Megabucks Jackpot History
It’s Our Game Oregon’s Game Megabucks has some of the most favorable big prize Jackpot game odds in the world. The jackpot always resets to $1 Million after someone wins and grows steadily each week. A staple for more than 30 years, Megabucks really is Oregon’s Game. Megabucks slots have paid the biggest jackpots in the history of Las Vegas casinos. A lucky Utah player won $10.7 million while playing a Megabucks slot at Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino. She had bet $100 on the slot before she could win all those millions.
If you love gambling or the world of casino then you must understand how important jackpots are. Whether it’s a bet for some sport or even a poker game. Being a game of chances and luck, gambling might either turn you into an instant millionaire or take away every dime in your pocket. That however depends with how skillful you are at it. Slot machines as well as table games not to forget bets are very easy to play. Some people end up assuming what would have been a life changing opportunities.
One of the best gambling casino games which include using slot machines are the easiest to win from. This is because this is where progressive jackpots were introduced. How does this work? This works especially if no one’s wins at all. The amount of money being won increases gradually. This has made so many casino players into millionaires overnight. What is greater than being a millionaire from simply just having fun? What happens is that when no one wins a small amount of money is put aside into the jackpot. Sometimes a number of machines come together to create a pool which increases the prize. Once one of the layer wins they get to access all the prize not looking at what machine they were using.
Gambling might sometimes come with its own misfortunes especially if you are not careful. The worst mishap to ever happen was to one Katrina Bookman at the resort world casino which was so disappointing and sad. She was set to win around 42.9 million dollars which would have been the biggest gambling prize of all time. However it turned out negative when a malfunction occurred and the machine could only give 6,500 dollars as pay out. She ended up being paid a prize of a steak dinner with the casino owner. Sad right? So gambling might be great but it doesn’t mean it’s a sure win.
However apart from the mishaps which rarely happen there comes the icing on the cake. The jackpot. People have been remembered across the globe for being the ones to get the highest jackpot prizes in both table games and slot games. Some of these celebrated people who turned millionaires in a spun of a wheel include:
One of the World War 2 fighters, Elmer Sherwin won himself 4.6 million dollars from the Megabucks jackpot just a few minutes after it was open to the public for the first time. The winner was actually in his 70’s. This guy was clearly a lucky guy. Years later while in his 90’s he visited to visit the Cannery casino in Vegas to try out his luck again. Funny enough luck seemed to follow him. This is because he managed to scoop around 22 million dollars yet again from the game he played and its jackpot.
A few years earlier in Megabucks casino a sixty year old won 27.5 million dollars from simply playing one armed bandit. The woman was a resident of Las Vegas.
Years later a resident in her vacation, Amy Nishiruma a 71 year old won her first jackpot of 8.9 million for playing with less than 100 dollars. Isn’t that just marvelous?
In Excalibur hotel a young man who isn’t known won 39 million dollars from a jackpot. This was recorded as among the highest jackpot to ever be won in the history of gambling.
One thing that made this one stand out was the fact that he requested that he gets pay out in installments. This means that he will be paid almost for the rest of his life.
Yet again one Cynthia Jay got the largest and biggest jackpot of the time. She scooped around 35 million dollars at a Megabucks slot machine in Monte Carlo casino. Too bad Cynthia cant get to try out her luck again. This is because years later she suffered an accident which rendered her paralyzed. The good thing she had at least hit it in the first try.
Apart from these wins some other people have made history in other gambling games. Some of these wins are so great that they are worth being mentioned.
Greatest winners in the game of roulette
If you love a nice clean game then you must have interacted with roulette. Known for its sleek and need for skillful tactics, this game is one of the most thrilling ones. Just around 2004 Ashley Revel hit a great win. The most interesting thing is the guy actually sold everything he had, including all of his clothes to gamble a stunning 135000 Dollars on one spin of roulette. This is where he won himself over 270,000 dollars. This actually turned out into a television reality show called „double or nothing“.
People who took over the game of blackjack
One of the greatest winners of this thrilling game were a group of students who used counting cards to earn themselves over 100 million dollars. From students to multi-millionaire! What made this interesting was how skillful these students were. They actually used intelligence to maximize on their wins without being noticed.
The next best guy who ousted these students was a guy named Johnson. Instead of using card counting he went ahead to use research to tackle this game. He made sure to work with the ones with the best pay-outs as well as having the most favorable rules. From this he was able to get himself more than 15 million dollars. Just from a simple research. Next in line was a billionaire, one Kerry Parker who on his trip to Vegas worn himself around 20 million dollar as well as another 40 million dollars from playing this simple game.
Apart from this lottery gambling is also one of the most sought out jackpot prizes in the gambling industry. One nurse Maria Grasso from Boston worn herself 197 million dollars from a simple lottery jackpot prize.
A nice deal from the early years of sportsbetting
One more thing that is also a cash cow for jackpot prizes is sports betting. One of them include the horse racing jackpot. In 1929 a horse called COOL came first. A woman named Kathrine who had only put a bet of 49 cents earned herself around 1700 dollars.
Try your own luck
If you want to try your own luck after reading about all of these lucky people, the site https://free-spins.net/ ist the right place to start with. Here you find the recently biggest progressive jackpot slots and where to play them.
Even if these jackpots are very tempting, please always remember to gamble with responsibility and never play with the expectation to win. Otherwise you might develop an addiction and run into massive trouble.
Conclusion
These were some of the biggest won jackpots in the history of gambling.
As you have seen from the various exmaples above, winning in gambling is something attainable. But you always have to keep in mind, in the end of the day, its mainly your luck that decides whether you win or not. Therefore one of the most important things to remember is that the main purpose of gambling is to have fun and enjoy a good time, and not to earn money.
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- Appendices
- Slots Analysis
- Miscellaneous
Introduction
This page investigates the odds of the progressive jackpot slot machine, Megabucks, including the average jackpot and breakeven point.
For now, let's ignore the fact that a jackpot is paid by installments over 25 years and that the jackpot would be subject to income tax.
I don't know exactly how Megabucks is programmed. However, there is some information that is public knowledge. If we fit the pieces together, we can make a pretty good estimate of the point at which the return is 100%, known as the 'breakeven point.' Here is what we do know:
- According to John Robison, the probability of hitting the jackpot is 1 in 49,836,032. This figure comes from an article titled Megabucks closes in on record jackpot from the Las Vegas Sun, Dec. 24, 1999. That probability comes to (1/368)3, implying each reel has a 1 in 368 chance of stopping on the jackpot symbol.
- The Nevada Gaming Control Board indicates that the profit of Megabucks on both a percentage and dollar basis. The following is a summary for 1994 to 2009.
Megabucks Win — 1994 to 2009
Year Win ($) Win (%) 2009 53,352,000 10.43% 2008 83,981,000 11.85% 2007 88,858,000 12.72% 2006 100,923,000 12.39% 2005 100,923,000 12.39% 2004 67,326,000 10.54% 2003 83,069,000 10.41% 2002 76,842,000 11.98% 2001 69,821,000 11.50% 2000 69,103,000 9.75% 1999 74,921,000 12.28% 1998 134,943,000 12.25% 1997 66,166,000 12.18% 1996 57,619,000 10.03% 1995 65,223,000 10.48% 1994 46,760,000 9.44% total 1,239,830,000 11.39% The key piece of information from this table is that the overall profit of the game has been 11.39%. In other words, 88.61% is returned to the players.
- According to defunct source, starting in September 2005, Megabucks was reset to a jackpot of $10 million. Before that, the reset value was $7 million.
- According to a2zlasvegas.com, there have been 11 jackpots hit between September 2005 and the date of the last jackpot (Feb. 21, 2010). That same website shows a jackpot was hit on September 15, 2005. The number of days between then and the time of this writing is 1,619 days. We also see from that website that the total of the last 11 jackpots was $167,367,727. Of that, $110,000,000 was from the reset amounts and $57,367,727 was from the progressive contribution.
= 548,196,352. Assuming each player bet the $3 required to win the jackpot, then a total of $1,644,589,056 was bet. 
The portion of money returned to players in form of jackpots is thus $167,367,727/$1,644,589,056 = 10.18%. From the Nevada Gaming reports, we know a total of 88.61% is returned to players. That means that the portion returned to players in non-jackpots is 88.61% - 10.18% = 78.44% (The 0.01% apparent difference is due to rounding).
If there were no small wins, and no progressive contribution, then the return of the game would be $10 million/(3×(1/368)3) = 6.69%. As already shown, the total return from jackpots is 10.18%, leaving 3.49% coming from the jackpot meter. Here is a summary of where each $1 bet on Megabucks goes:
Megabucks Breakdown
| Item | Cents |
|---|---|
| Fixed wins | 78.44¢ |
| Meter reset | 6.69¢ |
| Progressive contribution | 3.49¢ |
| Profit | 11.39¢ |
| Total | 100.00¢ |
The average point at which the jackpot will hit is 10 million + [$3 × 0.0349 / (1/368)3] = $15,215,248. In 2006, when the jackpot was almost $16 million, IGT, Megabuck's creator, purchased ads in the local media stating that the jackpot was 'overdue' to hit. I'm quoted in a Las Vegas Sun article about it, titled 'Pennies ready to pop'. This would seem to indicate my $15.2 million figure is not far off.
If j is the jackpot at which the game becomes a fair bet, with a 100% return, then we can solve for j as follows:
1 = 0.7844 + j × (1/368)3/3
j × (1/368)3/3 = 1 - 0.7844
j = 3 × (1 - 0.7844) / (1/368)3
j = $32,238,319.
The probability of any given jackpot growing this big is 1.41%. At the current rate of play, a jackpot should get this big once every 29 years, on average.
At any given time the return can be estimated as 78.44% + 0.6689%×m, where m is the number in millions of the current jackpot. For example, at a jackpot of $15 million, the return would be 78.44% + 0.006689×15 = 88.47%.
Everything in this page should be taken as a ballpark estimate. Various factors could cause it to be off, including players not betting the full $3 and the fact that while 11 jackpots were hit in the study period, the expected number could be higher or lower.
Megabucks Jackpot Winners
It also bears repeating that the above does not factor in the annuity or taxes. Let's look at what happens if we do consider those factors. For the time value of money, let's use the return on long-term Treasury Bills. Megabucks jackpots are paid in a 25-year annuity. At the time of this writing a 20-year T-Bill paid 4.58% interest, and a 30-year one paid 4.74%. Let's split the difference at 4.66%. Using some actuarial math I won't get into, the value of the annuity is worth 61.07% of face value, based on that interest rate, and 25 annual installments, at the beginning of each year.
Megabucks Jackpot Igt
For taxes, let's assume close to the expected jackpot of $15 million. Under 2010 income tax rates, assuming the winner is filing jointly, and all other income exactly equals deductions, the taxes due will be 30.05% for 2010. Assuming no change in the tax law, that will drop over time, because the tax brackets will be adjusted upward, but the winning payments won't be. I tend to think the recent passage of health care will increase tax rates, especially on large incomes. Let's just assume those factors cancel each other out, to keep it simple.
So to keep things in round numbers, the winner will keep 61% after the annuity, and 70% of that after taxes. So the jackpot winner will see about 61% × 70% = 42.7% of his winnings in current dollars. Factoring the annuity and taxes, the breakeven point becomes $75.5 million. The probability of any given jackpot growing that big is about 1 in 283,000, and will happen once every 114,000 years. Again, I'm making lots of assumptions, so these estimates should be considered very rough.
After publishing this article, a reader quoted a page at slot-machine-resource.com, which states that after the first installment is made, the player is given the option to get 60% of the rest immediately, or stick with the installment plan. Tax implications aside, which favor the annuity, the interest rate at which the two options are equal is 4.581%.
External Links
- Megabucks Closes in on Record Jackpot from the Las Vegas Sun, Dec. 24, 1999.
- Nevada Gaming Control Board
- Slots Payout percentage, from Cassaon Casino.
- History of Megabucks Jackpots, from a2zlasvegas.com.
- Pennies Ready to Pop, from the Aug. 9, 2006 Las Vegas Sun.
- Megabucks, from slot-machine-resource.com.