As more machines are offered in both low and high limit versions, players have noticed that some of the same bets can often be found on both machines. So why aim low?
If you play 5.00 or more on a slot machine, I noticed the Majors and Grands are a lot higher in the high limit room as opposed to the main floor. So is it better to play in high limit and are the odds the same.
Chris
I see games in the lower limit area at $10 and the minor and mini are lower , and you can bet the same in the high limit room. Why would people choose to play in the lower limit room over the high limit room?
Suzanne
It certainly can make sense to want to go for the bigger numbers in the high limit room. The thing to remember is your odds of winning one of those prizes is going to be lower in the high limit room.
The reason is simple – a $5 bet on a low-limit machine might be a max bet on pennies, but a minimum bet on high limit on dimes. For the low-limit machine, a Mini is $10 and 2x your bet – it’s going to show up a lot because of that. By comparison, the Mini on dimes is $100 – 20x your bet – and that won’t show up nearly as often.
Similarly, the Major resets to 100x your $5 bet on low limit, and could reset to 500x or 1,000x your bet (there are different versions) on high limit. It’s not going to award them at the same rate, as the chances of winning them are relative to your bet.
This is probably why many of those polled on Brian Christopher’s YouTube page aren’t necessarily high limit progressive chasers – almost half of you said you don’t do it, and another 14 percent said it’s not in your budget. Only about 40 percent chase them at least sometimes.
Now, the thing to be even more aware of on Lightning Link family games (including Dragon Link, Lightning Dollar Link, etc.) is that Mini and Minor prizes technically don’t really mean anything. They are just credit prizes, not progressives, and are fixed to a denomination, not your bet. So the words just substitute for number prizes that would show up with that value.
So when you’re playing pennies, the game can interchangeably show 1000 credits or the word Mini – it’s the exact same thing. It’s a psychological trick to make you think you’re winning a jackpot when it’s just a credit prize that would appear on the ball anyway.
Major and Grand are different, given they’re growing progressives. And to Chris’s question, if you’re finding something like a maxed out major it might be worth playing, even with the more difficult chances of winning, just because of the value of it. But the odds are definitely different between high and low limit machines on the same bet.
Don’t forget a high limit machine may have a slightly higher overall payback due to how casinos often configure high limit machines vs. low limit ones. So even though it may be harder to win a Major, it may be worth playing just for the expectation of higher payback over time.
But if you’re playing it to chase a progressive, given the same bet, it’ll be harder to win on high limit.
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When you see a a lot machine and look at the jackpots…how do you know if they recently reset…?
In many cases the pay table will indicate what a progressive starts at, but not necessarily every time. Different games have different starting points, so sometimes it’s just familiarity when you see games often enough, and other times it’s looking at the various slots in a bank – some will have lower prizes than others, which will give an assist to how low they can go, but again, the more you see them, the more quickly you catch on to the starting point!