What Are The Odds Of Winning A Slot Machine Jackpot

1. What Are The Odds Of Winning A Slot Machine Jackpots
2. What Are The Odds Of Hitting A Slot Machine Jackpot

The more people play them, the higher the jackpot amount. However, because of the number of people vying for that jackpot, your odds of winning at progressive machines are lower than fixed machines. Among flat-top machines, the overall odds are generally similar, no matter how high the jackpot is.

1. A simple example can help illustrate how this works. Suppose you have a slot machine with three reels with ten symbols on each, and it only pays out when three cherries hit. The odds of winning that jackpot, as we determined earlier, is 1/1000.
2. Your odds of winning are better than this, as you can hit five bells, five whistles or five of any other set of symbols, so on this machine your odds of any set of five are actually 5 x 0.032%, or 0.16%. So once in every 625 spins of this hypothetical machine, you’ll hit your set of five identical symbols for the jackpot.

As far as the casino industry is concerned, slot machine games are the most played games, yet, they are the least understood.

In the UK, slot machine games, also known as the fruit machine games, are some of the most sought after games at the land based casinos, and in the US, where they were first played in the 1890’s, they continue enjoying prominence and popularity among the players!

Australia, where they are referred to as Pokies, has more slots per capita than the US though, and while not at the same level as Australia, slot machine games continue to receive game time across different European countries and different gambling hotspots in Macau.

Online, hundreds of millions of bettors continue playing video slot machine games, as casual players through different social media application or for real cash at the different online casinos.

But even to those who have devoted their free time playing slots; the different slot terms, how they work, and the odds of winning the jackpots remain in the dark!

Is it possible to win playing slots jackpot?

The first and popular question that most of bettors ask is ‘Can I win the jackpot games?’ Right after this, they’ll ask ‘Is there a strategy or secret to winning big?’

It’s natural enough for any player to want to win! What’s the point of playing anyway? Is it not to experience the thrill and big wins that come with the video slot games?

Can I win while playing the jackpot slot games?

Sometimes, yes! All the payoffs as indicated on the video slot game actually represent your chance of winning. Any slots player who very often plays the game will increase his/her chances of winning and a reason to celebrate. But we are yet to see someone, besides the woman who won €1.75 million who while playing the same video slot game in a month, defied the odds of 625million:1 and won the same game twice in a row!

Is there a strategy or a secret to winning big?

Let nobody lie to you that they used a well worked out formula to win the video slot games! With rare cases, 99% of the slot machine games purely rely on chance. The results are determined by the Random Number Generator, and there’s nothing the casino or bettor can do to influence how the numbers are generated.

To this popular question, there isn’t any magical strategy or formula to increase your chances of winning! Only cross your fingers and pray lady luck is on your side!

What are the odds of winning a casino jackpot?

The odds of winning any casino jackpot vary from one game to another, on different coin values for the different bets you place, and in some cases on a slot machine game with the same denomination but playing on different machines. Casinos don’t usually advertise the odds of the different games and neither do they post them on the different machines.

Therefore, the best that we could do to estimate the odds of winning the different jackpot is to compare different games, offered at different casinos. For the estimate, we focused our attention on the United Kingdom market, where the casino average payouts are made public by the UK Gambling Commission for bettors to see.

The percentages are different from one casino to another but the overall look of the paybacks look like this: Slot machines normally pay higher percentages if you place bigger bets. Below are some average house edges and returns, based on the information that we gathered from the UK Gambling Commission.

Take note that the percentage of bets returned to the bettor as winnings increase as the size of the bet gets bigger. Gamblers who choose to go for the more expensive jackpot games get a larger portion of their wager back, and also stand a better chance of winning.

Does this mean that players should focus on placing bigger bets? No! By playing the more expensive game and get a larger portion of the bets you place back, but at the end of it, lose more money as you’ll be taking a bigger risk. The best thing to do is to let your bankroll guide you, and also avoid betting more money than you can afford.

Modern Video Slot Odds

Most of the modernised slot machines don’t have 10 numbers on each reel and most of the slot games, both at the online and land based casinos, have at least five reels as opposed to the traditional three reels. This means that the developers and programmers are always dealing with more complex machines, featuring hundreds if not thousands of stops, symbols or random numbers on each reel.

Below are some of the factors that are always considered when modern video slot odds are determined:

• When the slot machines are on video, the programmer can choose to make the reels as long as he/she needs them to be. If for example, to achieve the right odds the programmer requires a slot reel to feature a sequence of 1000 symbols, then he/she will have to program a 1,000 symbol reel.
• However, in the land-based casinos, it difficult for the programmer to fit the 1000 symbols in the mechanical slot machines. Therefore to achieve this, the programmers use what is referred to as the ‘Virtual Reel’. Thanks to this feature, the slot machines at the brick and mortar casinos with the small reels can act as if they have more symbols. For example, the programmer could tell the machine ‘Any time the RNG software stops on number 7, stop on the jackpot symbol. Any time it stops on numbers 5, 3, 1 or 9, stop on the first bar.’ By programming the machine this way, the highly sought symbol that triggers the jackpot can only appear once after several hundred or thousands spins. This plays a huge role in determining the odds of the jackpot. A good example was in 2003 when the world record jackpot of Megabucks machine paid out a mind-blowing $39 million. According to IGT, the company behind this game, the odds of winning the jackpot were approximately 1 in 50 million.

The Free Spins & Bonus Factor

Almost all the modern video slot games, including jackpots, have bonus events which come in different forms including the spinning of a bonus wheel as with Mega Millions; Pick’em bonuses as seen in Jackpot Party and you can check out free spins on our favourite sites at a number of highly recommended online casino operators.

During the bonus round, you have the chance of accumulating credits without spending any extra cash thanks to the in-game free spins bonus round. This has to account for while setting the game’s odds and paybacks during the regular reel spins. But how do the free spins contribute to the game’s overall jackpot?

One of my friend, who happens to be a programmer told me that one of the games he has developed has a 90% RTP; 60% of this comes from the general reel spins, 30% comes from the different in-game bonuses, including the free spins and the remaining 10% comes from the house.

So how do you increase your odds of winning the casino jackpot?

What Are The Odds Of Winning A Slot Machine Jackpots

Below are rules of thumb that every bettor should follow to increase their chance of winning while playing video slot games.

• Always choose games that you understand better
• Make the most of the casino bonuses and offers to boost your bankroll. Most sites powered by NetEnt have free spins offers and deposit offers
• To ensure that your bankroll goes further, reduce the number of coins that you bet on each line and increase the number of paylines. This increase your chances of winning the bet

By multiplying the probability by the possible win at each level, we can find the percentage returns or another very important value – house edge.

Hidden Numbers

When it comes to online slot machines where payouts at various levels are arbitrary, the values are rarely published. There are exceptions even in this case, but typically the chances are unknown. In this respect, we can only guess. Why? Because we are simply not capable of playing so many games on one slot machine to find its frequency. So if we get a jackpot, it’s the just pure coincidence. A game that one player finds very promising may be unattractive for another player.

The accompanying table that tells us that our slot machine has average returns of 92.61% will only serve us to find that we will never reach that value in the short run and hides the actual properties of the machine.

If we take into account all the possible combinations of stops of individual reels, each game has 373,248 possible final combinations. A player would therefore have to play more than 373,248 games to get the relevant results of the final combinations.

Our Real Chances for a Jackpot

For example, in the 373,248 games that we can call a cycle, a jackpot with a payout of 833 to 1 occurs on average in 8 cases. If consider that one round lasts five seconds, we would have to play 130 games per hour. Our chances of hitting the jackpot are then 13.96 percent. The chances of missing any jackpot are far lower, exactly 0.03 percent. Our chances for eight jackpots are therefore 45.30 percent or 40.74 percent, respectively.

Let’s consider a 4-hour session. You’re keeping the pace and playing one game in 5 seconds. Overall, you will thus play 2,880 games. Your chances of missing the jackpot are then 94.01 percent. That means you’ll hit it in 5.80 percent of the games, which is a decent chance. Don’t despair – it is not much, but it’s better than nothing!

Let’s leave behind the highest jackpot with the 833:1 payout and look at our chances of hitting the second highest jackpot. Its payout is 320 to one and we’ll miss it at 78.12 percent. In that case, however, we have a great 19.29 percent chance of hitting the jackpot. The chances of hitting two of each are then 2.38 percent of cases.

Chances to Win Progressive Jackpot

As you probably know, winning a million jackpot is not something that happens to you every day. And you’re right. For example, the chance of winning a jackpot on a Megabucks slot machine is 1 in 49,836,032. Just for comparison, the chance of winning a Powerball lottery is 1 in 292,201,338. In the following table, you will find the chances of winning for selected progressive jackpots.

And what about online slots? Sadly, no publishing company does declare the probability of winning the jackpot on online slot machines. However, these chances are generally thought to be in the order of tens or hundreds of millions to one.

If we brush up on basic knowledge of mathematics, we can try to estimate the probability of winning:

• Average winnings: € 5,073,220
• Let’s calculate that 2% of each bet is in the jackpot:
• The maximum bet is € 6.25
• For each maximum bet, € 0.125 (6.25 * 0.02) goes to the pot
• 5,073,220 / 0.125 = 40,585,760

What Are The Odds Of Hitting A Slot Machine Jackpot

On average, a player must place 40,585,760 bets. The chance of winning the jackpot can be estimated at 1 in 40,585,759. Of course, this is an estimate, and the real probability may be different.

Small Versus Big Jackpot

Note that the highest jackpot (833 to 1, i.e. 2,500 credits for a deposit of 3 credits) is generally considered low. Many other online slot machines offer far more profitable payouts. But here you have to be careful. The higher the possible win, the lower your chances of achieving it.

Let’s assume that our favorite slot machine pays a jackpot of 3,333 to 1 (10,000 for 3 credits). Our terms are the same as in the previous example. Now we hit 2 jackpots per 319,928 games and we lose 319,928 games. Thus, the return rate would be the same, up to two decimal places.

With a payout of 3,333 to 1, we will not hit the jackpot in 98.47 percent of the 2,880 games. Our chance for a successful round is thus only 1.52 percent. The odds of hitting 2 or more jackpots are only 0.01 percent.

Another indicator is the percentage of effective returns in case you do not hit the jackpot. In both cases, the odds of hitting the jackpot contribute to the returns by 1.78 percent. So, instead of 92.61 percent, you will not hit the jackpot in only 90.83 percent of cases. But if you’ve never hit the second highest jackpot, your chances are even worse.

Other gambling games have far fewer possible results. Because they have fewer results, the game must be approached in an even more sophisticated manner. Never forget the lazier you play, the greater edge the casino will have.

Even if the chance to hit the jackpot are tight, you can always anjoy playing non-jackpot slots. Check out our guide on how to win on slots and play like the pro.