Megabucks is a Nevada state-wide slot jackpot network that is owned and run by the slot machine company, International Game Technology (IGT). Considered Nevada’s state lottery, Megabucks is extremely popular and has created quite a few millionaires in its 19-year history.

1. Current Megabucks Slot Machine Jackpot
2. Megabucks Slot Machine Winners Megabucks Jackpot
3. Megabucks Slot Machine Jackpots

Megabucks are slots with progressive jackpots, combined into a single network that covers casinos in several American states. The owner and operator of this network is International Game Technology, better known by its abbreviated name IGT.

Megabucks slot is considered as an alternative to state lotteries and enjoys incredible popularity among Americans. Actually, there is an opinion that IGT specifically released it to create a lottery competition. Since the beginning of the eighties in the twentieth century, when the slot was launched for the first time, this slot made dozens of players millionaires.

Thanks to the skillfully organized advertising company, every Megabucks jackpot, when it reaches a considerable size, causes a real excitement among the gambling public. And every hit of the progressive jackpot is widely covered in the media, attracting even more casino visitors to the slot. No other slot in the world is overgrown with so many incredible myths, rumors, and legends. But with all this, there are a lot of gambling experts and just experienced players who consider Megabucks a hideous slot that absolutely does not deserve so much attention. So, who is right: fans or opponents of this slot?

Where to Play the Megabucks Slot

• Secure
• Fast Withdrawals

1. You can learn where to play these slots from home using this IGT Gaming guide and get that same excitement from playing in a live casino. Megabucks is a Dollar coin Slot Machine that must have 3 coins ($3.00) played to hit the jackpot. The jackpot is reset to $10,000,000.00 after a jackpot is hit.
2. The “progressive jackpot” is a type of a prize pool that is accumulated through all Megabucks slot machines positioned in various casinos throughout the state. A small percentage of every bet is gathered into a mutual pool, which makes up the jackpot. An interesting fact is that if the jackpot is won, the amount is reset at $10 million!

How to Play Megabucks

The classic version of the Megabucks slot from IGT is a 3-reel slot machine with the only one payline. In order to qualify for a progressive jackpot, the player must definitely bet three dollars. There are a lot of stories (both true and fictitious) about casino customers, who had the jackpot combination, but they did not receive any jackpot because of a bet less than three dollars.

The progressive jackpot is not completely nullified when a lucky winner gets it but starts to grow from a certain amount. In recent years, this fixed amount is $10,000,000. There are persistent rumors that soon this initial sum of the jackpot should increase by one million.

Megabucks Slot Odds

Strange as it may seem, there is no official information about the probability of winning the Megabucks jackpot. Some casinos say that the player has one chance out of 50 million, while others claim that this is one chance of 17 million. Whatever it was, when the sum of the jackpot is large enough, fans of this slot are ready to fly thousands of kilometers to try their luck.

What do Lady Luck’s favorites have from this slot? Do they get all that huge amount of money that is advertised? When you win a jackpot, events can unfold as follows. First of all, the lucky guy will receive a check for $1,400,000. Then the winner is given two or three months to decide how he wants to get his winnings. There are two options: the amount is divided into annual payments, which will be transferred to the player within twenty-five years, or he can get the winnings immediately at a time, but at a rate of 60% of the jackpot.

That is, having won ten million, the winner can receive in the second variant only six million, but at once and with one payment. After receiving the win, he still has to pay taxes. Unsurprisingly, almost all holders of Megabucks jackpots prefer to receive their winnings in the form of annual payments.

However, in this case, they also have to pay taxes, the Internal Revenue Service of the United States (IRS) very strictly follows this. Subtract from the total amount of the jackpot another 40%, because such winnings are taxed at the maximum rate. So, the next time you hear that someone has won ten million in Megabucks and immediately took all the money, you know that the lucky guy got a little over three and a half million at his disposal.

The Curse of the Megabucks Jackpot

Current Megabucks Slot Machine Jackpot

As already mentioned above, there are a lot of urban legends about the Megabucks slot and its jackpot, mostly of a gloomy nature. For the most part, they describe the tragic fate of players who managed to win a huge jackpot. It is believed that almost all the lucky people either perish or suffer numerous woes. The cause of their numerous misfortunes is the so-called Curse of the Megabucks slot.

Of course, in these stories, there is much more fiction than the truth. However, there is no smoke without fire — some winners, really, seriously suffered after they won the jackpot. In particular, the further life of the waitress Cynthia J. Brennan, who won $34.9 million in 2000, was sad. A month and a half after the win, Cynthia and her sister were hit by a drunk driver. The sister died on the spot, and Cynthia was forever paralyzed. The guy who drove the car in a state of intoxication was imprisoned for twenty-eight years.

But the rumors about the curse of Megabucks spread even before the year 2000. Simply, this accident was widely covered in the press and made people remember about other similar events, which at that time did not become so resonant. In 2003, many media published a story about a 25-year-old player who became the owner of the Megabucks jackpot and either died from a drug overdose in a casino hotel or was killed in a street shootout. IGT companies had to work hard to convince the public of the falsity of these statements.

There are also a lot of rumors about underage players and employees of different casinos who won the Megabucks jackpot but could not get it due to existing rules. But none of these rumors received documentary evidence.

Many experts in the field of gambling suggest that ITG recently made relevant changes to the Megabucks system, which makes the jackpot play less often, but with larger amounts. Although officially the company claims that nothing of the sort has happened, this opinion remains very popular.

Where Could You Play Megabucks?

Most fans of slot machines and large jackpots are not afraid of the curse of Megabucks and are willing to play in this slot. You can find this slot in almost all real casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, as well as in other establishments in Nevada, California, New Jersey, Mississippi, and some Indian reservations. Each state has its own separate network of Megabucks slots, but the biggest progressive jackpots are expected in Nevada. In other states, jackpots are much smaller.

Why do Experts Consider Megabucks a Bad Slot?

Experts do not believe in the curse of the Megabucks slot, but this does not stop them from considering this gambling machine not worthy of attention. The fact is that this slot is very unprofitable for the player. Firstly, it has an extremely high percentage of the casino advantage, which reaches 10-15% (for comparison, many slots in the Las Vegas casino are limited to 2-3%). Secondly, the procedure for paying a jackpot is extremely inconvenient. The winner either loses 40% of the amount or gets it in parts for 25 years. But the progressive jackpots of most other slots are paid immediately and in full.

All this suggests that Megabucks is a mediocre slot, which gained its popularity only thanks to record payments and a masterly organized PR campaign.

See Also

Megabucks Slot Machine Winners Megabucks Jackpot

Introduction: Winning the Jackpot on Megabucks Slot Machine

Have you ever thought about winning the jackpot on the Megabucks slot machine? If there’s a motto for gamblers coming in search of a fortune in Las Vegas, then it’s, “Go big, or go home”! The thing about playing jackpot slots in the casino is that in order to win big, you have to place maximum bets. So, though we always reckon you should follow some serious guidelines on money management, it’s also true that you’ll never hit the big time unless you slash out. And if you’re going to be laying the massive progressive jackpot slots, then your dream is to hit the main prize. And there’s just no way of doing that without playing to the max.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of gamblers playing progressive slot machines will not become overnight millionaires. Quite the opposite. They will lose money thanks to the house edge and every game inherent odds, which stack up against them. The casino is a business and it runs on the losses of most of its customers. But on March 21st, 2003, a random tourist decided to try his luck and in an instant became a Las Vegas legend.

The Largest Progressive Jackpot

It was on that fateful date that a young man came from Los Angeles to visit his relatives. A member of his family, his uncle to be precise, said that he should try the Megabucks slot machine which was in the Excalibur Hotel and Casino. He told the young man that the machine hadn’t paid out for some time….and that maybe today would be the lucky day. At that time, the Megabucks slot machine hadn’t actually paid out for nearly one year. We should also point out that this machine was based on the largest network progressive jackpot in the world.

Initially, megabucks had seeded the machine with $1 million in 1997 and then again, but with $10 million in 2005. But back in 2003, it had a starting seed of $10 million. If you add all the $3 per spin that was put into the slot over almost a year, then the prize was a massive $39.7 million when our young man went to play. He said to himself, that he would allow $100 to play and no more. It was some silly fun for him as he wasn’t a gambler. He just was following his uncle’s advice for no particular reason.

How Does the Megabucks Slot Machine Work?

Before we go on with our story, let’s first take a look and see how a Megabucks slot machine actually works. The Megabucks slot was originally put on the market in 1986 by its manufacturer, one of the best jackpot game providers, International Games Technology (IGT). At this time, all slots machines were “static” meaning that they were standalone machines, where each machine’s kitty and payout were based on the monies fed in. But IGT revolutionized the whole industry with the idea of linking machines together. These then became progressive jackpot lotteries. This would also increase the jackpot total. So, if a player was playing a slot in Reno and another anywhere else in Nevada, then all their monies would go towards just one pot.

Megabucks Slot Machine Jackpots

Over One Year Since the Last Payout

This “wide-area progressive slots” idea was an instant success. Players were transfixed on the machine’s meter, showing the prize rising to seven figures. In fact, you could watch the meter climb every day, as the odds were very very long on the possibility of winning the top prize. The actual Megabucks slot machines were very simple in design. There were none of these multiple pay-lines and expanded reels that you find on today’s machines. It was just three reels. You 43 was to send these spinning. They each featured the traditional symbols of sevens, bars, and cherries. All you had to do was line up three matching symbols on a single pay-line.

Megabucks Slot Machine: Massive Jackpot

All the current features on any slots just hadn’t been invented then. So there were no free spins, no scatter symbols, and certainly no video clips and wacky sound effects. It was just a simple no-frills slot machine, albeit with a massive jackpot. By the way, the game’s jackpot symbol is a “Megabucks Eagle” which shows the company’s distinctive logo. Now the odds of landing just one eagle are 1:368. And the odds of landing all three, and thus winning the jackpot are 1:49,836,032. It’s for this reason that the prizes go unclaimed for lengthy periods of time. And it’s this combination of long time periods between wins and all the $3 which are continuously being put into these machines, that allows the main prize to reach such epic proportions.

Megabucks was a constant in the news of the time, as huge jackpots were won. For example, a record-setting $27.5 million was won by a lucky player in 1998 at the Palace Station. Then another record jackpot fell to a cocktail waitress playing at the Desert Inn in January of 2000. That record-breaking amount was $ 34.9 million. And here we are, three years later, as our anti-hero sits down to play.

$100 Flier Turns Into Life-Changing Record Jackpot Win

So, with just $100 to his name, our young man would of gotten only 33 spins. Yes, it’s true you can play the Megabucks slot machine for both $1 and $2. But you need to be placing the maximum wager of $3 in order to have a chance at the main prize. This player was maybe born lucky as he was to later reveal that he had three sevens on his birthday. Without any jackpot winning strategy and yet within those thirty-three spins, the young man watched in wonder as those three Megabucks symbols lined up. And, in the blink of an eye, he’d beaten odds of nearly 1: 50 million and won nearly $40 million.

Megabucks Slot Machine: The Winner is Still Collecting His Winnings

Interestingly enough the winner chooses to take his prize in yearly installments. This is a rare way of doing things. Many winners are concerned as to whether the game provider company, who has to pay the prize will be in existence in the next 10 years. Never the less, he decided on 26 installments of $1.6 million each year. From today, he still has another $15 million to collect over the course of the next 10 years. The winner wisely chooses to stay anonymous. He gave a statement, “I’m still stunned; it doesn’t seem real yet. But both of my parents are still working, so some of this money will go to fund their retirement.”

Largest Megabucks Jackpot Ever – And By a Long Shot

There was a confirmation from the vice president of IGT, John Sears, that the jackpot of $39,713,982.25 was the largest ever. “This MegaJackpot is nearly $5 million more than the previous world record slot jackpot amount of $34.9 million – this one goes into The Guinness Book of Records.”

Competing Jackpot Hunters Lament Loss of Record-Setting Total

Everyone was happy to see the jackpot finally find a winner. But there was also disappointment for many that the prize was now back to $10 million. For many hard-core slot players, the win was a bitter-sweet moment. The Las Vegas Sun newspaper did a series of interviews where they inquired as to the feelings of other long term slot machine players. Kim Wong from Kailua told the paper, “I was here at lunchtime around 12:30 and it was still around $39.7 million. Then I came back around a quarter after one and it was resetting. It was such a drag. It was a little more enticing with the $39 million up there. But I’m still playing.”

A certain Judy Selasky from Lavonia, Michigan told a similar tale. Saying that though a record payout was off the table, she and her husband would still play in hopes of a “lightning strikes twice” type of moment: “I said, ‘Hurry up and get up to the room, so I can get downstairs. I figure if he won, there might be some magic here. I’m not a hog.”

Conclusion: Winning the Jackpot on Megabucks Slot Machine

Las Vegas is a city that appears to only deal in excess. As we said at the very beginning, go big or go home. Well, this young computer programmer for LA did just that. And for many gamblers, knowing that someone was able to win such a huge prize, gives them the hope that one day, it could be them. Especially when you consider that 16 years have passed since that fateful day. And since then, though many jackpots have come and gone, still no one has come close to that record amount of cash. Check out our casino jackpot guides.

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