Understanding slot machines is easy. They’re basically just a giant math equation. Casinos are so open about slot machines, they publish their own payback percentages in industry publications, and they often brag about the percentage that their machines pay back in a given month or year.
The most important odds to understand in slot machine gambling are a machine’s hit frequency and payback percentage. It’s impossible to ascertain the specific odds of winning on a given slot machine in today’s casinos, though. Gone are the days of 3 reels with 10 symbols per reel, when calculating the odds of hitting a given jackpot took little more than some back of the napkin multiplication. Still, hit frequency and percentage are easy to understand, and that information is easy to find.
Basic Slot Machine Odds
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. If we set the jackpot as $900, and charge $1 per bet, the payout percentage for that game will be 90%. Slot machines aren’t the greatest in terms of payout frequency either, but you can at least expect to win 10 15% of the time on each payline. This only gets better when you play more lines. This only gets better when you play more lines.
Now that random number generators power slot machines, the odds are more complicated. In the old days, figuring out your odds of winning on a slot machine meant dividing the total number of symbols by 1. If a slot has 3 reels and 10 symbols on each reel, the odds of one particular symbol appearing on the machine would be 9 to 1, or 9 losing symbols and 1 winning symbol. To figure out the odds of hitting 3 particular symbols (for a jackpot), multiply your chances of landing one symbol three times by itself. You have a 1/10 chance of pulling up a particular symbol. The odds of pulling up a given 3 reel combination are 1/1000. That can also be expressed as 999 to 1.
Back to the random number generator: you just can’t use simple multiplication to figure slot machine odds any more. Modern slot machines contain so many different symbols, reels, and winning combinations, that a purely mathematical approach is out of most people’s reach. Understanding a slot machine’s hit frequency and payback percentage are important because we can’t just sit there and figure out our odds by looking at the machine.
For example, with a modern slot machine, one symbol might appear one out of every twenty spins. A second symbol might appear one out of every ten spins. And a third symbol might be set to appear one out of every fifty spins. But there’s no way to determine the settings unless you have access to the slot machine’s PAR sheet, which is what sets these specifications in the random number generator program.
Slot Machine Hit Frequency
The term hit frequency applied to slot machines means an informed estimate of the ratio of losses to wins on a given machine. As the number of wins in the ratio increases, so does the slot’s hit frequency rate. Because of the variety of ways to win on modern machines, figuring out a slot’s hit frequency is somewhere between taking a mathematical average and making a guess.
One way to estimate a slot machine’s hit frequency is to play the machine 100 times and track the results. The cheapest way to do this is to find a nickel machine, pull the lever 100 times, and work out the ratio the hard way. Make a mark for every time during those 100 spins that you win, any win big or small.
What’s a good hit frequency? That depends on how much you’re looking to win and what kind of machine you’re playing, but most slot gamers consider any machine that pays out less than 10% of the time a bad machine.
To further complicate hit frequency, and to get a better overall idea of a machine’s odds, you can factor in the amount of winnings. Slot machines are often designed to pay out a lot of small winnings, so a hit frequency of 50% may seem like a loose slot machine, but if you’re only winning tiny amounts, you may want to move on down the line. On the other side of the coin, if a slot machine pays out only 9 or 10 times per 100 spins, but you win a ton of credits, you may be tempted to stay and press your luck for the big jackpots.
Slot Machine Returns
When you hear people talk about a slot machine’s return, they are referring to the percentage of money paid out by the machine compared to the amount of cash a gambler put into it. People who play slots at the tournament level keep track of these numbers and form strategies based on which machines to play at a given casino property.
To work out a return, you just need to do a little simple math. If you pumped $100 into a slot machine and at the end you’ve won $90 back, you just got a slot machine return of 90%. The casino kept $10 of your money for your troubles, but if that $100 kept you playing for an hour, you just had an hour’s entertainment for $10. That’s cheaper than going to the movies.
If you’re just a casual slot gamer, you don’t really need to keep track of slot machine returns. Casinos report their slot machine returns to local governments in most gambling jurisdictions, and those details and other figures are available to the general public. An easy way to stay on top of machine returns is to subscribe to Casino Player magazine or Strictly Slots magazine, where these numbers are published.
Slot Machine Payback Percentage
A final note on slot machine odds: don’t get too hung up on a slot machine’s payback percentage. Payback percentages are essentially made-up numbers, theoretical figures that make a guess about how much a particular machine will pay back to a gambler over time.
The trouble with payback percentage figures is that they’re developed from a pool of infinite spins. Think of payback percentage as slot machine returns in a vacuum. These numbers are used by game designers and casino managers and are not meant to inform gambling.
These numbers come from game manufacturers, who program a machine to return a theoretical amount to the customer. If a game designer advertises a slot’s payback at 95%, all that means is that over an infinite amount of time, the slot will pay back 95 cents for every dollar that is put in.
If you finished this article more confused than when you started, you’re in good company. Slot machines are straightforward gambling devices, little more than random numbers activated by a gambler. Still, modern technology has muddied the waters of actual slot machine probabilities, placing an emphasis on a game’s design and features rather than advertising it as a particularly player friendly machine.
Just because a game designer produces a machine that is programmed to pay back 90% of money put in doesn’t mean that you will always make $90 for every $100 gambled. At the same time, understanding slot machine odds and hit frequency can inform your choice of casinos.
Slot Machine Jackpot Odds
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.
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
How To Pick A Winning Slot Machine
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:
Odds Of Winning Slots
- 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.
What Are The Chances Of Winning Big On Slot Machines
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.