Odds of hitting a slot machine jackpot In general, the higher the jackpot, the harder it is to hit. Exactly as you should expect. The lowest odds I've found are 1 in 32,768 (for a 1000-coin jackpot on a flavor of Red White & Blue), and the longest are 1 in 49,836,032, for Megabucks, which has a. Know your limits and play within your budget. Not setting a gambling budget is perhaps one of the. The first tip that will help you to increase your chances of hitting a jackpot is to time the machines. Las Vegas slots player wins $15.5M jackpot on Christmas Eve It was the largest slot machine jackpot Nevada has seen in eight years, the casino owner said. Experience the BEST REAL VEGAS casino slot machine game in 2021 - there's a huge jackpot, tons of 777 Vegas slots machine games, and mega wins waiting for you! Jackpot Hit Slots, a TOP FREE slots casino game, invites you to experience the MOST POPULAR CASINO SLOTS.
New slot machine players are going to find a lot of advice for beating the slots. Have a healthy skepticism when a slots expert tells you they know how to beat the slot machines. Among the games in a casino, video slots (in general) have a high house edge. Besides finding gaming machines with high jackpots and a low house edge, no skill or strategy is required to play slots. That means you can’t expect to increase your odds of winning in most situations.
Read through the advice below to optimize your chances of winning at slots. None of the advice assures winning sessions. Instead, it helps you stretch your bankroll, so you enjoy playing the slots longer. Also, the longer your bankroll lasts, the more chances you’ll have of hitting the big jackpot every slots player wants.
Use a Slots Card
Upon entering a live casino, sign up for a slots card. This provides comps and cashback, which automatically lowers the house edge by a bit. Never play a spin without using your slots card. In an online casino, accept the highest slots bonus and play according to the terms and conditions until you meet the wagering requirement. Once again, this lowers the house edge on online slots.
Make Max Bets
Look at the payout chart on a slot machine to determine how jackpots are paid. On many slot machines, the 5-coin bet pays out a higher percentage on the top fixed jackpot. For instance, a 1-coin bet might pay $200, a 2-coin bet might pay $400, a 3-coin bet might pay $600, and a 4-coin bet might pay $800. You might expect the 5-coin bet to pay $1000, but many slot machines pay out $1200 or $1500 in that case, trying to convince bettors to make the max bet.
If the jackpot increases a bigger percentage with a maximum coin wager, then it makes sense to make the max bet on a slot machine. If the bet size is too high for your tastes, then lower the coin denomination and make a max bet at that level. Of course, if there is no additional jump between the 4-coin and 5-coin bet, then you can wager a single coin and max out the coin denomination to the bet size you like.
Read the RTP Information
If an online casino or land-based casino publishes its return-to-player information, read through the RTP percentages to find the video slots with the best RTPs. Return-to-player or expected return is the percentage of a theoretical $100 you expect to see returned to you. It is a theoretical percentage based on probability, so an RTP of 95% does not assure you’ll be paid $95 for every $100 you put in the machine. You might lose $50 or you might win $150, or you might win a progressive jackpot and go home rich.
The point of the RTP percentage is to give a player an idea of their expected return. If two slot machines sit next to one another and one has an RTP of 93% and the other an RTP of 95% (and both have similar jackpots), then it pays to play the game with the higher percentage. Over time, this leads to you maintaining a higher percentage of your bankroll.
Money Management Techniques
Read about bankroll management techniques. “Money management” or “bankroll management” is a series of steps you take to lock on winnings when good luck happens and limit your losses when a bad streak occurs. These do not assure that you’ll win, but it optimizes your bankroll.
Players should know three core bankroll management methods: percentage betting, win goals, and loss limits. Learn to calculate your bankroll and divide this into percentages. Then bet between 1% and 5% of your bankroll on any given hand, depending on your capacity for risk. This limits the amount of your stake you lose on any given session, keeping you playing for longer throughout your vacation. It is a given that people go to the ATM machine or credit card when they lose their whole bankroll — which means you spend more than you intended. The point of percentage betting is to assure your bankroll last through your whole trip, so you never have to replenish.
What Is a Bankroll?
“Bankroll” is not defined as your entire bank account. It isn’t defined as your discretionary spending budget or the money you have earmarked for entertainment expenses. Instead, it is a part of your discretionary spending cash and entertainment budget which is set aside specifically for gambling. In this case, a bankroll is less than your entertainment budget.
Once you have your bankroll figured, divide this into easy to understand percentage. If you have a bankroll of $1000, then divide this into percentages. These are simple calculations, but you should have an understanding of 1%, 2%, 5%, 10%, and 20% of your bankroll. In the earlier example, 1% would be $10, while 2% would be $20. 5% would be $50, 10% would be $100, and 20% would be $200.
Now that you have these, decide whether to bet 1% to 5% of your bankroll. Most experts suggest betting no more than 1% to 2% in order to maintain your bankroll throughout your casino trip or online slots session.
Setting a Win Goal
Next, set your win goal. This is the amount of winnings you set as your goal for any given slots session. If you have a win goal of 10%, then your win goal would be $100 for any given slot machine sessions. As soon as you hit that goal, you walk away from the slot machine — no matter what. A win goal is a hard-and-fast rule, because it locks in winnings. One of the biggest mistakes players make is losing back their winnings, because they think they’re on a hot streak.
Setting a Loss Limit
Even more dangerous is trying to win back cash you just loss. To protect against this tendency, set a loss limit. Once again, make this your hard-and-fast rule. Typical loss limits can be 5%, 10%, 15%, or 20% — though 20% means you could lose the entire bankroll in 5 slots session. 10% to 15% is a good middle ground. Once you’ve lost that amount, walk away from the slot machine under all circumstances. The slots game is not “due” to pay out, so step away from the machine and clear your mind.
Win goals and loss limits guard against gambler’s fallacy. Gambler’s fallacy is the idea that the law of averages assures or weight the odds in your favor. Slots use random number generators and every spin is entirely separate from the previous spin. Losing the last spin does not make it more likely you’ll win the next spin. The odds stay the same, no matter how many wins or losses in a row you’ve had.
Avoid Progressive Betting
For that reason, avoid progressive betting systems like the Martingale system, D’Alembert system, Fibonacci system, and so on. Betting experts have used computer simulations to track the progressive betting methods against flat betting (same bet each spin). Flat betting beats all of the progressive betting schemes over 1 billion spins.
How To Pick A Winning Slot Machine
Progressive betting seems like it’s working, because it leads to a lot of small winning sessions. The problem is that it also has a handful of huge losing sessions which wipe out all the wins — and then some. You can’t beat the house edge with the Martingale system, however it might look to the naked eye. The Fibonacci numbers are incredible, but they are not a magical way to beat the casino.
The reason progressive bets are bad is they increase the size of your bets (in some systems exponentially). If you start with $5 or $10 bets, a streak of bad luck has you betting hundreds of dollars on one spin. That’s busts your bankroll and leads to a “risk of ruin” — meaning you’ll lose your whole bankroll if you hit a bad luck streak. No matter what you read online, flat bets are better.
Take Breaks for Rest and Refreshments
Play when you are at your best physically and mentally. Don’t play when you’re tired or sleepy. Don’t play when you’re hungry or thirsty. Take frequent rest and restroom breaks. If you get bored, take a break and walk the casino. Play another game to change up the betting pattern.
When you are rested and engaged, you won’t have distractions that might lead to bad decisions. The idea is to have fun, so if anything is causing you to lose focus on the entertainment aspect of the game, walk away and save your bankroll.
Don’t Go on Tilt
Tilt is a concept in poker where a player makes decisions based on emotional responses instead of solid strategy. It can cost a player a lot of money if they make bets based on anything but rational decisions. While going on tilt is not a concept in slot machine gambling, every game of chance has a personal component.
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In short, don’t play when you’re agitated. Take stock of your inner thoughts. If your ego or anger is causing you to make irrational decisions, take a deep breath and calm down. If that doesn’t work, walk away and clear your head. It stinks to lose a series of bets, but what stinks more is to lose a series of bigger bets when you’re trying to make up for lost bankroll.
When it comes to slot machines, you have two broad categories. There are flat top slot machines, and there are progressive slot machines.
A flat-top slot machine is more common, and it’s a game where the top prize is a fixed amount. 1,000 coins is a common prize, but it varies by machine.
Progressive slot machines, on the other hand, have top prizes (jackpots) that grow over time until they’re hit. They can be compared to lottery games in that respect. You know how the lottery gets bigger every week if there was no winner the previous week? Hitting the progressive on jackpot on real money slot machines is just like that.
How Big Does the Jackpot Get on a Progressive Slot Machine?
The obvious first question is, how big does the jackpot on a progressive slot machine get? The answer is that it varies based on the game.
You can find progressive jackpots that rival lottery prizes in size. The Megabucks slots in Nevada have the biggest progressive slot machine jackpot in the world. The jackpot starts at $10 million and grows until someone hits it.
When I wrote this post, the jackpot was at $15 million and growing. The biggest the jackpot ever got was in 2003, when it had risen to almost $40 million before getting hit. It’s also gotten as big as $35 million before being hit, too. But that’s on the outside end of the spectrum.
Progressive jackpots can also be much smaller, depending on the casino and the specific game. You can find plenty of progressive jackpots on the other end of the spectrum, too. Online progressives can be as low as $500 or $600.
The advantage to lower-sized progressive jackpots is that you’re more likely to win one. The odds of winning something like Megabucks are astronomically small.
What Does a Progressive Jackpot Do to the Expected Return?
If you’re not familiar with the expression, the “expected return” for a slot machine is the percentage of the money you get back in the long run when playing the machine. It’s expressed as a percentage, and it’s always less than 100%.
Here’s what that means: If you have a slot machine with an expected total return of 94%, you expect to get back 94 cents for every dollar you put into the machine.
If you’re an average slot machine player, you might make 500 spins per hour. If you’re playing for a dollar per spin, you’re putting $500 through the machine per hour.
94% of $500 is $470, which means you’ll lose an average of $30 per hour on that machine.
That’s no guarantee, by the way. That’s an average you can expect in the long run, over dozens of hours. In the short term, you might see an hour or a session where you were up $30 or even $300. You might see other hours or sessions where you lost $60 or $120 or even more. That’s why it’s random.
The Size of the Jackpot Has an Effect on the Actual Return
The actual return on a machine is the actual amount you get back. This is opposed to the theoretical return on the machine, which is what most people mean when they talk about expected return.
But when you’re dealing with a jackpot that has such a low probability of being hit, its theoretical return might as well be zero. After all, if the probability is so close to zero that you might not expect to hit it in a lifetime of play, it might as well not even count.
Megabucks is a good example. The odds of winning the jackpot are about 1 in 50,000,000. How long would it take to make 50,000,000 spins on Megabucks?
At 500 spins per hour, you’re looking at 100,000 hours of play. If you played Megabucks 40 hours a week for 50 weeks a year, you’d get in 2,000 hours of play. That’s 50 years of playing Megabucks as a full-time job.
No one I know would want to spend 50 years playing for that jackpot. So, you might as well subtract the expected value for the jackpot from the overall expected return for the game.
Usually, this means that the expected return for a big progressive jackpot is effectively lower than it would be if you were playing a flat top slot machine game.
What Kinds of Progressive Jackpot Slot Machines Are There?
I mentioned before that I like to categorize things, and I’ve found that categorizing progressive slot machines is easy. You have three types:
- Individual machines
- Local area-networked machines
- Wide area-networked machines
An individual machine with a progressive jackpot has a jackpot that grows as you play it. The jackpot also grows when someone else plays it. But it doesn’t grow when it’s not being played. A percentage of each bet “fuels” that jackpot, so the jackpot ticker doesn’t move when no one is playing the game.
It’s a jackpot ticket for an individual machine. Local area-networked machines are slot machines in a single casino and sometimes in the same bank where your play on any of the networked machines that fuels the jackpot. When someone on any of the networked machines wins, the jackpot resets to its original amount.
Generally, the gambling games with the biggest jackpots are wide area machines, and the games with the smallest jackpots are the individual machines.
What Happens When You Gamble and Win a Jackpot?
First, the machines don’t pay out immediately in coins when you win a progressive jackpot. Such a payoff would be impractical.
A flashing light usually goes off on a progressive jackpot machine when it’s hit, and a slot machine attendant will visit you. The casino will set things up for you so that you get paid. If it’s a huge jackpot like Megabucks, it’s similar to winning the lottery.
You don’t just get a check handed to you. But you do get paid. Also, keep in mind that gambling winnings are taxable income. The casino will provide you with an earnings report. You should keep a diary of your gambling expenses so that if you do win big, you can defray at least some of the taxes you owe with these expenses.
You can’t defray expenses unless you’re a winning player, though, and you can never claim more in losses than you’ve won in a calendar year.
This is true for any United States casinos, and it applies to any winnings at the casino over a specific amount. Small wins like $50 are no big deal and don’t get reported, but once you get into progressive jackpot territory, they definitely get reported.
How Do You Win Progressive Jackpot Casino Slot Machines?
There’s no magic trick to winning at progressive slots. They’re like the lottery. No amount of superstition or astrology can help you win. You just have to get lucky.
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It also doesn’t matter where the slot machine is located in the casino. For years, people have suggested that the loosest slot machines are the ones nearest the walkways in the casinos, but that’s just one of the common casino myths. It might have had some basis in truth at one time. But as far as I know, no casino or casino manager makes it that easy to spot the “loose” progressive slots.
Conclusion
Hitting the jackpot with progressive slot machines is something most of us will never achieve. If you do become a progressive jackpot winner, it will probably be on one of the games with the smaller jackpots—the individual machines.
Still, it’s fun to watch the jackpot ticker grow constantly, and it’s even more fun to daydream about what you’re going to do when you win all that money.