Let It Ride Progressive
If you have ever seen an advertisement for a casino that had huge amounts (often in the millions) offered as top payouts you have probably seen games with a progressive jackpot. Keep reading to learn what a progressive jackpot is, how they work, different types of progressives, and where you can find them.
As with Caribbean Stud, there have been few changes to the general play structure for the online casino version of Let it Ride. The biggest changes include altered pay structures and, in some cases, the addition of a progressive jackpot feature. Let-It-Ride enables the Player to pull back your first two bets or to let the bet ride to win more money! Let-It-Ride has an optional 3 Card Bonus bet as well as the Progressive. The Progressive bet payouts pay 10% of the Progressive Meter for a Straight Flush and 100% for a Royal Flush. The Progressive Meter is currently at $352,334.29 as of. Let it Ride is a card game where your goal is to make the best five-card poker hand using your three cards and two community cards. You make three equal-sized bets. The dealer then places two community cards down in the middle of the table and deals out three cards to each player at the table.
What Are Progressive Jackpots?
Progressive jackpots are amounts offered as the top payouts for particular casino games that continue climbing until a player wins. They are available on a wide range of games, but the most common ones are tied to slot machines.
They tend to run from thousands of dollars all the way up to millions of dollars. Progressive jackpot games are available at online casinos as well as in land-based casinos.
Most progressive jackpot games require maximum wagers to be eligible for the jackpot amount. So if you hit whatever the required combination or hand is to win the progressive but haven’t wagered the correct amount you won’t win the progressive.
This would have to be one of the absolute worst feelings in the world so make sure you both understand the minimum wagering requirements to be eligible for the progressive and are always betting at that level or higher when you play on a progressive game.
The most common example of this is a video poker game with a progressive jackpot. On most machines, you have to wager five coins to unlock the top payouts. So if you are playing a quarter video poker machine the total bet at five coins would be $1.25 per hand.
If you bet less than this and hit the top paying hand you will only win the amount listed for your number of coins, not the progressive jackpot. If you aren’t comfortable betting as much, you should play for a lower amount per coin.
You may be able to play the same video poker game in a nickel machine, making your bet .25 for a five-coin wager. Many slot machines have the same ability to play for a lower amount per line.
How Progressive Jackpots Work
Progressive jackpots build over time until a player wins them, then they reset to a predetermined level and start building again. The way they build is by taking a percentage of every bet made on the game the progressive jackpot is associated with and adding it to the jackpot amount.
Here’s a fictitious example so you can see exactly how a progressive jackpot works. The example uses numbers that are easy to compute for the purpose of this page. These numbers are not necessarily representative of a real-life progressive game but are an accurate representation of the mechanics.
We’ll use a slot machine with an attached progressive jackpot as an example. The slot machine takes 10% of every wager and places it in the progressive jackpot amount. After the jackpot is won the amount is reset to $100,000. The reset amount is generally accumulated from the contributions to the overall progressive jackpot.
In this example, 1% is used to fund the next reset amount and 9% goes straight to the progressive amount until $100,000 is accumulated in the reset account. Once the $100,000 is accumulated the entire 10% is used for the climbing jackpot. Another way this can be handled is the casino or software provider, whoever is running the progressive, fronts the $100,000 and the 10% goes toward that until it is taken care of.
Then the progressive will continue growing. There are a few other ways the reset amount can be handled, but the important thing to know is the seed amount is taken from the wagers on the game just like the progressive amount.
Continuing with our example, you are playing for a total cost per spin of $2.50. In this case .25 of each spin is contributed to the progressive jackpot amount and $2.25 is handled just like it is on a non-progressive machine. The other pay outs and the profit from the machine are taken from this second amount.
A common misunderstanding is the belief that the casinos are taking a huge cut of the progressive jackpots. The casinos tend to make more money on large progressive jackpot machines, but not because they are getting a cut of the jackpot. Generally, they pay out 100% of the jackpot between the jackpot amount and the reset amount.
The reason they can make more profit on the largest progressive jackpot games is because of the extra players who are trying to hit the big win. The media coverage picks up when jackpots get high and it increases the number of players. The additional profit comes from the second amount ($2.25) in our example.
For example, if the machine in our example is set to pay out 90% over time, the casino will make 22.5 (twenty two and a half) cents per bet. So here is the complete breakdown of a $2.50 wager on the slot machine in question.
Total Wager | $2.50 |
Progressive Jackpot Contribution | $0.25 |
Paid out to players (Average over time) | $2.025 |
Casino Profit (Average over time) | $0.225 |
What are the Differences Between a Local and Wide Area Progressive Jackpot
From a player’s perspective, there really isn’t a big difference between a local progressive jackpot and a wide area progressive jackpot. A wide area progressive jackpot is also sometimes called a linked jackpot and some progressives are called a bank. The wide area jackpot tends to build faster because there are more players, but the mechanics of how the jackpots build are the same.
A wide area progressive jackpot is one shared across games, usually slot machines, across a range of properties. For example, you might find the same progressive slot machine games in numerous land-based casinos or in online casinos running the same software platform. If they are part of a wide area progressive they each feed into the same jackpot and payout from the same jackpot pool.
When there are hundreds or even thousands of players playing the same machines at the same time the progressive amount is bound to go up faster than local progressives.
A local progressive jackpot is one that is usually tied to a single game. An example that many players have seen of a local progressive is a progressive game of Caribbean Stud poker. The progressive is usually only tied to the individual game or group of the particular games at the particular casino.
In other words, if the casino has three tables offering Caribbean Stud, all three will more than likely share the same progressive, but no games outside of them will contribute. Note that the three games do not have to share the same jackpot. They can have three separate progressive jackpots.
You will also run into a bank of slot machines in land-based casinos that share a progressive jackpot. These machines don’t share a jackpot with any slots not included in the bank of machines.
If you are wondering where the line is drawn between local and wide area progressive games, in my mind if the game is linked to games offered at other casinos, either land-based or online, it is a wide area. If it is tied to a single game or a group of games in the same casino it is a local progressive.
Of course, it does go back to the first part of this section in the fact it doesn’t really matter for players. All that matters is how big the jackpot is and what you have to do to qualify for it.
What Types of Games Can Have Progressive Jackpots?
The most common types of games that have progressive jackpots are slot machines. While the slots that are most likely to have progressives are the newer video slots with multiple pay lines, often with bonus rounds and other features, progressives can be found on all types of machines.
I’ve seen progressives on just about any type of slot machines that you can think of, including three reel machines. I have also seen progressive jackpots tied to video poker machines and table games.
Though it really goes beyond the scope of this page, when you consider playing a video poker game with a progressive jackpot compare the paytable of the progressive machine and a non-progressive one. The progressive video poker game is almost always a worse paytable than the non-progressive one.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t play the progressive machine, because sometimes the progressive amount will get high enough that it is actually a profitable game to play.
An actual example of this that I have seen many times is Jacks or Better. The best Jacks or Better machines are called 9 / 6 machines, offering 9 coin payouts for a full house and 6 coin payouts for a flush. The progressive jacks or better games tend to only pay 8 coins for a full house and 5 coins for a flush.
Common table games with progressive jackpots include Caribbean Stud Poker, roulette and Let it Ride. Theoretically, just about any table game can be tied to a progressive jackpot. Most of the ones that have progressives have them tied to a side bet.
A common example is a $1 side bet. It’s up to each player whether he or she places the progressive jackpot side bet. I have even seen more than one table game tied to the same progressive jackpot.
For example, a casino could have their Caribbean Stud and Let it Ride progressives together. This can create higher jackpots faster as more people are contributing to the jackpots.
Are There Progressive Jackpots Online and Off?
You’ll find great progressive jackpot games both online and at land-based casinos. Anything the casinos can do to get more people to play they will usually do and huge progressive jackpots help get players in the door or in the virtual door.
So as long as progressive jackpots continue helping the casino make money you will continue to find them at all different kinds of casinos.
Popular Progressive Jackpot Games
Here is a table with some of the most popular progressive jackpot games both online and off. The amounts continue to climb and reset, so the popularity of these games goes up and down with the amount of the top payouts.
These are just a few of the hundreds of possible progressive jackpots so if you don’t see any you like, just take a quick look around at your favorite casino. You are sure to find plenty of other options.
Popular Online Progressive Jackpots | Popular Land Based Progressive Jackpots |
Jackpot Cleopatra’s Gold | Wheel of Fortune |
Mega Moolah | Megabucks |
Queen of the Pyramids | Millionaire 777s |
Monster Madness | Powerbucks |
Jackpot Pinatas | Monopoly Money |
Stars and Stripes | Reel Adventures |
Mega Jackpots | Cash Connection |
Should I Play Progressive Jackpot Games?
This is a question that only you can answer. There are progressive jackpots that are life changing amounts, but the odds of ever winning one are so high that millions of players will never hit one in their life. But many players view all of their gambling as entertainment expense and don’t really count on winning anything in the long run.
If you have the money to play with and can view your gambling as an entertainment expense, then, by all means, try to hit a big progressive jackpot. As a side note, there is nothing wrong with either gambling as an entertainment expense or gambling while trying to find an advantage against the casino. I am not judging either way, just covering as much of the subject as I can.
Many casual casino players will play a few casino games instead of going out to eat or taking in a movie. If you were going to spend a couple hundred on a night out, why not use it instead to take your chances at your favorite slot machine or table game? Even if you play the games with the highest house edge you will occasionally leave a winner.
You can also find progressive jackpots that get so high that they can be played with a statistical edge over the casinos in the long run. I mentioned this when discussing video poker above and it is an in-depth topic that can’t be covered in full here, but it is possible and when you find these situations on a game you enjoy you should take advantage of them and play.
When the Shuffle Master company released a new hybrid table game known as Let It Ride in 1993, even the famed gambling equipment manufacturer likely had no clue as to the impact their creationwould have on the casino industry.
24 years later, Shuffle Master is known as SHFL Entertainment. As part of the Scientific Games gambling conglomerate, the company is still producing innovative new gaming concepts.
But even given another two decades or more, game inventors there would have trouble coming up with another design quite like the now ubiquitous Let It Ride.
Today it can be easy to think games like Let It Ride – which combines central elements of both poker and blackjack to create an entirely new gameplay experience – are natural extensions of thecasino game family. Hybrid table games like Three Card Poker and Caribbean Holdem are a dime a dozen, but until Let It Ride provided the always important proof of concept, combining two or moregames to devise another was not an accepted practice within the casino gambling world.
Players like me who have been around the block once or twice can remember those days, and despite the nostalgic yearning for the “Old Las Vegas,” I for one am glad to have entered a new era. Backthen, before upstarts like Let It Ride set the standard for hybrid table games, players were offered a standard lineup of tables to choose from.
Blackjack, baccarat, craps, and roulette formed the “Big Four,” and aside fromsucker games like keno and the Big Six wheel, casinos didn’t offer much else in the variety aside from the machine based games like slots and video poker.
For table game fans, players who prefer the personal touch provided by a dealer, cards, chips, and the other tools of the trade, those four major games were pretty much it. Now, those are greatgames to play, and I’m happy to say I’ve spent countless hours in casinos around the country doing just that. But as the years go by, even the most grizzled of gamblers can appreciate a littlevariety from time to time.
Enter the Let It Ride tables coined by Shuffle Master. For the first time, players who loved to play the classic card games of poker and blackjack could put their hands together, so to speak.Using the traditional player versus dealer format found in blackjack, Let It Ride inserts basic poker gameplay to the equation. The result is a truly unique hybrid table game, one thatestablished a tried and true template for how new additions to the casino floor should be modeled.
Players begin a hand by placing three mandatory Ante bets, before receiving three random cards from a 52 card deck. From there, the objective is to assess the relative strength, or drawingpotential, of your first three cards, before deciding to take one of your Ante bets back – or let it ride. A community card used by all players at the table is dealt out, the Let It Ride processrepeats one last time, and a final community card is revealed.
With five cards now in hand, between the three starting cards and two community cards, players then score their best five card poker hand against an escalating pay table. With the chance to bag amassive 1,000 to 1 payout for forming the mother of all poker hands, the royal flush, Let It Ride manages to offer that crucial jackpot element most quality casino games thrive on.
Throw in a pair of common side bets, one based on your first three cards and another on the final five card poker hand, and Let It Ride lends itself to action and swings. What makes the game sospecial, however, is how easy it is to learn and play.
At one point back in the proverbial day, casinos weren’t the welcoming adult wonderlands they’ve transformed into, and new players had trouble navigating the waters. Without possessing a certainsense of expert knowledge on a game like craps, casino rookies would invariably watch along the rail, wanting to play, but choosing to walk away for fear of looking like a fool. After all, it’snot much fun betting money if you don’t know the strategic import of the wagers on the board.
Games like Let It Ride nipped that issue in the bud by creating extremely simple rule setups. New players need only watch a hand or two play out before sitting down to try things out forthemselves. And when it comes time to play the game correctly, Let It Ride’s optimal strategy is nothing more than a hard and fast system of hand strength guidelines used to decide when to pullback Ante bets or let them ride.
All told, the easily accessible gameplay and quickly mastered strategy – combined with the potential to turn $15 into $15,000 on a single hand – made Let It Ride one of the casino industry’s bonafide classics. The game spread to casinos far and wide, become a staple offering alongside the Big Four mentioned above. Today, the game’s popularity is waning a bit based on the crowdedcompetition within the hybrid table game market, but even so, you’re still bound to find a Let It Ride table running at most major casinos.
Let It Ride Progressive Payouts
If you’ve ever wanted to learn more about the game before trying your hand, this page is the place for you, because below I’ll run through my three best Let It Ride tips.
Let It Ride Progressive
I’ll assume you’re already familiar with the basic rules and gameplay, so my tips will cover essential aspects ofplaying well, such as shopping for the best pay tables, avoiding the side bets added to entice suckers, and understanding the odds and probabilities underpinning Let It Ride’s uniquestructure. Finally, because Let It Ride has spread throughout the realm of online casinos just as rapidly, my tips will cover both the brick and mortar and online versions.