Why play online slots when table games have a lower house edge?
People like playing online slots for numerous reasons, but there is really one main reason. Slots are the only online casino games where one small bet can change your life forever. Table games like roulette and craps that have no progressive jackpot don’t offer the chance of winning a big jackpot on a single bet. You simply don’t hear about people winning a million bucks playing blackjack. However, many online slots millionaires have been made, and even more at land casinos. Check out ThumbsUpBonus where you can find information about different casinos and of course the best bonuses for all slot lovers out there!
So why do players keep playing all types of slots, even if they know the house edge is worse?
Let’s take an example of a $500,000 progressive jackpot, which could be won with a $1 bet. If the particular game has a 90% payback rate, the house edge is 10%. For the sake of this example, 1% is contributed towards the progressive jackpot. The odds of winning are 50,000,000 to 1, considering that the jackpot is one hundredth of the payback. So if the machine is spun about 1 million times a year, the casino can expect to pay the jackpot about every six months.
Compare this to blackjack with a house edge of around 0.5%. Let’s say an average player buys $100 in chips and bets $5 at a time. If by some miracle you got lucky and played until you were $500,000 up, it would take you a several years. The odds of against achieving this though would be about 10,000 to 1, which is still better than the odds in the slots example give above. The reality is that this never happens, but it can with slots, even with worse odds.
Another reason why you see more frequent slots winners is that so many more people in fact play online slots. So its a simple case of the more people playing, the more will win.
So the average person can play slots and make $500,000 from $1 wager, but even the luckiest blackjack player will needs thousands of winning hands at a low wager amount. So he is facing bad odds as well as a very low probability of actually winning for long enough to make a huge sum. This player would have to spend countless hours online, and would not stop when he is, say, $5000 up, but keep on going. Ever played blackjack? Get the picture?
Yet another reason is an obvious one: instant gratification. The flashing reels, combined with the sounds and the win meter ticking is simply more appealing than table games to many people.
One spin at a progressive jackpot could change your life forever.