I know this topic has probably been discussed ad nauseam on this forum & in land-based casinos as well, but there never seems to be a solid answer to the question. Is your chance of hitting a jackpot (an actual jackpot, i.e. the posted jackpot amount on progressive games) the same on a 20/40 cent bet as it is on a $100/$200 bet?
My experience is as follows: I won at least six major jackpots over the past month playing here & the sister sites like ignition (most were won on ignition, admittedly). Each time I won these, I was betting either the maximum or one below it. I won 10 Times Vegas twice, each for over $100K, & was betting either $60 or $120 both times. I won Cleo on a $200 max bet. I won Gold Rush Gus & the City of Riches on a $100 (I believe?) max bet. I won Mystic Elements twice, again on $100 max bets. I believe I continued to win these jackpots not because I was just super lucky during the month of April, but because once I had $100K in my account the first time, well it just seemed pointless to bet $2-$20 a spin at that point, so I mainly bet the larger amounts. Something interesting I noticed specifically with Reels & Wheels XL is regarding the fabled jackpot wheel. I probably played this game 100s of times throughout the entirety of my membership with ignition/slots/etc. Never once have I seen the jackpot wheel. But once I started doing $100/$200 bets? Anytime I was lucky enough to actually trigger a bonus round, for the most part, I only got the jackpot wheel. I would literally win the mini & occasionally the minor & major over & over again in a session. The fact that the jackpot wheel appears so regularly when you’re betting $100/$200 vs. smaller amounts lends credence to the theory that you have to bet extremely high to have good odds at winning the jackpot. Now, I’ve seen people win the Vegas (or maybe the Mega at least) with something as low as a $40 bet (if you’d consider that low, which most people wouldn’t). I know this is anecdotal, but I have no reason to lie about it.
To further support my suspicion that maximum bet amounts are related to jackpot odds, Mystic Elements is a good example. Somewhere in the game’s information (in the game menu), it explicitly states that your chance of winning the jackpot is proportional to your bet amount. So this wouldn’t mean that you’re required to bet max to win it, just that you would have a greater (but by how much?) chance at winning it with a higher bet. Some of the smaller progressives like Fairy Wins, I’ve seen won on a minimum bet. But for the big time stuff, it seems the reality is that you should bet as high as you possibly can if you want the best odds of getting that lucky spin.
I wish there was some clear information on this. It’s not like the casino staff (not talking about forum mods here, though maybe they know too, I doubt it tho) doesn’t know about the odds of the game & whether the bet amounts affect those odds. In a real casino, bet amounts should not & do not affect the odds of the game, UNLESS specifically stated on the machine, e.g. “bet maximum to be eligible for progressive”.
Without such a disclaimer, they’re making it seem it’s possible to win a 60, 70, hell 100k+ jackpot on something like 10 Times Vegas with a 9 cent (minimum) bet. I’d be willing to bet a large sum of money that there’s no evidence of that ever once happening on any of the slots/ignition/bovada sister sites.
The lack of transparency is unfortunate. This isn’t something I have to worry about at land-based casinos, as I’ve witnessed my brother win $10K+ jackpots on bets smaller than $1. Now, I’ve never seen someone win a $100K jackpot on something that small, but I’ve also never seen someone win a jackpot that large at a land-based casino period. I know it’s possible, but that’s beside the point. Any knowledgeable gambler is well aware that they’re essentially playing a “rigged” game (in the sense that they’re playing a game against someone (the casino) who has an edge). This is obviously why slots players lose every time in the long term mathematically. The casino, more or less, can’t lose over the long term, so why be so secretive about something like whether or not people need to be betting max to win a jackpot? If people knew their $1 bets were never going to land them a major progressive, they’d either bet higher amounts or they wouldn’t be so disappointed after spending 200+ spins at $1 trying to hit it & ending up with nothing.
