The Megabucks IGT jackpot was the first WAP (wide-area progressive) jackpot game in the world. They launched this series of games in 1986, and since then, dozens of people have won enough money to change their lives.

• Megabucks Slot Machine Jackpot Winners 2019
• Megabucks Slot Machine Jackpot
• Megabucks Slot Machine Jackpots
• Megabucks Slot Machine Current Jackpot

The Megabucks IGT jackpot resets to $10 million immediately after being won. You can view the most recent size of the jackpot by visiting their online jackpot ticker here.

Megabucks Slots is a brand of linked progressive jackpot slot machines designed and distributed by International Game Technology. These games have a deceptively simple set-up. It is a 3-reel, $1-per-coin slots game. To activate the top payout, you’ll need to bet three coins. Elmer Sherwin Beats Odds to Win the Megabucks Slot Jackpot Twice. Elmer Sherwin was a one-off winner, that’s for certain. Everyone whose playing on the slot machines at the casino is hoping for the massive win that’ll turn their lives upside down. Megabucks Slot Machine: Massive Jackpot All the current features on any slots just hadn’t been invented then. So there were no free spins, no scatter symbols, and certainly no video clips and wacky sound effects. It was just a simple no-frills slot machine, albeit with a massive jackpot.

Not all Megabucks slot machine games are the same game, but they all carry the “Megabucks” branding on the machine, along with the now-recognizable logo on the face of the machine.

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Where Can You Play Megabucks IGT Slot Machines

Most people who want to play Megabucks IGT slot machines find them in Las Vegas, which used to be the only place offering the game. Now, the games are available throughout the state of Nevada, and that’s not all.

You can find smaller versions with the same Megabucks branding in other states and even other countries. In fact, you’ll find Megabucks machines in almost every casino in Macau.

I mentioned in the introduction that Megabucks was the first wide-area progressive jackpot in history, but I didn’t explain what that phrase meant.

The first concept to understand is that of a progressive jackpot. Such a jackpot is one that grows over time as players put money into the machine. A progressive jackpot takes a tiny percentage of each bet to “fuel” that jackpot.

The second concept to understand is how many machines share such a jackpot. Some games are standalone progressives, which means that the game only has its own jackpot. Others are local-area networked machines, which are machines within a single casino or even an area of the casino which shares the same jackpot.

A wide-area progressive jackpot has hundreds or thousands of machines sharing a jackpot across a wide geographical area.

This is the kind of jackpot Megabucks is, and it’s also why the jackpot is able to grow so large.

How to Play a Megabucks IGT Jackpot Game

Megabucks slots, as far as I know, are only available in land-based casinos. I don’t know of any online casinos offering games that participate in the jackpot. If I’m wrong about that, please correct me in the comments.

I recommend playing Megabucks in Nevada, which has the biggest jackpots.

Playing isn’t hard. You insert money into the machine, which awards you with credits. You decide how many pay-lines and how many credits to wager per line. Then you push the spin button or pull the lever on the side of the slot machine.

Most Megabucks games are just standard 3-reel slots with a single pay-line, which makes it even easier to play than that. You can find 5-reel versions, but they’re less common.

As far as I know, the big Megabucks jackpot games require you to wager 3 coins per spin, and they’re all $1 machines, so you’re looking at $3 per spin.

The main version of Megabucks is almost boring in its simplicity. Your goal is to get 3 matching symbols to line up across a single pay-line on the machine. The symbols are bars, fruit, and 7s.

The big, important symbol, though, is the Megabucks symbol.

To win the progressive jackpot, you want to line up 3 of these in a row.

There’s no skill to that, though — you’ll just have to get lucky.

Megabucks Jackpot Details

To win the jackpot, you must make the maximum wager of $3. Don’t ever play Megabucks for just 1 or 2 coins; always bet 3 coins.

The Megabucks jackpot always starts at $10 million and grows from there, so you’re always looking at a life-changing jackpot.

How big can the jackpot get?

In 2003, one player won almost $40 million playing at the Excalibur. ($39.7 million to be exact.

Jackpots of $20 million or more are relatively common throughout the history of the game.

What are the odds of winning?

The odds of winning the Megabucks jackpot are terrible by any standard — about 50 million to 1.

Apparently, the odds of getting a Megabucks symbol on each reel on the pay-line are 367 to 1, so you can do the multiplication to see how I came up with that 50 million to 1 number.

Does the Megabucks Jackpot Ever Offer a +EV Situation?

When you’re dealing with a bet where you know what the odds of winning are, you can calculate how good a bet it is.

That’s measured by the expected value of the bet, or EV.

Most casino bets, especially slots bets, are negative EV, or -EV. You expect to lose a certain amount on average over time when making that bet. This phenomenon is what makes professional roulette play impossible.

But when the jackpot for a game gets high enough, the expected value for the bet becomes profitable. This is what makes card counting in blackjack profitable. It’s also what makes professional poker play possible.

Here’s an example of how that works:

If you’re playing a game where you’re flipping a coin, and you lose a dollar every time you’re wrong, and you win $2 every time you’re right, you can see how that’s a positive expectation bet, right?

With Megabucks, when the jackpot gets over $32.2 million, you’re dealing with a +EV bet.

Should You Try to Become a Professional Megabucks Player?

If you can get an edge at Megabucks, can you just wait for a big enough jackpot and start playing and become a professional gambler?

Michael Bluejay has an excellent post about how expected value is useless when dealing with the lottery.

Megabucks isn’t exactly a lottery, but it’s the same concept.

When the odds get that long, they become essentially meaningless, even when you’re making multiple bets per hour.

Here’s a comparison:

The odds of being struck by lightning are 1 in 700,00.

The odds of being attacked by a shark are 1 in 3.7 million.

The odds of dying in an airplane crash are 1 in 5.3 million.

In other words, you’re 70 times more likely to be struck by lightning than you are to win Megabucks. You’re 14 times more likely to be attacked by a shark than you are to win Megabucks. You’re 10 times more likely to die in a plane crash than you are to win Megabucks.

The only meaningful question about Megabucks is whether it’s worth $3 to play for entertainment value?

If it is, then a single spin on the game makes sense.

Is it worth $180 to try to win that big jackpot?

That’s about what it would cost to play Megabucks for an hour. Remember, you’re going to make 600 spins per hour at $3 per spin, putting $1800 per hour into action.

If you want to play for an hour, it’s probably going to cost you about $180 to play.

Other Games with these Kinds of Massive Jackpots (That Aren’t Megabucks)

You only have 2 options if you want to win over a million dollars:

1. Progressive slots
2. Lottery games

I think you’re better off just playing the state lottery every week if you want to try to win a million dollars. You’ll lose less money that way in the long run.

After all, if you spend $2 on a lottery ticket each week, it’s not going to change much about your lifestyle.

Megabucks Slot Machine Jackpot Winners 2019

But if you’re putting money into a Megabucks slot machine, you’re going to lose a lot of money (probably) in the quest for that jackpot.

You’d be better off playing another slot machine game.

Or trying to parlay your winnings at a table game into a million dollars.

More about that in this next section:

Winning a Million Dollars Playing Table Games

Michael Bluejay has written the best page about trying to win a million dollars that I’ve read.

He provides an unmatched amount of detail on the odds for various games like the lottery and Megabucks.

But what’s better is the table game strategy he offers for winning a million dollars.

I don’t have the space to cover that strategy in detail here, but here’s the basic idea:

You choose a table game where you have a reasonable probability of winning, and you let your winnings ride in an attempt to work your way up to a total win of a million dollars.

Basically, if you start with a $5 bet and double it 18 times in a row, you have a million dollars. That results in odds of 200,000 to 1, which is still 3 times the odds of being struck by lightning.

But it’s still a way better number than the odds of hitting the Megabucks IGT jackpot.

What’s the big drawback of this strategy?

Most people won’t be able to put their winnings back on the table once they get to a certain point. Bluejay suggests that most people will reach that point somewhere between $2500 and $20,000.

He’s probably right.

In fact, if I get my winnings up to $1000, I’m taking my money and going home.

The other big problem is finding a casino that will allow you to make a $500,000 bet. Good luck with that.

Finally

That’s the best I could do at providing comprehensive coverage of the Megabucks IGT slot machine game. Hope you enjoyed reading it.

Please leave a comment and let me know if I missed anything.

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 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?

Where to Play the Megabucks Slot

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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.

Megabucks Slot Machine Jackpot

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.

Megabucks Slot Machine Jackpots

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

Megabucks Slot Machine Current Jackpot