I wasn't trying to hit a big progressive, although obviously I wouldn't have shed any tears if I'd ended up winning a hundred grand by accident..
has anyone ever had the bankroll to do this? how much would you need?
if the JP gets high enough surly it would make an +ev to play?
There are jackpots that are +ev from time to time. Microgaming triple 7s blackjack is well over its break even point now.
Video poker tends to be easier to win a progressive as the odds are you'll hit a royal roughly once every 40,000 hands on average. But they get hit often and most don't get above 100% rtp for long.
There are a couple of caribbean stud jackpots that are way above 100% at the moment. Do a bit of googling if you're interested, I'm sure you'll find some useful info.
As for whether its a viable strategy to profit, mathematically it is but you need to play only +ev jackpots all the time and the variance is big. There's no simple answer to what size bankroll you need because the proportion the jackpot contributes to the rtp varies with each game and the stake size varies too.
In the land casinos teams can identify a machine with a progressive that is +ev and monopolise it so no-one else can get on until they have hit the jackpot. Obviously you can't do that online as everyone can play the game at the same time.
I hate caribbean stud for that reason too. You're also long odds of being dealt a royal for the jackpot - about 1 in 650,000. Your chances in video poker are much higher because you get to discard and draw more cards if you aren't dealt a pat royal.
The trouble with slots is you need to map the reel layouts to work out the rtp with a progressive. If the progressive is paid via a bonus game like mega fortune or mega moolah you will never know the true odds. Same thing with random progressives like the ones at rtg casinos. You dont have any idea what the odds are of hitting them. So in most cases with slots you can only guess at whether the rtp is over 100%.
Obviously Mega Moolah is not being won that often. I'm guessing that the site is sending you an email every time the jackpot amount drops without analysing it to see if it really is a win, even if it the drop is only $1. That could be due to a bad data feed or maybe Microgaming adjusts the amount due to rounding or something at the same time every day. It could even be that the site is spamming its own email list with false information to try to get more people to visit in order to generate some more affiliate clicks.