They are called progressive slots, and you can find them in Canadian online casinos. To better understand how the mechanics of progressive jackpot works, here are the top things you should know about them.
Standard jackpots vs progressive jackpots
The first thing you should know about jackpot in online slots is that there are two types of them: one is called the standard jackpot, and the other is called a progressive jackpot. They are both big wins you should root for, but they differ when it comes to the amount of money a player can win from them.
A standard jackpot, as its name suggests, has a set standard amount a player can win. The jackpot amount is just that–it cannot get any bigger or any smaller. Standard jackpots have a higher rate of being won by players as opposed to progressive jackpots. On the other hand, it offers a significantly smaller amount than a progressive jackpot.
Progressive jackpots, on the other hand, start with a base standard amount but get bigger and bigger as more and more people play the game. The amount in the jackpot usually has no defined limit. However, as the jackpot gets bigger and bigger, the chances of a player hitting the big win gets bigger as well.
Progressive jackpots make this whole feat possible by taking in a part of the wager of a player and adding it to the jackpot amount. Unlike a standard jackpot, a progressive jackpot has a lower win rate. This is the reason why when most players play slots for real money, they also take into consideration the kind of jackpot the game offers.
Now, there are two types of progressive jackpots–the network jackpot and the standalone jackpot.
Network jackpot
A network progressive jackpot is a type of progressive jackpot that links data of wagers and betting across a number of games. In land-based casinos, this works by creating a link that pools all data from across all participating machines to create a bigger prize pool.
Network progressive jackpots analyze the wagers placed in each participating game within its network and based on a specific percentage off from it, an amount is added to the prize pool. As more and more people play the games within the network, the jackpot amount gets bigger. This will keep going on, until someone hits it big and gets to take home the entire prize pool.
Since the jackpot amount is based on the data coming in from several games or machines, the prize pool tends to get bigger and grander faster.
Standalone jackpot
On the other hand is what is called as the standalone jackpot. If a network progressive jackpot consists of several games or machines under the same network, a standalone progressive jackpot only deals with a single game.
It also works the same way–players play and wager an amount, and if they do not hit the jackpot, a specific percentage of the wagered amount gets added to the prize pool. However, since standard progressive jackpots only have one game under its pool, the time it would take to make the jackpot bigger would be longer.
What you should keep in mind
Since you now understand the way how progressive jackpots–both network and standard–work, you also have a better grasp of how to strategically approach playing an online slot game with a progressive jackpot.
For one, you should never go all out and keep on spinning if you see that the jackpot is not yet that big. While you can still win, yes, but the chances of you hitting it big is significantly less as compared when you let other people pool more prize money for the jackpot first.
