Many times an urban myth can change the course of an entire day. Such was the case with a myth that began in 1989 as a 76 year old man cracks the jackpot on opening day. on November 22, 1989, Elmer Sherwin played the Megabucks casino game and hit a jackpot of $4.6 million dollars. This win of course changed Elmer’s life, but it also changed the way that casino grand opening to respond to jackpot winnings on the first day.
Elmer won his money at the Mirage on its opening day, and therefore everyone expects that there is a great myth about playing the Megabucks on opening day and hitting a large sum jackpot. This however is not the case with every casino opening. This particular casino game operates as all others do under regulations which caused the machine to randomly generate symbols on a day-to-day basis. These machines by law are not able to be programmed to hit at any specific time or on any specific day. According to Boris Hallerbach, product manager for Megajackpots, there are over 761 slot machines contained within 156 Nevada casinos. All of these machines had the exact same odds of winning as they are all hooked into one central network.
Although this information is out there to the gambling public that there is no secret about winning this jackpot, it did not stop the believers from attending the Excalibur Day after day for the first weekend with the hopes that the Megabucks jackpot would pay off. In fact, there is a whole crowd of believers have spent the past 20 years devoting your life to opening day play at the casinos. Some of the famous casino openings that did not pay out included the MGM Grand Casino, Mandalay Bay, the Venetian, the Bellagio, and Wynn Las Vegas. although no one has ever won again on an opening day playing this casino game, Sherwin did return to his game where 16 years later he hit it once again for $21.1 million.
