The short version
Hold & Win is the mechanic behind a large share of the most-played online pokies, and you will meet it under several names: hold and win, hold and spin, link and win, respin, or cash collect. The idea is always the same. Special symbols, usually coins with cash values printed on them, lock in place and set off a round of respins, and your job is to collect as many as you can before the round ends. It is a feature bolted onto an ordinary pokie, so everything in our how online pokies work guide still holds: the result is drawn by a random number generator and the game pays a set return over its life.
How the respin round works
The feature usually triggers when six or more special symbols land on the same spin. Those symbols lock in place, everything else clears, and you are given three respins. The key rule is the reset: every time another special symbol lands, it locks too and the respin counter goes back to three. So a round can last two spins or twenty, depending on whether symbols keep arriving. It ends in one of two ways: three respins pass with no new symbol, or every position on the grid fills. When it ends, the cash values on all the locked symbols are added together and paid.
The jackpot tiers
Most Hold & Win games carry fixed jackpot tiers, typically a Mini, Minor, Major and Grand, shown above the reels. The smaller tiers are won by collecting a set number of symbols; the Grand is usually reserved for filling every position on the grid, which is rare by design. These tiers are set as multiples of your stake rather than a growing pool, so a higher bet scales the jackpots with it. Some networked versions add a true progressive on top, which builds from many players at once; our jackpots guide explains how progressive pools differ and why bonus terms usually exclude jackpot play.
Where the mechanic came from
If the round feels familiar from a pub floor, that is because it is. Aristocrat’s Lightning Link and Dragon Link made the hold-and-spin feature a fixture of Australian venues, and online studios have rebuilt the same idea under their own names. The online games are genuinely different titles from different studios, not ports of the venue machines, and only Aristocrat’s own games are Lightning Link. Our Lightning Link guide separates the real venue game, the free social app and the online copies that borrow the look.
Volatility and what it means for bonuses
Hold & Win pokies are high volatility. The feature triggers rarely, and when it does the payout swings from a handful of coins to a grid-filling Grand, so long losing runs between features are normal and expected. That is the nature of high variance, and it has a practical edge: these are among the worst games to use for clearing bonus turnover, because a balance can empty during a dry spell long before the wagering requirement is met. RTP sits separately from all of this; the figure in the game’s info screen is the one that applies, as our RTP guide explains.
Playing one well
Two habits help. First, set your stake before you start, because the jackpot tiers scale with the bet and it is easy to push stakes up chasing a feature that is, by design, infrequent. Second, if you want to see how a particular Hold & Win title behaves, the free pokies guide covers where demo mode is available; watching a few feature rounds in demo shows the volatility far better than the paytable does. As with any online pokie, a game that names no studio or shows no RTP is the one to walk away from, a point our guide on whether pokies are rigged covers in full.
