XTREME JACKPOTS
Bonus Spin Xtreme from AGS brings progressive jackpots from the pit to the poker room
By Frank Legato
Ever since slot machines usurped table games as the highest-earning games on casino floors, casino table game officials have searched for ways to close the money gap. One of the most effective contributors to this effort has been a technology borrowed directly from the slot floor—progressive jackpots.
Beginning back in the 1990s with Caribbean Stud Poker and a few other house-banked table games, players were given the option to place a progressive side bet to qualify for a slot-style progressive jackpot for landing a royal flush.
It was a win-win—casinos made more money from table games with low house advantages (compared to the slots, at least), and players got the added excitement of the chance to win big.
But table-game progressives really took off when the progressive jackpot was linked between various tables hosting the same game—jackpots became larger and grew more quickly, with progressive side bets at multiple tables contributing to the big prize.
Then, Las Vegas-based supplier AGS changed the whole game of the table-game progressive, with a system called Bonus Spin Xtreme (BSX). As the name indicates, it is the “extreme” in progressives, because its progressive jackpot is fed not only by a link between the same table games; it is a progressive jackpot linked between any number of different table games, up to every table in a casino. It happens through the spin of a tri- level concentric wheel.
The system, developed by AGS Senior Director of Table Game Content Jamie Abrahamson, accomplishes the cross-game jackpot through an ingenious mathematical formula that identifies a community-based event in each individual table game that happens at approximately the same frequency—namely, 5 percent, or a one-in-20 chance of happening.
For poker derivatives, the 5 percent trigger is three of a kind or better among the community cards. For blackjack and its derivatives, it’s the dealer getting an “extreme 16” on the deal—a six with a 10 or a picture card. For baccarat, it’s a four-card tie on the deal. For roulette, it’s zero or double zero—or any two single numbers (as determined by the casino). In pai gow, it triggers if the dealer has a king-high pai gow. On craps, it’s 11 on the come-out roll.
On Texas Hold’em in the live poker room, the wheel is triggered through a three-card straight or three of a kind on the flop.
For the first time, Bonus Spin Xtreme extended the possibility of a progressive jackpot and bonus to community games like roulette, craps, baccarat and live poker. But it also adds a first-ever community feature to those and other games—when triggered, everyone seated at the table gets a bonus payoff.
“This really addressed a problem with games like baccarat, craps, roulette and poker,” says Abrahamson, “because it solved that problem of having just one jackpot winner, and the fact they would have to share it.”
“That created a challenging jackpot dynamic,” adds John Hemberger, senior vice president and general manager of table products at AGS. “There would be $100,000 on a meter and there are five players at the table, and instead of saying I’m going to win $100,000, I’m saying, oh, I’m going to get $20,000. You always have that element of having to chop a jackpot.
“The other aim is to attack titles in the pit that have been excluded from progressives, like craps, roulette, even games like War, where it’s tough to justify seating a progressive meter independently running as its own jackpot. It made sense to utilize this platform.
“One other interesting benefit of the community aspect: when you walked on a casino floor, always the loudest, most exciting game was craps,” says Abrahamson. “And that was because they had that community feel—they were winning together, losing together. When you take that community aspect and even apply it to an individual game like blackjack, and base the trigger off of the dealer hand, all of a sudden, everyone’s rooting for the dealer to have 16 or to bust.
“Now you’ve created that excitement at the table, and everyone can enter the bonus round together regardless of their individual hand. So, we started to look at that community aspect and even apply the bonus round to games that were traditionally individual jackpot games like blackjack, or basing a poker derivative game on the flop and the cards that were shared.”
How it Works
When the triggering event occurs on a table, a display indicates a bonus spin will occur at the end of the hand. The basic game then proceeds as usual, and when it is over, the display of three concentric wheels lights up and the wheels spin. The inner wheel lands on a community award, typically ranging from $30 to $250. Every player at the table wins that award. The middle wheel lands on a number corresponding to one of the player positions, designating it as the “Hot Spot.” If that player has made the progressive side bet, a spin button at that station lights up, and he or she initiates the spin of the outer wheel, which contains jackpot amounts in the hundreds of dollars and the two top progressives displayed above the wheel.
The top progressives vary according to how many tables in the casino are linked to the jackpots, but the largest Bonus Spin Xtreme linkups have resulted in seven-figure prizes.
Optional to the casino is a third jackpot displayed on the meters above the wheel—the popular AGS “Must-Hit-By” progressive. This injects an extra bit of excitement into the game, as players glance at the display to see it is nearing the must-hit level—in the hundreds up to the thousands, again, depending on the size of the linkup. When that is triggered, the system picks one of the player positions at random to award the prize.
Because casinos can use Bonus Spin Xtreme to link every table game on the casino floor, casino operators will only have to seed each progressive meter one time, and the progressive meters will grow much more quickly. This injects an element of excitement, not only to traditionally staid games like blackjack, but to community games like craps and roulette, adding to the commotion natural to those games.
A Pulse for Poker Rooms
While Bonus Spin Xtreme initially spread as a system to link a common jackpot among house-banked games like blackjack, roulette and craps, the setup is rapidly being discovered by poker room managers across the casino industry.
After an initial boom caused by Chris Moneymaker’s 2003 World Series of Poker win and the advent of televised tournaments, the casino poker business eventually reverted to its former status as a loss leader for many operators, with money-losing poker rooms closing at many casinos.
Many poker operators now see Bonus Spin Xtreme as a way to turn those fortunes around.
Hemberger says Bonus Spin Xtreme has been added to poker rooms across the country since its first poker installation, which linked two tables at the Wind River Casino in Northern California—and significantly increased the revenue of the poker room. Bonus Spin Xtreme can now be found in several poker rooms across the U.S., in casinos as diverse as Caesars Virginia, Graton Casino in California, Gila River Casino in Arizona and FireKeepers Casino in Michigan—and the numbers are growing every month.
Abrahamson says poker room operators are realizing the benefits of the progressive jackpot—which increases revenue without interfering with the game for the poker purist —after its early popularity linking the jackpot among games in the pit. “We always had live poker in mind, but initially it wasn’t the focus because we wanted to prove the concept of Bonus Spin Extreme first,” Abrahamson says.
“And then we knew that our biggest challenge was to convince operators to try it in the poker room. We knew that poker room managers were dying for a solution to provide incremental revenue, and that they were limited by the rake in terms of how much money they could make.”
“Extending Bonus Spin Xtreme to the poker room has a huge upside,” adds Hemberger. “For an area of the floor that could be a loss leader, in a lot of instances it can flip that upside-down.”
Abrahamson says the added revenue has allowed poker managers in some instances to avoid increases in the rake, or even lower the house cut of the pot. This has garnered wide acceptance of the progressive system by players, from recreational to pro-level poker players.
“The recreational players are adopting it more than the grinders who are there trying to make a living,” says Abrahamson, “but even the grinders will look at certain aspects and then get involved. For instance, we have a must-hit-by feature that we can place on our traditional progressive, so if the must-hit gets closer, you know poker players are always doing the math.
“So when they think they have a positive EV on the must-hit, they’ll start betting it. If they noticed there hasn’t been a straight in 10 hands, they do the math and try to get an edge. Eventually, everyone gets involved.”
Just as in the pit, as the jackpot grows, the participation in the Bonus Spin Xtreme side bet increases. “When you hit thresholds like $100,000—when you hit that six-figure mark— you see participation spike,” says Hemberger. “And there are numbers that go beyond that.”
As in seven figures. AGS is offering casinos the option to link the poker room to the overall Bonus Spin Xtreme progressive in the main pit. “We just got our Nevada approval, and this is a market that has been quite eager to get the product,” Hemberger says. “We’re going to be going live with one of our partners in Downtown Las Vegas in the coming weeks and there is a chance we’re going to have a seven-figure jackpot, because they’re going to connect it up to their pit.”
“We provide different configurations for the operator,” adds Abrahamson, “choices of how frequently they want the jackpot to hit that could range from one every 500,000 plays up to one in several million.
“Different operators have different preferences. Some want quicker-hitting jackpots that hit in the $50,000 to $100,000 target, and some properties want that $1 million jackpot.”
Among the big-money Bonus Spin Xtreme jackpots available now is FireKeepers, which is linking its poker room to the pit jackpot, which was over $900,000 at press time. The Golden Nugget in Las Vegas linked its poker room to Bonus Spin Xtreme with its jackpot already over $1 million.
“This gives poker players a chance to win a life-changing jackpot,” says Hemberger. “The beauty with the poker room is the operator really has the choice if they want to link it with their games in their pit or keep it specific to the poker room, so we have folks who say, ‘I want it to be isolated to my poker players,’ and we have the other ones who say, ‘Man, I have this huge jackpot on my floor. I want everybody in my casino to be incentivized by this and have an opportunity to win it.”
Poker Comeback
The timing for moving Bonus Spin Xtreme to the poker room couldn’t be better. According to Abrahamson, poker is making a comeback in many markets. “Some people might have anticipated, after the ‘Moneymaker effect’ died, poker would go away,” he says, “but it’s leveled off, and it’s here to stay. The attendance this year at the World Series of Poker has been strong, and there are two or three properties on the Strip that have stated they are either in the process or already have reopened poker rooms that shut down initially.”
Hemberger adds that Bonus Spin Xtreme is having a positive effect on those poker rooms. “I think you’re seeing a little bit of a resurgence with poker across the country, and with Bonus Spin Xtreme, we’ve seen instances where rooms that are slightly profitable are increasing the rate of their profitability. Rooms that maybe are break-even or slight loss leaders are turning the corner and getting into a profitable area. So it is moving the needle.”
For the players, Hemberger stresses Bonus Spin Xtreme adds excitement to a game that is often business-like in its progress. “With this, if you are going through a dead period where you feel like you’re not getting any cards, you can jump on Bonus Spin Xtreme and play the little mini game each time, and have some action until maybe the cards turn your way. It gives you a little taste of being involved in something where your bad cards aren’t dictating a negative outcome.”
“And it could keep you interested and focused on the game instead of on your phone,” adds Abrahamson. “Now, you’re still watching the action. You’re anticipating the flop. It’s keeping you interested in the game.”
