Slots Slots Tight Since Recession?

The first time I went to Vegas when I was 21 (about 7-8 years ago) I remember having a blast with my mom. The slots paid out left and right and it was so entertaining. I went back a few years later and the slots all seemed "so tight." It wasn't the same. When I went back it was just after the major recession hit. I haven't been to Vegas for 5 years but I'm going in June. Does anyone agree that the slots haven't been the same since the recession or are they better now that it has been years since it hit?

 

The business model of most Vegas hotel/casinos was based on cheap labor. When the minimum wage increases started about 8 yrs ago, they had to adjust. The most obvious place is the slot machine, you can't see the payback like blackjack or craps.

The trend of removing slots in Vegas began about 4 yrs ago so most casinos are no longer jamming in slots everywhere they can. You might be a little surprised at how much open space is on the casino floors on the Strip these days.

They also replace older higher paying slots with newer lower paying slots. Couple that with the reduced availability and your choices are becoming a little more limited. Get off-Strip if you want better paying slots, chances are your local casino has better paybacks than the Strip does these days.

All this is my opinion, feel free to disagree.

 

One would think in tough times they would make slots looser to encourage more play, not the other way around.

If everyone was flush with money then they would not be counting pennies and tighter slots would be more acceptable.

So no, I dont think slots are tighter now. They have always been pretty much the same.

I think it has more to do with what particular machines one chooses to play and their perception of wins.

For me, If i get some drinks and every once in a while the thing lights up with a bit of a reward, I am willing to pay some money for that. If it is a quiet dud, I move to another machine that has a bit more excitement.

 

Agree

For me, If i get some drinks and every once in a while the thing lights up with a bit of a reward, I am willing to pay some money for that. If it is a quiet dud, I move to another machine that has a bit more excitement.[/QUOTE]

I agree about the drinks. We don't get drinks in the regular (small) casinos in my City. At least they give free drinks. It's funny though because their thought is the more buzzed you become the more likely you are to pump more money in. I know I do

 

You have good days and bad days and good trips and bad trips, and just because you have a bad trip doesn't mean they tightened up the slots, you just picked the wrong machines.

Remember the TV game show "Let's Make a Deal" where you had to choose door number one, two or three?

Slots are the same, if you're having a "bad day," the reality is, you're playing the wrong machines for too long. Learn to identify a machine in a bad cycle and stop feeding money into it thinking "it's due to hit." There's no such thing as "due to hit."
If in the first $10-$20-$40 the machine is not playing "friendly" by giving you even small hits, bail out and move on, even if it's your favorite machine and it paid like an ATM the last time you played it. Learn to identify bag games in bad cycles and cash out and move on.

 

The average payback numbers are easily available and come out every year.

For dollar slots, year ending June 2007

The Strip - 93.56%
Downtown -95.31%
Boulder Strip - 96.26%
N. Las Vegas - 96.89%


For dollar slots, year ending June 2013

The Strip - 93.40%
Downtown - 95.14%
Boulder Strip - 96.21%
N. Las Vegas - 96.30%

For quarter slots, year ending June 2007

The Strip - 91.36%
Downtown - 94.60%
Boulder Strip - 96.40%
N. Las Vegas - 96.14%

Quarter slots, year ending June 2013

The Strip - 91.37%
Downtown - 94.77%
Boulder Strip - 96.77%
N. Las Vegas - 96.58%

 

No, the slots aren't "tighter" but they have changed: going back 7-8 years ago slot machines were cheaper to play and they had less variance and volatility.

Going that far back was a time when it cost about 20-30 cents to play all lines on a video slot and there were lots of older games still out from the previous era when it was only 9-15 cents to play all lines. In 2008 that was when machines started making the transition to where it cost 40-50 cents to play all lines and most of the old games that used to have only 9-15 lines were getting modified to 20-30 lines.

That change in number of lines had a pretty big effect on variance. Consider that back in 2006 the majority of video slot machines on the casino floor had only 9-12 lines (there were some with more, but talking the majority) so that to play all lines at 1 penny a line a $20 was good for 223 spins before you went through your bankroll one time... nowadays almost every machine coming out has 40 or 50 lines to play (and yes, again there are some with more) and now $20 is only good for 40-50 spins before you go through your bankroll one time... and the more times you go through your bankroll the higher your risk of ruin.

So its not that the games are "tighter" its just that back in the day going to the casino with $100 usually meant you could play all day (over 1100 spins, or about 2 hours of play, just to get through your bankroll once, you could grind that for 10-12 hours easily) but now a $100 bill can go pretty quick because on a 50 cent machine its only going to take you about 20-30 minutes to play through it once.

And then there is volatility. Again, going back 6+ years on most video slot machines you would have a hard time hitting a $100 win let alone getting anywhere close to a hand pay. For most machines of that era even if you got all 5 of the top symbols on a pay line it was usually only good for an $80 win at 1 credit per line... then it was really about late 2007 to early 2008 that WMS was rolling out their new line of machines and with that came higher volatility and then when IGT and High5 started doing the same around the same time it really changed how the games were played because now with a bet of just 1 credit per line, a spin as low as 30 to 50 cents, you could potentially see a win of not just over $100 but over $200 and even $300.

And for years thats been the big thing: giving even the small time player the potential for a big jackpot. But of course the catch is: somebody must pay for it and to that end the machines of the newer era have a lot less positive winning spins so you see a lot of stuff like you bet 30 cents this spin, but you only win 5 or 10 cents back and hitting a couple of 4 of a kinds only pays out maybe $1.50 - this makes the machines seem tighter but they aren't, they just have all their paytable weight shifted up so that the massive wins are possible.

So the end result is not that machines are "tighter" (because tighter denotes shaving payback from the paytable) but that they have changed and now a player will need a bigger bankroll to get the same amount of play and they usually have to play longer so they can last it out to give the machine time to hit those big wins.

 

Hmm

Auggie I appreciate your detailed response and explanation. All makes sense especially because I see a ton of penny and nickel machines were the lowest bet is so much higher than the max bet was on older machines.

That being said, the machines I mostly remember playing and winning on were Goldfish, Jackpot Party and Monopoly Big Event in that era and I believe Goldfish & Jackpot Party have not changed in terms of line bet? Same machines?

 

Casino Debt

2-3 years ago at G2E, Gary Loveman pretty much came right out and noted that they were going to keep things tight, and he hoped that the rest of the Strip operators would do the same. (I'm obviously paraphrasing what it sounded like he was saying).

Until The Strip loosens up on the slots and 6-5 blackjack, downtown is the only place to gamble. The games are better and you are sending a message to The Strip.

 

Boulder Strip is the place to go for slots if you want to maximize your returns.

 

not a slot player, and I know a lot of people who think slots are tighter, I have no idea. One change that makes a difference in perception now is you do not have the coins dropping in the hopper anymore. Hearing the coins drop made you feel like people were winning or at least getting their money back. Another thing is that if you are not taking time to put coins in, you are probably playing faster, playing more hands, which mathematically means you will be losing more.

 

What p*sses me off is that they continue to take out slots that are playable anywhere from 9 to 20 cents or so per spin, and putting in those that have a minimum of 60-80 per spin. You also can't play off when you get down to only a few cents left.

 

One of our low roller, Progressive slots, favorites that we used to play all the time, was the Blondie/Dagwood 5c, 3 reel slot at Bally's.

The progressive started at 20K and usually hit in the high 20K to low 30K.

Max bet = 15c, and with a $10 buy in, that would last either 20 minutes on a bad run, to over an hour, with profit.

Play those, sooooooo many times (2000 and again in 2002). For 3 reeler's at 5c * 3 (15c a wack) with a chance to win $25 - $30K.... Priceless. Miss those too much

Played them at Barbary Coast and the Gold Coast too back in the day. Those were the days..