When reality and fantasy collide, something’s got to give
People often get seduced by the idea of something for almost nothing. That is why they often drop a coin or two into a slot machine as they walk into a real land-based casino. The myths are “out there”. Lightning can always strike you. There are real stories to back up the myths so, perhaps, it is always worth dropping a coin or two just on the off-chance…
Now we must all stay calm. These players are the exception that makes the rule that everyone who plays the slots ends up a loser. Ren and Klaus have joined a fairly exclusive band of players that have “hit the big time”. For the record, Klaus was the thirteenth player to become an instant millionaire on this particular online progressive (let no-one say that thirteen is always an unlucky number). But, by any standards, a win of more than $5m is fairly impressive. It brings the total winnings since the system came online to $27m.
One of the major companies in the casino games industry is Playtech. In WinAJackpot.com, they have produced the first progressive network to link online, mobile and real-world jackpots. The network has just made a jackpot payout of slightly less than US$2.5m.
When you do start looking at the facts, the online casino games industry is maturing fast. As millions more players on cross-platforms start to play, the progressive jackpots will rise more quickly. There will be more big payouts. You see that when your luck is in, you can suddenly find yourself rich for a small stake. When I was younger, cinemas used to run movies back-to-back in a rolling program through the day. You could go in and watch the cycle through as many times as you wanted. So this is where I came in when I started writing this article. People are fascinated by the prospect that, for a small outlay, they might hit it big. Subject to that, it never hurts to drop a coin or two into one of the online casino games. You never know, today might be your lucky day when fantasy does become reality and changes your life.
That last sentence puts the win in its proper context. There were twelve previous winners of more than $1m plus the latest win. That makes $17.7 as a minimum or less than $10m paid out to all the other jackpot winners over the last few years. The win of $5.5m is one of the largest the online industry has seen. It took months for the progressive to build up to that level. It took millions of “pulls”. There were an uncountable number of players who did not win.