When the Fontainebleau opens to the public at midnight on Thursday, many gamblers, in all probability wearing their lucky sweaters, testament beeline for the closest liberate Megabucks slot machine. Once seated, they’ll pull on its branch because of an urban legend that’s pulled on their legs for 34 years.

Elmer Sherwin was the retired 76-year-old WWII warhorse who turned $100 into a $4.6M Megabucks jackpot at The Mirage on Nov. 22, 1989. That was the famous casino resort’s opening night, and it explains the origin of unity of the most enduring Las Vegas gaming myths, which says Megabucks jackpots are more potential to smasher on a casino’s gap night.

That’s because it’s beneficial to the casino, since the eyes of the man are already on their property.

Seven months after The Mirage opened, you couldn’t catch close the Megabucks machines during the Excalibur’s opening weekend. And the story’s been the same during every subsequent Vegas gambling casino opening.

‘Bucks Naked

Megabucks was created inward Mar 1986 by slot producer International Game Technology (IGT) as a right smart to win endorse some of the concern Battle Born State casinos were losing to land lotteries. Those  promised mega-million jackpots, and racetracks offered large pay-out parlay wagers. It was the world’s first off wide-area linked-progressive slot machine system.

Whenever someone takes a Megabucks spin, a little portion of the wager is placed into a jackpot that anyone, at any machine, put up win at any time. The yearner the separation 'tween jackpots, the higher the amount.

Mega Bull****

Casinos make zero point moderate over which ternion Megabucks symbols penetrate into station on a expansion slot machine. That’s determined past a random identification number generator.

Because that succession is generated exclusively at random, to each one of the close to 750 Megabucks machines in Nevada’s 136 networked casinos has the same odds of hitting the jackpot.

Every. Single. Time.

And though those betting odds feature never been public information, they are certainly long.

But science, technology, and logic aren’t things that deter Megabucks believers. Most will evidence you there’s to a greater extent to it than that. And the evidence to the highest degree will gunpoint to is, one time again, Elmer Sherwin.

Sixteen years after hitting his nearly impossibly unlikely Megabucks jackpot at The Mirage, Sherwin hitting another one, at eld 92, at the Cannery Casino inwards downtown Las Vegas.

That’s like getting struck past lightning piece posing on your living room couch without a cloud in the sky,” Anthony Lucas, a professor of gambling casino direction at UNLV, told Casino.org last year when we busted another Megabucks myth.

Sherwin used the special $21.1M to travelling the reality inward the twelvemonth he had left.

Oh, and it wasn’t the Cannery’s opening night night. They had already been operating for two years.

Extra Proof that Logic Wins

Since Sherwin’s Mirage jackpot, 46 more casinos make opened in Las Vegas. The Fontainebleau will be the 47th. So far, not a bingle single has produced a Megabucks jackpot on its chess opening night.

But essay explaining that to anyone beelining for a Megabucks one-armed bandit at midnight on Th inward their lucky sweaters.

Look for “Vegas Myths Busted” every Mon on Casino.org. To say antecedently busted Vegas myths, call VegasMythsBusted.com. Got a prompting for a Vegas myth that needs busting? Email corey@casino.org.