Megabucks Slot Jackpot
Megabucks are slots with progressive jackpots, combined into a single network that covers casinos in several American states. The owner and operator of this network is International Game Technology, better known by its abbreviated name IGT.
- Megabucks Slot Jackpots
- Megabucks Slot Machine Jackpot Winners 2019
- How To Win Megabucks Slots
- Megabucks Slot Machine Payouts
- Megabucks Slot Win
Megabucks slot is considered as an alternative to state lotteries and enjoys incredible popularity among Americans. Actually, there is an opinion that IGT specifically released it to create a lottery competition. Since the beginning of the eighties in the twentieth century, when the slot was launched for the first time, this slot made dozens of players millionaires.
Thanks to the skillfully organized advertising company, every Megabucks jackpot, when it reaches a considerable size, causes a real excitement among the gambling public. And every hit of the progressive jackpot is widely covered in the media, attracting even more casino visitors to the slot. No other slot in the world is overgrown with so many incredible myths, rumors, and legends. But with all this, there are a lot of gambling experts and just experienced players who consider Megabucks a hideous slot that absolutely does not deserve so much attention. So, who is right: fans or opponents of this slot?
The biggest jackpot of any progressive slot in the world is Megabucks, often hitting at around $12 million, but hitting as high as $33 million. To my knowledge, no manufacturer, land casino, or online casino publishes the jackpot odds of any of their slots. Megabucks by IGT Megabucks is a Dollar coin Slot Machine that must have 3 coins ($3.00) played to hit the jackpot. The jackpot is reset to $10,000,000.00 after a jackpot is hit. Current Megajackpot Totals Last Hit History of Jackpots Where to Play. Megabucks (slot machine), a brand of linked progressive jackpot slot machines; A fictional currency in the Illuminati card game This page was last edited on 6 May 2020, at 14:07 (UTC). Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike. JACKPOT amount is estimated. Megabucks odds based on two plays for $1. Prizes are approximately 53.5% of sales. EZ Match odds based on one play for $1. Prizes are approximately 63.1% of sales.The prize money allocated to the JACKPOT shall be equally divided by the number of plays correctly matching all 6 numbers. JACKPOT winner has 60 days. The world’s first wide area progressive jackpot system, Megabucks has been awarding life-changing jackpots to lucky winners since 1986. Win big with this jackpot - it resets to $10 million! Games Available on Jackpot System Not all game themes for this Jackpot System.
Where to Play the Megabucks Slot
- Secure
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Megabucks Slot Jackpots
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How to Play Megabucks
The classic version of the Megabucks slot from IGT is a 3-reel slot machine with the only one payline. In order to qualify for a progressive jackpot, the player must definitely bet three dollars. There are a lot of stories (both true and fictitious) about casino customers, who had the jackpot combination, but they did not receive any jackpot because of a bet less than three dollars.
The progressive jackpot is not completely nullified when a lucky winner gets it but starts to grow from a certain amount. In recent years, this fixed amount is $10,000,000. There are persistent rumors that soon this initial sum of the jackpot should increase by one million.
Megabucks Slot Odds
Strange as it may seem, there is no official information about the probability of winning the Megabucks jackpot. Some casinos say that the player has one chance out of 50 million, while others claim that this is one chance of 17 million. Whatever it was, when the sum of the jackpot is large enough, fans of this slot are ready to fly thousands of kilometers to try their luck.
What do Lady Luck’s favorites have from this slot? Do they get all that huge amount of money that is advertised? When you win a jackpot, events can unfold as follows. First of all, the lucky guy will receive a check for $1,400,000. Then the winner is given two or three months to decide how he wants to get his winnings. There are two options: the amount is divided into annual payments, which will be transferred to the player within twenty-five years, or he can get the winnings immediately at a time, but at a rate of 60% of the jackpot.
That is, having won ten million, the winner can receive in the second variant only six million, but at once and with one payment. After receiving the win, he still has to pay taxes. Unsurprisingly, almost all holders of Megabucks jackpots prefer to receive their winnings in the form of annual payments.
However, in this case, they also have to pay taxes, the Internal Revenue Service of the United States (IRS) very strictly follows this. Subtract from the total amount of the jackpot another 40%, because such winnings are taxed at the maximum rate. So, the next time you hear that someone has won ten million in Megabucks and immediately took all the money, you know that the lucky guy got a little over three and a half million at his disposal.
The Curse of the Megabucks Jackpot
As already mentioned above, there are a lot of urban legends about the Megabucks slot and its jackpot, mostly of a gloomy nature. For the most part, they describe the tragic fate of players who managed to win a huge jackpot. It is believed that almost all the lucky people either perish or suffer numerous woes. The cause of their numerous misfortunes is the so-called Curse of the Megabucks slot.
Of course, in these stories, there is much more fiction than the truth. However, there is no smoke without fire — some winners, really, seriously suffered after they won the jackpot. In particular, the further life of the waitress Cynthia J. Brennan, who won $34.9 million in 2000, was sad. A month and a half after the win, Cynthia and her sister were hit by a drunk driver. The sister died on the spot, and Cynthia was forever paralyzed. The guy who drove the car in a state of intoxication was imprisoned for twenty-eight years.
But the rumors about the curse of Megabucks spread even before the year 2000. Simply, this accident was widely covered in the press and made people remember about other similar events, which at that time did not become so resonant. In 2003, many media published a story about a 25-year-old player who became the owner of the Megabucks jackpot and either died from a drug overdose in a casino hotel or was killed in a street shootout. IGT companies had to work hard to convince the public of the falsity of these statements.
There are also a lot of rumors about underage players and employees of different casinos who won the Megabucks jackpot but could not get it due to existing rules. But none of these rumors received documentary evidence.
Many experts in the field of gambling suggest that ITG recently made relevant changes to the Megabucks system, which makes the jackpot play less often, but with larger amounts. Although officially the company claims that nothing of the sort has happened, this opinion remains very popular.
Where Could You Play Megabucks?
Most fans of slot machines and large jackpots are not afraid of the curse of Megabucks and are willing to play in this slot. You can find this slot in almost all real casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, as well as in other establishments in Nevada, California, New Jersey, Mississippi, and some Indian reservations. Each state has its own separate network of Megabucks slots, but the biggest progressive jackpots are expected in Nevada. In other states, jackpots are much smaller.
Why do Experts Consider Megabucks a Bad Slot?
Experts do not believe in the curse of the Megabucks slot, but this does not stop them from considering this gambling machine not worthy of attention. The fact is that this slot is very unprofitable for the player. Firstly, it has an extremely high percentage of the casino advantage, which reaches 10-15% (for comparison, many slots in the Las Vegas casino are limited to 2-3%). Secondly, the procedure for paying a jackpot is extremely inconvenient. The winner either loses 40% of the amount or gets it in parts for 25 years. But the progressive jackpots of most other slots are paid immediately and in full.
All this suggests that Megabucks is a mediocre slot, which gained its popularity only thanks to record payments and a masterly organized PR campaign.
See Also
Las Vegas Progressive Jackpots
Dating back to the early 2000s, slot machines were only legal in 31 states around the U.S. Today there’s around 40+ states that have made them legal as well as other states that are in the process of being added to this number soon. If you think the U.S. has a lot of slot machines, check again. In Japan, slot machines are more popular and accepted than in the U.S. In comparison to the rest of the world, Japan is #1 on the list for having the most slot machines, followed by the U.S. ranking in at #2. Japan alone has around 5 million slot machines, and a smaller population than the U.S.
With all this talk about how popular slot machines are, have you ever dreamed of walking into a casino and then walking back out a millionaire? Surely, a lot of people have, especially when there’s so many slot machines out there that offer progressive jackpots such as the Megabucks slot machines, which have enormously large jackpots. In fact, Megabuck slot machines are a very big network operating their machines all over Vegas, and run by a company called International Game Technology (IGT). Speaking of Megabucks slots, that’s exactly what we’ll be talking about in this article. We’ll be looking at some of the winners, locations of the machines, what kind of jackpots they offer and what kind of odds they have.
Megabucks Slot Machine Payout Rules
If you’re familiar with the appearance of the classic slot machines, Megabucksslot machines are very similar holding a true and classic style with just three columns and only one payline. In order to spin the reels with the possibility of hitting a jackpot, the typical rules are that you need to bet at least a dollar, going up to three dollars. Keep in mind, in order to have a chance at winning the progressive jackpot, each spin must be three dollars. Of course you can win other smaller payouts from other combinations, however the Megabuck symbol is the symbol with the most value, and if you get three Megabuck symbols, you will be walking home with tons of cash in your pocket. What’s cool about Megabucks, all the slot machines around Vegas are all connected to one another. That means each person gambling on these machines is contributing to the jackpot amount, and whenever someone wins the jackpot, the jackpot amount for that machine, as well as all the other ones are reset to the starting amount which is $10,000,000. As of now, there are approximately 800 of these machines being operated in about 150 casinos in Nevada.
Megabucks Slot Winners
Over the last 20 years or so, Megabucks has had a handful of winners who walked out of the casinos a millionaire. As mentioned before, the progressive jackpot award starts at $10,000,000, meaning it continues to go higher until someone gets lucky and wins. Since Megabucks was first introduced back in 1986, on average 2 people win each year. Only one person won in 2016, whereas three people won in 2013, however in the year 2000, six people won. The biggest jackpot amount ever won was taken place at the Excalibur casino back in 2003, where someone took home a gigantic check with their name on it for a whopping $39M+. Keep in mind that the nearly 40% of the earnings are removed after having to pay state taxes from the winning amount, which can dramatically drop the initial win amount.
Speaking of Megabucks slot winners, below are some people that have won over the years:
- In 2000, a local cocktail waitress aged 37 won almost $35M at the Desert Inn
- In 1998, a woman who was almost 70 years old won nearly $28M at the Palace Station, and only spent around $300 to reach that win. On top of that, she won close to $700K from another machine sometime before
- In 1999, a 44-year-old man won over $21M at Caesars Palace who only supposedly won on his first spin
- In 2002, a lady at the age of 74 gambled around $150 at one of the Megabucks machine at Bally’s casino, and turned it into approximately $23M
- In 2005, a 92-year-old man won close to $21M at the Cannery Casino, and won another Megabuck jackpot at time before that one back in the late 80s for about $4M from the casino at the Mirage.
- In 2011, some lady bet only around $6 and ended up winning approximately $12M from the Megabucks machine at the Aria.
Megabucks Slot Machine Jackpot Winners 2019
Megabucks Slot Machine Odds
Now let’s talk about the Megabucks slot machine odds. First of all, all the official machines are equipped with a software installed called a Random Number Generator (RNG), which controls the random behavior of each spin. The RNG ensures that each spin that takes place is indeed random, making it impossible to control anyone’s payouts.
How To Win Megabucks Slots
Although not guaranteed, but some people believe the odds of winning one of the Megabuck jackpot awards are anywhere from 1 in 17M to 1 in 50M, which means the odds of actually winning are worse than a majority of the state lotteries. Aside from the jackpot odds, the non-jackpot spins have a higher house edge than the slot machines without a progressive jackpot feature. Overall, there’s a possible chance anyone could win a Megabuck, since the odds are so small it will take a lot of losses before someone will actually wins. Nonetheless, you have to play in order to win, so don’t let the odds hold you back. If you think you’re the lucky one, go for it.
Megabucks Slot Machine Payouts
Here at Caesars Casino online, we offer a progressive jackpot feature on some of our video slot machines, which is similar to the Megabucks. In fact, if you’ve never played a progressive jackpot feature before, this is a great way to try it out for your first time, for free without any risk involved. Even if you have some experience with them, go ahead and play them anyways for some fun and/or to practice before you gamble at a real casino, with real money.