If you’ve never had a jackpot handpay, you probably are wondering what the secret is to getting one. This question is similar to one we get pretty regularly:
What’s the best way to guarantee a handpay? I have never ever received one and for years, I’m at the casino twice a week. How much should I play? People win handpays on $.88. Why is my luck so bad? The highest I play is $2.00.
Ethella B.
I certainly understand what you mean. I began visiting casinos when I was first legal to do so in my state (21), and it took more than 15 years before I saw my first jackpot handpay in 2018. Since then, an eight year time window, I’ve had about a half dozen in physical casinos, all of them on bets of $2 or less.
So it’s certainly possible – two of my biggest wins were on $1 or less bets! But it’s also worth noting that all of these were won before the jackpot handpay limit was raised in January to $2,000 when it comes to federal taxes, so it was easier then vs. now. (That said, my last two handpays would have still required a form, both being above $2,000.)
Because a jackpot handpay is a set win regardless of bet amount, the easiest way to improve your chances of one is to simply bet more.
Betting $2, you need a win that’s 1,000x your bet to yield a $2,000 win. These are not very frequent – maybe you’ll see a couple of them a year if you’re lucky. But if you’re betting $10 a spin, that shrinks to a 200x win – unusual, but more likely to come around once in awhile. Push it further, and if you bet $20 a spin now you’re down to a 100x win.
But the flip side to this is if you have a budget of $100 or $200, doing those bigger bets can mean running out of money before a good line hit, let alone a jackpot handpay. So the pursuit of a jackpot may simply not be worth it.
Notice how I said improve your chances, not guarantee like you asked in your question. Because the random number generator is involved, a jackpot is possible on any spin, but it’s not guaranteed just because you bet a certain amount or take a certain number of spins. There’s still a luck element involved.
I also strongly advise against players chasing a handpay as their goal, especially if your budget leans towards lower bets. Instead, a 100x win is an achievable milestone that comes around often enough, but can still be significant. Winning $200 on a $2 bet is nothing to sneeze at!
But if you want to keep to your bet sizes, which I think is the right move, you can look for machines that have progressives that have grown above the jackpot level. This is particularly helpful for slots with Major jackpots that can grow beyond that $2,000 number, because when they do hit, it will be a jackpot for the player. (My most recent jackpot was a Major that grew past $2,000, which I won on an 88 cent bet.)
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