Another holiday, another jumbo jackpot for one lucky player at Four Winds Casino in New Buffalo. It’s a track record that seems to repeat itself with regularity.
The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians’ Four Winds Casinos reports today that a jackpot totaling $744,416.48 was paid to one lucky guest from North Liberty, Indiana on New Year’s Day. The jackpot was won at Four Winds New Buffalo from a $15 wager on a $5 progressive Buffalo Thundering 7’s slot machine, as shown in the photo accompanying this story on Moody on the Market. The winner requested to remain anonymous.
The winning Buffalo Thundering 7’s machine is a wide-area progressive machine. Every Four Winds Casino location—along with over 300 other tribal casinos across the nation—belong to a 16-state Native American progressive gaming network. Anytime a coin is played in a linked machine anywhere in the network, the cumulative jackpot continues to grow until it is won, producing some of the largest jackpots in the region.
The New Years Day win is not the first big holiday bracketed jackpot at all. Back on Memorial Day, a penny machine player on the Casablanca game wagered $3 and won $326,067.58 at South Bend. On Cinco de Mayo, a New Buffalo jackpot topped $65,440, a St. Patrick’s Day winner hit for $101,250 at New Buffalo, and there was a more than $100k jackpot at South Bend a couple of days before Mothers Day.
Other big wins have been registered at New Buffalo in recent years on Good Friday of Easter weekend, several at the Christmas holiday, yet another around St. Patrick’s Day, a Valentine’s Day win, and New Year’s Day has logged at least one other massive jackpot on the record.
Other significant slot payouts at Four Winds Casinos in the past couple of months include a $1.2 million win in October and a $403,534 win on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, also won on progressive machines.
Four Winds New Buffalo offers nearly 125,000 square feet of gaming with more than 2,500 slot machines, 48 table games and a smoke-free gaming room. Four Winds South Bend has over 56,000 square feet of gaming space, 1,600 games and a poker room. Four Winds Hartford features 500 slot machines and eight table games. Four Winds Dowagiac features 400 slot machines and seven table games.
The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians’ sovereignty was reaffirmed under legislation signed into law by President Clinton in September of 1994. The Pokagon Band is dedicated to providing community development initiatives such as housing, education, family services, medical care and cultural preservation for its approximately 5,000 citizens.
The Pokagon Band’s ten-county service area includes four counties in Southwestern Michigan and six in Northern Indiana. Its main administrative offices are located in Dowagiac, with a satellite office in South Bend. In 2007, it opened Four Winds Casino Resort in New Buffalo, followed by Four Winds Hartford in 2011 and Four Winds Dowagiac in 2013. Four Winds South Bend opened January 16, 2018.
