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.
