After playing slots for so long, many people start to wonder what their chances are of hitting a jackpot. And the truth is that this is an impossible question to answer from a universal perspective. Many slots games differ in the number of paylines, reels, symbols and payouts they offer, so one can't just say, "Your odds of hitting a slots jackpot are 'X' in 'X.'"

But this isn't to say that you can't come up with a rough estimate for how likely you are to hit a jackpot. That said, let's look at a generic sample for your odds of hitting a jackpot.

Simple Arithmetic

To set up our example, assume that there's one jackpot stop in each window of the game. Furthermore, let's say that each window displays 30 total stops. This would mean that you could find the odds of hitting a jackpot by multiplying 30 by itself, equal to the amount of reels available.

If there were three reels, you would take 30 x 30 x 30 to get the following answer: 1-in-27,000 chance of winning a jackpot.

If there were five reels, you'd multiply 30 x 30 x 30 x 30 x 30 to get this answer: 1-in-24,300,000 odds of winning the top prize.

Long Shot

As you can see, your opportunity to win big decreases as the number of reels go up. This is why a lot of the $1 million-plus jackpots are offered on 5-reel slots games because casinos know that people aren't going to win very frequently.

Even on the generic 3-reel example we showed, you'd only have a 1-in-27,000 chance to win the top prize. But considering the fact that most people can perform hundreds of spins per hour, these aren't terrible odds of winning big.

When calculating your shot at hitting a slots jackpot, you most likely won't know the number of stop positions in each window. However, if you really want to get technical, you could email the makers of a slots game and ask them about this info so you can get exact math. Otherwise, you can just guess by using 30 reel stops when doing the math.