VEGAS MYTHS RE-BUSTED: Megabucks Will Hit on a Casino’s Opening Night
Many gamblers, perhaps sporting their fortunate sweaters, will head straight for the closest free Megabucks slot machine when the Fontainebleau opens to the public at midnight on Thursday. Due to an urban legend that has been tugging on their legs for thirty-four years, they will pull on its arm once they are seated.
On November 22, 1989, Elmer Sherwin, a retired 76-year-old WWII veteran, won $4.6 million at The Mirage after turning $100 into a Megabucks jackpot. One of the most persistent gambling misconceptions in Las Vegas, that Megabucks jackpots are more likely to occur on a casino's opening night, has its roots in the opening night of the renowned casino resort.
This is because the casino benefits from having the world's attention on their property already.
The Megabucks machines were inaccessible during the opening weekend of the Excalibur, seven months after The Mirage opened. Additionally, the narrative has remained consistent with each new casino opening in Vegas.
"Bucks Naked"
International Game Technology (IGT), a slot machine manufacturer, founded Megabucks in March 1986 in an attempt to regain some of the business that Nevada casinos were losing to state lotteries that offered mega-million payouts.
The first wide-area linked progressive slot machine system in history was this one.
A tiny percentage of the wager is added to a jackpot that can be won at any moment by anyone playing any Megabucks machine. The amount increases with the length of time between jackpots.
Mega Bull****
The three Megabucks symbols that appear on a slot machine are completely outside the control of casinos. A random number generator decides that.
Each of the roughly 750 Megabucks machines in Nevada's 136 networked casinos has an equal chance of winning the big prize because that sequence is created completely at random.
Each and every time.
And those odds are undoubtedly long, even though they have never been made public.
However, logic, science, and technology don't dissuade Megabucks supporters. Most people will tell you that's not all there is to it. And Elmer Sherwin is the proof that most people will cite.
At the age of 92, Sherwin won another Megabucks jackpot at the Cannery Casino in downtown Las Vegas, sixteen years after he had won his almost unthinkable Megabucks jackpot at The Mirage.
"That’s like getting struck by lightning while sitting on your living room couch without a cloud in the sky,” Anthony Lucas, a professor of casino management at UNLV, told Casino.org last year when we busted anothes Megabucks myth.
In the year he had departed, Sherwin traveled the world with the additional $21.1 million.
Oh, and it wasn't the first night at the Cannery. They had been in business for two years already.
Additional Evidence of Logic's Victory
Forty-six other casinos have opened in Las Vegas since the Sherwin's Mirage jackpot. The 47th will be the Fontainebleau. None of them have yet to yield a Megabucks jackpot on the first night of operation.
However, try explaining that to everyone in their lucky sweaters who is scurrying for a Megabucks slot at midnight on Thursday.
