Must-hit by progressives. Do these calculations to know if you should play

“Must-hit by” or “mystery” progressives are all the rage in casinos these days. You can’t blame the casinos for putting an ever increasing amount of these types of slot machines on their gaming floors. They want players to gamble for as long as possible & what better way to keep them on a machine than by having them chase a progressive that is guaranteed to hit by a certain number.

Unfortunately too many gamblers have little clue whether the progressive they are trying to win is truly worth going for & this can sometimes lead to disastrous results. On several occasions I have seen someone chasing an Ainsworth hit by $10k machine that’s at $9900 & they’re already in around $30k because they started chasing at a number way too early like $9580. You can read the desperation in their face. It’s a face that’s begging that the machine hit & put them out of their misery.

The reason situations like this occur is often because the player has no idea about meter movement. I’ve seen several examples about how to calculate whether or not a progressive is playable but I’ve found them to be difficult to understand for a gambler who is new to advantage playing. Here I’ll explain the relatively simple method that some advantage players use to figure out if a must-hit progressive is worth playing.

Again, meter movement is key. On any progressive that you’re interested in, find out how much it takes to move it 1 cent either by playing it yourself or by watching someone else play the machine & tracking it.

For this example let’s say it’s a penny, must-hit by $500 progressive currently at $480 that moves one cent for every $2.50 played or $250 to move it a dollar. The midpoint therefore is $490, so we have to calculate how much coin in/play it will take to reach this midpoint which is $10 x 250 = 2500.

Of course no one knows what the exact payback percentage of any machine is. Because this is a penny machine I’ll assume it pays around 85%. Could be higher but that’s the number I use for penny progressives & 90% for 25c & $1 progressives.

Now plug in the midpoint coin in of 2500 & multiply it by my presumed payback of 85%.

2500 x 0.85 = 2125

Now add the midpoint number of $490.

2125 + 490 = 2615

Lastly, take that number & subtract the coin in of 2500.

2615 – 2500 = $115 which is your expected result. Because this number is positive, this is a playable situation.

I think it’s a good idea to prepare for the worst case scenario so I also calculate how much I can estimate to win/lose if the progressive goes to the very end. Same process except the meter movement number is now $20.

So $20 of meter movement x 250 = 5000 coin in  
5000 x 0.85 = 4250
4250 + $500(hit point) = 4750
4750 – 5000 = -$250 loss

Of course the actual result from each individual play will be different. Sometimes you’ll hit one before the midpoint but lose. Some will run all the way to the end yet you still manage to win. Any & every result is possible but doing these calculations will give gamblers a good idea if a progressive is playable or not.