Differences between Local and Networked Progressive Slots

With thousands of different types of slot games being available online, it can often be a quite confusing environment to players, more so those who have never played slots online or those who are used to playing slots as casinos offering only a small limited number of games.

If you choose to play slots as casinos powered by the industry leading software companies such as Playtech, NetEnt or Real Time Gaming to name but a few you are going to have access to hundreds of slots many of which come with progressive jackpots.

There are two categories of games that all progressive slots will fall into and these are Local Progressive Slots and Networked Progressive Slots. In this casino game playing guide we are going to introduce you to how both of these types of progressive games work and operate, so you will have a much clearer understanding of the way they work if you are ever tempted to play these types of slot machines online.

Online Networked Progressive Slots

Networked progressive slot games are linked into many different online casinos, so for example if you are playing at let’s say a Microgaming powered casino site and you give their Cash Splash slot game a try then your stakes will be feeding the jackpot attached to that slot game and players playing it at any Microgaming casino site have a chance of winning the same jackpot as each Cash Splash slot at all Microgaming casinos share that one jackpot pool.

The one benefit you will have as a player playing any networked progressive slot is that the jackpot pools grow far more quickly than the local progressive slot games which we will go into a little more detail about shortly, and as such if you are looking for a life changing jackpot win then these are the type of slots you ought to be playing online.

However, be aware that before you start to play any progressive game at any online casino site, always find out whether the jackpots when won and awarded to any one player are paid out in one single payment, as some online casinos pay jackpot winners in small equal weekly or monthly payouts, which often means progressive slot players can wait years to get paid all of their winnings!

Stick to those casinos such as Microgaming powered sites for each casino using this gaming platform is obliged to pay you all of your winnings in one single payment, and that payment is often paid out to you in around twenty four to forty eight hours of you winning the progressive jackpot online!

Local Online Progressive Slot Games

Let us now turn our attention to Local Progressive slots, you will find that these slots can be available at several different casinos using the same gaming platform and software company, however the progressive games on offer are not linked into other sites, the stakes used to feed these type of slot game jackpots are exclusive to the one casino site.

The Real Time Gaming powered casinos of which we have several reviewed around this website for example have a range of Real Series Slots, these slots have one or more progressive jackpots on offer but it is only the stakes of players at each respective site that is used to feed the jackpot pools.

This will mean if you logged into several different Real Time Gaming powered casino sites you will notice the progressive jackpots on each of their slots will differ in value from site to site. These particular slots have been designed to award those progressive jackpots at much smaller amounts than those found of networked progressives, and as such winning a jackpot on these slots will result in a large winning payout but not necessarily a life changing one.

It will of course be up to you which type of progressive slot game you play, the odds on your winning a jackpot will vary but the beauty of any slot offering a progressive jackpot is that you are never going to know when that jackpot awarding spin will appear!

In fact there are one or two slot games that offer a jackpot that will be guaranteed to be won when it hits a certain amount, and you will find those slots tend to get the most attention from players whenever the jackpot is fast approaching the amount when the jackpot is guaranteed to hit by, so look out for those kinds of slot, more so when their respective jackpots are near the point where they have to be awarded.

Summary

As you can see from above there are two different types of progressive slots game you can play online, and there are plenty of different slot games in each category, and as such you may be wondering just which slots give you a better chance of winning their respective jackpots.

As all slots are random then you could of course win progressive jackpots at any minute, however you may get more of a chance of winning one when you play those slots offering multiple progressive jackpots.

The network wide slots games do have the largest jackpots, and due to there being more players playing them they are won regularly, having said that though the local progressive jackpots are won just as frequently but the jackpots attached to them do not grow anywhere as near as high in value as the network wide slots.

So you will have just as much chance winning a progressive jackpot no matter which ones you play, and that chance will be a very low one, so always keep that in mind and never try and chase a progressive jackpot win!