a specific symbol — only individual session variance is affected.