How the jackpot works
If it’s a bigger cash prize than usual, the first thing to do is to play a jackpot slot with real money. Each slot has its own jackpot, and depending on the value of the spins and the number of users playing the jackpot will increase more or less quickly. It is not uncommon that to qualify for the jackpot the slot forces you to play with the maximum bet. To get it, all you need to do is get a combination of the highest value symbol on a slot payline with a spin, and the jackpot is yours. The jackpot can be one of the reasons for choosing to play one slot over another, so it pays to know all the facts about these jackpots.
Beyond the conventional game, it is possible to hit slots that allow you to win the jackpot in the bonus game, which makes the feat a little more complicated as you first need to get the combination that triggers the bonus game and then you need to hit the combination that awards the bonus. In any case, the behaviour of the jackpots is unpredictable, you never know when they might hit, and that is one of the things that players like the most.
Jackpot types
Jackpot slots are divided into two types depending on whether they offer a fixed or progressive jackpot. As always, before opting for one type of jackpot or the other, it is very important to know the differences between fixed jackpot slots and progressive jackpot slots. Progressive jackpot slots are the most common in the online slots universe:
Fixed jackpot: the amount in play is always the same, it does not depend on how many players are active. To qualify for the jackpot, we have to place the maximum bet and once the jackpot is awarded, the prize is always the same.
Progressive jackpot: the jackpot grows little by little according to the number of spins of other players. The more active players there are and the higher the amount wagered, the higher the jackpot grows. Once the prize has been awarded, it is reset and accumulates again from 0, hence the name progressive jackpot. We can win jackpots of 10, 100, 1,000, 100,000 or a million euros.
How to find out the jackpot on a slot machine
When you enter the slots section of your online casino you will see a number next to the name of the slot machine that keeps growing. This number is the current jackpot of the slot, which can have several numbers. Many casinos allow you to filter the slots directly so that only the ones with jackpots appear.
As a curiosity, the biggest jackpot ever awarded by an online slot machine is the €17,861,800 that was awarded by Paf’s Mega Fortune in 2013. It was won by a Finnish player who made it into the Guinness Book of Records, beating a Norwegian who two years earlier won a jackpot of €11,736,375 also on the Mega Fortune but this time from Betsson, which remains the second biggest jackpot ever.