Played a must hit slot for the first time last night.
This was a "must hit 5k" machine.
For those who aren't familiar, these are progressive machines with two jackpots which absolutely will hit before a specified number. They've been around for awhile, probably since the late 2000s. A must hit $5000 machine will have a jackpot which has to hit before it reaches $5000, and usually the second one will hit before it reaches $500. (It is stated on the machine the latest each jackpot "must hit".)
Obviously if you were to walk by a must hit $5000 machine with the counter at $4998, you'd be a fool not to sit down and run it until it hits, since you would have a guaranteed large win (there's no way you could lose anywhere close to $5000 in getting the meter to move up those final $2.)
After the jackpot hits, it resets to a lower value. The machine I played resets to $4000 after hitting.
The value where it "must hit" is auto-determined by the machine, via random number generator, every time it resets. So the machine knows the entire time when it will "hit", but the player doesn't know until it happens.
My question is the distribution of when the jackpot hits. I don't believe that it's randomly distributed evenly between $4000 and $5000 on the game I play, for example. Obviously it's to the casino's advantage to have the jackpot hit as late as possible. So I'm pretty convinced that it's disproportionately distributed at the end (by a wide margin), but to what extreme are we talking about?
I ask this because mine hit at $4999.31, which was laughable. Needless to say, I lost money attempting to get there. I can only imagine how much people will collectively lose on that machine for awhile, now that it's back at $4000.
Is it possible that my $4999.31 wasn't unusual, and perhaps something like 40% of all jackpots hit that late?
Anyone know the answer?