For many online and mobile casino players, the only kind of game they’d even bother spending their time playing is those with progressive jackpots. Progressive slots are games, which offer players the chance to win a huge jackpot off the back of a regular spin. They don’t have to be high stakes and allow regular players to win huge, even life changing, sums of money.
You may already be a dedicated progressive players yourself, but we bet there’s a bunch of interesting stuff about progressives you don’t know about. That’s why in this post we’ve put together a progressive fact sheet – a guide to all the information you don’t know you don’t know about progressives. There’s even one tip in here that might help you work out when a progressive is likely to drop…
Where The Money Comes from
One of the biggest questions players ask when talking about progressive jackpots is where the money comes from. It might not have occurred to you yet, but when you think about it, that’s an awful lot of money to just pop out of nowhere — surely someone is losing out? In fact, each and every wager made on a progressive slot has a small percentage (like less than 0.1%) taken from it and added to the jackpot kitty.
So, is anyone losing out? Well that kind of depends what your opinion is. Basically, to fund that small percentage going towards the seed money for the jackpot, each progressive slot has a slightly lower return to player rate (RTP). This doesn’t mean you’re definitely going to lose out more, but it does drop the average winning potential a little.
The Various Faces Of Progressive Slots
Online and mobile casinos are all about variety, with games of all colour, type and mechanics for you to get your teeth into. The same goes for the progressive jackpots they carry. Just to confuse you further, there’s not just one kind of progressive jackpot, but three. Each of them works in a subtly different way, though, ultimately, when it comes down to it, they all look very much the same to players.
The three are stand-alone progressive slots, in-house progressives and networked progressives. Stand-alone games source their money for the jackpot from the players playing one specific game. In-house progressives have jackpots sourced from a single casino. Networked progressive jackpots are sourced from multiple casinos, with players playing all the progressive slots from the same developer.
Shorter Intervals Between Jackpots
There’s a funny phenomenon that often happens after a really big progressive jackpot win and it’s that the jackpot will be hit much sooner than average the next time. Let’s say there’s an average of three months between the jackpots of a given slot and someone wins £10 million. Then, there’s sometimes only a month until the jackpot hits again. What’s this all about?
It’s simple, really. News of a big jackpot travels fast and you’ll often find that players will flock to a slot that has just paid out big in the hopes of being the next lucky player. The more players are using a slot, the more likely the jackpot is to hit, so if there’s a sudden huge uptick in players, you’re likely to see the jackpot drop sooner.
Working Out When A Jackpot Will Drop
There’s no such thing as certainty when it comes to online and mobile casinos. That is, after all, why gambling is a gamble. However, there are times when you’re able to get a better idea of when a jackpot is about to drop. By checking out what the average payout of a progressive jackpot slot is and then comparing that to the current kitty, you can work out if a jackpot is ‘hot’ (i.e. likely to drop soon) or ‘cold’ (i.e. unlikely).
Look, we’re not saying this necessarily makes YOU more likely to be the one to claim the jackpot. Yet, what we will say is that you’re more likely to win a ‘hot’ progressive slot than one, which still has a way to go to reach its average payout point. It’s just logical.
