Lots of songs lie to you, and none more so than golden oldie, Everyone’s a Winner Baby, by Hot Chocolate (and there’s a great cover by Ty Segal). If everyone was a winner, winning wouldn’t be so notable. The truth of online casino play is that most people have a great time, but will probably lose small amounts of money in the long run.
But, you might be a winner. And you might be a big winner. And for a lot of players, it’s that chance – often at odds in the millions to one against – that keeps them coming back.
Stories of big wins go around the world because they seem to prove that that next spin might change your life.
Here are some UK online casino players who have won fortunes, all of them playing on progressive slot games.
1 – Jonathan Haywood wins £13.2 million on Mega Moolah
This win was a world record at the time back in 2015. Jonathan’s record has now gone, but it’s gone to players on the same game, Mega Moolah.
Mega Moolah is a progressive jackpot slot. These games provide almost all of the biggest wins. They work slightly differently from standard slots. A standard slot takes your money and awards prizes that are largely independent of your stake. The progressive slot takes a slice of each bet and puts it in a jackpot fund.
These games were first big in real-world casinos in places like Las Vegas where players at thousands of games can be linked up to make a big prize pot. But online there are no limits: progressives can link up any number of games being played by millions of players. These machines are usually either locally linked – pooling money from just players on a single site – or might network across the whole internet.
It’s by doing this that huge prizes can be built up. And by being the most popular such game, Mega Moolah, by Microgaming, has risen to the top of the pile, with prize pools going up massively quickly.
Jonathan Haywood was playing Mega Moolah with a 25p stake. And in return, he got £13.2 million. Haywood’s back story – he was a former soldier, and we were told that his winning spin was a one-off as he left a site, and he gave a lot of money to help his family – helped spread the good news, and it’s his win that really cements Mega Moolah as the standout progressive slot.
2 – Neil from Aberdeen wins £6.3 million on Hall of Gods
By 2017 there were a lot of big progressives. And these games are guaranteed to pay out at some point, probably changing someone’s life in the process. Staying relatively anonymous, Neil from the north of Scotland, ponied up a chunky £4 bet on the Ancient Greek-themed game from Playtech that’s a must on every good online casino site.
Apparently, Neil put his money and then popped up, only finding out he’d won when he came back to his computer.
He won the prize at Casumo, a site known for its big wins – and for making a lot of noise about them.
3 – An Anonymous Player wins £6.23 million on Mega Fortune
If a site doesn’t have Mega Moolah it needs to have – and probably will have – Mega Fortune. This game from NetEnt is probably the second biggest progressive title in the world.
Mega Moolah is a super simple game. Mega Fortune is slightly more involved, but it’s not changed much over the years, and against the modern game it looks really old fashioned these days.
But players will queue up to play it because there is a chance of winning big prizes. Our anonymous player hit the prize game and saw it come home with a £1.25 bet – not a bad return.
4 – D.P wins £7.1 million on Mega Moolah
Mega Moolah is a phenomenon. There aren’t many slot games that make the news, and there aren’t many games that have a whole eco-system of websites dedicated to following their every move and offering tips on winning the big prizes.
And this is why.
Mega Moolah is our first and third entry on the list. We have something of a name, D.P. (Dave Phillips? Dawn Pointer? Who knows!?), and we also know that this is a record for a smart-phone win.
Mega Moolah is available on the small screen too! And D.P. was playing at Zodiac, by no means one of the biggest sites on the web.
D.P. won his life-changing prize in August 2016.
How to Win Big Progressive Prizes
These lads and lasses won their prizes on the classic games.
These games are favourites and commonly available, and they are closely followed.
We have very strong views on sites that offer to sell you tips on how to win. Do not buy tips on how to win.
The truth is that the vast majority of games are luck and luck alone. There is, however, one exception to this truth, and that is progressive jackpots.
Progressive jackpots may have an element of predictability in their pay-out cycles. Because the prizes are triggered by random sequences that are programmed to pay out at some point it does follow that the longer it has been since a game paid out its progressive jackpot, the more likely it is to pay out its progressive jackpot. Very slightly. And you have no way of knowing which iteration of the game is going to pay out.
So your best bet is to pick games that you enjoy playing and to make sure that you follow safe gambling advice, including setting limits on your gambling that you stick to and never trying to chase losses.
If you want to play for the biggest prizes and maybe try to rack up on of these big wins yourself then you need to check the jackpots or the progressives tab at your favourite casino site and look for the biggest prizes. However, remember that most games these days offer big pay-outs even without a progressive.
