Posted on: June 28, 2024, 07:30h. 

Final up to date on: June 24, 2024, 09:50h.

EDITOR’S NOTE: “Vegas Myths Busted” publishes each Monday, with a bonus Flashback Friday version. Right now’s entry in our ongoing collection initially ran on Dec. 11, 2023. 

When the Fontainebleau opens to the general public at midnight on Thursday, many gamblers, most likely sporting their fortunate sweaters, will beeline for the closest free Megabucks slot machine. As soon as seated, they’ll pull on its arm due to an city legend that’s pulled on their legs for 34 years.

Elmer Sherwin was the retired 76-year-old WWII veteran who turned $100 right into a $4.6M Megabucks jackpot at The Mirage on Nov. 22, 1989. That was the well-known on line casino resort’s opening night time, and it explains the origin of probably the most enduring Las Vegas playing myths, which says Megabucks jackpots usually tend to hit on a on line casino’s opening night time.

That’s as a result of it’s helpful to the on line casino, for the reason that eyes of the world are already on their property.

Seven months after The Mirage opened, you couldn’t get close to the Megabucks machines throughout the Excalibur’s opening weekend. And the story’s been the identical throughout each subsequent Vegas on line casino opening.

’Bucks Bare

Megabucks was created in March 1986 by slot producer Worldwide Recreation Know-how (IGT) as a strategy to win again a number of the enterprise Nevada casinos was shedding to state lotteries, which promised mega-million jackpots.

It was the world’s first wide-area linked-progressive slot machine system.

Every time somebody takes a Megabucks spin, a small portion of the wager is positioned right into a jackpot that anybody, at any machine, can win at any time. The longer the interval between jackpots, the upper the quantity.

Mega Bull****

Casinos have zero management over which three Megabucks symbols click on into place on a slot machine. That’s decided by a random quantity generator.

As a result of that sequence is generated totally at random, every of the roughly 750 Megabucks machines in Nevada’s 136 networked casinos has the identical odds of hitting the jackpot.

Each. Single. Time.

And although these odds have by no means been public data, they’re actually lengthy.

However science, expertise, and logic aren’t issues that deter Megabucks believers. Most will inform you there’s extra to it than that. And the proof most will level to is, as soon as once more, Elmer Sherwin.

Sixteen years after hitting his almost impossibly unlikely Megabucks jackpot at The Mirage, Sherwin hit one other one, at age 92, on the Cannery On line casino in downtown Las Vegas.

That’s like getting struck by lightning whereas sitting in your lounge sofa with out a cloud within the sky,” Anthony Lucas, a professor of on line casino administration at UNLV, instructed On line casino.org final yr once we busted one other Megabucks fantasy.

Sherwin used the additional $21.1M to journey the world within the yr he had left.

Oh, and it wasn’t the Cannery’s opening night time. They’d already been working for 2 years.

Additional Proof that Logic Wins

Since Sherwin’s Mirage jackpot, 46 extra casinos have opened in Las Vegas. The Fontainebleau would be the forty seventh. To this point, not a single one has produced a Megabucks jackpot on its opening night time.

However attempt explaining that to anybody beelining for a Megabucks slot at midnight on Thursday of their fortunate sweaters.

Search for “Vegas Myths Busted” each Monday on On line casino.org. To learn beforehand busted Vegas myths, go to VegasMythsBusted.com. Acquired a suggestion for a Vegas fantasy that wants busting? E-mail corey@on line casino.org.