Everyone is familiar with slot machines. It’s one of the most popular gambling games out there and one that exists in almost every gambling culture across the world. There are a lot of different types of slots out there, depending on the payout structure and many other features.
Progressive slots are one of the most common and most popular amongst the players since they allow you to win big and to keep winning more as you play for a longer time.
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What Are They?
Let’s start with answering what is a progressive slot machine in the first place. Many have heard the term and even used them without knowing what they do or what makes them progressive. The machine is called progressive because the jackpot becomes progressively higher as you feed more money into the machine.
Sometimes the machines are fed by one player or by many players that play the same game on different machines. The pot of the winnings is, therefore, the same for all the players and they are working towards the same common jackpot.
Types of Progressive Slots
There are three main types of progressive slots. This distinction is made best on how the pot for the jackpot is formed. These are standalone progressive, local progressive, and wide area network progressives. Themes terms indicate who’s feeding the machine and adding to the pot from which the jackpot will be paid off.
Standalone progressive slots are self-explanatory; local progressive refers to the slots that share the same location, usually in the same casino. Wide area network progressive slots are connected via the internet and they pay to the same pot even if they are not in the same casino or the same city.
The Winnings
How the pot is created affects the potential winnings in a jackpot. This means that the standalone progressive jackpot is the smallest one since it’s only the players using the machine that add to it. The local progressive jackpot is mid-size and it can add up to quite a lot in a busy casino. The wide area network progressive can provide the biggest winnings.
Local progressive jackpots are usually around $100.000 and at the most, they can go up to about $1.000.000 in winnings but that’s rather rare. When it comes to the wide network progressive slots, the jackpot can be as high as $10 million.
What Are Your Chances
What your chances are doesn’t depend on the amount you’re betting or the amount you can win in the long run. Instead, it’s based on the random number generator. That means that there’s a strategy that can help you get the most out of the machine.
There’s a statistic to keep in mind known as the return to player. That’s what determines how much you’ll win or lose to a game during the whole time you’re playing it. Together with volatility, it tells you what your chances really are.
Return to Player
Return to player is presented as a percentage and it refers to how much money the player puts into the slot machine is returned to them in the course of playing it. For the most part, it’s somewhere between 95 and 97 percent.
It’s up to you to choose what kind of return is suited to your needs and your plans. However, the return will always be less than 100 percent meaning that the machine will earn from you rather than the other way around regardless of how much you’re winning.
Volatility
Volatility is another feature to be on the lookout for since it tells you what your odds are with progressive slots even though it’s not as simple as letting you know if you’re going to win. It tells you how risky a slot is, meaning how much of a chance you have of losing.
The riskier the slot the higher the payout. However, this isn’t always a good thing. Sometimes, smaller but steady winnings are a better way to go. A skillful player knows how to find a balance between these two approaches. It’s often not within the same slot game.
Useful Tips
There are no tips that will help you win every game of slots and you shouldn’t strive for that anyway. However, there are tips to help you with winning more and getting more of a chance to increase your jackpot when it comes to progressive slots at least. This is due to the way they are set up and run.
For instance, you’ll do well to bet the most you can every time you play a turn. That way you’ll add to the jackpot every time you lose and keep feeding the machine. The same happens when you bet a smaller amount, but this way you add as much to it as you can.
To Sum Up
Progressive slot machines are one of the most popular slots out there and that’s because they provide the players with a chance to earn more as they play more. The pot grows as you keep playing and losing in the process.
There are three main types of progressive slots based on whose losses are going towards your potential winnings. It can be done with a single machine, all machines in one casino, or all machines connected to the network regardless of where they are. There’s also a difference in how much will each of this payout be.
