“The probabilities are static. They never change. Your odds of hitting a jackpot on any one spin are always the same.”

That is true for a linked progressive (like Megabucks, for example) in that the chance for hitting the progressive is the same for the same monetary bet, regardless of which game actually wins the prize. However, the odds of hitting a “jackpot” on a particular game can change if the slot has no credits on the machine (i.e. no one is playing it), and the operator / licensee changes the paytable while it is idle.

I would also have a slight quibble with the following paragraph, again, as far as Nevada and NGCB regulation 5.112 is concerned:

“To combat this perception, many neighborhood bars use hidden meters,” Lucas said. “They divert a little piece of every coin to a meter that no one can see. So if the progressive jackpot hits at $14,000, it will reset to something like $12,510 instead of $10,000, courtesy of this secret sum it’s accumulated.”

If a progressive has a displayed or published maximum award value, then all the money that would have gone to increasing that value over the maximum instead must be added into a hidden fund. Once the progressive hits, that maximum value is given to the player, and the amount in the hidden fund gets added to the reset value.

Nevada requires that all the progressive increments must ultimately be returned to patrons, in some way. If a machine with a non-shared progressive prize is taken off the floor or rendered permanently inoperable for whatever reason, the amount that got added to all of its local progressive levels must be put on other machines or awarded in some other way, such as a tournament or drawing, including any “hidden” accumulations.