Online Casino Jackpots

It's obvious that there's lot of competition between the various UK online casinos. But things have got a lot more interesting over the past twp years. A new battle is heating up the competition among the casino players; the rivalry between the progressive jackpots of Microgaming and CryptoLogic and now the superb Playtech. Online progressive jackpots first began in May 1999 when Microgaming introduced the first ever progressive jackpot called CashSplash. The $1.00 slot machine was tied to multiple Microgaming online casinos, providing a bigger, faster growing jackpot and of course a larger base from which to draw its players.

Meanwhile CryptoLogic, Microgaming's biggest competitor had been rolling out its very own collection of progressive jackpot games. And to compete with MicroGaming's Jackpot Madness, Jackpot Mania portal site was launched by CryptoLogic.

The information provided at each site is laid out similarly, but the inherent qualities of Microgaming and CryptoLogic incur most players to side with one or the other, which is probably what has sparked the battle to attract players. After all, the size of the Jackpot really does matter when you're talking about online progressive jackpots.

One big difference between the offerings can be found in the number of 'pooled' casinos that participate in each software supplier's progressive jackpots. Over 70 participating casino web sites carry at least one of Microgaming's progressive games. Creating a massive player base, which can quickly create very large progressive jackpots in a very short amount of time.

CryptoLogic, which now has over 12 online casinos pooling a number of different players and progressive jackpots. One way that CryptoLogic makes up for the difference is by offering progressive jackpots with higher base amounts - two of the progressives start at a massive $100,000!

Both portal sites offer automatic e-mail notifications of jackpots over a specified amount, supposedly so that you will play after the jackpot has reached a certain plateau. And, both portals offer information on winners and the ever-important jackpot size of each game with real-time counters. Microgaming goes one up on Crypto by adding testimonials from winners, but surely this will be an addition to Crypto's site before too long.

Another similarity: You won't find any odds listed for any of the progressive games at either site. This is merely an observation, but even after searching some of the member casino sites, the information on odds was not easy to come by.

The big difference between the two sites isn't the sites themselves but how the two companies set up the progressive games. For example, Cryptologic really only has four progressive games, but two have $0.25 and $1.00 versions, while Microgaming has five progressive games - two $1.00 games, two $0.50 games and one $0.25 game.

Cryptologic offers two different progressive poker games (video poker and Caribbean poker) and Microgaming just offers one progressive poker game. The Cryptologic Caribbean poker progressive game has a $100,000 minimum progressive jackpot and is a multi player slot game, but you have to play a bonus $1 wager on each spin to be eligible for that progressive jackpot win. Microgaming has no multi player progressive game at this time.

CashSplash is to Microgaming as Rags to Riches is to Cryptologic. These are the big-name slots that are marketed to the gaming public very heavily, both by the software giants and the casino operators themselves. Rags to Riches is a one-wheel, three-coin slot and CashSplash is a three-reel, three-coin slot. Both are $1 games. Rags to Riches has a $100,000 minimum progressive jackpot, but you have to win a bonus spin after you match the three Rags to Riches symbols. CashSplash has no minimum jackpot.

After looking at the record of the game winners, it's easy to see that for CashSplash at least, it's not necessary to have a minimum because with so many people playing it, there are multiple winners per day and the average jackpot is around $30,000. With Crypto, however, there are less winners and bigger jackpots. It's a fairly broad generalization, but that's how it's played out thus far in the relatively early life of the competition.

The numbers of total payouts are hard to compare. At the time of this writing, Microgaming had doled out over $30 million in progressive jackpot wins and has paid out nearly $1 million each month for the last six months. Jackpot Madness' pool of winners is more comprehensive than JackpotMania's. The only payout numbers I could find on the latter's site were numbers briefly displayed on the home page, which declare "$4.9 billion in payout's." This information, which can also be found on the "About Us" page, references the total amount processed by Cryptologic, so it's not the amount paid by progressive jackpots. The listed jackpots add up to roughly $604,000 for 2001.

As more options are available to players, they will become more fickle, which it seems is exactly what the software suppliers are banking on. They're allowing the licensees to work together and they're doing a little branding and marketing for them with the portal sites. It's a win-win situation for the software companies and their licensees. And from the looks of things, it's a winning situation for a lot of players too. Let's just hope that the friendly competition makes it better for the players in the long run.