Hawkplay Ways to win Explained — What 1024 Ways Actually Counts

If one term on a casino page is worth understanding properly, Ways to win is a reasonable candidate.

Ways to win (including Megaways) — Adjacent matching symbols pay here whatever position they land in, making it an alternative to paylines.

What Ways to win actually means

Field	Value
Term	Ways to win
Written out	including Megaways
In one line	Adjacent matching symbols pay here whatever position they land in, making it an alternative to paylines.
Fixed by	Created by the game studio as a substitute for fixed paylines.
Where you meet it	Cluster slots and scatter-pays slots list this in their spec tables

No fixed paths are involved — a ways-to-win game pays whenever matching symbols show up on consecutive reels reading from the left, in whatever row. Multiply 4 by itself 5 times and you get 1,024: that’s the possible-combination count in a 1024-ways game, reflecting four rows across five reels. This gets extended under Megaways, where symbols per reel vary spin by spin, meaning the way-count is never fixed.

The common misreading

It’s common to assume a big way-count means a big advantage. The RTP calculation takes the count as an input, never as an addition. A game with 46,656 ways isn’t forty-five times as good as one with 1,024 — it simply hits more often for smaller amounts, all within the studio’s set long-run return.

Ways to win falls under neither a jackpot mechanic nor a bonus feature. The base game resolves wins through this structure, which shows up on every spin instead of only when triggered. A megaways game’s count varies, but not out of random generosity — the engine sets a fixed range for it.

A worked example

Nothing illustrates it better than the arithmetic. 4^5 equals 1,024 ways, the total for a 5x4 grid. Calculating 6^6 for a 6x6 grid yields 46,656.

The engine’s count of symbol paths is what both numbers describe, and neither speaks to generosity. That tens-of-thousands way-count you see advertised is a description of the grid, not of the payouts.

Using it in practice

Lower per-combination payouts are the usual trade-off ways-to-win games make for hitting more often. Rather than judging by the headline way-count — a simple grid description — look at RTP and volatility. It is easier to hold onto alongside paylines, which the same pages tend to mention in the same breath.

The game pages on this site use Ways to win often, and wherever the studio hasn’t published the figure behind it, that’s stated directly rather than pulling a number from a comparison site. That’s why blanks show up in a few spec tables here.

Checking Ways to win at Hawkplay

1. Open a game at Hawkplay and find its info or help screen.
2. Ways to win appears there; read it using the definition given above.
3. Compare it with the same entry on another title before you pick one to play at Hawkplay.
4. Write your stake and your stop point down before the first round at Hawkplay.