One fact about gambling that you can never really argue with is the fact that almost everybody engages in games like poker, slots or roulette with one main thing in their mind – the tantalizing possibility of striking gold and walking away with an absolutely gargantuan casino jackpot in a casino site. There really is no arguing with that – does anything else matter in a casino past the possibility of walking out as a millionaire?
In fact, without the promise of winning a huge casino jackpot we’re not sure there would be nearly as many gamblers in the world as there are today. The whole concept of Las Vegas, for example, was (and still is) based on the premise of coming in with a bit of money, and walking away with its value tripled through gambling success. It got us thinking – what are the biggest casino jackpot wins in history? Keep reading to find out.
$590.5 million
Wind back the clocks to May 2013 and we have the story of a woman called Gloria McKenzie who ended up on the winning end on the largest casino gambling jackpot ever recorded, an absolutely outrageous sum of $590.5 million. The game in question was the Powerball lottery, something that the at-the-time 84 year old grandmother loved to enter.
The odds of winning were 1 in 175 million, which is by far the worst odds you can find in the world of casino gambling, however this didn’t stop Gloria McKenzie from bagging the cash! What would you do with over half a billion dollars? We’re not sure where we’d start…
$40 million
Some people are seemingly just born to be casino gamblers, and the infamous Archie Karas is probably the best-known example of this in reality. The now-popular figure only had $50 to his name when he arrived in Las Vegas in 1992, however he fortunately managed to find an old friend to loan $10,000 in order to keep gambling.
This was a huge risk of course, however Archie Karas was able to repay his debt the very same day, with 50% interest too! The reason why? Well, Mr Karas had already won 17$ million by the end of the day, and he amazingly went on a 3 year casino gambling winning streak, picking up some $40 million in the process – the kind of winning streak that everybody would be pining for!
$39.7 million
Ironically, it often seems as though the most determined casino jackpot hunters can go years and years without hitting a big win, whereas amateur gamblers just looking to kill some time can end up winning a fortune. Just take the example of an anonymous 25 year old gambler who started spinning the reels of a few slot machines in Las Vegas whilst waiting for a basketball game to start.
Amazingly he ended up winning $39.7 million from one single spin – probably the best way to kill time before a later commitment we have ever heard of.