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Progressive Jackpots

At some point, you’ve probably heard about someone winning a huge jackpot worth millions of dollars on an online pokie. That might seem almost impossible to you: on most pokies, after all, the top prizes might be worth just a few thousand dollars, and even they are very difficult to win. How is it possible, then, for a player to win millions on a single spin?

The answer to this riddle is the progressive jackpot, a special type of pokies jackpot that allows casinos online and live to offer some fantastic prizes without risking going broke when a player ultimately wins the big prize. With progressive jackpots, prizes of almost any size are possible, and anyone can win at any time.

How Do Progressive Jackpots Work?

In most cases, prizes on a poker machine are fixed: you can look at the pay table and find out exactly how much you win for hitting three sevens in a row, five wild symbols, or whatever the big prize is on the pokies you play. These prizes are the same every time you play the game.

Progressive jackpots are a bit different. Every time someone plays a given poker machine, a small portion of their bet goes to funding one or more progressive prizes. That means that the prizes are constantly building over time until someone finally wins them. If a pokie is particularly popular, the prizes can grow quickly, allowing for players to potentially win millions if it takes a long time for anyone to win the top prize.

How Do Progressive Jackpots Get So Large?

If a progressive jackpot is attached to just one pokie at one online casino site, it won’t grow very fast. However, many Internet progressive jackpots are actually linked across some or all of the sites that use software by the same manufacturer. That means that players at potentially dozens of sites are helping to fund the jackpot, allowing it to quickly grow into an impressively large sum.

Famous Progressive Jackpots

While there are now several jackpots that have awarded multi-million dollar prizes in the past, a few of them have become more famous over the years than others. Here’s a quick rundown of just a few of the best-known massive progressive jackpot pokies at online casinos:

  • Hall of Gods: Powered by NetEnt software, this slot machine boasts an average progressive jackpot of more than $7,500,000. And while this jackpot can be won at any given time, it is generally hit perhaps two to three times per year on average.
  • Mega Moolah: One of the most popular progressive jackpot games, this Microgaming poker machine has paid out a progressive jackpot more than 20 times in its history, never awarding less than $1 million on any win.
  • Mega Fortune: Perhaps the biggest progressive jackpot pokie out there, this game, found at Net Entertainment-powered casino sites, once awarded more than €17.8 million to a lucky winner!
How to Win Progressive Jackpots

Like most things when it comes to pokies, winning a progressive jackpot mainly comes down to getting lucky. However, the exact method for winning the jackpot will depend on the machine you are playing.

In some games, the jackpot is linked to a specific combination of symbols, and hitting that combination will immediately win the progressive jackpot. However, be careful to read to the rules for pokies that award progressive jackpots in this manner: you may have to play the maximum number of lines to win, or the jackpot may only be awarded if you hit the winning combination on a specific line.

At other times, the jackpot is linked to a bonus round. Sometimes, these rounds offer a variety of different progressive jackpots. For instance, the Marvel Ultimate Power Jackpot pokies from Playtech will always award you a progressive jackpot when you reach the bonus round; however, it could be one of four different jackpots, ranging from the relatively small “Power” prize to the massive “Ultimate Power” bonanza, which is sometimes worth more than $1 million.

If the bonus round is triggered randomly, it may be in your best interest to play for more per spin. Usually, your chances of triggering the bonus round will be weighted based on how much you spend on a given spin; for instance, putting $2 into a poker machine will give you twice as good a chance of reaching that bonus round as putting in $1 would.

But most importantly of all, you can only win a progressive jackpot by playing real money pokies that offer such prizes. Most of the best online casinos now offer at least a handful of pokies that come with progressive jackpots, and you can usually play these games in a practice mode (though you won’t be able to win any prizes this way, of course). Once you find a game you like, you can make a deposit, put a few dollars into the poker machine of your choice, and with a little luck, you could be the next progressive jackpot millionaire!

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