I may not understand properly what the real issues are in relation to jackpots, but at least according to the Adelaide Casino website:
"Linked jackpots are part of the overall return to player calculation and not in addition to a ‘base’ return of 87.5%."
That suggests to me that the Casino satisfies its obligation to return (in aggregate) 87.5% of all bets placed through a poker machine in two ways. First, by returning an amount less than 87.5% of the bets placed on a particular machine to players of that machine (call it x%), and, secondly, by returning an amount equivalent to the difference between 87.5% and x% of the bets placed on all machines treated as "linked" for the purposes of the jackpot (call that y%).
If that is right, then there is no separate concept of "jackpot money" - although you might call the y% jackpot money if you wanted to. But the upshot is that 87.5% of the amount gambled through poker machines will be returned to players in the two ways specified above - meaning that the casino keeps 12.5% of all wagers.
There is thus no separate pool from which the casino skims 66%. Indeed, if you treat the y% as jackpot money, then the casino takes 0% from it - it is all returned to players.
Or maybe I'm missing something?
Caribbean Poker ,Atheist.
John Kocbek.