Biloxi
Make that two $1 million-plus jackpot winners in three weeks at Biloxi casinos.
The latest jackpot came at Beau Rivage Resort & Casino at around 11:41 p.m. Monday, Aug. 6, when a Texas woman sitting at a 25-cent Triple Double Diamond Wheel of Fortune slot machine hit $1,245,278.
The machine was a wide-area progressive, which means the jackpot was building at casinos throughout the state.
Videos shot by Michael Farrell, soon after the lucky spin and before the Mississippi Gaming Commission verified the win, show a crowd of people gathered around the winner and the slot machine, marveling at the size of the jackpot.
“Could you even imagine?” one person commented when the videos were posted on social media.
There hadn’t been a million-dollar winner at a Coast casino in three years — until July 18, when a Florida man hit the jackpot for $1,291,918. It came in the high limits room at Hard Rock Casino Biloxi while playing a Double Diamond 3x, 4x, 5x $10 in-house progressive slot machine.
Fred S. (no last name given) of Gulf Breeze, Florida, then won another $14,000 the same day, on a nearby machine while he waited for his jackpot to be certified.
These jackpots come after the Sun Herald asked in May, “What happened to the mega jackpots?”
The last “life-changing” jackpot of over $1 million had been in October 2015, when Evelyn H. (no last name given) of Milton, Florida, won $1.5 million at IP Casino playing a Wheel of Fortune machine.
In February 2013, the last win to make it into the Top-10 all-time slot jackpots on the Coast came at Palace Casino Biloxi, when a 73-year-old Michigan resident won $7.2 million on a WMS The Lord of the Rings penny slot.
