What the Brits refer to as fruit machines, the Australians refer to as pokies. Invariably consisting of 3 or 5 reels and with between 1 pay line and 100, the pokie has been around in various forms for decades. The only thing that has really changed in recent years is the increase in jackpot size, and the advent of online pokies, opening up the joy of pokie-playing to a far larger audience. Indeed, the increasing sizes of jackpots have largely been brought about by the online gaming revolution. The reason for this is “liquidity” – a term usually heard in the online poker space where, as here, it applies to the sheer number of people playing online. Liquidity affects online pokies in a different way to poker however, especially when applied to the concept of a “progressive jackpot”.
A progressive jackpot is a prize-pool funded by a small contribution off every wager placed on a pokie. For example, if you are playing a total of a $1 stake on a pokie with a progressive jackpot, perhaps 10c of every spin would go to fund the jackpot. When you consider how many people are playing on the same slot, you begin to understand why you can see the jackpot rising so high. These progressives have reached astronomical heights largely due to the network progressive pokies. With the networks, a multitude of casinos using their software have the same progressive machines in their suite of games. This means even more people to pump up the progressive. Eventually, one lucky person will win the jackpot or a share of the jackpot. It doesn’t matter which operator the punter plays on, the portion of the jackpot won will be taken out the pot, and the progressive pot on all operators pokies will dip.
Of course the good news with a progressive win (apart from the fact that you have just won a huge amount of cash) is that the win has already been accounted for as is made up of a contribution from every pot. This means that the sum, no matters how large should be paid out in one go. Beware operators who try and pay out a progressive in instalments; they are obviously trying to keep the progressive in their own bank a little bit longer which, all things considered is a bit cheeky.