Understanding Payout Caps

Capping Payouts

In both the bricks & mortar terrestrial casinos and on various on-line systems there may exist a caps on the maximum win from a single bet. This includes features that spring from a bet, typically other than jackpot wins (particularly large reset progressive jackpot wins).

It's actually very common in the land-based industry to cap wins derived from a particular paid game, in fact it’s essential in many markets due to government regulation. In Australian States, for instance, capping is set at $10,000 or $5,000 (depending on State) irrespective of the amount bet (which can be up to $10).
This may not apply to some jackpot wins.

However, in all instances (other than extremely low caps such as 50p/35 pound machines in the UK), the effect of such a cap on the mathematics is utterly negligible. Capping out in the extremely rare instances of wins of that magnitude makes way less than 0.1 of 1% difference.

It can still create a twinge of annoyance if you hit the cap…but it’s usually quickly replaced by that feeling of euphoria as you suddenly think: “Holy crap I just hit the max prize cap!”

Capping can also affect the top prizes in a game.

In order to minimise the impact of a cap it’s necessary to take maximum prize multipliers into account, so a game that has a x20 maximum feature multiplier may well result in the top prize for 5 of the best symbol being apparently lower than on other games.

It doesn’t mean it’s going to pay less, it just means that percentage RTP impact of the cap will be kept at a minimum.

Range-based jackpots

Jackpots of this type will always trigger between a defined range.

This range is advertised to the player, such as “will always trigger between $100 and $1,000”.

At the time the jackpot is reset it will determine the precise level, to the cent, that the next jackpot will trigger at.
The player that then contributes the 1c to take the jackpot meter to that defined trigger value will be the one that wins it.