The phrase ‘money isn’t everything’ is often used to downplay the importance of money, in a consolatory way, but the old saying was never more aptly illustrated than by the tragic tale of former Las Vegas cocktail waitress Cynthia Jay-Brennan.

On January 26, 2000, at the age of 37, Jay-Brennan invested $27, at $3 a spin, in a ‘Megabucks’ slot machine at the Desert Inn – which closed in August that year and was subsequently demolished to make way for Wynn Las Vegas – and won a record-breaking jackpot of $34.96 million. An infrequent and careful gambler, Jay-Brennan enjoyed living the ‘high life’ for a few short weeks, marrying her boyfriend, honeymooning in Fiji and looking after her family financially.

However, on March 11, during a family visit to Las Vegas, the car in which she and her elder sister, Lela, were travelling was smashed into by a habitual drunk driver, while stationary at traffic lights. Her sister died at the scene and Jay-Brennan was rushed to hospital, where she remained unconscious for several days. When she regained consciousness, she was informed by medical staff that her fifth lumbar vertebra had been shattered, leaving her paralysed from the waist down.

The offending driver was sentenced to serve a minimum of 28 years’ imprisonment, but that, of course, was scant consolation for Jay-Brennan. While thankful to be able to pay her medical expenses, she said, ‘I’d give every cent I have’ to turn back the clock to the days before the accident.

Slot machines blow ‘hot’ and ‘cold’

No, they don’t. The outcome of each spin of the reels is determined by a random number generator – or, at least, a pseudo-random number generator – and is an independent event, completely unaffected by previous events. The odds of winning are determined by the number of reels, the number of symbols on each reel and the ‘weighting’ of each symbol. Weighting information is usually known only to the casino, but the point is that the odds of winning, say, the jackpot, are exactly the same whether the slot last paid out the jackpot on the previous spin or six months ago.

The longer I play the better my chances of winning

Not so. Each outcome is completely random and independent, so the odds of winning are the same however long you play. In fact, the longer you play, the closer you’ll come to the percentage return-to-player (% RTP) figure for the slot in question. % RTP typically ranges between 85% for offline casinos and 96%, or more, for online casinos, but the inherent house edge actually means that the longer you play the worse your chances of winning.

A percentage return-to-player figure of 92% means I’ll only lose £8 of every £100 I stake

No, it doesn’t. The percentage return-to-player (% RTP) is an average, calculated over infinity – or, in practical terms, the lifetime of the slot – and, as such, does not apply to a single gaming session. In the short term, you could win the jackpot, win a little, lose a little or lose £100 for every £100 you stake, so don’t rely on % RTP as an accurate guide to returns.

Casino staff can ‘loosen’ or ‘tighten’ slot machines

No, they can’t. Whether lower than average, high than average or just plain average, the payout ratio of any slot machine is determined by a microprocessor, pre-programmed at the factory. Casino staff can do nothing to change it, one way or the other.

Introduction

Microgaming‘s vampire-themed slot is transformed into an exciting 5×3 reel Mega Moolah game. In addition to all of the well-known bonus features, the game now has an RTP of 93.4%, with a jackpot contribution of 5.3%. There are four progressive jackpots to delight jackpot hunters too.

Features

By stepping into the Chamber of Spins you’ll find four progressive bonus games, each with its own unique features. As you play through the Chamber of Spins, you’ll collect reel modifiers the more times you trigger the free spins bonus round.

Wild Desire Bonus

You can experience some extraordinary fortunes if you trigger the Wild Desire Bonus feature randomly on any spin. You can win the game’s maximum win of 12,000 times your stake when it is active, turning all 5 reels wild.

Free Spins

The Chamber of Spins round begins when three, four, or five golden door knockers appear. Amber, Troy, Sarah, and Michael, the game’s heroes, each have their own bonus game. After triggering the free spins round five, ten, or fifteen times, you will unlock the remaining games in Chamber of Spins as you progress.

Amber – As soon as Amber triggers, you will receive 10 free spins and all wins will be multiplied by 5x. During this feature, you can retrigger up to 20 free spins.

Troy – You’ll unlock 15 free spins and the Vampire Bat feature if you trigger the Chamber of Spins feature five times. The vampire bats transform random symbols into 2x or 3x multipliers for a total of 6x.

Michael – The 10th trigger leads to the vampire lover. A rolling reels feature will be triggered and you will be awarded 20 free spins. Cascading wins increase the multiplier here by 1 from 2x to 5x, but free spins cannot be retriggered.

Sarah – As a reward for triggering 15 features, Sarah, the human, awards 25 free spins with Wild Vine symbols that randomly transform 15 symbols into wilds. In this game, landing two to five scatter symbols will award you one to four additional free spins.

Prior to March 20, 2022, Jose Lopez, a self-employed painter from Lynnwood, Washington, was already no stranger to success at the Tulalip Resort Casino, approximately 30 minutes’ drive from his home. Lopez had previously won a slot machine jackpot worth $20,000, but that windfall merely served as prologue to the events that unfolded early on a Sunday morning, shortly after midnight.

At the behest of his girlfriend, Lopez, who reportedly usually played ‘Triple Fortune’ and ‘Buffalo Gold’ slot machines, tried his luck on ‘Golden Charms’, which is a 3×5-reel, 50-payline progressive jackpot slot. For a $5 bet, Lopez, 39, lined up the five golden fish required to win the ‘Grand’ progressive jackpot on a single payline and scooped a massive $2.37 million. In so doing, he beat the previous record for a slot machine payout at Tulalip Resort Casino, $1.1 million, also set on Golden Charms two years earlier. In fact, registered the highest slot machine payout ever reported in Washington State.

Dan Miller, spokesperson for the AAA Four Diamond resort, said, ‘He [Lopez] took home some cash, but the majority was in a check. They [The State of Washington] withhold 25% in tax.’ The tax deduction amounted to an eye-watering sum of $592,500, or thereabouts, but the somewhat reluctant gambler still profited to the tune of $1.78 million.

According to one estimate, based on the number of stops and the number of stops corresponding to a jackpot symbol on each reel, the probability of winning the ‘Megabucks’ progressive jackpot is 1 in 49.8 million spins. Nevertheless, the late Elmer Sherwin, who died in 2007 at the age of 93, defied astronomical odds – in the order of trillions to one – to win the jackpot not once, but twice, at two different Las Vegas casinos, sixteen years apart.

Sherwin was already a 76-year-old retiree when, on November 22, 1989, he lined up the Megabucks symbols for the first time at The Mirage on the Las Vegas Strip, which had only opened to the public earlier that day, and collected $4.65 million for his $3 stake. According to a spokesman for The Mirage, Sherwin played for about an hour-and-a-half and invested about $100 before winning what was, at the time, claimed to be the largest jackpot even won on a slot machine in Las Vegas.

Evidently not entirely satisfied with winning the progressive jackpot once, Sherwin continued to pursue what he later called his ‘life’s dream’ of a second Megabucks win for the next sixteen years. The stars, or at least the Megabucks symbols, aligned for a second time at the Cannery Casino in Downtown Las Vegas on September 16, 2005, and Sherwin collected a further $21.1 million. By now aged 92, Sherwin donated much of his winnings to charitable causes, including to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, which had caused catastrophic damage to cities along the Gulf Coast, including New Orleans, the previous month.