Ask the Slot Expert: Are progressives awarded using set points?

Question: I’ve enjoyed your column over the years and thank you very much for fighting the good fight with regard to smoking in casinos.

Recently, I was fascinated by your in-depth analysis of the King Khufu game. I saw it for the first time at Harrah’s in Atlantic City just a few days ago and it is even more confusing in real life than your description implies and I have absolutely no interest in playing it!

However, something you quoted from the help screens caught my eye. It stated that “increasing the currency value of the total bet increases the chance of winning the GRAND jackpot." And your interpretation of that disclosure is that “the probability of hitting the Grand depends on how much you're betting. The higher your bet, the higher the probability.”

I see similar wording in disclosures on other help screens for a bunch of games that have progressive jackpots. And I’m not sure it means what you think it means.

First, let me say that I believe that on modern slot machines, the most common method of determining when a progressive gets paid out is the “set point.” The machine chooses a dollar figure at random, such as $12,745.22 and then when it reaches that randomly chosen set point, the first person to get the bonus (or whatever qualifying event or symbol awards the progressive), wins that progressive jackpot. It’s absolutely random, but the point at which the machine pays the Grand is predetermined and set (randomly) right after the last Grand has been won.

Now, if somebody doesn’t believe progressives have a set point, then what I’m about to say is irrelevant. But then they’d have to come up with an alternate explanation as to how the Grand (or any other progressive or “must hit by” prize) is awarded. When a game manufacturer says that betting bigger “increases the chance of winning the GRAND jackpot,” well, they’re not wrong. But have you considered that all that likely means is that bigger bets get you incrementally closer to the randomly chosen set point? Larger bets move the progressive meter more quickly than smaller bets. (Doh!) And so the set point will be reached more quickly.

That’s why you have a better “chance” at winning the Grand. It’s most likely NOT because you’re more likely to fill the screen with 15 balls or orbs or or have a greater likelihood of landing the Grand gem or coin or symbol or slice of the wheel.

So, yeah, it’s not technically wrong to say that betting bigger increases your chance at the top prize. But not because bigger bets provide - or guarantee – more or better symbols or outcomes. It’s because the Grand will hit sooner if players bet bigger. (Although “sooner” could still mean weeks or months.) You can hit the Grand by betting 50 cents; it’ll just take you longer to get there. Is it truthful to say you have a “better chance” when making larger bets? I guess. Sort of. But it’s fuzzy math… and shady marketing.

It’s important to note that even though a big bettor might do the heavy lifting to get to the set point, that doesn’t mean he or she will get the jackpot, if playing on a bank of linked machines. Once the set point is reached, the triggering event (a free games bonus or hold and spin or whatnot) will still be randomly awarded by that machine or one of the linked machines.

To be sure, the manufacturer wants us to think that bigger bets somehow get us to a different pool of higher value outcomes, including better odds at winning the top prize. But if that were true, they could have said so in clearer language. They said as much in another section of the game rules you quoted. They say flat out that “increasing the bet multiplier increases the number of gold tiles.” Well, that’s pretty straightforward. So why did they feel compelled to talk obliquely about the “currency value of the total bet” increasing your chances when it comes to explaining how the Grand jackpot is awarded? Why not simply say that the wheel has a greater chance of stopping on the “Grand” symbol when you increase your bet? They don’t say that because it likely isn’t true.

Like the overflowing pots that have no bearing on game outcomes, this language in the game rules is there to make us think that we have a better chance of winning the Grand than we actually do. They want people to bet bigger, so they obfuscate the language to encourage big bets. A reasonable interpretation of “increasing the currency value of the total bet increases the chance of winning the GRAND jackpot” might support what some players continue to think: “odds” and outcomes are somehow better when betting bigger, even though it most likely just means that bigger bets will get you to the unknown set point faster. But if they stated it like that, it probably wouldn’t encourage higher bets.

Same thing applies to Dragon Link and Dragon Cash! The game rules state that “an increase in wager proportionally increases the odds of winning GRAND jackpot.” It doesn’t say that if you bet bigger, you are more likely to get 15 orbs. It says that your odds proportionally increase with an increased wager. Well, yeah. When you bet bigger, you get that much closer to the random set point, in direct proportion to the size of your bet. (Doh!)

I’ve seen a heck of a lot of people win the Grand betting 50 cents on Lightning Link and Dragon Link. I myself hit a Grand on Lightning Link while betting $2.50. That’s not evidence, of course, that betting big doesn’t give you a better “chance,” but it certainly is worth mentioning when discussing the “probability” of hitting a Grand when betting big.

The mechanics of most slot machines remain as mysterious as the algorithms used to determine casino offers. But one thing I’m fairly certain of deep within the smithy of my soul is that the odds of winning the Grand don’t really increase with the size of the bet. At least, not in the way most people think they do.

Answer: Thanks for the kind words. And thank you especially for the detailed letter. I rarely get a letter with such a forcefully made case.

(Can you sense a but coming?)

But.... You have made a "hasty generalization".

You took a specific example of how one implementation of a progressive works and assumed it applied to all progressives.

A prominent example of a hasty generalization with regard to video poker happened a little over 30 years ago. People who I suppose were new to video poker posted this advice on a message board: If you want to play a good game, just look for one that pays 9 for the Full House and 6 for the Flush.

That's good advice for a Jacks or Better paytable, but not necessarily so good when you consider [Triple][Double] Bonus Poker paytables.

Lenny Frome, who I bet was the first person to work out and publish strategy charts for dozens of paytables, called this advice "leading lambs to the slaughter." 9/6 is neither necessary nor sufficient to make a good paytable.

There are progressives that work the way you described. For example, Must-Hit-By (MHB). The controller for this type of progressive chooses one or more values in the stated range. A portion of each wager is added to an internal counter. The player whose wager pushes the internal counter to or above the "set point" wins the progressive.

Larger wagers add a larger amount to the counter. You're, in effect, covering more of the values in the range.

You issued a challenge to explain how progressives are awarded without using set points. Let me also show how larger bets can mean a higher probability of hitting a progressive. Here goes.

First, changing denomination or bet multiplier may change the reel layout. The jackpot symbols can appear more times on the reels used for the higher-value bets, thereby giving a higher probability of hitting the jackpot.

King Khufu says on one help page that "reels are determined at the start of each base game and depend on the bet multiplier."

Second, let's look at when you win a progressive in a bonus game, like picking items until you get three matches. Most (all?) of these games do not reveal the values behind the items you didn't pick. The manufacturers don't want you to see that the machine randomly chose the progressive you would win at the start of the bonus. You had no chance at winning the other progressives because they did not have at least three symbols on the board. The disclaimer for this situation states that your picks are for entertainment purposes only.

You can win the progressives on King Khufu in the Bonus Wheel feature. When the wheel stops on a progressive wedge, cha-ching. The help for this feature says that "a different wheel is used for each bet multiplier and for each wheel spin."

If a set point were used to award the progressive, there would be no need for different wheels. You already won the progressive from the bet that pushed the counter over the set point and triggered the bonus. Manufacturers cannot lie in the help screens.

Let's say I'm playing and my wager on a spin that awards the Bonus Wheel also passes the set point and I'm going to get the Grand. It might take a few spins for my wheel to land on the Grand wedge.

We have a problem. A machine generally cannot display an amount that a player cannot win. When do we reset the Grand jackpot amount on the other Khufu machine in the cluster? As soon as I enter the bonus even though my machine hasn't revealed that I have won it yet?

The problem gets worse when machines in disparate locations participate in the progressive. When do we tell them to reset the Grand jackpot amount?

I have never seen a local progressive reset without seeing or hearing someone hit it. I have never seen a preemptive reset.

Isn't the following method for awarding the progressive simpler?

When I trigger the bonus, the machine chooses a wheel layout and probability model (probability of landing on each wedge) based on my bet. After each spin, some wedges turn to game-ending wedges and the machine may choose a new probability model for the wheel. No matter what happens on each spin, my probability of landing on the Grand wedge is higher for higher bets. That's a consequence of the probability model.

If I land on the Grand, my machine sends a message to the progressive controller that I have won the Grand. The controller then sends messages to all the machines in the link to reset the Grand amount.

Third, I'll call this method Deus Ex Machina. Regulators get really tetchy if a machine doesn't display the symbols chosen by the RNG. Can't do it. Manufacturers, however, can add bells and whistles over and above the base game.

I was particularly fond of a particular Lord of the Rings game. It had a feature in which an archer would randomly appear in the bottom corner of the screen and shoot an arrow. I don't remember what the purpose of the feature was, but the archer appeared more frequently at higher bets.

A pernicious disclaimer I'm seeing more and more on machines is that some symbol or event MAY trigger a bonus. Not will, but may.

The probability that the bonus is triggered can be higher for higher bets.

The methods I have described above may be more difficult to explain than your set point, but they are much easier to implement and slots have been working this way for decades.

Let me address some of your statements.

You wrote, "the most common method of determining when a progressive gets paid out is the set point."

No, the most common way is random selection of an event that awards the progressive.

"When it reaches that randomly chosen set point, the first person to get the bonus (or whatever qualifying event or symbol awards the progressive), wins that progressive jackpot."

Here's a major problem. You imply that I can land the symbols that should award a progressive, but I won't get it because I haven't passed the set point. That is verboten.

And if you say that the machine won't display the jackpot combination unless I have passed the set point, you have a machine that cannot be certified. The machine must determine the result of a spin using numbers from the RNG without any outside influence. The machine cannot check to see if I have passed the set point and then generate the jackpot combination.

You wrote about Dragon Link. The game rules state that “an increase in wager proportionally increases the odds of winning GRAND jackpot.” It doesn’t say that if you bet bigger, you are more likely to get 15 orbs.

Well.... It does.

How do you win the Grand jackpot? By getting 15 orbs, which is a necessary and sufficient condition to win the Grand. If higher wages increase the odds of winning the Grand and the only way to win the Grand is to get 15 orbs, then higher wages increase the odds of getting 15 orbs.

"Is it truthful to say you have a 'better chance' when making larger bets? I guess. Sort of. But it’s fuzzy math… and shady marketing."

It's neither fuzzy math nor shady marketing. If I have a 0.01% chance of winning the Grand in the Wheel Bonus when I bet $0.75 and a 0.02% chance when I bet $1.50, I undoubtedly have a better chance at the higher bet.

"Why not simply say that the wheel has a greater chance of stopping on the Grand symbol when you increase your bet? They don’t say that because it likely isn’t true."

What Khufu's Rosetta Stone of help screens says is that "increasing the currency value of the total bet increases the chance of winning the Grand jackpot." That statement applies across all ways you can win the Grand, including having the wheel stop on the Grand.

I want to reiterate that a Must-Hit-By progressive is a different animal. You have presented no evidence showing that a progressive that doesn't explicitly state that it is a Must-Hit-By progressive is Must-Hit-By.

As I said before, a machine cannot display an amount you cannot win -- with some exceptions.

Megabucks and other progressive machines can show the big progressive amounts, but they also have to show you how much you can win playing short coin and tell you that a max bet is required to be eligible for the progressive.

Assuming no change in denomination or bet multiplier between spins, your probability of hitting the progressive is the same on every spin.

Must-Hit-By progressives are different. Depending on the set point and how much you are betting, a spin has either a zero chance of winning the progressive or winning it is certain. Most of the time, you cannot win the MHB progressive. As a result, if a progressive is MHB that must be disclosed on the machine.

Your set point methodology could conceivably work, but it introduces many logistical and regulatory problems. It's much easier to just let the machine award the progressives based on the RNG and adjust reel layouts and probabilities to reward higher-betting players with higher probabilities of hitting a progressive.

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