A casino player at Encore Boston Harbor turned a single dollar into a $27,790.21 jackpot on a Screaming Links slot machine on August 30, one of thousands of winning spins that helped push the Everett resort's monthly payouts past $46 million.
The win, reported by MassLive, came on a Screaming Links slot machine. Screaming Links has been good to Encore players before — a $2.50 wager on the same game line landed a gambler a $178,975 jackpot on a Tuesday, according to VegasSlotsOnline.
The $27,790 win was far from the only big payday at the casino that same day. Also on August 30, a Buffalo Cash player walked away with $80,038.92, per the same MassLive report. Eleven days earlier, on August 19, a blackjack player turned a $5 side bet into a $217,478.80 progressive jackpot — a notable haul on a gaming floor that includes more than 175 table games, the outlet's report notes.
A Record Month for Jackpot Payouts
Those individual wins were part of a broader surge: Encore Boston Harbor paid out nearly $50 million across 17,638 jackpots in August, according to the report. That included $47,680,649.47 from 17,480 slot jackpots and nearly $1.4 million spread across 158 table-game jackpots. The resort's report also states that August set a record for jackpot payouts, with more than $46.3 million distributed to winners across the gaming floor.
The volume tracks with what the property typically handles. Encore Boston Harbor's floor includes more than 2,700 slot machines, and slot play routinely drives the bulk of its revenue. In April, the resort generated over $60 million in gross gaming revenue — more than $38 million of it from slots and over $21.8 million from table games — accounting for approximately 60% of all commercial casino gaming revenue statewide that month, according to SiGMA World.
How the State and the IRS Factor In
Massachusetts casinos like Encore, classified as Category 1 resort licensees, pay a 25% tax on gross gaming revenue that flows to the state, according to the Massachusetts Gaming Commission. That structure has added up: the state's three commercial casinos generated $97.36 million in gross gaming revenue in June alone, pushing total tax and assessment collections from commercial casinos past $2.47 billion since operations began, per SoloAzar.
For winners themselves, 2026 brought a change in how the IRS treats these payouts. The federal Form W-2G reporting threshold for slot machine winnings rose to $2,000 this tax year, replacing the long-standing $1,200 threshold, according to Wipfli. Payouts exceeding $5,000 are still subject to a 24% federal withholding rate, while Massachusetts taxes net gambling winnings under its own personal income tax rules, per Super Lawyers. At $27,790.21, the Screaming Links jackpot was a sizeable payout.
Part of a Bigger Pattern at the Everett Resort
This is not the first time Encore Boston Harbor has made headlines for outsized wins on modest bets this year. On New Year's Day, a Quincy man won a roughly $1.6 million Royal 9 Baccarat jackpot at Encore Boston Harbor, one of the largest table-game jackpots in the casino's history. Encore Boston Harbor, which opened in June 2019 following a $2.6 billion development on 33 acres along the Mystic River, remains a major Massachusetts resort casino.
The jackpot windfalls have also landed amid tension on the labor side of the resort's operations. In August, roughly 1,300 casino service workers represented by UNITE HERE Local 26 and Teamsters Local 25 voted to authorize a strike during ongoing contract negotiations with Wynn Resorts, Hoodline previously reported. Anyone concerned about their own gambling habits can reach the responsible gaming helpline at 1-800-327-5050.
