JackpotCarnival.com

The ultimate goal of anyone playing slot machines, either online or in land based casinos is to win a jackpot, which is typically the highest prize in a game. This is especially noticed in progressive jackpot games like slot machines. Several of the slots are linked and the jackpot goes up with each coin the players feed into the machines. A player wins the jackpot when he hits the highest combination. The jackpot amount is whatever total is showing on the slot machine when the winning combination was hit.

These jackpots can be a rather significantly large number, or it can be a smaller amount. It depends totally on the machine you’re playing. When playing a slot machine that is not progressive, you have the chance to win anywhere from $1,000 to $1,000,000 or more if you get lucky enough to hit a jackpot.

Something you should keep in mind when playing in land based casinos is if you should hit a jackpot, NEVER leave your machine until an attendant has come to verify your win and pay you. Most veteran players know this but someone new to the games may not realise that someone else can come along and claim your jackpot if you walk away from your machine. So even if you really want your friend who is sitting three rows over to know that you won, it’s better to wait until you have your money in hand.

An interesting side note is that there is a little town in Nevada called Jackpot. It has a population of 1,500, has 4 casinos, an airfield, golf course, a post office and its own schools. Jackpot, Nevada is located about a mile from the Idaho state line. This seems like a very fitting name for a town located in the state that boasts the gambling capital of the world.

Stop already with the negative connotations being fostered around gambling. This is surely the strength behind the recent approval of the Bush administration’s online gambling ban that will take effect in December 2009. How do these lawmakers ban a man who can afford to transact money for gambling bets on the web, and do nothing about the desperate shadow of the impoverished lottery player waiting in line to buy that winning ticket? Gambling, betting and risks are more commonplace in our everyday lives than the frenzied legislators pushing desperate last-minute laws to curb online wagers care to admit.

‘Betters’ and gamblers know (or should know) the rules at the onset of each chance they take. For bets, by their very nature, can be identified by very particular variables. One, how much money is being put down for the bet; two, what are the odds between winning and losing; and three, how much is stacked in favour of the house or bookie or banker. These variables remain pretty constant no matter what the game of chance.

That all games are really made up of different measures of chance and skill is a certainty. That the variables mentioned above have spurned yet another questionable betting science is another. That science: calculating risk based on the predictability of these variables and then selling that calculation to others for the purpose of placing bets based on a perceived expected value.

Think lottery. The chances of winning are virtually 1 in a zillion. Yet, I hear none of the loud-mouthed detractors shooting off about how the poor is being cheated into betting on such odds. There are hundreds of formulae now available for sale in pocket book sized form, which promise guide the purchaser to untold riches. My wife talks about the lottery as ‘tax on the poor’, and she is right. The lottery is the cruellest form of legalised gambling in the modern world.

Joe the Accountant is more likely to wager money online than he would be to throw a smaller amount at the lottery. While the average lottery player is a struggling blue collar worker who dreams of telling off the boss and living the rest of his days in cash-bleeding idle ways. For lottery hopeful in the world, less than 1% will ever win any money. Still, we stand by and watch the poor squandering their precious pennies on a game of such impossible odds. It’s hard to believe no one has called for a ban.