lab studies / dead or alive 2
lab study, simulation-based

116 million spins on dead or alive 2: 64% of $0.50/$100 sessions busted, and the famous 111,111x max needs 142 million spins to land once

exp · 045 · 2026-06-27 · simulation-based

provider NetEntRTP 96.80%volatility very high
at 50c a spin
€55,556
biggest win
111,111x top win
~195
spins to the bonus
about 39 min at 5/min
€28
average bonus
when it hits (55x)
€0.48
avg back per spin
of your 50c
win hit frequency 29.8% (~1 in 3.4 spins)max win 111,111x = €55,556 (a feature event)
dead or alive 2 is famous for one number: a 111,111x top win, one of the few non-jackpot ceilings documented as actually hit. we simulated 116,199,198 spins (90,000 sessions across nine stake-and-bankroll cells) of the 96.8% version to see what the ride to that number actually costs. at $0.50 a spin against a $100 bankroll, 64.2% of sessions busted before the 2,000-spin cap and the median session ended with about $0.47 of the original $100. the 111,111x exists, but at its published probability of 1 in 142,194,762 spins, a player spinning five times a minute would average over 540 years between hits.

Run it yourself in the live simulator. All figures are simulation-based observations, not predictions. See our methodology.

what we measured

parametervalue
provider / engineNetEnt · 5×3, 9 fixed paylines, sticky-wild free spins
rtp simulated96.8% (the single published version, see the note below)
volatilityvery high; the extreme tail lives in the bonus, not the base game
stakes$0.20 / $0.50 / $1.00 per spin
bankrolls$50 / $100 / $200
sessions10,000 per stake/bankroll cell, 90,000 total
spin cap2,000 spins per session
max win111,111x stake (published probability 1 in 142,194,762 spins)
play modelflat stake, all 9 lines, three-mode free-spins selector represented by its modelled payout distribution

a note on versions, because it is unusual for us: dead or alive 2 ships at a single fixed 96.8% RTP. the famous six-step NetEnt RTP ladder (96.82 down to 90.07) belongs to the original Dead or Alive (2009), a different game; search results routinely confuse the two. CasinoWizard, which tracks per-casino RTP, lists no alternate version for dead or alive 2. so this study has no version-lottery section, there is, for once, only one version to play.

model inputs worth flagging: RTP (96.8%, four sources including NetEnt's own page), hit frequency (29.80%) and bonus trigger rate (1 in 195) are well-sourced; the bonus payout distribution is a model assumption (lognormal calibrated to the published 96.8% RTP and the 111,111x ceiling), so all bonus-value figures below are model-based estimates, not measurements. the base-game ceiling (2,500x, the five-scatter pay) is a reasoned estimate, not a published base-only max.

how long bankrolls survived

survival curves, share of sessions still alive vs spins played

the stake sets the clock. at the $100 bankroll, the median session lasted the full 2,000-spin cap at $0.20, fell to 1,213 spins at $0.50, and to 390 spins at $1.00, under an hour and a half at five spins a minute. the cheap seats are a different game from the expensive ones: $0.20 against $200 did not bust a single one of 10,000 sessions, while $1.00 against $50 busted 92.0%.

bust rates

bust-rate grid, share of sessions that busted before the spin cap

bust rates within the 2,000-spin cap, 95% confidence intervals:

$50 bankroll$100$200
$0.20/spin54.2% ±1.015.4% ±0.70.0% ±0.0
$0.50/spin82.6% ±0.764.2% ±0.928.6% ±0.9
$1.00/spin92.0% ±0.583.4% ±0.764.3% ±0.9

plain reading: hold the bankroll at $100 and move the stake from $0.20 to $0.50, and the bust rate jumps from 15.4% to 64.2%, the single biggest lever in the grid. the only genuinely safe cell is $0.20 against $200, where 1,000 spins of cover meant nothing busted. dead streaks ran long, as a very-high-volatility game implies: at $0.50/$100 the 90th-percentile session's worst winless run was 22 spins, and the longest observed in 10,000 sessions was 40 spins in a row without a single returning spin.

the bonus wait, and what it pays

at the published trigger rate of 1 in 195, our simulated sessions averaged one free-spins round every ~195 spins, as expected. the payout side is where the texture is (model-based estimates, 500,056 simulated bonuses pooled): the average bonus paid 55x stake, but the median was 30x, half of all bonuses paid less than that. 35.7% paid under 20x and 67.8% paid under 50x. the top 1% paid 389x or more, and over 50 million spins the biggest single bonus our model produced was about 4,660x, still a factor of twenty-four below the 111,111x ceiling. that gap is the whole point: the headline number is real and reachable, but a typical bonus pays around 30x, and the jackpot is an event you should expect to never see.

a $50 bankroll at $1.00 a spin buys 50 spins of cover against a 1-in-195 trigger, most of those sessions (92.0% busted) never reached the feature at all.

what a finished session looks like

final bankroll by percentile

the final-bankroll distribution at $0.50/$100 has almost no middle. six sessions in ten ended with under $0.50 of the original $100, busted, in effect, with the median finish at about $0.47. then the distribution leaps: the 70th percentile kept $67.20, the 80th kept $163.22, and the 90th kept $280.27. dead or alive 2 sessions overwhelmingly either die or, rarely, detonate upward; the comfortable middle outcome barely exists.

methodology note

we simulate models calibrated to published math, RTP, hit frequency, volatility profile, bonus behaviour, not the provider's game engine. results are sample-based observations from 116,199,198 simulated spins (90,000 sessions), with 95% confidence intervals shown. the bonus payout distribution is a modelled assumption (lognormal calibrated to the published RTP and the 111,111x cap), so bonus-value figures are estimates, not measurements; the base-game ceiling (2,500x) is a reasoned estimate. model validation: dead-or-alive-2 v1, analytic calibration exact at 96.80%, a 10M-spin implementation check measured 96.901% ±0.281pp se (within tolerance). slots are negative-expectation games; nothing here predicts outcomes or improves odds. corrections policy: methodology.html.

Where the max win actually comes from

base 69%
feature 28%

29% of this game's RTP is locked inside the bonus you rarely trigger; the base game on its own returns just 69%.

A normal spin in our simulation never returned more than ~2,500x (€1,250). The 111,111x top win is a feature event, it only came out of the bonus. (base-game ceiling: model estimate)

Play the Dead or Alive 2 demo, or stress-test it

Looking for the Dead or Alive 2 demo or free play? A demo shows you a handful of spins. Our free simulator runs Dead or Alive 2 across thousands of sessions and shows what actually happens to a bankroll over time: the bust rate, how long the money lasts, and the wait for the bonus. It is the demo with the math switched on.

stress-test Dead or Alive 2 free

FAQ

Is there a Dead or Alive 2 demo or free play?

Yes. You can play Dead or Alive 2 in demo mode at most casinos, and you can stress-test it free in our simulator, which runs thousands of sessions and reports the bust rate and session length, the demo with the math switched on.

Is Dead or Alive 2 worth playing?

It is negative-expectation like every slot. In our simulation, 64% of $0.50/$100 sessions busted before the 2,000-spin cap. We report the cost; we never tell you to play.

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