Mystery Progressives on Slots

By John Grochowski on Monday August 1, 2011

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If you play video slots, no doubt you’ve taken a turn or two on games with mystery progressives. Often there are four or more levels of progressive jackpots, and getting into the progressive round doesn’t rely on the right symbols landing on the payline. The mystery comes in just when you’re going to be randomly taken to the progressive event.

An old friend asked why he shouldn’t bet just one coin at a time. “If the jackpots are really random, don’t I have just as good a chance betting one penny at a time as someone betting 500?” he asked.

He doesn’t, and the key is in the mystery programming. One method is to launch the jackpot event when the jackpot size reaches a certain amount, or total wagers reach a certain amount. Let’s say a game is configured so that a jackpot event is launched when wagers on the bank of machines total between $250 and $500.

A random number generator would select an amount between the parameters. If it selected $383.17, the player whose wager took the total to $383.17 would trigger the jackpot event.

Every active player could have a chance to go to the jackpot round. But those who are betting the most money would have the most chances.

If you’re betting one penny, you have that one chance per spin to take the total wagers to that magic number. If I’m playing with you, betting one coin per line on 25 paylines, then I’d have 25 chances per spin to move up to the selected total, while my neighbor betting 20 coins on each of the 25 lines has 500 chances.

The results would be random, but the big bettor would have a better chance of solving the jackpot mystery.