I keep reading about slot games downtown and how they are not as tight as those on the strip. Is this true? How do people know? What is your favorite slot game and where is it downtown?
It depends on the denominations you play too. If you're a penny player, downtown is only marginally better. DT casinos that grossed > $12M annually or more held 11.39% on penny slots over the last 12 months. Strip casinos that grossed > $72M annually held 11.80% on penny slots. So relatively DT casinos are 3.5% looser than the strip last year. That falls into the "who cares?" category, imo. http://gaming.nv.gov/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=11120
This is some Really interesting data. Amazing how the monthly data tracks so closely to the 12 month. Why do you think the casinos get so much back on twenty-one? Do they lump Backjack and all similar games with a higher house edge together or do players just play so poorly?
Well, table game win percentages are based on "hold", not house edge. Unlike slots/VP, not every wager is tracked on table games, so they calculate a "hold percentage" for a table. Hold % = (table chips purchased - table chips cashed out) / (table chips purchased) x 100% For example, you buy-in for $1000, and you leave the table with $800 in chips remaining, then the table hold for your session is: ($1000 - $800) / $1000 x 100% = 20%. So hold matters not only upon the house advantage, it matters on how much players buy-in for and how long they play. Baccarat and BJ often have "holds" in the low teens. Carny games are closer to 25%. It's typically about ten-fold than what the house expects to win per round of play (aka the "house edge").
I think it boils down to the selection of machines vs the tightness or looseness. An example is my favorite machine hot rolls. Downtown and can easily find a good selection of them and can play 9 lines 1 cent per line. Same machine on the strip is always going to be about 50 cents minimum to play if i can find one. Just that alone would make them seem tighter to me.
Limited Bankroll is the killer.... Most players buy in with too small of an amount, and walk away minus their buy-in after the natural dip takes them. If you're on a $10 table, you need a $200 buy-in, likewise on a $25 table, buying in for less than $4-500 spells wipeout. This process repeats its self thousands of times across Las Vegas: "How was blackjack?" "She killed me." Reality: He was playing $20 per hand and the $100 buy-in couldn't survive 2 dealer blackjacks and a few 20's in a short timespan. Nick
Also remember that VP is lumped in with the slot payback percentages. So they numbers for .25 slots and up may skew more towards downtown because of the better VP options.
Are they looser? Yes, as a rule, but there are some months the slots on the strip do pay better. The Slots magazine prints out the info. For the casual gambler/visitor to Vegas won't ever notice the true difference in just a few days. If you like the strip, it would be ridiculous to say you are staying downtown simply because the slots are looser.
I'd like to expand upon the above. That's a HUGE swing! Nearly 4 points might not seem like much. But let me put it into real world money and you'll see just how fast that adds up per spin. 88% payback VS 92% payback (just generics for this exercise) The casino win on every 10 spins at 12% hold (88% payback) is expected to be $1.20 ($0.12 X 10 = $1.20) The Casino win on every 10 spins at 8% hold (92% payback) is expected to be $0.80 ($0.08 X 10 = $0.80) So it seems like just 4 points but that's 50% more lost per spin. Figured in over 100 spins you would expect to lose $120 VS just $80. Obviously there is no way to quantify winning and loosing spins along the way. You could hit big on either set of machines. But just looking at pure average math those 4 points could mean playing on a machine for 90 minutes VS just an hour on the lower payback. Always look for the best value in gambling when playing slots. You can throw out things like Megabucks. One guy wins the lions share so a big hit that month can make a shitty payback machine look good. To take this to the extreme, a 95% payback dollar machine in Reno means you can expect to lose $5.00 for every $100 spent. Play a dollar machine that's 80% payback at the airport and your $100 will lose $20 (again all on average) Thats 4 times the play for the same $100. It just looks like 15 points. But that's quadruple the expected loss.
No, I meant a 3.5% relative swing, sorry. Downtown held 11.39% last year on pennies (88.61% return) while the strip held 11.80% (88.2% return). So downtown was (11.80-11.39)/11.80 = 3.5% looser than the strip was last year. The actual hold difference between the two is only 0.41%. So slot hold isn't a big reason to run downtown. If the actual hold difference was 4%, then yeah it would be a good idea to play there.
Ahh gotcha! But the math in my example stays true. I actually laid it out that way for a co-worker yesterday. They play pennies. I told him to switch to nickles if he likes that sort of game, when possible. He tried arguing that better 20 lines X 5 on a penny slot was better than 20 X 1 on a nickle thinking "bet a buck" was the same no matter what. I used the report linked in here to show him the strip "hold" on pennies VS nickles and that's where my 88 VS 92 came from. He said so what, its just 4 points. Once I showed him the real world math on just 4 points he was shocked!