Question of the Day - 24 December 2024

[Editor's Note: We put this question to Ben Rosenthal, author of our upcoming book Breaking the Slot Code. Here's what he had to say.]

One lucky, and I have to assume very rich, player smashed a Dragon Link jackpot worth a staggering $2,856,079 at Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood in south Florida, betting a whopping $250 per spin.  

Now, if you're betting $250 per spin, you're much more likely to hit something that big than an average Joe wagering $1 per spin. That's the case on any slot machine.

As for how common it is, it's impossible to know for sure, but my opinion is: not very. Many if not most of these giant jackpots are publicized by the casinos and manufacturers and, in my experience at least, they're few and far between. In this case, the minimum bet on that Dragon Link machine was $25, so $1 wouldn't apply. But it's the overall point: bet big, win big, lose big.

You didn't ask, but other questions remain, which I'll tackle as best I can.

First, could this be an advantage player who just popped something enormous? Doubtful. Dragon Link isn't an advantage play slot machine, so in theory no AP should or would be playing it in the first place. I've seen some advantage players get bored and gamble on non-AP games, but it would be an ultimate spew job to be doing this while betting $250 per spin.

The mystery player is most likely someone who bets at this nosebleed level with some frequency. Most mere mortals aren't able, financially or emotionally, to stomach that kind of action with any regularity. Yes, some people may bet $5 per spin and every now and then throw in a $25 Hail Mary, but we're still a long way away from $250.

I'll go off on a tangent, because why not? I follow a bunch of casino pages on Facebook and I'm often left wondering who's in charge of their marketing. Many pages will include photos of jackpots from the previous day or week and they often have one thing in common: huge bets. It's not impressive to me or the many people who comment when someone betting $25 per spin hits a jackpot for $2,500. Nice hit, sure, but when you're betting that much, you're likely losing three or four times that much in one session.

Now, $2,856,079 is $2,856,079 any way you slice it, but I've seen true high-limit whales not bat an eye after winning six figures. That's because they're stuck 10 times that.

But back to what we know from the limited info given so far: According to PR Newswire, "The $1 Million Dragon Link by Aristocrat Gaming jackpot in the casino's high-limit slots area started at $1 million and increased independently from other Dragon Link slots at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood and elsewhere."

Could someone have noticed the nearly $3 million top prize, known it resets at $1 million, and reasoned, "Wow, that's nearly three times the reset. I should give it a shot!" Quite easily. But for there to be an actual advantage, it would need to be much much higher than $3 million. And even then, we're talking about lotto percentages, even at that huge bet. It would be like if an actual lotto ballooned to a certain point where it may be +EV to buy a ticket. But if each ticket is $250 per, most people would go broke many times over before hitting it.

So the best that can be said about the player is that he/she is a slot whale taking a shot at the progressive and certainly earning stratospheric comps in the process.