How this archive is built
Every entry here is a record of reporting, not of our own investigation. We index what was published, pin it to a casino and a machine where the reporting names them, and link back to the original. Below is exactly how that happens — including what we throw away.
Where the entries come from
Two sources, because they're good at different things. A news aggregator gives broad reach and goes back years, but since 2024 its links are encrypted — you can see that a story exists, not where it lives. Individual outlets' own feeds give real article URLs but only cover the last few dozen stories. So one supplies the back catalogue and the other supplies the daily flow.
Where a headline alone isn't enough, we look up the original article and read the body for the three things headlines almost never carry: which machine, how much was wagered, and the amount to the cent. That's how an entry gets from "someone won $1.6 million" to "$1,620,335.70 on a MegaHot 3/5/10 off a $7.50 bet."
What the labels mean
- Documented11
- Casino, machine and wager all on record.
- Confirmed80
- Two independent details on record.
- Amount only393
- Prize confirmed, venue not named in reporting.
- Unverified373
- Reported win, prize figure not stated.
We show the weak entries rather than hiding them. A win that was genuinely reported but where the casino was never named is still a real event — dropping it would make the archive look tidier and be less true.
What gets thrown out
- Jackpot totals that are still climbing. "Jackpot hits record $22.5 million" means the pool grew, not that anybody won it. Those go in a separate list.
- Multi-win write-ups. "Two jackpots over $1.7 million" — the figure is a sum, not any single win, so it can't be filed as one.
- Year-end and cumulative figures. "Slot players win $361M in 2025" is an operator statistic, not an event.
- Online casino promotion. Off-topic here — this archive is land-based only.
The mistakes we actively guard against
Getting a fact wrong is worse than not having it, so a few specific traps get checked every build:
- Same name, different game. "Megabucks" is both an IGT slot network and the name of several state lotteries. A lottery story never gets filed against the slot network.
- Roundup articles. A piece covering five wins mentions five casinos — reading entity names from anywhere in the body would attach the wrong venue, so we only read near the figure itself, and skip roundups entirely.
- Numbers from elsewhere in the story. A cumulative payout of $43M sitting three paragraphs below a $25,000 win is not that win's prize. Body figures are only trusted when they're the same order of magnitude as the headline.
- The same win counted twice. When several outlets report an identical figure within days, it's one event, not several. Those are merged — and multiple independent reports of the same number make an entry more trustworthy, not less.
What we don't do
We don't reproduce article text, we don't run affiliate links, we don't take a cut of anything, and we don't tell you a machine is "due." A progressive has no memory — how long a network has gone without paying is a fact about the past and nothing else.