The Endless Stupidity Of Chasing Progressives

[ChopleyIOM]

One of my little quests at 3Dice over the years has been to hit a progressive on their single-liner games. These are really simple slots but I quite like them, they have a selection of reel wins (with varying multipliers), a spinny wheel bonus round, and the progressive wins themselves.

The progressives tend not to actually be that big, 1500-2000x stake would be a pretty chunky amount for them to get to, we're not talking Mega Moolah type stuff here. In fact they're generally smaller prizes as a multiplication of stake than you can hit on their normal slots.

There are four single-liners to choose from, they all work on the same principle but have ascending levels of volatility. I have learned the hard way that Triple Dough and particularly Penta Pay can be somewhat ruinous, whereas Double Dough and Old Glory are fairly tame. (Penta Pay has a 1000x stake reel win, whereas Double Dough maxes out at 160x on the reels, to give you an idea.)

(Ignore The Joker, whilst that is a progressive it's a totally different sort of game, is a five-liner, and requires playing five coins for a chance of the progressive.)

Following my spawn on Cleopatra's Conquest the other week (2906x basegame hit, and then a couple of other decent wins on other slots):

New(ish) 3Dice Slot - 'CLEOPATRA'S CONQUEST', chasing the scatters.... - Casinomeister Forum

I decided to once again settle down for a crack at hitting one of the single-liner progressives. As it happened Double Dough represented the most favourable stake/prize ratio, and with it being gentle volatility overall I set about the task.

Long story short, after a total of over fifteen hours of constant plugging away at it, I did not win the progressive, although my wagering had contributed a chunk more to its value.

On the plus side it wasn't too bad in terms of losses, as my balance 'only' diminished by 1260x over that time. (The reels and wheel kind of just kick back percentage less progressive once you get a decent chunk of spins through it as its pay profile is so flat, this contrasts sharply with Penta Pay which can tear you a new arsehole.)

Logged back into 3Dice this morning and decided I couldn't be arsed with more Double Dough so I started playing Gemini (Twin Spin!), and what pops up in the chat feed? (The progressive scales with stake, so this person must have been on $2 spins as opposed to my 20p spins.)

And true enough, loading in Double Dough, the progressive is back to its reseed value of 1000x.

Now to be clear on this, I'm not complaining about the games. I know exactly that the deal with them is, I know that the chance of hitting the progressive win is very small, and that if you don't hit it, you're bleeding away some RTP to a win that you almost certainly won't win. I get that.

I also know it's a pretty stupid endeavour if you look at it rationally, most of 3Dice's regular videoslots can and do hit bigger wins than any of these single liners are capable of even including the progressive - and yet once in a while I'll decide I'm going to dig in for long extended sessions trying to win one of the buggers, and to date, having done ~120,000 spins across the four games, I've yet to see those three progressive symbols drop in on the winline.

I think the thing with these progressives is that they feel very winnable, they're not that massive, and you see them get won on a fairly regular basis, I just figure that eventually my number will come up, I mean, there's no way I'd chase a Mega Moolah or Jackpot King progressive as you're looking at beyond lottery odds to win one of those things.

Anyone else got a weakness for chasing a progressive, or am I stuck in my own little crazy corner?

Just as an aside I've hit the top reel wins on both Triple Dough and Penta Pay, which are 600x and 1000x respectively. In the case of Triple Dough it's two 3x multipliers working together to make 9x , and Penta Pay does two lots of 5x to make 25x. In both cases the third 3x/5x symbol is the progressive win.

(The other thing that makes Triple Dough and Penta Pay more dangerous is you need to play three coins for the wheel/progressive, so your minimum stake is effectively increased by 50% to 30p, whereas Double Dough and Old Glory are two coins, so only 20p.)

 

[dunover]

One of my little quests at 3Dice over the years has been to hit a progressive on their single-liner games. These are really simple slots but I quite like them, they have a selection of reel wins (with varying multipliers), a spinny wheel bonus round, and the progressive wins themselves.

The progressives tend not to actually be that big, 1500-2000x stake would be a pretty chunky amount for them to get to, we're not talking Mega Moolah type stuff here. In fact they're generally smaller prizes as a multiplication of stake than you can hit on their normal slots.

There are four single-liners to choose from, they all work on the same principle but have ascending levels of volatility. I have learned the hard way that Triple Dough and particularly Penta Pay can be somewhat ruinous, whereas Double Dough and Old Glory are fairly tame. (Penta Pay has a 1000x stake reel win, whereas Double Dough maxes out at 160x on the reels, to give you an idea.)

(Ignore The Joker, whilst that is a progressive it's a totally different sort of game, is a five-liner, and requires playing five coins for a chance of the progressive.)

View attachment 202076

Following my spawn on Cleopatra's Conquest the other week (2906x basegame hit, and then a couple of other decent wins on other slots):

New(ish) 3Dice Slot - 'CLEOPATRA'S CONQUEST', chasing the scatters.... - Casinomeister Forum

I decided to once again settle down for a crack at hitting one of the single-liner progressives. As it happened Double Dough represented the most favourable stake/prize ratio, and with it being gentle volatility overall I set about the task.

Long story short, after a total of over fifteen hours of constant plugging away at it, I did not win the progressive, although my wagering had contributed a chunk more to its value.

On the plus side it wasn't too bad in terms of losses, as my balance 'only' diminished by 1260x over that time. (The reels and wheel kind of just kick back percentage less progressive once you get a decent chunk of spins through it as its pay profile is so flat, this contrasts sharply with Penta Pay which can tear you a new arsehole.)

Logged back into 3Dice this morning and decided I couldn't be arsed with more Double Dough so I started playing Gemini (Twin Spin!), and what pops up in the chat feed? (The progressive scales with stake, so this person must have been on $2 spins as opposed to my 20p spins.)

View attachment 202068

And true enough, loading in Double Dough, the progressive is back to its reseed value of 1000x.

View attachment 202069

Now to be clear on this, I'm not complaining about the games. I know exactly that the deal with them is, I know that the chance of hitting the progressive win is very small, and that if you don't hit it, you're bleeding away some RTP to a win that you almost certainly won't win. I get that.

I also know it's a pretty stupid endeavour if you look at it rationally, most of 3Dice's regular videoslots can and do hit bigger wins than any of these single liners are capable of even including the progressive - and yet once in a while I'll decide I'm going to dig in for long extended sessions trying to win one of the buggers, and to date, having done ~120,000 spins across the four games, I've yet to see those three progressive symbols drop in on the winline.

I think the thing with these progressives is that they feel very winnable, they're not that massive, and you see them get won on a fairly regular basis, I just figure that eventually my number will come up, I mean, there's no way I'd chase a Mega Moolah or Jackpot King progressive as you're looking at beyond lottery odds to win one of those things.

Anyone else got a weakness for chasing a progressive, or am I stuck in my own little crazy corner?

Just as an aside I've hit the top reel wins on both Triple Dough and Penta Pay, which are 600x and 1000x respectively. In the case of Triple Dough it's two 3x multipliers working together to make 9x , and Penta Pay does two lots of 5x to make 25x. In both cases the third 3x/5x symbol is the progressive win.

(The other thing that makes Triple Dough and Penta Pay more dangerous is you need to play three coins for the wheel/progressive, so your minimum stake is effectively increased by 50% to 30p, whereas Double Dough and Old Glory are two coins, so only 20p.)

View attachment 202077
View attachment 202078

Did you not get rodgered by Tunzamunni once too, on Viper? As with all progressives, the 'ticket' so to speak is a reflection of minimum stake. So each spin you get one ticket for a 20p minimum play or whatever it is, and ten for a £2 play. So the $2 player was always 10x more likely than you, given an equal amount of spins, to win the jackpot. This is why most of the Mega Moolahs went to £5 and £7.50 players etc.

So yeah, I'd be inclined to agree with you that minimum stake jackpot chasing is a fool's errand. An exercise in futile hope over pragmatism.

 

[conker]

@ChopleyIOM you should bring all your experiences together from your posts and stick an ebook up on Amazon. I know your frustrations can torment you, but they don't half make good reading . Thanks for sharing as always.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Did you not get rodgered by Tunzamunni once too, on Viper? As with all progressives, the 'ticket' so to speak is a reflection of minimum stake. So each spin you get one ticket for a 20p minimum play or whatever it is, and ten for a £2 play. So the $2 player was always 10x more likely than you, given an equal amount of spins, to win the jackpot. This is why most of the Mega Moolahs went to £5 and £7.50 players etc.

So yeah, I'd be inclined to agree with you that minimum stake jackpot chasing is a fool's errand. An exercise in futile hope over pragmatism.

These ones appear to work on a different principle, and my reading of it is that your chance of winning the progressive remains identical on each stake, however the size of the progressive itself changes relative to stake.

Before you enter the game you need to choose your coin size, and this is then fixed for that session on the game.

So with a 10p coin size, this is what I get. (Remember it's two coins to activate the progressive, so 20p spins.)

Whereas a £1 coin size results in this.

Or if you've been getting some Starmer-style freebies, or maybe some Tory Covid PPE contracts and you're feeling very flush, a £5 coin size gets you this.

I'm not quite sure how the maths behind it work, last night when I was playing on 20p spins, before finally giving up and going to bed, this is where the progressive was.

But after it got won this morning, on a higher stake, the 20p progressive reset to £200, so there's clearly a link there. Obviously on 20p spins I'm contributing less to the progressive than the £2 spin players so I get why my progressive is smaller, but when the £2 spin player won the progressive, my 20p progressive got reset as well.

I don't know what happens if that was reversed, so if I won the progressive on 20p, surely it can't reset the £2 progressive as well, as otherwise all of those contributions from £2 spins will basically have disappeared.

20p and £2 both reset to 1000x stake, but different amounts. However on £2 coin size (£4 stake) the progressive is currently £6237 which is 1559x, and £5 coin (£10 stake) is £16,293, or 1628x stake.

So, erm, I'm not sure really.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

@ChopleyIOM you should bring all your experiences together from your posts and stick an ebook up on Amazon. I know your frustrations can torment you, but they don't half make good reading . Thanks for sharing as always.

I guess that's what my YT channel is for really, there are lord knows how many hundreds of hours of my waffling up on there

Back on my earlier YT channels I did a lot of online slots coverage, but on the current incarnation I basically stick to the fruit machine content. The online casino stuff generated a fair bit of aggro for me one way or another, especially when I had a pop at The Bandit and also Roshtein and the shifty casinos he was playing at - so these days I just steer clear of the whole thing. (I've reuploaded a handful of my old online slots videos to my current channel, but not many.)

I like writing too, hence these long review/experience posts here at CM

 

[jasonuk]

But after it got won this morning, on a higher stake, the 20p progressive reset to £200, so there's clearly a link there. Obviously on 20p spins I'm contributing less to the progressive than the £2 spin players so I get why my progressive is smaller, but when the £2 spin player won the progressive, my 20p progressive got reset as well.

It sounds like an asymmetric progressive to encourage people to bet bigger.

That would mean that a 20p progressive winner gets their 1000x seed (£200) plus any contributions made at 20p stakes; and a £2 progressive winner gets their 1000x seed (£2000) plus any contributions made at 20p, 50p, £1 and £2 stakes.

So that would suggest around £6240 carried forward from previous (and very recent) contributions at £5 and £10 stake. 1000x seed for £10k + £6240 + £54 of new contributions at lower stakes = £16294.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

It sounds like an asymmetric progressive to encourage people to bet bigger.

That would mean that a 20p progressive winner gets their 1000x seed (£200) plus any contributions made at 20p stakes; and a £2 progressive winner gets their 1000x seed (£2000) plus any contributions made at 20p, 50p, £1 and £2 stakes.

So that would suggest around £6240 carried forward from previous (and very recent) contributions at £5 and £10 stake. 1000x seed for £10k + £6240 + £54 of new contributions at lower stakes = £16294.

OK then that makes sense TBH I think it's a decent way to do it because you don't feel like you're getting a massively gimped 'progressive experience' as it were. (Mega Moolah is famously terrible for this, whereas the Blueprint 'Jackpot King' series handle it very well.)

The game is identical on any stake, with exactly the same reel sets used, and it's only fair that those lumping away on bigger stakes, so contributing more to the progressives, get a bigger prize should they land it.

Mind you it's all slightly academic for me as I can't land the bloody progressive for love nor money. Mainly money.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Just hit this again, straight 1000x pay. Actually saw it come in as well, was rather hoping the third 5x symbol would drop into place but I'll settle for 1000x!

I should also note I was 1166x down from my starting position at this point too, so all this has done is repaired most of the damage on this most foolish of missions to land the progressive on Penta Pay, the highest volatility of all the single-liners.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Gah! I'm not complaining, but come on folks, just the three, and I'll leave the game content.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

I think the sensible thing to do here might be to give up.

I started on this yesterday with £700 and somehow after many hours of constant spinning I'm actually in profit despite not hitting the progressive, which is only 1676x stake anyway. This morning I've hit 1000x, 500x and 333x and my balance is nearly £850.

EXECUTIVE DECISION TIME - I'm going to abort and I'll go and make a video about an old fruit machine for my YT channel instead.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

This was my balance's low point a little earlier this morning, so quite the recovery really. Sometimes I think the knack is knowing when to bail out.

 

[jasonuk]

EXECUTIVE DECISION TIME - I'm going to abort and I'll go and make a video about an old fruit machine for my YT channel instead.

I better get caught up then, I've got a few I haven't watched yet!

The interesting aside here would be the RTP curve:

• If you know the reel strips (since 3Dice tend to use genuine reels) then you can work out the base RTP excluding progressive and the probability of landing the jackpot
• You would thus know the expected RTP contribution to the jackpots (which would be calculated as seed and increments - similar to how WMS do it)
• Putting that together, you can work out when the game is EV+ - although as you've already said, as with any progressive it would be theoretical rather than tangible.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

I better get caught up then, I've got a few I haven't watched yet!

The interesting aside here would be the RTP curve:

• If you know the reel strips (since 3Dice tend to use genuine reels) then you can work out the base RTP excluding progressive and the probability of landing the jackpot
• You would thus know the expected RTP contribution to the jackpots (which would be calculated as seed and increments - similar to how WMS do it)
• Putting that together, you can work out when the game is EV+ - although as you've already said, as with any progressive it would be theoretical rather than tangible.

Yeah I think this would definitely be possible (I'm 99.9% sure all these games use genuine reel strips), the problem of course is that, as I've found myself, you can quite easily go 125,000+ spins without landing a progressive, so your EV+ position really is indeed far more theoretical than realisable.

I could just email Anna at 3Dice and ask her, I asked her about the progressive contributions on Battle of Bastogne and she emailed me back with the numbers for how the RTP was sliced up into MEGA and MINOR progressive contributions, and the rest of the game. (And she specifically made the point that the progressive contributions were skewed towards the MINOR as that one was easier to win, which is true as I've won that twice on smaller stakes.)

Since I've given up on Penta Pay and all the other single-liners don't have great jackpots at the moment, there's always the option of 'The Joker', this has a fixed coin size of 10p and you need to play five coins to activate the progressive win, so 50p per spin. It's currently sat at 3210x stake.

I mean, obviously there is the option of withdrawing my balance but that's for wimps

You can see winline five is the progressive (currently £1605), I've had the three 3Dice symbols on a couple of the other winlines, but they only pay £100-£400 on those.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Well it's super easy to work out the progressive contribution on this, as it goes up by 10p for every £2.50 wagered (I'm assuming I'm the only person on the site playing it now as it's completely consistent).

So out of the 95.22% stated RTP, 4% of that goes to the progressive which leaves 91.22% for the rest of the game. It's actually pretty tame volatility though, with those single line 3Dice symbols being the biggest other pays on there at 200-800x.

Still, an 8.88% house edge, assuming no progressive is won, is pretty harsh, and at a 50p spin requirement, it could still get expensive.

Then again, speculate to accumulate and all that.....

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Start:

£848 balance
Progressive at £1605.20p

Eight Hours Later....

End:

£575 balance
Progressive at £1700.30p

So I've put nearly £100 into the progressive, my little present to the 3Dice community (I don't think anyone else was playing it as I only saw messages for my big wins coming up in chat.)

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Right I'm going in for day two of this bastard, it is my now MY progressive to win and I won't be having anyone STEALING the money I've put into it.

Some shifty character has played some money through it overnight, trying to dip their hands into my pockets, albeit not much, as the progressive starts today's session at £1702.30p.

I have no idea why I'm doing this, yesterday I had a withdrawable balance of £848, today that's down to £575, and without the progressive win on this session, that traffic is only going carry on in the wrong direction.

However that's defeatist talk, so it's ONWARD TO VICTORY!

 

[philderby]

Looking forward to updates

 

[dunover]

Like watching a bloke trying to empty the pool with a sieve.

 

[Reelsoffun]

Never knew you was into the 3 reel progressives chops, I have dug out the one I did over 2 decades ago.... It might be of interest to you as it had at the time some rare things going on for this type of progressive, the main ones being you didn't need to play max coins to win the progressive, had fairly high frequency JACKPOT hit rate and it had a coin flip 50/50 gamble for all other wins. max 5 gambles.

The RTP varied depending on coins played 92% - 96%

You could play 1-5 lines so 1 to 5 coins in effect.

What's super annoying is that I had this coded onto a real MPU5 RIO machine ( converted from a super streak IIRC ) But alas I no longer have the machine or ROMS as it would be running on MFME!

If you got any questions you can ask, as I know you love the nuts and bolts of the maths etc

Managed to dig out a pic of the concept art/slot taken from a old flash file, the real machine was different but similar, I did have a photo of the real machine, if I ever find it I post it, but had many house moves since then so probably got binned by the misses.

 

[Reelsoffun]

I did forgot to say that the player often gets genuine near misses on max lines due to the first reel has a stacked progressive 7’s so landing that and one on middle of reel 2 gives you the chance of progressive win if it lands any position on last reel.

Obviously, ordinarily the player wouldn’t know just how close they are to a jackpot at that point but as I designed it I know exactly what it is and it’s very close

 

[ChopleyIOM]

I did forgot to say that the player often gets genuine near misses on max lines due to the first reel has a stacked progressive 7’s so landing that and one on middle of reel 2 gives you the chance of progressive win if it lands any position on last reel.

Obviously, ordinarily the player wouldn’t know just how close they are to a jackpot at that point but as I designed it I know exactly what it is and it’s very close

I was wondering about this on The Joker, I'm sure the reels are 'real reels' but only one of the five paylines pays the progressive with the three 3Dice symbols, I've had them on two of the five paylines, but paylines other than the progressive payline. I guess there's an equal chance of getting them on any, you just need to hit the one in five chance to get it on the progressive payline. This also means of course that hitting them for any of the other wins they award (200x-800x depending on payline) is also vanishingly unlikely.

Your sim looks pretty cool, although for now I am locked into the madness of trying to hit it for real on The Joker

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Well that's seven and a half hours of lumping away at it today. The bad news is that I didn't win the progressive, the good news is that, somehow, I actually ended up £25 in profit on the session. Not bad going for a game with 91.22% RTP once the progressive contribution is removed.

The progressive now stands at £1779.90p. That's my money, I want it back! Well, some of it is, at least.

The other news is that me and Mrs Chopley were able to finish off watching 'RIVALS' on Disney+ whilst The Joker did its thing. Rivals has a lot of shagging in it, but then it is based on a Jilly Cooper book. Mrs Chopley remembers reading it as a teenager in the late 1980s.

Anyway, that progressive had better still be there when I get back to it tomorrow, or there'll be trouble.

START:

FINISH:

 

[Reelsoffun]

Your sim looks pretty cool, although for now I am locked into the madness of trying to hit it for real on The Joker

Not really a sim as exact math of the real built machine, I wish I had never sold it, probably worth a small fortune now as I only had one made! Glasses, reels bands, ROMS, all custom made.

Going on the way things have gone would have been a slot collectors must have for sure. Ah well too late now lol, maybe I will put some in the flash ver if I still have it see if I can jackpot it before you hit the joker LOL

 

[ChopleyIOM]

DING DING ROUND THREE.

I'm feeling good about this session. Progressive ahoy!

£1797.20p up for grabs.

 

[Reelsoffun]

Good luck I feel you’re going to need bucket loads to hit the progressive…….

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Good luck I feel you’re going to need bucket loads to hit the progressive…….

 

[philderby]

Miss the 'chasing 5 scatters/progressive' videos they were fun. nursed many hangovers watching them haha

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Back up to £757, go figure..... It's dropped in 160x (£80) a couple of times as well.

Still can't hit a line of the 3Dice symbols at all, let alone on winline 5 which is the progressive!

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Miss the 'chasing 5 scatters/progressive' videos they were fun. nursed many hangovers watching them haha

I've been toying with the idea of starting up a second channel just for reuploads of the old online slots videos. I wouldn't do full timecodes or anything as that's too much of an ask, but at least it'd get them back online. Some of the older ones are perhaps of some historical interest now, with sessions on the old Viper Client at a couple of different MG casinos, NetEnt slots that have long been retired (Beach, Wild Rockets, Evolution, etc), and suchlike.

I'd like to keep my main channel for the fruit machines and fruit machine emulation, but I do still have all the online slots videos archived out.

 

[dunover]

I've been toying with the idea of starting up a second channel just for reuploads of the old online slots videos. I wouldn't do full timecodes or anything as that's too much of an ask, but at least it'd get them back online. Some of the older ones are perhaps of some historical interest now, with sessions on the old Viper Client at a couple of different MG casinos, NetEnt slots that have long been retired (Beach, Rockets, Evolution, etc), and suchlike.

I'd like to keep my main channel for the fruit machines and fruit machine emulation, but I do still have all the online slots videos archived out.

WE WANT SCATTERVILLE SKUNKS!!

 

[ChopleyIOM]

And now back through the £800 barrier (£819 to be precise).

Assuming my sums on the progressive contribution are correct, if I'm not winning the progressive, I'm playing a 91.22% RTP slot.

Just goes to show you what low variance can do, nearly all the pays on this are in the 160x or less bracket, so you can actually get a nice little run going on it.

I'm busy collecting all 50 fast travel boards on the entire map in Forza Horizon 4 so having The Joker rumbling away like this is a perfectly acceptable accompaniment.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

WE WANT SCATTERVILLE SKUNKS!!

Yes that'd be in there too

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Well after this evening's six hour session I haven't managed to win the progressive, or get a line of 3Dice symbols on any of the other winlines, and yet somehow my session profit is £200.

I also managed to collect 49/50 fast travel boards in Forza Horizon 4, the only one remaining is the difficult bastard one on top of the church.

The progressive is now £1863.90p.

Winning progressives is hard! Who knew eh?

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Right I can go in for one more session on this and then I'll have to take a break as I'm going away for a few days (to Bonny Scotland, no less).

Rather excellently, 3Dice have sent out a Halloween bonus offer to their members (bonuses eh? We all remember those from years gone by!), so I'll be putting that to good use for this.

In this case it's 100% up to £100, with a 10xD+B WR (this may vary depending on VIP level, but what's what I got). Now, I still had a cash balance of £800 on the go, which would ordinarily make depositing on top of that balance to claim a bonus with a WR attached rather awkward, however at 3Dice what you can do is make use of the Personal Safe to claim the bonus.

This is all entirely legit and is built into the banking side of their site, I guess the idea is that it's convenient for both casino and players, and cuts down on processing costs and waiting around, especially where crypto is involved. (Personally I've moved over to Mifinity at 3Dice now, but that still has fees.)

So what I did here was withdraw my entire balance of £800 to my Personal Safe, then entered the bonus promo code into the cashier to activate the bonus, and then made a 'deposit' of £100 from my Personal Safe to claim the bonus.

You'll also see that the bonus basically has no restrictions on it except for a max bet of £20, this is standard issue with 3Dice bonuses, and as you can see there are no restrictions on playing a progressive.

And bingo! I have a balance of £200 to play with, albeit with wagering attached, and I didn't have to move any money out of or into 3Dice's ecosystem to do it, and I still have £700 safely tucked away in my Personal Safe!

The wagering doesn't bother me at all in this case, for starters 10xD+B is pretty much EV neutral anyway, but more importantly, for my batshit crazy chasing the progressive mission, what I'm really after is funds to plug away at it with. If I hit the bloody thing then the wagering becomes trivial, and if I don't hit it and lose, then the bonus served its purpose of cushioning the blow and giving me more time lump away at it.

It's spinning away now already - let's see how long the £200 lasts!

As a final note you can see how the wagering is going down normally despite me playing a progressive.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Ahem.

It makes a hell of a fuss as well, the screenshots don't do it justice, a mad alarm sounding thing goes off, the joker pops out of the machine, it zooms out to the wide shot, and then it all explodes into money

(Just noticed it resets the progressive amount before the third reel actually drops in.)

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Just added up all the Bandicam footage in terms of duration, only took a mere 26 hours......

Still some wagering left to do, but that one literally can't go wrong.

 

[Jono777]

Currently sat here eating a big plateful of my own words.

Didn't think this would end well so wtg mate

 

[philderby]

Congrats

 

[jasonuk]

Just added up all the Bandicam footage in terms of duration, only took a mere 26 hours......

Still some wagering left to do, but that one literally can't go wrong.

View attachment 202308

... and now, the 10 minute wagering montage with dance and techno music.

Congratulations!

 

[Reelsoffun]

Its a bit weird but I actually had a feeling that you was gonna get it out if you kept on.

1. You have played a lot of spins, and its a numbers game!

2. As it seeds at 5000 it hadn't been won in quite a while, and without knowing the math it "could" of been heading towards +EV esp while playing with bonus funds

3. You are one of the luckiest people online I know.

Another point that although its a dangerous president but when playing a progressive like that your only really down when you have lost the current value of the progressive, so in most cases you can throw a hell of a lot of plays through this type of game before your truely in trouble of a point of no return, not that I would ever recommend anyone chasing one out.

But Congrats, anyone that's prepared to push for one like that does deserve it.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

... and now, the 10 minute wagering montage with dance and techno music.

Congratulations!

All done, I just went over to Wild Waves on 45p spins and finished it off there, that's a nice gentle slot that always does a decent task of wagering. As it was I won a few quid on that as well (two lots of four scatters helped), so by the time I'd added my wagering-cleared funds to what I'd put into my safe earlier, the final numbers are quite agreeable!

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Its a bit weird but I actually had a feeling that you was gonna get it out if you kept on.

1. You have played a lot of spins, and its a numbers game!

2. As it seeds at 5000 it hadn't been won in quite a while, and without knowing the math it "could" of been heading towards +EV esp while playing with bonus funds

3. You are one of the luckiest people online I know.

Another point that although its a dangerous president but when playing a progressive like that your only really down when you have lost the current value of the progressive, so in most cases you can throw a hell of a lot of plays through this type of game before your truely in trouble of a point of no return, not that I would ever recommend anyone chasing one out.

But Congrats, anyone that's prepared to push for one like that does deserve it.

Whilst I haven't been sitting there watching it for the whole 26 hours or anything, if I've been in the same room as it, and had it in my field of view, I have kept half an eye on it. Those 3Dice symbols drop in all the time on all three reels, and on reels 1 and 2 they appear twice, one stop apart.

They also act as wilds and I've seen two of them on a winline substitute for wins all the time, and all over the 3x3 matrix.

Part of me was thinking 'surely they've got to drop in, on the same spin, in the correct configuration, eventually'?

It does about 720 spins an hour, so in 26 hours that's ~18,720 spins, not a massive number admittedly, but it's still a lot of chances for the RNG to pick the stops for each reel, and choose the desired position.

TBH I'd probably have settled for just getting one of the five '3Dice' winlines, which I did in the end, it just happened to be the progressive one!

Clearly I've been very spawny on this run (starting with the wildline on Cleopatra which kicked this whole progressive chasing thing off, as it gave me the bankroll to take it on), but I've taken my knocks at 3Dice over the years too. I've never got heavily involved with The Joker before, but I have with some of the other progressives there and seen that go quite badly wrong, so I've had the downswings as well as the ups. I've also seen many EV+ bonuses crash and burn, and I got off to the most abominable extended start on Arctic Adventure, which is still documented in its thread here at CM!

But yes, this has been an impressive run and I've got away with a very risky slotting strategy, Penta Pay nearly wiped me out and it wasn't the progressive that saved me there, just a superb run on basegame hits including the 1000x max basegame win. (And remember on my first day on The Joker, it had £300 off me!)

As an aside I just had a look through my screenshots gallery at 3Dice to see if I have any for The Joker, the win on my screenshot isn't impressive (160x), but what is very interesting is the size of the progressive.....

£13,761.50p! So it can clearly stick around for a lot, lot longer than it has this time!

 

[Reelsoffun]

Without knowing the math you are not going to know if it got that high due to natural deviation odds or if it had been hit but it had been missed due to someone not playing max coins when hit.

Although my slot was designed so 1 coin players could still win the progressive (eg landing it on line 1), people rarely did for fear they hit it on say line 3 when only line 1 in play, playing all 5 lines makes it 5 times easier to hit progressive ( "The Joker" don't have that) and no chance of missing it.

My slot while it was in the wild only ever got to about 17k from memory from a seed of 2.5k but mathematically it should be hit in less than half that LOL someone just sat on it till it hit after that and made very nice profit.

This is why slot math of this nature is secret tho as otherwise syndicated players could target +EV situations.

 

[Reelsoffun]

So you could also argue that local progressives are unfair due to someone with enough money to see it out in those situations compared to someone with limited bankroll, and was probably one reason the UKGC didn't move forward on CAT A games.

 

[mulven]

Enjoyed reading this thread yesterday.... delighted to see that you actually hit it! It's a shame LLS got in the way of you clean sweeping the leaderboard. I do love the transparency 3dice has with their proprietary software, that zeitgeist page is a beaut.

 

[jasonuk]

Given they were 4 days prior, still a chance for the clean sweep when that name drops off the leaderboard

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Slightly interestingly people have been playing The Joker since the progressive went, it's referred to in this table as 'Double Dice' which is what 3Dice must call it on their backend (down at the bottom of the list).

For the progressive to have climbed £10.30p, based on what I saw with the contributions from my play means it's had £257.50p wagered through it, not much, but it is getting played and slowly climbing again.

Can't see me ever taking it on again, (well, maybe if it gets big enough......) but Penta Pay still hasn't gone, and there's always the option of going for the 'big boy' progressive on 3Dice, which is Battle of Bastogne, but at £8,910 that's pretty small at the moment, it can often be seen up at £15K and more.

That's one where the progressive is the same on whatever stake you play, but the chances of winning it increase with higher stakes, that said I've had the MINI jackpot twice on 50p spins, and the MAJOR has been won on small stakes. There's a thread here on CM somewhere where someone won the MAJOR on a 10p spin!

Note that in this list the single-liner progressives are shown based on max stake, so Penta Pay wouldn't be £24K if I was playing it on 20p spins.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Enjoyed reading this thread yesterday.... delighted to see that you actually hit it! It's a shame LLS got in the way of you clean sweeping the leaderboard. I do love the transparency 3dice has with their proprietary software, that zeitgeist page is a beaut.
View attachment 202322

Yeah the Zeitgeist page is superb, a layer of transparency I really appreciate as you can see what their games have been paying out, and gives you a very good idea of what sort of big pays they're actually capable of.

Cleopatra's Conquest for example, which I hit the wildline on, has knocked out 6047x stake, which says to me someone's had two wildlines in the free spins round, presumably from the fully evolved reels.

 

[mulven]

Yeah the Zeitgeist page is superb, a layer of transparency I really appreciate as you can see what their games have been paying out, and gives you a very good idea of what sort of big pays they're actually capable of.

I've recently had a hyper fixation of making my own little list of slots and their rtp/maxwin and any important notes. I love when a provider has a datasheet or clearly states the exact RTP and max win as it makes my data entry that much quicker! PG Soft had a habit of until a year or two ago, advertising a theoretical max (infinity spins) and an observed max win (a billion or more spins). Flirting Scholar was advertised as 22500x max win but will only pay out around 1407x (observed in a billion simulated spins). After finding their repository of gamesheets I was able to correct all the misinformation! The games from before still have those unrealistic numbers advertised but thankfully all their newer games only advertise the observed wins.

After hearing about all the praise for 3Dice from Casinomeister (and their awards), I decided to add True/Odds games to my list and some games weren't clear on max win or couldn't be easily deduced so when I found the zeitgeist page I was overjoyed as I could, at the very least have guideline numbers as well as some of my guesses being confirmed. In the case of cleopatra I had assumed that one wild line was the max win but due to the page updated my entry. I wish every provider had a page like this, would be wonderful.

 

[jasonuk]

After hearing about all the praise for 3Dice from Casinomeister (and their awards), I decided to add True/Odds games to my list and some games weren't clear on max win or couldn't be easily deduced so when I found the zeitgeist page I was overjoyed as I could, at the very least have guideline numbers as well as some of my guesses being confirmed. In the case of cleopatra I had assumed that one wild line was the max win but due to the page updated my entry. I wish every provider had a page like this, would be wonderful.

The mistake here is giving credibility to the term "max win", which is an artificial win cap. Traditional slots - including those at 3Dice - don't actually cap the multiplier by stake, but will have a maximum liability (in currency) to prevent them owing infinity dollars if that perfect game round comes in.

For most providers (although PlayNGo is an exception), when they say "win up to" it'll be a guide of what the best single spin is, rather than a cap. So in the case of 3Dice's Cleopatra it's theoretically possible to get more than one wild line in a bonus - and so far one lucky player has managed it.

Of course, some providers take that to the extreme too - Pragmatic have declared some laughably impossible "win up to" numbers over the years... most slots will quote based on their 1-10 billion spins, some of those I doubt you'd see in a trillion...

As always, there's an irony of how the scratchcard providers are the ones pushing "max wins" as marketing bait, when they have complete control (no subsequent RNG calls) of the game round... hey you just won 65,000x... but wait, 5,000x cap