Progressive Jackpot

A progressive jackpot is the biggest cash payoff via a gaming machine, such as slot machine or video poker machine. Progressive jackpot is one, the value of which grows gradually but slowly (by small amounts) for every game played.

In the online world, progressive jackpot will also grow due to the other players betting on the same game. It will grow endlessly until only one lucky player acquires all there is to win, which is sometimes a life changing sum of money.

In the land based casinos to achieve the same significance of the sum, a number of machines get linked together and create a better and bigger progressive jackpot by players contributing together.

Every time somebody bets on the machine that is linked to the progressive jackpot group, the sum increases by a small amount, which is set by each casino specifically, depending on their house edge. The common jackpot contribution share is about one fifth of the bet. So where the 10% house edge is applied, the jackpot contribution would be about 2%.

It can seem that casinos are giving away their profits but certain factors make it reasonable to do so. There is a certain novelty attached to progressive jackpots, gamblers find it very exciting that other players are together with them on this one, so it becomes like one big competition where everyone is invited to try their luck, and the more people try the more temping the end reward becomes.

Aside from the ever-growing large sums of money and the community feeling that attract gamblers to jackpots, it is also the small things that make the game more entertaining, such as big LED displays where the jackpot progression is demonstrated in real time, when in brick and stone casinos of course.

In order to get a chance of winning any given progressive jackpot, a gambler needs to wager the maximum amount of credits for the game. Those who wager less than that amount will still contribute to the main pot but will have no chances of grabbing the pot in that go. It follows also that the higher the required jackpot wagering credits amount is, the faster the jackpot will grow and the higher figure it will eventually reach.

Strategies

There are some particular games nevertheless, where luck and chance is only partially responsible for the win. In some games a player can work out the best timing for betting by calculating the frequency of payoffs against the odds of hitting a payoff. In the Video Poker game, when the jackpot reaches a break-even point, the machine will develop a positive expectation bet for the player; when it hasn't reached the breakeven point, there will be a negative expected value for the players.

It is indeed possible to make a plan with a long term orientation in mind, but that would be 00000's games orientation.

On the slot machines, the break-even point is impossible to calculate as the player will not know the payback percentage, when in video poker payback percentage is a function of the paybacks and odds of the poker hands in relation to the 52 card deck.

Advantage players are those who only play after the breakeven point. In this case they have an advantage over the house, but still generate profit for the casino. It is possible, as the bulk of the progressive jackpot has been created by the other players, who have contributed to the sum.

Some players look for jackpots with positive expectation value and gather groups to play on the machines assigned to such jackpot. These groups would often take over the machines at the peak of the possible advantage play, by communicating with each other over self phones and other means to replace each other when tired. This puts ordinary players at disadvantage, as they will have very slim chances of getting to the machine when it represents the best chances. This is why some of the casinos prohibit gamblers to team up like this.

There are some ways casinos try and make the gamblers feel better about not winning the jackpot. One of them is through the players clubs. In slot clubs for instance, some share of a gambler's wager will be returned through cash rebates and various other perks. The more people decide to get into a slot club, the smaller the progressive jackpot' break-even point is going to be, due to the value of the rebate on each wager.

There are different progressive jackpots available to the gamblers, aside from these two simple and most popular ones. In poker, gamblers can play progressive bad beat jackpot, which are worked through a random number generator. There are also other games, like Caribbean stud poker, blackjack, roulette and various games, that are invented just for the progressive jackpots and usually are a one-off thing.

The most popular progressive games, are MegaJackpots, like MegaMoolah for instance, Wheel of Fortune and Video Poker games.