Bet a little to win a lot might as well be the mantra of every gambler. However, saying it and doing it are two completely different things. Short of winning the lottery or getting insanely lucky at the World Series of Poker, how does that life-changing score drop into your lap?
One mechanism for big bucks on a small gamble is to pony up for a progressive wager. In the casino, that means betting on a longshot and benefiting from a pool of money that builds up over time. Most famous are the progressive slot machines, where you wager on reels lining up in usually elusive ways. Most of the time, of course, they do not. But, with every loss, money goes into a pool set aside for the lone winner who hits it big. You want to be that winner.
Becoming that fortunate beneficiary is best attempted when the progressive jackpot is large. The odds of hitting what you need in order to take it down will be unchanged, but you’ll win a lot rather than, say, a lot less.
Money for Nothing & Lucky Machines
For all of that, though, nothing can be sweeter than landing a big score when there is no money at risk. Such was the case in 2012 for an anonymous gambler who wandered into the off-Strip M Resort in Las Vegas.
Amazingly, the gambler happened to have a free-play ticket for a slot machine. So, the thinking must have gone, what the heck, pull the lever and take your shot. The player got incredibly lucky when the free play came through magnificently and the stars aligned.
Most amazing of all? For a moment, the person did not realize that they had won. Soon after, though, it became clear that the lucky slots lover was suddenly $17.3 million richer than when they walked into the casino.
While it’s hard to buy into certain machines being lucky, recent turns of events might make you reconsider. Between Nov. 2 and Nov. 9 of this year, six Money Mania jackpots roared in. Various machines, operating under different Money Mania iterations, paid off, all told, to the tune of more than $30 million.
Considering that the machine is called Money Mania, it’s one gambling device that clearly lives up to its name.
Setting Records & Attracting APs
Progressive slot machines, with the giant scores that they deliver, open the door for players to not only win life changing money, but also to hold records for their wins. Such was the case recently when a gambler in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, broke the record for jackpot wins in the American state.
The gambler took down $924,562 and, arguably, has Whitney Houston to thank for it. The money derived from a Whitney Houston-themed progressive slot. It is unclear whether or not the winner sang the Whitney hit “I Will Always Love You” to the machine that made them rich.
The long-running endurance of progressive slot machines is testament to how much people love them. They first materialized around 1986. The breakout machine was called Megabucks and was created by slot king IGT (officially known as Internet Gaming Technology).
The first big payout was hit in 1987 when a player caught a windfall of nearly $5 million. And the progressives were off to the races, becoming one of the most popular gambles on a casino floor.
Games evolved to the point where advantage players (APs) figured out ways to find positive expectations in the marvelous machines. Once the progressive jackpot builds to a certain level, those who understand the odds of winning can exclusively target machines that offer juicy jackpots with positive expected value.
In other words, the odds of winning matched with the money in the jackpot create a situation where playing the machine is an advantageous move. Of course, nobody knows exactly when it will hit. So, even a favorable situation can still turn into a money loser.
And once an AP starts playing a machine under that circumstance, stopping play is not exactly an option. There are times when the payoff takes longer than is optimal for a canny gambler. As one said to me about the many hours he spent feeding money into a one-armed bandit that was primed to pay, “If I stopped playing, it would have been a mathematical catastrophe.”
Beyond Slots
Slots are not the only machine games with progressive components. There are video poker machines featuring progressives that keep building up until someone hits a royal flush, a straight flush or, sometimes certain four of a kind combinations.
A prime example of that took place last year when a video poker fanatic was playing a game at Caesars Palace in June 2023. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, he was at it for 31 hours, playing for $500 per turn and managing to get extremely lucky three times. The player won a pair of $400,000 jackpots and a third for $200K before he was satisfied with his earnings and wound down the session.
Other players manage to rake in the big bucks more efficiently. It’s been reported that a gambler at Cosmopolitan, on the Vegas Strip, was playing for stakes of $1,250 per spin and managed to take home $1 million after four aces with a 3 on the side materialized in front of him.
It’s not only machine game players who get to have all the fun and win all the sudden fortunes. Blackjack, Three Card Poker and Pai Gow Poker rank among the table games with progressives of their own.
Pai Gow’s will pay off big when you hit a seven-card straight flush. A big progressive in blackjack requires a player to be dealt two 7s of diamonds and the dealer to have one of his own.
The possible downside of making such a hand? Getting lucky enough to be dealt the cards but to not be wagering on the side bet.
A poster to Reddit recalled just such a scenario at a live blackjack game. A player in his 20s got dealt the 7s and the dealer made a third. But he failed to wager on the side bet and did not receive the $277,000 jackpot.
Despondent, the lucky but unlucky blackjack player is said to have responded to the non-payoff by saying, “I just never thought it would happen to me.”
But it did, it does, and it makes progressive side bets difficult for gamblers to ignore.
