Understanding Progressive Jackpots

Some of the biggest online slots awards have been the progressive jackpots, certainly some of the largest that the gambling world has seen over the years. Slots at land based casinos are fairly generous, the progressive jackpots on the online casino has made some players multi-millionaires, and this has happened quite often.

This is made possible because of the large numbers of players on Online Casinos as well as the vast numbers of progressive online slots networks.

The online casino world has three different types of jackpot networks, the most well-known of the three is the wide area progressive network. This progressive jackpot network links a prize pool of a game and spreads it across the various casino websites, thus, there will be hundreds of players among the hundreds of online casino networks. This means that there are multitudes of players who will contribute towards the prize pool, thus ensuring that the prizes climbs quicker, some of these progressive prize pools run into extremely high numbers which makes them very attractive.

On land based casinos jackpots of this type are rare, because of technology limitations that restricts operators to be able to link jackpot pools, if the slots machines are not able to physically connect, through the 'game bank', then linking is not possible. In recent years companies such as International Game Technology have invented technology solutions, that are able to allow land based operators to be able to link games onto a wide area basis but this is till relatively new, which means there are currently only a few of these types of networks operating, this includes the IGT's Megajackpots network.

Because of the vast numbers of players on web-based casinos worldwide, this contributes to the fact that the jackpots will be much larger at Online Gambling sites. Because of the technology multi-players are able to place wagers of the same game at the same time, this will push up the jackpot prize money quite substantially. In land-based casinos only one player is able to sit at a game, and only when then player leaves can another player be able to play on that game, this means that land-based jackpots will climb much slower than online jackpots.

The largest jackpot networks of the online casinos are offered by PlayTech and Microgaming. The Microgaming progressive jackpot presence has been on the go since about the turn of the century, they have also had more than a decade to have added many new games to their portfolio, and also expanded their prize pools. Over the past years the Microgaming Slots machines have already paid out more than $400 million in their progressive jackpot prizes. Microgaming most generous game is their Mega Moolah, this game regularly offers prizes that are worth more than $5 million.

PlayTech's WinAJackpot network has not been going for as long as Microgaming networks, however, during its existence it has been very generous. Established during 2003 the WinAJackpot has already paid out $126 million in winnings over this period of time. Playtech largest jackpot to date is the one that was on the game, Beach Life, where a player won $7.5 million which is very impressive.

Some of the newest online companies that run jackpot networks are also beginning to prove generous for their players. International Game Technology game MegaJackpots network offers gamers jackpot prizes which start from $1.5 million upwards. Last year Net Entertainment paid out $22 million which smashed the record for a jackpot awarded on an online casino.