Introduction to 60-Thousand-Dollar Slot Machine Jackpot
Used Top Dollar Slot Machine
Are you ready? Are you ready to win a 60-thousand-dollar slot machine jackpot? Are you sure? From making the bet to income tax preparation, I’ll go over everything you’ll need to do.
One of my biggest issues with slot machine casino gambling has been the surprises, like winning an unexpectedly large jackpot. Of course, it’s possible to win big jackpots. We all know that’s possible, so why not be ready? Here’s what to expect if you win big.
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This article has the following sections:
- Introduction to 60-Thousand-Dollar Slot Machine Jackpot
- What It’s Like to Win Big
- How to be Ready, Just in Case
- Choices: Handling the Hand Pay
- What Comes Afterward
- Preparing for Income Taxes
- Summary of 60-Thousand-Dollar Slot Machine Jackpot
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What It’s Like to Win Big
I’ve won 90 taxable jackpots in 9 months in a U.S. state where slot machine jackpots became taxable at $1,200. Of those, three exceeded $10,000. On average, 1 in 30 jackpots exceeds $10,000. This excludes the $40,000 cash option I got for winning a car at the end of those 9 months.
My first big jackpot was for $27,000. So far, this is my largest jackpot won playing slot machines. I won it early on Saturday, December 21, 2013, at 5:40 a.m. at Horseshoe Cincinnati, since purchased and renamed JACK Cincinnati Casino.
I won this $27,000 hand pay on a Red-Blue-White Seven’s slot machine in the high limit slots room. I’d made the maximum bet on this $10-denomination, 2-credit slot machine.
I was checking to see if I could cycle my bankroll on this slot machine. I was testing to see if it was a winning slot machine. I’d just about decided I was wasting my money because it wasn’t showing any evidence of bankroll cycling when it hit.
I remember the moment clearly. It was very early in the morning. I’d started my session at 4 a.m. and had already won a small hand pay. I remember seeing someone
A floor manager was there with the slot attendant during their hand pay, so it must have been over $10,000. As the floor manager and slot attendant walked away after the hand pay, they began walking by me.
Just as they approached, my $27,000 jackpot hit. I looked down, saw the 2,700-credit hit, looked up at the floor manager looking at me, and swore.
That was embarrassing. I don’t usually swear. But, at that moment, I felt the need to do so. I swore right while
I called out to him, to explain. “Excuse me! Sorry about that! I didn’t mean to swear, but I just won a jackpot. A really big jackpot!” They came back.
Right about then, 30 seconds after the slot machine hit, I basically went into shock. Since I’d started gambling again after nearly 10 years, my biggest jackpot was $5,000. I’d won it three times over the last month, since I’d started gambling, and every time was hard on me.
But now, I’d won more than 5 times that. It wasn’t easy. I remember telling the floor manager how unreal and dreamlike it felt. I even asked the slot attendant to pinch me.
And, after the hand pay, I had trouble deciding what to do next. Should I just go on with my day? Should I stick to the plan I had had in mind? Or, was my plan of gambling all day ruined? Hint: You’re done – go home.
Can you imagine how I was feeling? I know some of you can indeed imagine it. I know because some of you have won even bigger jackpots while playing slots.
How to Be Ready, Just in Case
Are you ready to win a big jackpot the next time you play a slot machine? To be ready, you’ll need some essentials like your government-issued I.D. But there are other ways you’ll probably want to be ready.
You’ll need the government-issued I.D. to receive a taxable jackpot at a casino. That’s essential. If you don’t have it with you, nice casinos will let you go to your car for it. But, I don’t think you should count on the casino letting you go home to get it.
If you’re anything like me, you might find yourself not quite yourself after winning a big jackpot. To be ready, think it through in advance. Make yourself a plan. Then, if/when it happens, all you need to do is remember the plan.
It doesn’t have to be a complicated plan. Just ask yourself this simple question. After you get the hand pay, will you stay or will you go? There will be more decisions to make, but that’s really the most important one.
As I tell my students, which as it happens I did again earlier today, I don’t care what your plan is. I care that you have a plan. We’re not having a career discussion right now, but I think you get the point.
Will you leave the casino or will you make a night of it? Personally, I’d leave. I’d leave as soon as I could. I didn’t know that in advance of my biggest jackpot, but I do now. That’s my plan. What’s yours?
Choices: Handling the Hand Pay
So, imagine you’ve just won your biggest jackpot ever. And, you have your I.D. You might even have a player’s club card so your personal information is on file with the casino. Next up is the hand pay and more decisions.
If you’ve never won a taxable jackpot before, no matter what size, the hand pay process is straight-forward. You win a jackpot. The machine locks up. A slot attendant comes. You do the paperwork. Someone else shows up to verify the jackpot. Finally, you get paid.
As it happens, I’ve already explained the hand pay process when winning a taxable jackpot playing slots. I called that article How Do Slot Machines Pay Out Taxable Jackpots, which is also my podcast episode #7: How Do Slot Machines Pay Out-California Slots 2017.
But, there are some slight changes to this process when winning big jackpots. In most states, jackpots of $10,000 or more require that the jackpot verifier is a floor manager rather than another slot attendant.
Tip #1: You can tip the slot attendant, and in my opinion should, but you can’t tip the floor manager. If they say it’s okay, the floor manager will take a tip to put into the group tip jar for all the slot attendants. But, typically, floor managers can’t receive tips.
Tip #2: This is your chance to meet a floor manager. It’s a priceless opportunity. Get to know them. Make friends, if you can. Floor managers know a lot more about what’s going on in a casino than slot attendants. Ask questions. Be nice. Thank me later.
You do have another choice to make, however. For jackpots just over the taxable limit but under $10,000, casinos will provide banded stacks of $5,000 when you ask for cash instead of a check. Other casinos only provide banded stacks of $10,000.
Either way, for a large jackpot where you ask for cash, you can expect banded stacks (sometimes called bricks) of hundred-dollar bills. Personally, I have found it’s nice when a slot attendant counts out 100-dollar bills in my hand. Professionally, I advise you to take most or all the jackpot as a check.
That is if your plan includes requesting some or all your taxable jackpot in cash. It’s really your choice, however. What’s your plan, again?
What Comes Afterward
If you do request cash and end up leaving the casino without spending it, I should mention what happens at a bank when you go to deposit $10,000 or more in cash. It’s just the same as any other cash deposit, except for the Currency Transaction Report (CTR).
The CTR is a reporting requirement for U.S. financial institutions regarding all cash deposits, withdrawals, and currency exchanges of $10,000 or more. When making a deposit of at least $10,000, it will be reported to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) within the U.S. Treasury Department.
FinCEN was created in 1990 and became its own bureau under the USA Patriot Act passed in 2002. In part, it monitors and analyzes financial transactions for illegal transactions. This includes financial crimes related to money laundering and corruption.
Over recent years, I’ve deposited more than $10,000 multiple times at my bank and never had a concern. They do ask where the money came from to which I typically respond, “I won it at the casino.”
I don’t think you have any cause for concern as earning money at a casino isn’t an illegal transaction. My lack of concern here hinges on understanding that big jackpots generate a W-2G tax form when won at a casino. So, if FinCEN does become interested, it wouldn’t take much for the U.S. Treasury to confirm the source of that much cash.
Nevertheless, I thought you should know about the CTR. There is another aspect to accepting a lot of cash you should probably be aware of. In my mind, it’s slightly more important than the CTR. It’s this: How much cash can you carry?
Let’s say you’re wearing a pair of jeans or trousers with typical size pockets. Let’s further say you’re not wearing a jacket or carrying any sort of purse. Finally, let’s assume all your cash is in $100 bills. Under those circumstances, how much cash can you carry without it being in your hand or sticking out somewhere for anyone to notice?
With a wallet in one pocket and a mobile phone in another, I’ve been able to tuck away 200 $100 bills, that’s only $20,000, in all the pockets of a typical pair of men’s jeans. Let’s say you won a big jackpot which you accepted as cash and after taxes have $50,000 in your hand.
What do you do with it? Yes, you can fill all your pockets with $20,000 of it. What about the remainder? Do you ask the casino to provide a brown paper bag, perhaps? I’ve been in this situation and faced this dilemma. Once again, make sure you have a plan in case you win.
One final note about getting home. Feel free to ask the casino for security to walk you to your car. They’re perfectly happy to do so. Unlike me, try to remember where you parked your car. Take it from me, it can be surprisingly hard to remember that little fact when you’re clutching tens of thousands of dollars in your sweaty hands.
Preparing for Income Taxes
One time I was sitting two seats away from someone who looked like they had never been in a high limit slots room at a casino. Do you know that look? Anyway, they looked both nervous and like they wanted to go.
Suddenly, and it’s always sudden, they won a $4,800 jackpot. They just nodded to themselves and started hitting the cash-out button. Which, naturally enough, wasn’t working because the slot machine had locked up due to winning a taxable jackpot.
When the cash out button wouldn’t work, they turned and looked at me with a question in their eyes. This is where I walked right into trouble. I said, “Oh, the machine’s locked up because you’ve won a big jackpot. Don’t worry, the slot attendant should be here any moment to help you with getting it as well as paying taxes.”
I was just trying to be helpful. I imagine you know what happened next. “Taxes? Taxes?!” As they became more and more upset at me, I tried to disengage from the conversation. Luckily for me, the slot attendant arrived right about then to save me.
Slot attendants are great. Seriously. I always remember how upset this taxable jackpot winner was whenever I work with a slot attendant. It is what I remember whenever I tip my slot attendant after winning my own taxable jackpots.
So, if/when you win a taxable jackpot, you’ll be working with a slot attendant. I’ve already described what that is like. But, let’s discuss income taxes for a moment.
Just the other day, a follower of my Professor Slots Twitter account said, “The amount of the taxable jackpot needs to be raised.” My response was, “Why? It’s still taxable, even if you don’t get a W-2G hand pay. But, I do appreciate the sentiment. I really do.”
If you win $10 at a casino, it’s taxable income. This gets confusing fast though, because what if you spend that $10 in the next few minutes without it ever leaving the slot machine? I’m going to avoid answering that as it really deserves its own article someday.
What isn’t in dispute is what happens when the casino issues a W-2G income tax form reported directly to the IRS. If you choose to accept a taxable jackpot, then you will receive a W-2G.
As an aside, some people can’t afford or otherwise don’t want taxable jackpots. For instance, my family friends Lois and Dave in my article Seminole Brighton Casino Florida Trip Report, also mentioned podcast episode #27 Seminole Brighton Casino-Minnesota Slots 2018, are from Canada.
For them, any gambling income from their annual visits to U.S. casinos is foreign income and potentially subject to taxation by the Canadian government. Yikes! Apparently, as usual with income taxes, what to do is very individualized.
My admittedly limited understanding is, and please don’t consider me as any kind of professional or expert with regards to international tax law, my Canadian friends can earn some income when gambling in the U.S. – but not a lot of income. A $60,000 taxable jackpot may well be too much, too difficult, and therefore unwanted. Maybe.
You can always choose not to accept a taxable jackpot. You can choose to walk away. An old slots joke is this: “The only way to legally avoid paying taxes after winning a jackpot of $1,200 or more is to simply not accept the winnings.”
That’s funny, yes? It’s funny but true. Also, be aware the taxable limit is instead $600 in some states like Massachusetts, at least for the moment.
Finally, there are the tax choices you’ll need to make when filling out the paperwork for the taxable jackpot with the slot attendant.
- A federal income tax withdrawal from your winnings is typically optional.
- State income tax withdrawal is very state-dependent.
- Local income tax withdrawal exists if the casino you are at is located within a city’s limits.
- Other withdrawals may exist such as a nonrefundable 3% tax on jackpots over $1,200 in Mississippi as imposed by the Mississippi Gaming Commission. For details on this, see my article for Mississippi Slot Machine Casino Gambling.
If you keep good gambling records, it usually works out well to choose to not pay federal taxes. Why? Because keeping good gambling records means you’ll have gambling deductions to apply during your annual income tax preparation.
If you don’t keep good gambling records then, frankly, you should start doing so. To help get started, here’s my article on Keeping Gambling Records for Tax Preparation and More as well as podcast episode #28 Gambling Record-Keeping-Mississippi Slots 2018.
The danger of not keeping gambling records is having to pay income taxes when avoiding them, or getting a refund later, was entirely possible. Keep gambling records just in case you win a big jackpot. Make it part of your plan, okay?
Summary of 60-Thousand-Dollar Slot Machine Jackpot
A few weeks ago, a fan of my website and podcast named Richard from Gainesville, Georgia, contacted me via Twitter after he won a $60,000 slots jackpot. I was proud of how well he handled it and told him so at the time
How he handled a big jackpot reminded me of what it was like. My first time, I didn’t do as well as Richard. So, I wrote this article so you can do better than I did and perhaps as well as Richard if you won a large taxable jackpot.
Basically, you need a plan in case you win a taxable jackpot. Here are a few things we’ve considered and which you’ll need to decide for yourself preferably before winning a big taxable jackpot:
- What will you do immediately after winning a big jackpot? Choosing to leave or stay is the biggest decision here.
- Cash or check or both? If cash, consider how little you can carry in your pockets.
- Paying income taxes: Federal, state, local, and more are all possible. Or, there may be none. It mostly depends upon your state.
- Keeping good gambling records to potentially get income tax refunds. Or, without gambling records, not getting any of it back. Choose now.
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Have fun, be safe, and make good choices!
By Jon H. Friedl, Jr. Ph.D., President
Jon Friedl, LLC
Slots are the easiest games in the casino to play -- spin the reels and take your chances. Players have no control over what combinations will show up or when a jackpot will hit. There is no way to tell when a machine will be hot or cold. Still, there are some pitfalls. It's important to read the glass and learn what type of machine it is. The three major types of reel-spinning slots are the multiplier, the buy-a-pay, and the progressive.
The multiplier. On a multiplier, payoffs are proportionate for each coin played--except, usually, for the top jackpot. If the machine accepts up to three coins at a time, and if you play one coin, three bars pay back ten. Three bars will pay back 20 for two coins and 30 for three coins. However, three sevens might pay 500 for one coin and 1,000 for two, but jump to 10,000 when all three coins are played. Read the glass to find out if that's the case before playing less than the maximum coins on this type of machine.
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The buy-a-pay. Never play less than the maximum on a buy-a-pay, on which each coin 'buys' a set of symbols or a payout line. The first coin in might allow the player to win only on cherry combination, while the second coin activates the bar payouts, and the third coin activates the sevens. Woe is the player who hits three jackpot symbols on a buy-a-pay with only one coin played--the player gets nothing back. A variation is the machine with multiple payout lines, each activated by a separate coin. All symbols are active with each coin, but if a winning combination lines up on the third-coin payout line with only one or two coins played, the payoff is zero.
The progressive. You also have no reason to play less than maximum coins on a progressive machine. A player who eventually lines up the jackpot symbols gets a percentage of each coin played. The first progressive machines were self-contained--the jackpot was determined by how much that particular machine had been played since the last big hit. Today most progressives are linked electronically to other machines, with all coins played in the linked machines adding to a common jackpot.
5 Dollar Slot Machine Jackpots
These jackpots can be enormous -- the record is $39,710,826.26, a $1 progressive at a Las Vegas casino. The tradeoff is that frequency and size of other payouts are usually smaller. And you can't win the big jackpot without playing maximum coins.
If you must play fewer than maximum coins, look for a multiplier in which the final-coin jump in the top jackpot is fairly small. Better yet, choose a machine that allows you to stay within your budget while playing maximum coins. If your budget won't allow you to play maximum coins on a $1 machine, move to a quarter machine. If you're not comfortable playing three quarters at a time, move to a two-quarter machine. If you can't play two quarters at a time, play a nickel machine.
With so many paylines and the possibility of betting multiple coins per line, video slots are different. Some penny slots with 20 paylines take up to 25 coins per line. That's a $5 maximum bet -- a pretty penny indeed! Most players bet less than the max on video slots but are sure to cover all the paylines, even if betting only one coin per line. You want to be sure to be eligible for the bonus rounds that give video slots most of their fun. Some progressive jackpots require max coins bets, and some don't. If a max-coins bet is required to be eligible for the jackpot and you're not prepared to roll that high, find a different machine.
Money Management
Managing your money wisely is the most important part of playing any casino game, and also the most difficult part of playing the slots. Even on quarter machines, the amount of money involved runs up quickly. A dedicated slot player on a machine that plays off credits can easily get in 600 pulls an hour. At two quarters at a time, that means wagering $300 per hour -- the same amount a $5 blackjack player risks at an average table speed of 60 hands per hour.
Most of that money is recycled from smaller payouts--at a casino returning 93 percent on quarter slots, the expected average loss for $300 in play is $21. Still, you will come out ahead more often if you pocket some of those smaller payouts and don't continually put everything you get back into the machine.
One method for managing money is to divide your slot bankroll for the day into smaller-session bankrolls. If, for example, you've taken $100 on a two-and-a-half-hour riverboat cruise, allot $20 for each half-hour. Select a quarter machine -- dollar machines could devastate a $100 bankroll in minutes -- and play the $20 through once. If you've received more than $20 in payouts, pocket the excess and play with the original $20. At the end of one half-hour, pocket whatever is left and start a new session with the next $20.
If at any point the original $20 for that session is depleted, that session is over. Finish that half-hour with a walk, or a snack, or a drink until it is time for a new session. Do not dip back into money you've already pocketed.
That may seem rigid, but players who do not use a money management technique all too frequently keep pumping money into the machine until they've lost their entire bankroll. The percentages guarantee that the casino will be the winner in the long run, but lock up a portion of the money as you go along, and you'll walk out of the casino with cash on hand more frequently.
That is changing in new server-based slots that have started to appear in casinos. Operators will be able to change payback percentages at the click of a mouse, but they still must have regulatory approval to do so.
There is a lot more to slot machines than meets the eye. But if you learn the ins and outs of playing them, you can use some strategies that just might help you hit the jackpot.
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