Progressive jackpot online casino

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The goal of this website, and this page in particular, is to answer questions like “what is a progressive jackpot?”, “how do progressive jackpots work”, and “how do you win life-changing prizes on slot machines?” I’ll cover each of these subjects in detail below:

What Is a Progressive Jackpot?

A progressive jackpot is a top prize on a gambling game (usually a slot machine) that gets progressively bigger until it’s been won. At that point, the size of the jackpot returns to its starting amount and starts climbing again. When gamblers talk about progressive jackpots, they’re usually talking about slot machine games.

But lotteries are also progressive jackpots.

Every week, millions of people buy lottery tickets, and if no one wins the jackpot, a percentage of those sales gets added to the jackpot for the next drawing. If no one wins a jackpot for weeks (or months), the size of the lottery jackpot can get insanely high.

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The big difference between lottery jackpots and progressive jackpot slot machines has to do with when the jackpot grows. On a progressive slot machine game, the jackpot grows constantly as the game is played. With a lottery jackpot, you’re waiting to see if the jackpot is won before seeing whether the prize amount has grown.

Even though I’ve only mentioned slot machines and lottery games, progressive jackpots can (and often are) attached to other gambling games. You can find progressive jackpots in the poker room at the bad beat tables. You can find them in the table games sections of the casinos at the blackjack and roulette tables, too. And, you can definitely find progressive jackpots on video poker machines.

How Do Progressive Jackpots Work?

Progressive jackpots work by adding a tiny percentage of each bet to the jackpot every time you play until someone hits that progressive jackpot. For example, if you’re playing a game with a $3 bet, the game might add 3 cents to the size of the jackpot every time you spin the reels.

You’ll find progressive jackpots on slot machines in multiple configurations:

1. Standalone jackpots
2. Local area jackpots
3. Wide area jackpots

A progressive slot machine with a standalone jackpot only uses the action on that individual machine to size the jackpot. In other words, a standalone progressive isn’t networked with other games or machines. The bets you make on that machine grow that individual machine’s jackpot but no others. And that jackpot can’t be won on any other game or machine.

A local area jackpot, on the other hand, is networked among multiple machines within a local area. For example, a bank of slot machines in a specific casino might all share the same jackpot. This means that play on any of the multiple games in that bank contributes to the growth of the jackpot. And once the jackpot is hit on any of those machines, the jackpot resets for the entire bank of machines.

A wide area jackpot is one that networks slot machines at multiple casinos in a wide area. As you can imagine, the sizes of wide area jackpots grow faster than the other two kinds of progressive jackpots.

No matter which type of progressive jackpot you’re looking at, though, they all work the same way. The game has a starting jackpot, and it gets bigger every time someone makes a bet and spins the reels.

What Happens to the Odds of Winning on a Progressive Jackpot?

To understand progressive jackpot odds, you must first understand slot machine odds in general. Luckily, they’re not that hard to understand once you grasp a couple of concepts — one of these is “expected value.” The other is “probability.”

Probability and How It Works

Let’s start with probability. Not only does probability refer to a branch of mathematics, it’s also a measurement in the same way inches, feet, and yards are measurements.

But probability measures how likely something is to happen. The first thing to understand is that probability is always a number between 0 and 1. Something with a probability of 0 will never happen. An example might be rolling a 7 on a six-sided die numbered 1 through 6. It’s impossible. Something with a probability of 1, on the other hand, will always happen. An example might be a trick coin that has heads on both sides. The probability of tossing the coin and having it land on heads in that case is 1.

Probabilities can be expressed in various ways. If you paid any attention at all in math class, you know that a number between 0 and 1 is  a fraction. 1/2, for example, is the probability of something that will happen (on average) half the time. That can also be expressed as a decimal (0.5) or a percentage (50%). It can also be expressed in odds format (1 to 1, or even odds.)

Also, the probability of something happening added to the probability of it not happening always results in 1. In fact, that’s the critical distinction for understanding something’s probability.

The number of ways something can happen divided by the total number of possible outcomes is the probability that it will happen. Here’s an example from roulette:

You want to know the probability that the ball will land on red on the next spin of the wheel. You know there are 38 possible outcomes. 18 of those possible outcomes are red. The other 20 are black (18 of them) or green (2 of them).

18 winning outcomes versus 38 possible total outcomes means the probability is 18/38, which is the same as 9/19, which is also the same as 47.37%.

The ball will land on red ALMOST half the time, but not quite.

Finally, probability is a long run estimate of how likely something is to happen. In the short run, anything can happen, and probability is less meaningful.

Expected Value and How It Works

The other critical thing to understand if you want to understand how probability works as it relates to progressive jackpots is the concept of expected value.

Expected value is just the probability of something happening multiplied by the amount you stand to win if it happens.

Let’s use a simple example:

If you’re playing a gambling game where you have a 50% probability of winning, and you stand to win $1 in profit, the expected value of that winning outcome is 50 cents.

On a slot machine, you have multiple potential winning outcomes, each of which has its own probability of winning and its own prize amount. This is represented by the pay table for the slot machine game.

Here’s an example pay table:

• One bar = 1 credit
• Two bars = 2 credits
• Three bars = 3 credits
• A cherry = 4 credits
• Two cherries = 6 credits
• Three cherries = 9 credits
• A diamond = 25 credits
• Two diamonds = 50 credits
• Three diamonds = 250 credits

Let’s say that those outcomes account for about 50% of the spins you make on the slot machine. This means that the “hit ratio” for the game is 50%, but that doesn’t mean anything when it comes to how much you’ll win or lose. It just shows how often you’ll hit a winning result.

The expected value for each of those possible outcomes is the amount paid out multiplied by the probability of getting that result.

Let’s say that the probability of getting one bar is 20%. The expected return for that outcome is 20%.

Now let’s say that the probability of getting two bars is 12%. But since you get two credits, the expected return is 24%. (You multiply the 2 units by 12%).

And the probability of getting three bars might be 6%. That makes the expected return 18% for three bars.

The cherries might all have the same probability — 1%. This means you have 4%, 6%, and 9% to add to the overall expected return for the game.

And they set the probability of getting a single diamond to 0.2%. That’s an expected return of 5%.

Two diamonds is a lot harder outcome to achieve — 0.01%. Expected return for that one is 0.5%.

Finally, the probability of hitting the jackpot is really low — 0.005%. Expected return is 12.5%, though, because the size of the prize is so large.

What do you get when you add all those expected returns up?

20% + 24% + 18% + 4% + 6% + 9% + 5% +0.5% +12.5% = 81%.

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This means that for every dollar you play in that machine, you’ll see — on average, over the long run — 81 cents paid back to you. The casino will win an average of 19 cents every time you bet a dollar.

That’s the expected return for the game. And 81% isn’t an unusual percentage, although the percentage tends to be higher at bigger casinos in competitive areas.

What Effect Does the Constantly Growing Progressive Jackpot Have on the Game’s Expected Return?

This is where things get interesting. As the size of the top prize grows, so does the expected return for the game. In fact, if the jackpot gets big enough, the expected return can grow to over 100%.

In any casino game where the expected return is less than 100%, the casino has a mathematical edge over the gambler. If the gambler can find a way to get the expected return over 100%, the gambler has the edge over the casino.

If you double the size of the jackpot on this example pay table I made up, the expected return for that outcome also goes up — raising the overall expected return for the game.

In other words, if the jackpot grows from 250 to 500 without being won, you get to add 12.5% to the expected return for the game, making its return 93.5% instead of 81%. The casino still has the edge.

But let’s say that the jackpot grows to 1000 coins. Now you have a game with an expected return of 118.5%. If you’re playing a game with this kind of expected return, in the long run, on average, you’ll win 18.5 cents for every dollar you wager.

But since the top prize only hits 0.005% of the time, it will take you a long time (if ever) to win it. In fact, it’s likely that someone else will hit it first. While you’re waiting for that to hit, you’re dealing with the expected return less the expected return on the top prize.

And that’s only 68.5%.

How to Win Progressive Jackpots

Unfortunately, I can’t offer you any winning tips for progressive jackpots. Slot machine outcomes are entirely random, and nothing you can do as a player can affect the probability of winning. It doesn’t matter whether you press the button to spin the reels or pull the lever. The odds are the same.

It also doesn’t matter how long it’s been since the jackpot has been hit. Every spin of the reels is an independent event. The probability of hitting the jackpot is 0.005% in the example we’ve been using, regardless of whether it’s your first spin or your hundredth.

Winning progressive jackpots is like winning the lottery. There is not a strategy for this.

The only thing I can say is that you can’t win if you don’t play.

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