How do progressive slots work?

Progressive slots are a special category of slot machines known for their huge additional prizes which keep rising every time someone spins the reels.

With jackpots that can run into the millions of pounds, it’s not surprise that ‘progressives’ are the most popular type of slot at online casinos. Let’s see how they work, how to play progressive jackpot slots, how to bag a jackpot and which are the top progressive slots at PlayOJO.

What are progressive slots?

These games are called progressive slots because the jackpot prize isn’t fixed – it progresses with every bet made, until it’s won. Some progressive jackpots automatically pay out if they hit a certain size, but most are uncapped and can, in theory, get bigger and bigger until someone wins it.

Progressive jackpot slots are only different to the rest of the slots universe because of the monster prizes. Some slots are dedicated progressives, while others are merely versions of existing games that are connected to a jackpot network.

Progressive slots meaning:

A casino slot machine which features a progressive jackpot – a cash prize that gets bigger every time someone places a real money wager and the jackpot isn’t won. A small share of each wager is added to the jackpot, and the jackpot size is usually displayed in real time, so players can see it rise. When the jackpot is won, it is reset to a pre-determined minimum amount called a seed.

But casinos and games developer wanted to find ways to offer bigger prizes without stumping up the cash themselves. A shrewd game designer figured out that if they got players to fund the jackpots themselves using something called a stake contribution, it would produce bigger prize funds. These would attract more players, who would fund bigger and bigger jackpots, and so on!

This innovation basically means that millions of players each contribute a few pence so that one of you becomes a millionaire, a bit like a lotto.

Thanks to the massive popularity of games like Cleopatra, IGT’s progressive MegaJackpots prizes are some of the biggest in the UK.

How do progressive slots work?

In most ways, jackpot slots function in the same way as how other slots work. But to add one or more progressive jackpots, game developers have to introduce a number of new variables. Let’s go under the hood of these casino games and taking a closer look at the model these slots use which makes huge wins possible.

The contribution

For every bet you make, a small portion is siphoned off into a separate pot which is used to fund the jackpot or jackpots. Play any Red Tiger slots linked to their Daily Jackpots feature and around 3% of your bet will fund the jackpot pool, while IGT’s MegaJackpots take around 2.3% of your bet.

The seed

What happens when someone wins a jackpot and why doesn’t it start at zero? Progressive jackpots have to start somewhere, because no one would play a slot with a jackpot of £0 or £10.

That somewhere is called the ‘seed’ amount and it’s guaranteed by the casino or game supplier. IGT’s MegaJackpots™ prize pool is seeded at £500,000, for example.

The prize

A progressive jackpot is just one which keeps rising as it’s played, until it’s won. The million-pound progressives get all the attention but progressive slots come in all shapes and sizes, with some slots even having their own progressive jackpots of less than £1,000.

IGT’s MegaJackpots games have paid out average jackpot wins of £846,000 and has been won (again, on average) every 10 weeks.

Different types of progressive slot

Progressive jackpots have continued to change since they were invented decades ago. What started as single-game jackpots have now evolved into jackpots that are funded across an entire international network of casinos. The more players participate, the bigger the jackpots AND the more frequently they’re won.

Here’s Blueprint Gaming’s Jackpot King feature, which shows their 3 networked progressive jackpots and the rules.

Here are some of the progressive jackpots you’ll find at PlayOJO:

• Game jackpot: Games like Ozwin’s Jackpots have their own progressive prize, although they are still funded from players across different online casinos

• Network jackpot: Game providers now bolt on a network-wide jackpot system to their most popular games, so that players can choose from over 30 different slots and still have the chance to win the same prize.

• Tiered jackpots: Many progressive slots now offer as many as 4 different progressives, ranging from Mini pots worth hundreds of pounds that are won every few minutes, to Mega prizes worth hundreds of thousands of pounds which are won every few weeks. This makes jackpot bonus games more interesting, as you’re more likely to win something, while keeping the potential for the biggest win alive.

• Timed jackpots: Red Tiger pioneered the online timed progressive with their Daily Jackpots, which feature small and medium progressive pots that are guaranteed to pay out by a particular time of day.

How to win a progressive jackpot

Fortunately, if you already know how to play online slots, then you’ve got the skills to win a progressive jackpot too. It’s all luck, so just pick your stake, spin and go!

But how does the game know to pay out? Let’s get technical and see how these special slots award their biggest prizes.

Progressive slots have been around since the 1980s. The jackpot win is just another line in the math model that powers the slot, so it’s controlled randomly in much the same way as the other slot prizes.

The jackpot has a win condition that’s built into the slot’s maths design. It can be a fixed probability event (e.g. 1 in 6.43 million spins) or a randomly selected time, total staked across all slots, or jackpot size.

The slot provider picks the design of the jackpot event and the random number generator inside the game software does the rest. That’s the how software that powers the slot chooses when a jackpot is won. But what happens on-screen differs from game to game.

In the early years of progressive jackpots, you would have to match special symbols on a payline. With 21st century progressive jackpot slots, you’ll usually trigger a bonus game first. You won’t be guaranteed the biggest jackpot, and you might not even be guaranteed any of the tiered jackpots.

With Red Tiger’s Daily Jackpot games like Dynamite Riches, you have to land 3 jackpot symbols during a base game spin. You’ll then get to spin the jackpot wheel, which features the Daily and Mega progressive jackpots you can see above.

IGT’s MegaJackpot is a simple beast; if you land 5 jackpot symbols on the centre payline. Blueprint Gaming’s Jackpot King is a different animal.

To trigger the jackpot bonus game, you must first trigger the Jackpot King Deluxe bonus feature, then spin 15 or more Kings to enter the Wheel King jackpot game. It is possible to go straight to the Wheel King if you land the correct number of Wheel King symbols.

But even once you’re in the Wheel King, a life-changing win isn’t guaranteed, as you could scoop a cash multiplier instead of one of the 3 jackpots.

Popular progressive slots

Almost all game providers now offer progressive slots online, although it’s difficult for the newer or smaller game studios to go out on a limb with bigger prizes, so the biggest and most popular prizes are usually reserved for the likes of Games Global, NetEnt and IGT.

Because the 3 network jackpots from Red Tiger, IGT and Blueprint now dominate the slots world, their participating games tend to top the charts of best progressive jackpot slots.

There are a few exceptions such as IGT’s Mega Fortune which you can see above. This famous slot has its own jackpot and as you can see, it’s usually one of the biggest UK online progressive jackpots out there.

At the other end of the progressive spectrum, games like Play N’ Go’s Celebration of Wealth and Yggdrasil’s Dr Fortuno have much smaller jackpots because fewer players spin them from day to day. The advantage of these smaller jackpots is they’re easier to win, as there’s less competition.

Our top jackpot slots

You can tap the Jackpot section of our casino for the latest progressive prizes, but here’s a snapshot of the best progressive slots this year.

Conclusion

That’s your lot for the ultimate guide to slots. What we haven’t covered so far, isn’t worth knowing! Now you know what are progressive slots and the top progressive jackpot we have at PlayOJO. Time to go spin and win!