More About Slots

admin — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:37:38 +0000

The Competition

Obviously, the more competition a casino has for business, the looser their machines are going to be. The slot manager isn’t going to order a bunch of low payback machines if there are five other casinos within a short driving distance. Players will notice and won’t come back. Naturally, this means that places like Vegas, Reno, and other high-concentration gambling areas will generally have better-paying slots, whereas remote, out-of-the-way Podunk casinos will have machines that pay out much less - within reason, of course. If the slot machines are too tight, players just won’t bother to show up.

Penny Machines: Paying for the Entertainment

Slot machines cost money, whether it’s the cost of renting them, the electricity required to run them, or the cost of maintaining them. And of course the
casinos would like to make a small profit from them. It goes without saying that a customer has to push a lot of pennies into a slot machine for a casino to make any money from it. As the denominations go up - nickels, quarters, dollars, five dollars, and more - the payback percentage can be higher for the customer because the casino doesn’t need to keep as much to be profitable. As one slot manager told me, “If you’re going to play penny machines, you’re going to pay for the entertainment.”
Also, when a casino orders their machines, they’ll order the same payback percentage for each of their denominations. So if a slot manager wants a nickel machine to pay back 92.5 percent, all nickel machines will be 92.5 percent. It’s a rare casino that mixes the same denominations with different paybacks.

Loose and tight

admin — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:35:25 +0000

Customers (and many casinos) like to describe slot machines as either “loose” or “tight,” when what they’re really saying (without realizing it) is that a machine’s payback percentage is relatively high (”loose”) or relatively low (”tight”). A machine’s payback percentage will depend on the casino, where
casino has strict limits regulating how little a slot machine can pay out - but nearly every casino has their machines set to pay back more than the state minimum. For example, the minimum payback required by law in Nevada is 75 percent, but almost all machines in that state pay back at least 90 percent, and it’s easy to find 95 percent. In Atlantic City, the state requires the lowest payback to be 83 percent, but again, you’ll rarely find a machine that pays less than 90 percent.
So how do you find out how tight or loose the machines are at a particular casino? Well, it helps if you’re sleeping with the slot manager, but there are other ways. Many states, like Colorado, require casinos to report the slot percentages, some broken down by denomination. A visit to the state’s gaming control board (or the board’s Web site) can usually produce the info you seek. And magazines devoted to slots also regularly publish slot machine paybacks for areas around the country.