Progressive Slots

• Easy Win Slot Machines
• How To Win At Progressive Slot Machines
• Progressive Slot Machine Winning Videos

How to Win at Slot Machines. New slot machine players are going to find a lot of advice for beating the slots. Have a healthy skepticism when a slots expert tells you they know how to beat the slot machines. Among the games in a casino, video slots (in general) have a high house edge. On a three-coin dollar slot machines, for example, you can’t win the progressive if you bet only one or two coins. Instead, landing the top jackpot combination on the payline brings a reduced payoff at a fixed amount. On video slots, progressive jackpots usually are multi-tiered. Anywhere from two to 12 progressive levels have been offered.

A progressive slot machine is the most likely way to change your
financial life by gambling. Progressive slots offer the same kind of big life-changing jackpots as the lottery. That's not to say that you're likely to win a progressive slot machine jackpot either. Your chances of winning the lottery are only slightly better than your chances of winning a progressive slot jackpot, but that doesn't necessarily make it the better bet.

Progressive Slot Machines

It's important to note that these are just samples. Some lottery games offer better odds, like 1 in 125,000 on a game in Georgia with a $20 ticket. (That's the exception though, not the rule.) Nothing wrong with the lottery, but...

Progressive slots are better than the lottery because you have a chance of breaking even or winning a smaller jackpot while you're on the road to hitting the big progressive jackpot. Slot machines are designed to give back small amounts more often in order to encourage people to play.

Most other gambling games don't offer a chance at a huge prize. Bet $3 on roulette, and the most money you can expect to win is $105. Bet the same $3 on blackjack, and you might win $18 if you split and hit a blackjack on each card. Bet $3 on a roll of the dice at the craps table, and you might win $30.

But bet $3 on a Wheel of Fortune progressive slot machine and you have a chance (a small chance, but a chance) at a progressive jackpot worth over a million dollars! That's the kind of money you could win playing a progressive game right now. That kind of money can literally change your life.

Traditional Land Based Progressive Jackpots

Traditional landbased progressive jackpots are best exemplified by Megabucks progressive slot. The jackpot for that game usually ranges from between $6 million and $12 million.

Strategies for Winning a Progressive Jackpot

No strategy is going to guarantee your chances of winning a progressive jackpot. In fact, only one strategy will increase your odds. If you don't play, you have a 0 chance of winning. You can increase your chance of winning just by playing. It's still a negative expectation game, but your odds of winning become infinitely larger just by actually giving the reels a spin.

So your strategy for winning a progressive jackpot boils down to deciding how much you're willing to spend on this type of entertainment. You could:

1. Take one spin per day on a machine that costs $3 to play. That's $1095 a year. If you make a lot of money, that's probably a small enough percentage of your income to make it worth taking a shot. But if not, you might try another strategy.
2. Take one spin per week on a $3 progressive slot machine. That's only $156 a year. This might be a lot better strategy.
3. Take ten spins per day on a $3 slot machine. That's $10,950 a year, but if you're a high roller, you can afford to give it a go.

Keep in mind too that you're not guaranteed a loss on these spins. In fact, even if you're playing the lottery, you can expect to get back approximately 52% of your money in payouts. So spending $1095 a year on lottery tickets will only cost you (on average) $1095 X 48%, or $525. But if you play a progressive slot machine online, with a payout percentage of 90%, you can expect to only lose $109.50 in that scenario.

Even if you go with the high roller strategy above, of spending $30 a day on your jackpot attempts, you can expect to get 90% of your money back. So you could budget for losing $1095 even though you're putting $10,950 in action a year.

Slots are the easiest games in the casino to play -- spin the reels and take your chances. Players have no control over what combinations will show up or when a jackpot will hit. There is no way to tell when a machine will be hot or cold. Still, there are some pitfalls. It's important to read the glass and learn what type of machine it is. The three major types of reel-spinning slots are the multiplier, the buy-a-pay, and the progressive.

The multiplier. On a multiplier, payoffs are proportionate for each coin played--except, usually, for the top jackpot. If the machine accepts up to three coins at a time, and if you play one coin, three bars pay back ten. Three bars will pay back 20 for two coins and 30 for three coins. However, three sevens might pay 500 for one coin and 1,000 for two, but jump to 10,000 when all three coins are played. Read the glass to find out if that's the case before playing less than the maximum coins on this type of machine.

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The buy-a-pay. Never play less than the maximum on a buy-a-pay, on which each coin 'buys' a set of symbols or a payout line. The first coin in might allow the player to win only on cherry combination, while the second coin activates the bar payouts, and the third coin activates the sevens. Woe is the player who hits three jackpot symbols on a buy-a-pay with only one coin played--the player gets nothing back. A variation is the machine with multiple payout lines, each activated by a separate coin. All symbols are active with each coin, but if a winning combination lines up on the third-coin payout line with only one or two coins played, the payoff is zero.

The progressive. You also have no reason to play less than maximum coins on a progressive machine. A player who eventually lines up the jackpot symbols gets a percentage of each coin played. The first progressive machines were self-contained--the jackpot was determined by how much that particular machine had been played since the last big hit. Today most progressives are linked electronically to other machines, with all coins played in the linked machines adding to a common jackpot.

Easy Win Slot Machines

These jackpots can be enormous -- the record is $39,710,826.26, a $1 progressive at a Las Vegas casino. The tradeoff is that frequency and size of other payouts are usually smaller. And you can't win the big jackpot without playing maximum coins.

How To Win At Progressive Slot Machines

If you must play fewer than maximum coins, look for a multiplier in which the final-coin jump in the top jackpot is fairly small. Better yet, choose a machine that allows you to stay within your budget while playing maximum coins. If your budget won't allow you to play maximum coins on a $1 machine, move to a quarter machine. If you're not comfortable playing three quarters at a time, move to a two-quarter machine. If you can't play two quarters at a time, play a nickel machine.

With so many paylines and the possibility of betting multiple coins per line, video slots are different. Some penny slots with 20 paylines take up to 25 coins per line. That's a $5 maximum bet -- a pretty penny indeed! Most players bet less than the max on video slots but are sure to cover all the paylines, even if betting only one coin per line. You want to be sure to be eligible for the bonus rounds that give video slots most of their fun. Some progressive jackpots require max coins bets, and some don't. If a max-coins bet is required to be eligible for the jackpot and you're not prepared to roll that high, find a different machine.

Money Management

Progressive Slot Machine Winning Videos

Managing your money wisely is the most important part of playing any casino game, and also the most difficult part of playing the slots. Even on quarter machines, the amount of money involved runs up quickly. A dedicated slot player on a machine that plays off credits can easily get in 600 pulls an hour. At two quarters at a time, that means wagering $300 per hour -- the same amount a $5 blackjack player risks at an average table speed of 60 hands per hour.

Most of that money is recycled from smaller payouts--at a casino returning 93 percent on quarter slots, the expected average loss for $300 in play is $21. Still, you will come out ahead more often if you pocket some of those smaller payouts and don't continually put everything you get back into the machine.

One method for managing money is to divide your slot bankroll for the day into smaller-session bankrolls. If, for example, you've taken $100 on a two-and-a-half-hour riverboat cruise, allot $20 for each half-hour. Select a quarter machine -- dollar machines could devastate a $100 bankroll in minutes -- and play the $20 through once. If you've received more than $20 in payouts, pocket the excess and play with the original $20. At the end of one half-hour, pocket whatever is left and start a new session with the next $20.

If at any point the original $20 for that session is depleted, that session is over. Finish that half-hour with a walk, or a snack, or a drink until it is time for a new session. Do not dip back into money you've already pocketed.

That may seem rigid, but players who do not use a money management technique all too frequently keep pumping money into the machine until they've lost their entire bankroll. The percentages guarantee that the casino will be the winner in the long run, but lock up a portion of the money as you go along, and you'll walk out of the casino with cash on hand more frequently.

That is changing in new server-based slots that have started to appear in casinos. Operators will be able to change payback percentages at the click of a mouse, but they still must have regulatory approval to do so.

There is a lot more to slot machines than meets the eye. But if you learn the ins and outs of playing them, you can use some strategies that just might help you hit the jackpot.

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