Progressive Slots Games

The first thing most people look for when they play online slots is a game’s payout percentage. For example, if you’re playing a game with a 95% payout percentage, you are going to be getting back 95 cents on every dollar wagered. Now most people would look at this as a long-term losing proposition for the average player. But depending on the size of the jackpot, you could actually be getting a positive win rate from the slots games you play. Let’s take a further look at this phenomenon below.

As many gamblers know, progressive jackpots are prizes that continually grow with each bet made. So if you make a $1 bet in a progressive slots game, a certain percentage of that money goes towards the jackpot prize. Aside from this aspect, progressive jackpots usually involve several different games linked together, and bets from all of the games go towards seeding the jackpot. As you might have guessed, the more games that are involved, the more money the top prize will be worth.

Assuming somebody wins the jackpot, it will be reset to the original starting amount. This is the worst possible time to play a progressive game because of the obvious fact that you’re playing for a smaller top prize. However, as the jackpot continues to rise, there comes a point where you actually gain positive expected value by playing these games. This is the point where you would theoretically earn money long-term by playing for the progressive jackpot.

Unfortunately, finding this point isn’t exactly easy since you need a lot of experience playing progressive games to find +EV situations. But as a general rule, you are better off waiting until progressive jackpots increase in size based on the bets of other players. The longer the jackpot goes unclaimed, the more opportunity you have to take advantage of these +EV situations. And if you really want to find progressive games that offer an edge, you might consider joining a team, which is discussed below.

Those who are really serious about chasing good jackpot opportunities often form teams. The main benefits to doing this is that A) if one person hits the jackpot, everybody shares the wealth, B) a collective group of players are able to find +EV situations more easily, and C) there are more bankrolls in play, and more people making spins during the same time period.

Playing on a jackpot team is similar to those who buy lottery tickets together in order to increase their chances of cashing in on a jackpot. The only difference is that you have a much better opportunity to make money over the long-term with slots than you do with the lottery. But just be aware that some online casinos frown upon teams, so know the policies of the casino(s) where you play.

One last topic worth discussing in regards to advantageous jackpot situations are random jackpots. With random jackpots, you can win the prize no matter what coin size you are playing, or how many paylines you play. This is especially nice for people who can’t afford to spend $1 or more per spin on some of the bigger progressive games. But in regards to whether or not playing $0.01 spins on random jackpot games gives you an advantage, the prizes aren’t normally large enough to make up for the house edge - even when making the smallest spins.

So if you truly want an edge when playing slots, you’re going to have to look for the progressive games with jackpots that haven’t been won in a while.