Heart slot machine symbol

What the heart slot machine symbol means

On a slot, a heart means whatever the paytable says it means. That sounds obvious, but it matters, because the same red shape does three very different jobs depending on the game. On a card-themed machine or in video poker it is one of the four suits. On a sweets-and-candy slot it is often the most valuable sweet. On a romance or Valentine-styled slot it is decoration that may pay as an ordinary symbol, act as a scatter or fill a feature meter.

What a heart is never is lucky. Its value comes from how many times it appears on the reel strips or grid and what the game designer has set it to pay, both fixed in a maths model that independent test houses check before a UK game goes live.

Hearts on the first slot machines

The heart’s place on the reels goes back to the very start of slot history. The Liberty Bell built by Charles Fey in San Francisco had three reels and five symbols: horseshoes, diamonds, spades, hearts and a Liberty Bell. Three bells paid the top prize of ten nickels. Three of those five symbols were card suits, a clear sign of where the idea came from.

That card-game link runs back further. The poker machine designed by Sittman and Pitt of Brooklyn in the early 1890s (Wikipedia dates the design to 1893) used five drums holding 50 card faces, and the house edge came partly from taking two cards out of the deck: the ten of spades and the jack of hearts. Removing them doubled the odds against a royal flush. Prizes such as a free beer or cigars were paid by the bar, not the machine.

Dates in this period are genuinely contested. The Wikipedia slot machine article (opens in a new tab) places the Liberty Bell ‘some time between 1887 and 1895’, while the Wikipedia article on Charles Fey (opens in a new tab) gives 1898, and a surviving Liberty Bell in the Nevada State Museum’s collection dates from 1899. The often-quoted 1895 sits inside the first range but is not confirmed by itself.

Why hearts gave way to fruit and BARs

When Mills Novelty fitted a gum-vending attachment to its Operator Bell, fruit-flavoured gum brought lemons, cherries, oranges and plums onto the reels, and a stick of gum became the BAR. Our history of fruit symbols explains the vending connection. Machines that looked like vending devices were easier to defend than machines that looked like card games, and card suits largely disappeared from mainstream reels.

The suits never vanished completely. The A, K, Q, J and 10 that fill the low end of most modern paytables, known as card royals, are a direct descendant of those card machines; they just dropped the suit. And the bell, the Liberty Bell’s own top symbol, is still a staple of fruit machines and classic slots.

Hearts in video poker machines

The heart’s strongest surviving role is in video poker. There it is not a slot symbol with a set pay but one of four suits in a 52-card deck. A hand of five hearts makes a flush; the ace, king, queen, jack and ten of hearts make a royal flush. The odds come from card maths rather than weighted reels, so with a known paytable the return can be worked out exactly. The Wizard of Odds video poker guide (opens in a new tab) sets out those calculations.

That makes video poker a useful contrast. On a slot you cannot see the reel weighting; on video poker the deck is the deck, and the paytable on the screen tells you most of what you need to know about the return.

The heart slot machine symbol in sweet and candy slots

Online, the heart is best known as a sweet. In Sweet Bonanza by Pragmatic Play, a red heart-shaped sweet sits at the top of the paytable, above the other sweets and the fruit. The game uses a 6 × 5 grid with no paylines: it is a pays-anywhere slot, so 8 or more matching symbols anywhere on screen form a win. Winning symbols then disappear and new ones fall in, the tumble mechanic that lets one spin produce several wins.

The same symbol set carries over to the spin-offs. Sweet Bonanza 1000 keeps the grid and pays-anywhere rule with a higher published maximum, and Sweet Bonanza Xmas reskins the original for the festive season. Our comparison of Sweet Bonanza vs Sweet Bonanza 1000 sets the two side by side.

A worked pays-anywhere example

Here is how a heart win builds on a pays-anywhere grid, using invented pay values so the method is clear. Check the real game’s paytable for its figures.

1. You stake £1. The 6 × 5 grid has 30 positions, and the spin lands 9 hearts scattered across it.
2. Nine is in the 8–9 band, so the illustrative paytable awards 10× stake, or £10.
3. The 9 hearts are removed and the symbols above drop down, with new ones filling the gaps.
4. The tumble brings in 3 more hearts but the old ones are gone, so 3 hearts alone do not pay.
5. With no new 8+ group, the sequence ends and the total win for the spin is £10.

What heart symbols usually pay

Pays depend on the game’s format. The table shows illustrative values for the three common settings; none of them is taken from a real game.

Why so different? On a pays-anywhere grid, 8 hearts among 30 positions is a rare event, so the pay has to be generous. On a line slot, three hearts on a line is much easier, so the pay is small. The return to player is balanced across all of these outcomes, which is why a heart in one game cannot be compared with a heart in another.

A heart win that pays back no more than your stake is not a real win. Since 31 October 2021 UK online slots may not celebrate such returns with win sounds or animations; see our page on the losses disguised as wins rule.

Heart symbol variants you may see

If you like the gem version, our page on gem symbols covers why jewels sit high on so many paytables. For the low-paying letters that replaced card suits, see royals in the glossary.

Heart slot wins at UK stake limits

The most you can stake on an online slot in Great Britain is £5 per spin if you are 25 or over and £2 if you are 18 to 24, as the Gambling Commission’s online slots stake limit guidance (opens in a new tab) explains. Here is what the published maximums of the best-known heart slots mean in pounds.

The average cost is far more relevant to a normal session. At 96.48%, Sweet Bonanza returns about £96.48 for every £100 staked over millions of spins, so 100 spins at 20p, or £20 staked, cost about 70p on average. Both games are listed as high volatility, so a single session can lose much more than that, or occasionally win, before the average shows itself.

Heart symbol myths: lucky hearts and losing streaks

The ‘due’ belief is the gambler’s fallacy, and it leads people to chase losses. Our page on the gambler’s fallacy on slots explains why a run of bad spins changes nothing.

How to find what a heart pays in any slot

1. Open the game’s paytable or help screen before your first spin.
2. Find the heart and check whether it pays on lines, ways or anywhere on the grid.
3. Read the count bands (for example 8–9, 10–11, 12+) or the 3/4/5 line pays.
4. Note whether pays are multiples of the line bet or the total stake.
5. Find the RTP in the rules for the version you are playing, and set a deposit limit before you start.

Where to play heart symbol slots in the UK

Game availability changes, so search each casino’s lobby for Sweet Bonanza or any other heart-symbol game you want, and check its help screen for the RTP version. The offers shown below are for adults aged 18 and over, and terms apply. Coral gives 100 free spins at 10p each on selected games when you deposit and bet £10 or more on slots between 1 October 2026 and 1 February 2027, with no wagering on free spin winnings. Ladbrokes gives 50 free spins a day for 10 days (up to 500, at 10p on selected games, no wagering) after you deposit and spend £10 on slots. PlayOJO gives 80 no-wagering free spins on Big Bass Bonanza, not a heart-symbol game, after a first deposit of at least £10.

Coral and Ladbrokes are run by the same company, so check the terms before joining both. Treat slots as paid entertainment, use your account’s limits and time-outs, and if you need to talk to someone the National Gambling Helpline on 0808 8020 133 and GamCare (opens in a new tab) are free and open 24 hours.

18+. Gambling should be entertainment that costs money, not a way to make it. Decide a budget before you play: plan a slot budget. Free, confidential help: National Gambling Helpline 0808 8020 133.