To catch something with odds of, say, one in a million, you need either a lot of luck or a lot of attempts. I had both.
I put together a collection of the rarest wins I have ever hit, ordered from the most likely to the least likely. Just as important: every single one of them came out of plus EV play, meaning the odds were on my side before the spin.
Heads up. This one is long enough that some email clients will cut it off. If that happens, open it in the Substack app or on the web to see all of it.
Odds up to 1 in 100,000
Let’s start with the easy one. A straight up number bet in European roulette, single zero, 1 in 37 to hit. There was a time when I very often put 1,000 euros1 or dollars on a single number. I have not told you yet what the trick was, though subscribers who have been here since the beginning may already have worked it out. Either way, I will get to it.
Hitting the Divine Fortune jackpot is not that rare an event if you play at the 100 euro max bet, 1 in 26,854. I have also taken that jackpot at a 20 stake, which puts the odds at 1 in 134,270.
The Mega Joker jackpot, 50,000 to 1 at a stake of 10. What makes this one harder is that there are no proper autospins, and you constantly have to make decisions based on what the Super Meter is showing. Not the most relaxing way to spend an evening.
Hitting the same number three spins in a row is almost exactly as likely as taking Mega Joker at a stake of 10. 1 in 50,653. I got this one while clearing a bonus after my max bet had already been cut from 100 down to 15, so the win itself was not huge. In an earlier post I wrote about betting on red seven for several months straight, 10 to 23 hours a day, across 5 or 6 tables at once, at 106% RTP. So three in a row happened to me more than once. Four in a row never came. That achievement stayed locked.
The 5,000x max win in Fruit Party. The real odds are 1 in 88,230. I have hit the max win here about 10 times playing various best multiplier tournaments. Interesting thing about this slot is that the max win can land on an ordinary spin, no bonus needed.
Odds between 1 in 100,000 and 1 in 1,000,000
The max win in Rise of Merlin, estimated at 1 in 261,4882 playing a single line. Same 5,000x, but almost three times rarer. This one came during the slot races I wrote about earlier.
The 20,000x max wins in Emerald King Rainbow Road, at odds of 1 in 402,928, are some of my best finds. Three of the top four places in one slot race, and a great ratio of odds to multiplier.
One of my wins in Dead or Alive 2. Estimated odds of 1 in 424,987 for a win bigger than 13,204x. Probably the best known slot that lets you land big wins in a reasonable amount of time.
The odds of the max win in Cat Wilde and the Lost Chapter are roughly 1 in 463,028 if you play a single line. Almost twice as rare as Rise of Merlin, but the win is twice as big, 10,000x.
While I was writing this post, Claude helpfully informed me that Cat Wilde is a nod to Oscar Wilde. I asked what exactly the nod was, and it turned out to be a hallucination. Which is a good excuse to reread my old post on why AI lies about gambling. It still holds up. And just as good an excuse to subscribe if you have not already.
Another max win, and probably the best odds to multiplier ratio I have come across. 549,248 attempts on average to land the 50,000x in Bandit Thunderlink by Stakelogic. But for the odds to look like that, you have to pick the third bonus.
One of my first jackpots, won at a 1 dollar stake with free money. Unbelievable luck. Believable, actually, at odds of around 1 in 640,000, even though I made no more than a thousand spins. The real kicker is that I was playing on freeplays, 888’s version of free spins, so I was risking nothing at all. That jackpot is exclusive too, only available on 888.
Odds rarer than 1 in 1,000,000
What gambler has not dreamed of filling the whole screen with the top paying symbol in a book slot. In this particular take on the book theme, I put the odds of that at 1 in 1,249,460.
Landing something that happens once in a million really is enormous luck, especially when you only had a few thousand attempts. An almost max win in Hot Fiesta, estimated at 1 in 1.6 million3.
A 1 in 3 million shot for the 37,727x win in Dead or Alive 2. This came in a slot race where it only got me fourth place. That same time someone pulled the top prize of 111,111x, which comes in at 1 in 42 million. I no longer have my own screenshot of this one either, so I had to grab one off the internet.
The last win on the list is the same 50,000x max win in Bandit Thunderlink, but with the second bonus selected. Slightly rarer than 1 in 3 million. Look at the difference that comes from picking the wrong bonus game. 549k versus 3M, five and a half times, in the same slot, for the same prize. This is exactly the case where you need to know the math to make the most rational and most profitable decisions.
My recent 46,038x win, roughly a 1 in 5 million event, came through the bonus buy feature, which brings the task down to about 1 in 30,000. That is why I kept it separate from the list. This matters, because a lot of the screenshots and video clips you see on social media were made with bonus buys, which completely distorts how rare they actually are.
So what is the rarest thing that has ever happened to you? Tell me in the comments.
I also post shorter notes on Substack Notes and on X (Twitter). If that is your kind of thing, you can follow me there too.
All amounts are in the currency of the account I was playing on at the time, so euros in some places and dollars in others.
For NetEnt and Pragmatic Play the frequencies come from provider documentation. For Play'n GO and Stakelogic they come from data I collected myself, which makes them estimates with a margin of error.
One more thing. Pragmatic Play only has numbers for the max win, so this multiplier is my own estimate too.