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Slots make up the majority of games at online casinos because they are easy to play and can deliver a big payday on a single spin. While most slots give you decent to big wins depending on the amount you wager and of course your luck, there are some that offer you massive 6-figure or 7-figure payouts with a single maximum bet. These are the progressive slots and because of the huge payouts they could give you they are among the most popular slots at online casinos.
Progressive slots instantly stand out – and online casinos of course highlight their presence through suitable advertising – because of the massive wins they can potentially get you. One of the biggest of all time that you find at online casinos is Microgaming’s Mega Moolah, with a seed value of $1 million. Not all progressive slots are video slots; there are classic 3-reel slots with a progressive jackpot attached as well to choose from.
Not every online casino software offers progressive jackpot slots because of the massive payouts they come with. Almost all the top providers, mostly the industry veterans, have their own range of progressive slots. We have compiled for you a list of the top progressive slots available today.
Progressive slots are available not just at online casinos but also at land-based casinos. And now with the advent of the mobile casino you get to play them directly from your smartphone or tablet as well, on the go. How you play them depends on the casino you are playing at and the software powering the casino. NetEnt casinos have all games, including progressive slots, in the instant play mode only. This means you do not need to download the games. Microgaming-powered casinos offer both download and instant play modes; so you can choose the mode you want to play in.
The higher the payout possible, the lower the payout percentage is likely to be. The logic behind this is mathematical and very simple: the probability of a progressive jackpot paying out ever so often is slim because of the huge amounts involved and the need to build up to that huge payout.
So how does a progressive slot work, you may wonder. How do those huge payouts become possible? The answer is simple: for every wager you place on the game, a part of the money is contributed to the jackpot. The way the progressive jackpot amount grows depends on the kind of jackpot it is:
This means that you must bet the maximum amount allowed on a single wager. Also, you do not see progressive slots being used in slots tournaments. Slot tournaments are time-based: all players get the same amount of credits and time to play the game on offer. That is what makes progressive slots the wrong fit: progressive jackpots take time to build up.
Another thing you should know: the amount you win on a progressive slot depends on a couple of things:
Progressive slots have been around for quite a while now. They originated in the land-based casinos and have since spread wing and reached the online casinos. And now with the arrival of the mobile casino you find them there too. However, not every online casino offers progressive slots. Whether you get progressive slots at an online casino depends on the software provider that the casino is powered by.
That is not all; not all casino software providers have progressive slots on their portfolio of games. This is because progressive jackpots mean big money, and the software provider has to be sufficiently big to be able to make those payouts when someone hits one of them out of the park for a multi-million dollar payout. However, it is easy to find out if an online casino offers progressive slots, because the ones that do will inevitably boast about it through the adverts and promotional material related to them.
Online casinos are not the only place where you find progressive slots today; you still get them at land-based casinos, especially in Las Vegas. There are quite a few available there. In fact, there is one that had not been hit in over 20 years!
The progressive slot that wasn’t hit for 20+ years is Lion’s Share, which had a value of $2.3 million. It had a lot of history going for it as well: it was one of 50 one-dollar jackpot slots that made their way to the MGM Grand Casino. It is the oldest 3-reel progressive slot there. Some of the other famous progressive slots at land-based casinos include, among others:
A jackpot amount on a progressive slot can be moderate, big, or massive. The size of the jackpot on a progressive slot depends on the type of progressive it is. There are 2 major types of progressive slots:
As the name suggests, standalone progressive slots are loners; they are not connected to any other machines or games at the online casino or other online casinos. They are also therefore referred to as flat top slots; as in they top out at a particular amount that is reasonably big but by no stretch of imagination are the ones that give you a million dollar payout.
Standalone progressives are also unofficially considered to be non-progressive, as the jackpot amount is not built up over prolonged periods of time as play progresses on the game at different online casinos or even land-based casinos running the game. The jackpot amount is limited, because the contribution to it comes from wagers placed solely on that machine or game.
Here is some more info on standalone progressive slots – these were the first of the progressive slots to hit the market. Technology has advanced over the years and now there are way more sophisticated games for players to use to try and get their million dollar paycheck but you still find standalone progressive slots at online casinos and especially, at land-based casinos. The payouts with this kind of progressive slot are not too high, anywhere between $10,000 and $20,000 generally.
As technology advanced, it became possible to link up different slots at a casino in a way that a share of the wager on each of them went towards building up a jackpot. Thus was born the local progressive slot. Local progressive slots are linked directly to other slots but at the same land-based casino or online casino that you find them in.
As you may have gathered from the definition above, local progressive slots were literally the next step in the evolution of the progressive slot. Because multiple machines are involved in contributing to the jackpot, the progressive jackpot amount is definitely much higher than what you could potentially win with a standalone progressive.
While local progressive slots are connected over multiple machines at the land-based or online casino, they are limited to a single location. That is why the jackpot amount, while being big, is nowhere of mammoth proportions. You could win anywhere between $100,000 and a million dollars with you a local progressive slot.
With standalone progressive slots leading to the arrival of the local progressive slot, the next step in the evolution of the progressive slot machine was inevitable. That came in the form of the wide area progressive slot. The wide area progressive slot is an extension of the local progressive slot – the connectivity is not between slots in a single casino but across a network of multiple casinos. As the name indicates slots across a wide area are connected to create the jackpot value for these slots.
Because multiple slot machines across a wide area are connected and all of them contribute to the jackpot, the jackpot value is usually very high for these slots. You find these slots quite frequently at online and also mobile casinos nowadays. You find some of them at land-based casinos as well.
The biggest positive with regard to wide area progressive slots is the huge payout. But there is also another side to them that is directly related to the huge payout: these games come with abysmally low Return to Player (RTP) values compared to what you get for regular slots, and even compared to the standalone and local progressive slots.
In this section we list out for you the biggest wins on progressive jackpots at online casinos.
| Jackpot Won | Software | Value | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mega Moolah | Microgaming | €17,879,645 | Won by Jon Heywood at Betway online casino on 6th October 2015 |
| Mega Fortune | NetEnt | €17,860,868 | Won by anonymous player at Paf Casino on 20th January 2013 |
| Mega Fortune | NetEnt | $13.47 million | Won by anonymous Norwegian player at Betsson casino on 24th September, 2011 |
| Mega Moolah | NetEnt | $9.57 million | Won by an anonymous player at Folkenautomatem |
| Mega Moolah | Microgaming | $9.22 million | Highest mobile jackpot won by an anonymous user at Tipica casino in April 2017 |
| Mega Moolah | Microgaming | $8.82 million | Won by anonymous player on an iPad at Zodiac casino on 28th August, 2016 |
| Hall of Gods | NetEnt | $8.75 million | Won by a Swedish player at Unibet casino in November 2012 |
| Hall of Gods | NetEnt | $8.73 million | Won by anonymous player at Betsson casino in April 2015 |
| Hall of Gods | NetEnt | $8.63 million | Won by anonymous player at Folkenautomaten casino in June 2017 |
| Mega Moolah | Microgaming | $8.6 million | Won by George M at River Belle casino in March 2009 |
As you can see from the table above, all the top 10 wins on progressive slots have been on Mega Moolah from Microgaming or Mega Fortune and Hall of Gods from NetEnt. So what are some of the other big progressive jackpots nowadays that you can try your luck with? We list a few of them below:
There are a few others as well, including Beach Life and Gold Rally from Playtech, Major Millions from Microgaming, and Jackpot Pinatas from Real Time Gaming.
There is no effective strategy for winning progressive slots. You must play Max Bets as that is the only way most casinos will allow you to trigger the jackpot rounds and hopefully win. If you do not play with the Max Bet feature all you will end up doing is effectively contribute to the jackpot kitty; you cannot win the jackpot itself.
The following are some basic tips to help you win while playing progressive slots:
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