Patent ID: 7883410

Claim:
A method for establishing a progressive jackpot award associated with a plurality of machines usable by a plurality of users, each user having a user account stored in a computer connected to the machine, the computer including a database for storing user account data including bonus points associated with each user, the progressive jackpot award having an associated payout value, including the steps of: allowing the users to use the machines and responsively award the users with bonus points as a function of their use of the machines and a predetermined criteria; storing the bonus awarded to each player in the associated user account; allowing the users to access the bonus points in the associated user account from the machines; allowing the users to use a number of the bonus points on the machines by exchanging the bonus points for at least one from a group including a non-gaming gift and a non-gaming service; adding an incremental number to a progressive jackpot award pool as a function of the number of bonus points used by each user; and, detecting a trigger condition during use of one the gaming machines by a progressive winning one of the users and responsively awarding to the progressive winning one of the users at least a portion of the promotional progressive jackpot pool as the jackpot award.