It broke the record set in October 2004 when a Toronto tax accountant won nearly $5.8 million after spending $60 on a Megabucks progressive slot machine at Niagara's Fallsview Casino. Megabucks is a slot machine system linking 11 Ontario casinos to escalating jackpots.
Dating back to the early 2000s, slot machines were only legal in 31 states around the U.S. Today there’s around 40+ states that have made them legal as well as other states that are in the process of being added to this number soon. If you think the U.S. has a lot of slot machines, check again. In Japan, slot machines are more popular and accepted than in the U.S. In comparison to the rest of the world, Japan is #1 on the list for having the most slot machines, followed by the U.S. ranking in at #2. Japan alone has around 5 million slot machines, and a smaller population than the U.S.
With all this talk about how popular slot machines are, have you ever dreamed of walking into a casino and then walking back out a millionaire? Surely, a lot of people have, especially when there’s so many slot machines out there that offer progressive jackpots such as the Megabucks slot machines, which have enormously large jackpots. In fact, Megabuck slot machines are a very big network operating their machines all over Vegas, and run by a company called International Game Technology (IGT). Speaking of Megabucks slots, that’s exactly what we’ll be talking about in this article. We’ll be looking at some of the winners, locations of the machines, what kind of jackpots they offer and what kind of odds they have.
The World’s largest Slot Jackpots. Nevada Slots Jackpot. Nearest Location is 5.97 miles away Where Can I Play. Megabucks in Nevada 6.0 mi. Largest Jackpot Found $ 2,511,637. This fan favorite has been paying out life-changing jackpots for over 12 years! Take a spin today! What happens when you win a jackpot? Sunday, March 9, 2014 3 a.m. Payment options. Most slot companies give winners two ways to receive their money. Casinos won’t pay on a machine. About Megabucks Slot Machines. Megabucks Slots is a brand of linked progressive jackpot slot machines designed and distributed by International Game Technology. These games have a deceptively simple set-up. It is a 3-reel, $1-per-coin slots game. To activate the top payout, you’ll need to bet three coins. Therefore, to qualify for the. Are simply slot machines that offer a wide range of betting options. These can be anywhere from a single penny to a hundred dollars. These can be anywhere from a single penny to a hundred dollars. Megabucks is a slot machine system linking 11 Ontario casinos to escalating jackpots. The jackpots begin at $1 million and continue to climb until someone at one of the 11 casinos hits the winning combination. Falco's win is the fourth Megabucks jackpot at Casino Rama. They can’t accurately do this with slot machines at brick and mortar casinos, because providers feature different RTP options. One casino may order a slot at 93% payback, while the next orders it at 95% RTP. Developers are therefore unable to offer a uniform payout percentage for each slot.
Megabucks Slot Machine Payout Rules
If you’re familiar with the appearance of the classic slot machines, Megabucksslot machines are very similar holding a true and classic style with just three columns and only one payline. In order to spin the reels with the possibility of hitting a jackpot, the typical rules are that you need to bet at least a dollar, going up to three dollars. Keep in mind, in order to have a chance at winning the progressive jackpot, each spin must be three dollars. Of course you can win other smaller payouts from other combinations, however the Megabuck symbol is the symbol with the most value, and if you get three Megabuck symbols, you will be walking home with tons of cash in your pocket. What’s cool about Megabucks, all the slot machines around Vegas are all connected to one another. That means each person gambling on these machines is contributing to the jackpot amount, and whenever someone wins the jackpot, the jackpot amount for that machine, as well as all the other ones are reset to the starting amount which is $10,000,000. As of now, there are approximately 800 of these machines being operated in about 150 casinos in Nevada.
Megabucks Slot Winners
Over the last 20 years or so, Megabucks has had a handful of winners who walked out of the casinos a millionaire. As mentioned before, the progressive jackpot award starts at $10,000,000, meaning it continues to go higher until someone gets lucky and wins. Since Megabucks was first introduced back in 1986, on average 2 people win each year. Only one person won in 2016, whereas three people won in 2013, however in the year 2000, six people won. The biggest jackpot amount ever won was taken place at the Excalibur casino back in 2003, where someone took home a gigantic check with their name on it for a whopping $39M+. Keep in mind that the nearly 40% of the earnings are removed after having to pay state taxes from the winning amount, which can dramatically drop the initial win amount.
Speaking of Megabucks slot winners, below are some people that have won over the years:
- In 2000, a local cocktail waitress aged 37 won almost $35M at the Desert Inn
- In 1998, a woman who was almost 70 years old won nearly $28M at the Palace Station, and only spent around $300 to reach that win. On top of that, she won close to $700K from another machine sometime before
- In 1999, a 44-year-old man won over $21M at Caesars Palace who only supposedly won on his first spin
- In 2002, a lady at the age of 74 gambled around $150 at one of the Megabucks machine at Bally’s casino, and turned it into approximately $23M
- In 2005, a 92-year-old man won close to $21M at the Cannery Casino, and won another Megabuck jackpot at time before that one back in the late 80s for about $4M from the casino at the Mirage.
- In 2011, some lady bet only around $6 and ended up winning approximately $12M from the Megabucks machine at the Aria.
Megabucks Slot Machine Odds
Now let’s talk about the Megabucks slot machine odds. First of all, all the official machines are equipped with a software installed called a Random Number Generator (RNG), which controls the random behavior of each spin. The RNG ensures that each spin that takes place is indeed random, making it impossible to control anyone’s payouts.
Although not guaranteed, but some people believe the odds of winning one of the Megabuck jackpot awards are anywhere from 1 in 17M to 1 in 50M, which means the odds of actually winning are worse than a majority of the state lotteries. Aside from the jackpot odds, the non-jackpot spins have a higher house edge than the slot machines without a progressive jackpot feature. Overall, there’s a possible chance anyone could win a Megabuck, since the odds are so small it will take a lot of losses before someone will actually wins. Nonetheless, you have to play in order to win, so don’t let the odds hold you back. If you think you’re the lucky one, go for it.
Here at Caesars Casino online, we offer a progressive jackpot feature on some of our video slot machines, which is similar to the Megabucks. In fact, if you’ve never played a progressive jackpot feature before, this is a great way to try it out for your first time, for free without any risk involved. Even if you have some experience with them, go ahead and play them anyways for some fun and/or to practice before you gamble at a real casino, with real money.
Related posts:
A slot machine simply takes a dollar and gives 80-98 cents back (it's rare to find a slot machine with a payback of over 98%).
But, of course, it does this in the long run.
Megabucks Slots Nevada
Since playing slot machines seems insane on paper, what makes slot players spend so much money on these machines that are often referred to as one-armed bandits?
That'll be all the psychological factors.
Slot Machines and Psychology
A machine that just takes money and does nothing else would unlikely succeed, so the way slot machines have worked around that hurdle is offering a theoretical chance to win money, even if you lose money on the machine in the long run.
And that chance makes people play the machines. First of all, who wouldn't want to win a lot of money for basically doing nothing? That's appealing even if the odds were against you.
Additionally, people rarely realize just how much of a house edge slot machines have, and how much better it would be to play games like blackjack with optimal strategy.
Usually, the bigger the jackpot, the more players are willing to play the machine. After all, what's $50 spent on a machine that may give you a life-changing sum of money? (Co-incidentally, progressive jackpot slots, the ones that have more than a million dollars in jackpot prizes, give you the worst winning odds.)
Megabucks Progressive Slots
Our desire to win big-time allows slot machines to play another psychological trick on us: the near-miss situations, which happen because slot machine reels are weighted differently (more about that lower on this page). It encourages us to keep on playing since we 'came so close' to winning life-changing money.
At live casinos, the most popular slot machines are often placed in the places where most people can see them. This takes an advantage of a psychological tendency called Social Proof (or as I like to call it, 'monkey see, monkey do'). Some say that casinos even place the machines with the highest hit frequency to where everyone can see them - I find this believable, but I have no proof.
Seeing lots of others play and win is one heck of a psychological trick. The sound of winning that a slot machine makes is affiliated deep in our mind with something positive, as is the sound of coins clinging and clanging against the metal disposer of the machine (the sound of money!). It's easy to see why someone walking in to space like that would be hooked.
So I thought it would be important to understand how slot machines work from a psychological point-of-view first - since psychological factors are what make us play slot machines - and now that you understand the basics of slot machine psychology, let's move on to the technical aspects.
Random Numbers and Paytables
When someone believes in a slot machine's hot and cold streaks, it's called Gambler's Fallacy, and for a good reason. 'Hot' streaks happen, 'cold' streaks happen in the sense that sometimes, when numbers are chosen randomly, they happen to be of similar sort for X times in a row.
It's like receiving pocket aces twice in a row at poker - it's unlikely (in fact, there's a X% chance it happens) but it does happen sometimes. Does that mean the deck of cards is 'hot'? Or when you flip a coin and you get heads five times in a row, is the coin 'hot'?
Of course not. When things happen at random, they do. They're unpredictable. Anything can happen, and at some point probably will happen.
But the point is, you have no way of knowing what the future holds for a slot machine. Every spin of the reels is an independent trial, which means the previous game has no influence on the next game. Everything starts over and the chances of winning are the same with each spin of the reels, regardless of whether someone's lost ten spins in a row or just hit a jackpot.
Why would anyone design slot machines that get 'hot' or 'cold' anyway? If they did, players could tell when to play and when not to play. It makes no sense. Casinos are much better off creating slot machines to which there are no 'winning systems' available.
So slot machines use a random number generator (from now on referred to as 'RNG') to, well, generate random numbers for each reel. These numbers are between one and a couple of billions (let's just say a lot of numbers).
And there's a symbol assigned to each number - for example, if the RNG would pick numbers between one and a billion, the game had ten symbols and each were as likely to come, there would be a 100 million numbers assigned to each of the symbols.
Feb 12, 2019 Welcome To #SunFlowerSlots #DiamondRider and #ACoinsMatey #SlotMachine Max bet: $3.00 Our bet: $1.20 Still like to play #KonamiGame Check out Our Jackpot H. Little devil slot machine. Advantages of Playing Free Online Slot Games without Downloading Casino Software. Free slots no download offer tons of benefits, and perhaps the biggest one is giving players the ability to play free online slot games that one would normally find in Atlantic City or Las Vegas. Unlike real life casinos, you do not have to make your way there.
So, let’s start by thoroughly assessing the myth of the casino minimum deposit $1 USA. Casino Minimum Deposit $1 USA Here comes one of the most often searched categories of the minimum deposit slots, which is the casino with lowest minimum deposit $1. $1 Deposit Casinos. Yes, you can make a deposit to an online casino from as low as $1.00! Some of the casinos we have listed here are accepting $1 dollar deposits (or pounds or euros) as a special introductory promotion on your first deposit with them, while others allow those low limits on all of your deposits. Feb 02, 2018 In this case, finding a USA online casino minimum deposit is a great option as it will allow you to play the games while depositing smaller amounts of cash. Another situation in which lower deposit limits are suitable is when you want to try out a new online casino and its features.
But lot machine symbols are never equally likely to come; the ones that pay the most are the hardest to get. Therefore different symbols have a different amount of numbers assigned to them. (The odds of winning the Megabucks jackpot are somewhere in the one out of 50,000,000.)
But the point is, the RNG assigns numbers to each reel and those numbers correspond with symbols that have been assigned to them. The RNG is not influenced by previous results; it deals a new, random set of numbers with every spin, regardless of what's happened.
Interestingly, the moment you press Spin or pull the lever, your fate has already been sealed. Spinning reels stopping one by one is just theatrics; they make the game more exciting and enjoyable.
Now, the slot machine must also know which symbol combinations are winners and how much they pay. For this, slot machines use EPROM chips. They tell the slot machine winning combinations and define the paytable.
When a casino wants to change the payback of a machine, they change the EPROM chip (or the settings of the chip). Not long ago casinos had to physically change the chip which was quite a bit of work, but now many casinos can change the settings of the chip externally.
There are rules, though. In Nevada, for example, casinos aren't allowed to change the settings four minutes before and after someone has played; this eliminates the myth that casinos change the settings while you're playing.
So either someone physically changes the chip or there has to be a four minute time window before and after someone's played. (While the settings are being changed, the slot machine screen should have a message stating that some sort of 'configuration' is happening.)
That's pretty much it. There are a lot of psychologal tricks involved, but technically the RNG assigns random numbers to each reel and the EPROM chip determines the winning combinations and paytables, which together determine the payback (or 'return') of the machine. The less it pays back, the more you're going to lose on the machine in the long run.
More About the Subject:
Megabucks Slot Winners
- Vegas Click: Michael Bluejay's comprehensive explanation of how slot machines work. In my opinion, the best one out there.
- Wizard of Odds: Michael Shackleford's slot machine advice -- the site also features an extensive FAQ section for slots.
- Gambling Captain: If you're looking for a short but insightful read on the basics of slots (or other casino games), this is a good site to visit.