Can Progressive Jackpots Give Players An Edge?
Online casino players are always looking for an edge, a way that they can beat the game. In most cases, they can't.
Casino games have a built-in house edge, which assures the casino will eventually always win. This fact is what enables casinos to stay in business. However, there is an interesting exception to this rule, which comes in the way of progressive jackpots.
How Can Progressives Give You an Edge?
Casino game house edges are based on a fixed payout. If a casino game has a five percent house edge it means that the discrepancy between the actual odds of an event happening and the odds they are laying you is five percent in their favor. If the casino knows an event will happen one in five times, they can offer you 3-to-1 on that bet and know they will come out ahead.
However, the casino does not set the size of the progressive jackpot; it is based on the amount that the players pay into it. This means that if the jackpot is not hit for a while, it can reach levels that would award a player better odds than the odds of hitting it. In other words, it may be 100,000-to-1 against you hitting the jackpot, but if there is $1 million in the jackpot pool, the odds are not only in your favor, they may be so much in your favor as to overcome the negative expectation of all the other bets in the game.
How Big Does the Progressive Jackpot Have to Be To Give You an Edge?
There's no real way to know how big the jackpot has to be for this to happen unless the casino tells you or you have done extensive calculation. However, a game with a jackpot in the millions or even sometimes in the hundreds of thousands has a chance of being a positive expectation game.