Just who are some of the biggest casino winners in Vegas? The answer
might surprise you. It's not the professional poker players or the
people that are paying the $100 slots that are winning big. It is
people just like you and me that are just keeping the seat warm and
taking a chance on the slots. The biggest winners on record are all
winners of the Megabucks jackpot. The jackpot starts at $7 million and
goes up from there until there is a mega winner.
For one lucky man, lightning or rather a jackpot has struck twice. At
the age of 92, Elmer Sherwin won his second Megabucks jackpot. Mr.
Sherwin won $21 million almost 16 years after his initial win of 4.6
million in the same jackpot game. Both of Mr. Sherwin's jackpots were
won in Las Vegas and were part of the Megabucks network of progressive
slot machines. He will receive his winnings in annual installments but
said that he had plans to donate his winnings to victims of Hurricane
Katrina. His first jackpot win had allowed him to travel the world, now
he wanted to give back.
Another big winner was Amy Nishimura from Hawaii. At 71, Ms. Nishimura
was visiting Las Vegas on vacation and hit the $8.9 million Megabucks
jackpot at the Freemont hotel after spending about $100 on the slots.
Ms. Nishimura was another winner of the Megabucks network that is linked
to over 150 casinos across Nevada. More players mean a higher payout
for the lucky winners. She said that she had had dreams about her win
before she hit the jackpot.
The largest jackpot ever won in Vegas was $39.7 million and was won in
March of 2003 at the Excalibur casino. The lucky winner was a
25-year-old man from Los Angeles that turned a $100 stint at the slots
into the biggest win ever recorded. The instantly wealthy man was
visiting Vegas for the NCAA basketball tournaments and just sat down at
the slot machine to play for a while. He walked away with a whopping
1.5 million dollar payout for the next 25 years.
While we can all dream, the big winners are all just like you and me.
They decided to sit down and take a chance and lady luck was on their
side. As Mr. Sherwin has proven, lady luck doesn't always only strike
once.
