Odds Of Winning A Progressive Slot Machine
The best way to think about progressive slots is that they’re the slot machine equivalent of a lottery game. The odds of winning are long, but the prizes are huge. In most lotteries, the size of the prize increases from drawing to drawing until someone wins the lottery. The odds for a particular slot machine are built into the program on the machine's computer chip. In most cases, the casino cannot change the odds on a machine without replacing this chip. Despite popular opinion, there is no way for the casino to instantly 'tighten up' a machine.
The only way you can win a million dollars playing slots is to play slot machines with progressive jackpots, however, you get even worse odds to win than you would get if you played flat-top slots. The odds of winning a jackpot are usually way better on the first reel of the machine than on the last one. Jan 07, 2018 The odds will also depend on the estimated jackpot value of the particular slot game. The higher the expected initial value, the more difficult are the odds of winning the jackpot. So, in general the odds of winning a progressive slots jackpot, even though still high, are much better than the chances of winning the lottery. For example, SlotCharts.com keeps data on progressive slots at online casinos. But even when a progressive slot is unusually high, it's impossible to know at what point it becomes high enough to be a positive-expectation game without knowing how the probabilities on the machine are programmed. The other is progressive slot machine games. You have a better chance of winning a million dollars or more playing the lottery, believe it or not. According to this article from the Las Vegas Sun, the odds of winning Megabucks are 1 in 49,836,032. What Are the Odds of Winning on a Slot Machine? Slot machine odds used to be easy to calculate. When you’re dealing with three reels, ten symbols on each reel, and a limited pay table, then it’s just a simple math problem. But the rise of electromechanical slot machines and (later) video slots added some complexity to the situation.
Progressive slots (and video poker games) offer jackpots that increase every time someone makes a bet up until someone wins. At that point, the progressive jackpot resets to its starting value and starts accumulating again.
The amount that the jackpot rises is based on a tiny percentage of your action on the machine. Most progressive slot machines are now pooled with other machines so that the jackpot goes up fast, although some games are still standalone progressives.
The best way to think about progressive slots is that they’re the slot machine equivalent of a lottery game. The odds of winning are long, but the prizes are huge. In most lotteries, the size of the prize increases from drawing to drawing until someone wins the lottery.
You’ll know you’re playing a progressive jackpot game because it will feature a prominent jackpot meter showing the size of the jackpot. This is also sometimes called a “jackpot ticker,” because it ticks upward as players on the network lose bets into the machines on that network.
This post features 10 of the most interesting facts I could find about progressive slot machines.
1 – Megabucks Is the Biggest Slot Machine Jackpot
Megabucks is IGT’s most famous progressive slot machine. It’s a state-wide game run in Nevada, and it’s the main reason the state doesn’t have an actual lottery. Who needs a lottery when you can just play the Megabucks slot machine?
Megabucks isn’t new either, the games have been available now for a couple of decades. Several people have won millions of dollars over the history of the game.
To play Megabucks, you must wager $3. It’s a dollar machine with a three-coin maximum bet. If you don’t place the maximum bet, you’re not eligible for the jackpot.
In Nevada, at least 750 different slot machines in over 125 different casinos pool those tiny contributions to grow that $10 million jackpot faster than you’d think is possible.
The odds of winning Megabucks is similar to that of winning the lottery, 50 million to 1. And like the lottery, winners get paid in the form of an annuity that pays annual installments over the next 25 years.
If you go with the cash option, you can settle for 60% of the prize amount as just plain cash. It’s hard to deny that Megabucks is the most interesting progressive jackpot game in the United States.
2 – Megabucks Has a Curse Associated With It
Some gamblers believe that if you win Megabucks, you have a greater than usual probability of dying young.
This legend of the “Megabucks curse” stems from the death of Cynthia Jay-Brennan, a cocktail waitress who won $35 million Megabucks only to be paralyzed in a car wreck. Jay-Brennan’s sister died in the wreck, which was caused by a drunk driver.
Most of the other tales of woe related to Megabucks are nothing more than urban legends, though.
It’s the opinion of this blogger that the wreck was just “one of those things,” and Cynthia Jay-Brennan has my sympathy.
3 – Progressive Jackpots Can Put the Odds in the Players’ Favor
Any game with a progressive jackpot can offer a player a positive expectation bet if the jackpot is large enough.
The trouble with slot machines is that no one knows exactly what the payback percentage for the game is, so it’s impossible to determine what the size of the jackpot would have to be.
But in other games with progressive jackpots, like video poker, you can compute the break-even point for the game and only play after the jackpot has exceeded that point.
The optimal strategy for playing such a game changes based on the size of that jackpot, too.
4 – Some Progressive Games Get Attached by Advantage Player Teams
An advantage player is a gambler who only gambles when he has an edge over the casino. The classic example of an advantage gambler is a card counter in blackjack.
But we already discussed how a gambler could have an advantage at a progressive slot machine game.
They play as a team until someone on the team wins the progressive jackpot, and the team then splits the profits. Some casinos don’t mind this type of advantage play much, because even though the players have an edge, the jackpot comes mostly from players’ contributions to the game over time. Nj online casino three card.
Other casinos have policies forbidding team play and will back off or bar such players.
5 – Slot Machines With Progressive Jackpots Have Worse Odds
You measure the casino’s advantage with a slot machine by looking at the payback percentage, or return to player percentage, for the game. This is the flip side of the house edge.
The payback percentage estimates an average amount that will be returned to the player in winnings over the long run based on the odds of winning and the prize amounts. The house edge estimates how much the player will lose on each bet.
The higher the payback percentage is, the better the game is for the player. For example, a slot machine game with a 98% payback percentage is better than a slot machine game with an 88% payback percentage.
Generally, there are two factors that ensure the progressive jackpot games have a lower payback percentage.
- The first is simple to understand. A percentage of each bet is diverted toward increasing the size of the jackpot. That amount comes directly from the payback percentage of the game.
- The second is only slightly harder to understand. A large percentage of the game’s payback percentage is based on the payout from the jackpot. If a game has a 95% payback percentage, 5% of that might be made up of the jackpot.
But with a game where you only have a 1 in 50 million or even 1 in 10 million chance of seeing that jackpot, the payback percentage before that jackpot gets hit will necessarily be lower than that 95%.
The more economical choice for slot players is always the flat-top slot machine, not the progressive slot machine.
6 – Mega Moolah Is Probably the Best Progressive Jackpot Online
Mega Moolah is an online-only progressive slot machine game with five reels and 25 paylines. The game’s symbols and sound effects have an African theme, with elephants and zebras.
In the decade since Microgaming launched Mega Moolah, no other online slot machine game has produced as many millionaires.
The prizes for Mega Moolah have ranged from $5 million to $13 million. That $13 million was the biggest online jackpot win in history, too.
7 – You Usually Can’t Win the Progressive Jackpot Unless You Play Max Coins
Most slot machines have a denomination and a maximum number of coins you can wager. Most of the time, you can bet less than the minimum without any kind of adverse effects.
But progressive slots, like video poker games, are an exception.
If you don’t bet the maximum number of coins, you’re usually ineligible to win the progressive jackpot.
This doesn’t make much of a practical difference, since the probability of winning a progressive jackpot is practically zero anyway. Once the probability of an event gets small enough, it might as well be zero.
8 – Some Online Casinos ONLY Offer Progressive Jackpots
One online casino, Slotland, offers a minimal number of games, but they all share the same progressive jackpot. You can’t play there from the United States, but it’s probably just as well. The casino has some misleading practices, especially in terms of how their video poker and blackjack games work.
When a casino offers a video blackjack or video poker game, they’re implying that those games follow the same probabilities you’d see if they were using a deck of playing cards.
If you’re okay with that, it might be okay to play there, but the most interesting thing about that casino is that all the games tie into the one big jackpot.
Best Odds Of Winning Slots
9 – A Standalone Progressive Offers Better Odds
You’ll find three different kinds of progressive slot machines:
- Standalone progressives
- Local area progressives
- Wide area progressives
A standalone progressive slot machine is one where the jackpot can only be won on that machine. But playing on that machine counts toward raising the jackpot. The size of the jackpot on a standalone game is almost always smaller than the jackpot on other kinds of machines.
A local area progressive network is a network of machines in the same casino, usually all within a short distance of each other. These jackpots are bigger than what you’d see on a standalone progressive, but not as big as you’ll see with a wide area progressive jackpot.
A wide area progressive jackpot is similar to what you see with Megabucks. Multiple machines in multiple locations feed the jackpot. This game has the biggest prizes.
The best odds for the player can be found at the standalone progressive slots, because the jackpot is smaller. In fact, the lower the jackpot, the better the odds are in general with a slot machine game.
10 – You Can Win the Progressive Even With Your Slots Club Card Inserted
There’s a popular myth/urban legend that you can’t win the top jackpot on a slot machine if you’re playing with the slots club card inserted. This isn’t true.
The random number generator running these machines isn’t aware of whether you’re playing with your slots club card inserted or not. It’s impossible for it to have such an effect on your gaming experience.
Conclusion
Progressive slot machines can be a lot of fun as long as you know what you’re getting yourself into. Generally, I recommend avoiding them for games with lower jackpots, but certain players prefer to play for big, life-changing prizes.
If that’s your cup of tea, be my guest. What kinds of facts about progressive slots do you know that I haven’t covered here? Leave a comment and let me know.
Slot machines are the most popular gambling game in the casino. The casinos must love this because slot machines also provide the worst odds to the players. This post looks at how slot machines work.
I go into a lot of detail about how slot machines work, but I focus mostly on the nuts and bolts behind the game. Why are the odds of winning at slot machines so low? How did they become so popular? Why are these games more addictive than any other gambling game?
You’ll find the answers to all those questions and more in the post below.
1. What Is a Slot Machine?
A slot machine is a gambling game with spinning reels. Most slot machine games have 3 spinning reels or 5 spinning reels. Each reel has multiple symbols on it.
The spinning reels stop at random, and if matching symbols line up across a pay line, the gambler wins prize money. Early slot machines had a single payline across the center of the reels. Newer slot machines have multiple pay lines of different shapes.
Slot machines come in various denominations. When you put your money into the machine, the game converts that money into credits. For example, if you’re playing a $1 slot machine and insert $100 into the machine, you get 100 credits. Payouts are handled in terms of credits.
These are deceptively simple games that provide the potential for larger prizes than most other gambling games on the casino floor. Gamblers pay for that large prize potential, though.
2. Spinning Reels and Random Number Generators
Understanding how slot machines work requires an understanding of some basic math.
But first, let’s talk about how the results are determined.
Early slot machines were mechanical. They used springs to spin the reels, which were huge metal hoops inside the machine. They stopped at random. The odds of getting any specific symbol on a stop on such a machine were the same regardless of which symbol it was.
But over the last three or four decades, slot machines have become more complicated. The spinning reels are just for show. In fact, on most slot machine games, you don’t even really have spinning reels. You’re just watching an animation of what looks like spinning reels.
These machines use a different method of determining results. They’re run by a computer program called a random number generator (RNG). This computer program cycles through numbers at a rate of thousands of numbers per second. When you pull the lever (or press the spin button), the computer stops at whatever number it’s thinking about at that moment.
That number determines the combination of symbols you see on the screen and the amount of your prize money.
You’ll see some so-called slot machine experts claim that you can predict what’s going to happen next on a slot machine because a random number generator, by nature, runs in cycles. That might be true if the cycles were slower. But when a random number generator is running through thousands of numbers per second, cycles no longer matter.
These random number generators also allow slot machine manufacturers to attach different probabilities to different symbols. By doing so, they can afford to offer much larger payouts.
To understand why that’s so, you need to understand some facts about pay tables and payback percentages.
3. Pay Tables, Payback Percentages, and the House Edge
The pay table on a slot machine is a list of the potential prizes and which combinations of symbols trigger those prizes.
Here’s a simple example of a slot machine pay table:
The payback percentage is a theoretical amount that the casino expects to pay back to the player on every bet. It’s expressed as a percentage, and it’s a long-term mathematical expectation.
Here’s an example:
A slot machine game is said to have a payback percentage of 94%. This means the casino expects to pay out an average of 94 cents every time you wager a dollar.
In the short run, this is practically impossible. In fact, if that’s how it worked in the short term, no one would every play slot machines at all.
But in the long run, if you average all the wins and all the losses and look at the average loss per dollar wagered, this game will come close to its theoretical return.
Most players spin the reels 600 times per hour or more. If you’re betting $3 per spin, that’s $1800 per hour in action. After a single hour, you might be up a few hundred dollars or down a few hundred dollars.
But over thousands of hours, you’ll usually see results that come close to the expectation. The casino works in the long run automatically, because they’re running hundreds of games 24/7.
The casino doesn’t mind if you walk away a winner now and then. They know you’ll eventually lose all your money back if you keep playing.
Here’s how the math works:
Suppose each symbol as a 1/10 chance of showing up. To get 3 of them on the same payline, you have a 1/10 X 1/10 X 1/10 = 1/1000 chance of hitting that combination.
In the pay table above, the expected value of each of those combinations can be calculated by multiplying the payoff by the probability of winning.
Add all those expected values together, and you have the payback percentage for the machine.
Odds Of Winning A Progressive Slot Machines
Here’s what that looks like:
Modern slot machines rarely have the same probability for each symbol, though. With computers and random number generators, slot machine designers can adjust the probability for each symbol. Obviously, this makes larger jackpots possible.
Here’s an example:
Suppose you set the probability of getting the game logo on our example game to 1/20 instead of 1/10.
The probability of getting that jackpot is now 1/20 X 1/20 X 1/20 = 1/8000.
You could offer a jackpot of 2880 coins and have the same 94% payback percentage for the game. (I multiplied the 360 jackpot by 8 since that’s how much less likely it is to hit that jackpot.)
This accomplishes a couple of things for the casinos and the game manufacturers:
- It allows them to offer larger jackpots.
- It allows them to obscure the actual payback percentage for the game.
Point #2 is important.
Slot machines are the only games in the casino where a mathematician can’t calculate the house edge for the game. They just don’t have enough data to work the math problem.
You must know both the probability of winning and the payout when you win to make this calculation.
4. How Progressive Jackpots Work
You’ve probably seen slot machine games with huge jackpots that seem to constantly be growing. These are progressive jackpot games, and they work slightly differently than a standard slot machine game.
The first way they’re different is because of their constantly growing jackpot. Standard slot machine games have a flat amount for their top prize. These are called flat top machines.
But a progressive slot machine takes a tiny percentage of each of your bets and adds it to the jackpot. This has the effect of reducing the payback percentage for the machine while also growing it.
You lose the amount that’s being added to the jackpot.
But you also gain a higher expected value based on the possibility of winning that jackpot.
If you think this couldn’t possibly be an equitable trade, you’d be right.
Let’s assume that the game takes a penny from each dollar you wager and adds it to the jackpot. That costs you 1%.
But the odds of hitting that jackpot are at least 1 in 1000. It would take 2 hours of playing before the increase in the jackpot amounted to a higher payback percentage for the machine.
And most progressive jackpots are far larger than this and have much lower odds of winning. Some of these games have jackpots over $10 million. The probability of winning such a jackpot resembles the probability of winning the lottery.
In other words, you’re more likely to be struck by lightning.
Literally.
My advice is to skip progressive slots games unless you enjoy dreaming about that life-changing jackpot. Even if you ignore my advice and play progressives anyway, try to limit the amount of time you spend on them. They will cause you to lose money at an absurd rate.
You’ll see 3 kinds of progressive slot machine games, by the way:
The first kind is a standalone progressive. Only the bets made on that machine increase the size of its jackpot.
The second kind is a local area network. Only bets made in the networked machines in that casino increase the size of the jackpot. If the jackpot is won on any of those machines, the jackpot on all those machines resets to its starting number.
The third kind is a wide area progressive. These games are networked through multiple casinos. Megabucks is the most famous example of this kind of game. The top prize for this game starts at $10 million and grows until it’s hit. Some players have won over $50 million on Megabucks.
5. Bonus Games and Fancy Slot Machine Features
Modern slot machines have lots of fancy features besides progressive jackpots. I explain a few of these features below:
Bonus games are games that offer bonus prizes and are activated by certain combinations of symbols. The most famous example of a bonus game on a slot machine is the Wheel of Fortune spin on Wheel of Fortune slots.
Wild symbols work just like wild cards in a poker game. They stand in for a symbol you might need to make a winning combination.
Scatter symbols are symbols which can appear anywhere on the screen and trigger payouts, even when they’re not on the pay line.
Here’s the thing to remember about all these fancy features:
The game pays for them by reducing the payback percentage for the player.
If you want to maximize your odds of winning, your best bet is to find the most boring slot machine in the casino—the one with the fewest features.
6. The Skinner Box and Randomized Rewards
Slot machines are probably the most addictive form of gambling in any casino. This is by design.
The behavioral scientist BF Skinner did an experiment with rats and cheese. He created a box with a lever on it. If the rats pulled the lever, they got cheese. Naturally, the rats were motivated to pull the lever.
Skinner went on to create a new box which only provided cheese some of the time when the rats pulled the lever. He discovered that when he added the random possibility of a reward, the rats were MORE motivated to pull the lever than they were when they had a 100% chance of getting a reward.
That’s exactly how slot machines work.
Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and—if you play long enough—you’ll always be a net loser in the long run.
But the brain triggers endorphins every time you win—even if the amount you win is less than the amount you bet.
And slot machines don’t return your original bet with your winnings like table games do. That’s why we say a blackjack bet pays off at 3 to 2 instead of saying it pays off at 3 for 2.
If you bet $1 on a slot machine game and win 95 cents, you’ve lost 5 cents on that bet.
But your brain doesn’t recognize the net loss.
It triggers the same endorphins as a win of $2 would.
For people with impulse control problems, playing slots is a bad idea.
7. How Online Slot Machines Work
Online slot machines work essentially the same as slot machines in a casino. Since all casino slot machines are now powered by random number generator software, the slots in online casinos are almost identical to the slots in a traditional casino.
The big difference is that online casinos have much lower overhead. As a result, most online casinos offer higher payback percentages than their land-based cousins. This isn’t 100% true across the board—some online casinos have lousy payback percentages.
But if I had to choose between playing an online slot machine game at an online casino or playing a traditional slot machine at the Las Vegas airport, I’d go with the online game almost every time.
You’ll also find many unique slots games at online casinos that aren’t available in traditional casinos. Some of these games are fun and cute. Others are evocative of games you’re used to in Vegas.
Either way, the math and technology behind online slot machines are basically the same as in Las Vegas.
Conclusion
How slot machines work isn’t a big mystery. They’ve been around for over 100 years, and the technology has changed.
But they’re still the same game our grandmothers played. Like all gambling games in the casino, they have an unassailable mathematical edge.
The difference is that you win bigger jackpots on a slot machine than you can on any other game. The best you can do at the blackjack table is 3 to 2. At a roulette table, the biggest prize is 35 to 1.
It’s easy to find slots where you can win 100 for 1 or 1000 for 1 or more.
If you like playing for big jackpots, slot machines are the game to play.