The dream of every pokies player is to someday hit a big jackpot, one that will be worth millions and change their life forever. But not every poker machine gives you the same opportunity to live out that fantasy. Some pokies pay out much better or much bigger than others, and depending on what you want out of your play, you might want to seek out these high payout pokies rather than just playing the first game that catches your eye.
One ways in which a poker machine can be a high payout game is by returning a better percentage to players. The higher the return to player, the better the players will do in the long run. For instance, if a machine is said to have a player return of 95 percent, that means that on average, it will pay out $0.95 for every dollar that is put in. Of course, it could take a very long time for a machine to come close to that percentage, as it doesn’t take into account short term runs of good or bad luck, or how frequently jackpots pay out.
When it comes to live casinos, pokies with very high payouts are often pointed out to attract players. Walk onto the casino floor and you might see signs advertising machines that give back 97 or 98 percent. That’s very high for a live pokie: most pay out anywhere from 85 percent to 95 percent, though there are exceptions in most directions, and higher-stakes machines will tend to pay out somewhat better than penny games.
On the other hand, online pokies tend to offer better returns to players. It can often be difficult to find the exact percentages that an online poker machine expects to return, and often different online casinos can set the same game to pay out at different rates. However, plenty of online pokies pay out at 95 percent or more, meaning that in most cases, online poker machines offer higher payouts than their live counterparts.
While everyone wants the best odds possible when playing pokies or any other casino game, that’s not often what players mean when they talk about high payout pokies. Instead, they’re referring to the kinds of poker machines that offer huge prizes to players: either in terms of big fixed prizes or major progressive jackpots.
If you want to find a poker machine that has the potential to pay out big, you can always check the pay table and find out what the largest prize available is. Typically, hitting five wild symbols in a row will be the largest “standard” prize on a machine; this could be thousands or tens of thousands of coins, depending on the game you are playing.
Even larger prizes can sometimes be won in bonus rounds, and machines will often advertise the maximum possible win from a free spins game, even if it’s virtually impossible to achieve. But the biggest prizes in online pokies come from progressive jackpots, which can sometimes award as much as millions of dollars when they hit.
That’s the main reason why games with progressive jackpots are among the most popular at any online casino: the big prizes attract more players, which in turn drive the jackpots even higher (as progressive jackpots are funded by a small percentage of each bet made).
The biggest progressive jackpots are always changing: when one gets hit and drops back down to its minimum account, another one climbs up the list of the richest prizes available. Still, a few machines are known for awarding big progressive jackpots, including the following:
If you want to play on a high payout pokie, you’ll need to make sure to do everything you can in order to improve your chances and get the best returns possible. On most machines, that means you’ll have to play for the maximum number of coins; progressive jackpots are often only available to those who play for the maximum, as you’ll have to hit the winning combination on the right payline to score the top prize. Other machines randomly award the progressive jackpot, but your chances will still be based on how much you played for on each spin.
You might also want to take a look at which progressive jackpots have taken the longest time to hit. Your odds of winning won’t be any better, but a bloated jackpot may be enough to tilt the return in your favour, meaning it is actually profitable (at least in theory) for you to play a given machine!