I received an email, with numerous follow-ups, from a player wanting to know how many dollars per hour certain games were worth at a particular casino. And he wanted me to give him an answer if he played 600, 800, or 1,000 hands per hour (hph) for various denominations.
It is far easier to ask such questions than it is to answer them. Some of it can be figured by simple algebra (assuming that isn’t a self-contradictory term for you), but some of it depends on unknown things, such as what promotions the casino will run in the future, how large the mailers will be, and other such matters.
Let’s look at some of these things.
First the game itself. Let’s take two of them, 9/6 Jacks or Better and NSU Deuces Wild. Whether or not these particular games are available at the casino where you play, the technique for evaluating remains the same for other games as well.
9/6 Jacks or Better returns 99.544% and NSU Deuces Wild returns 99.728%. I’m assuming you play close to perfectly. They are relatively easy games. But not every player has learned the games well. Not every player remembers the fine points. If you play less than perfectly, you’ll need to make some adjustments.
Let’s also assume you’re playing for dollars, five coins at a time. The following chart shows how much you lose per hour at the three different hands-per-hour rates before we consider the slot club and promotions.
| Game | Return | 600 hph | 800 hph | 1000 hph |
| 9/6 JoB | 99.544% | -$13.68 | -$18.24 | -$22.80 |
| NSU DW | 99.728% | -$8.16 | -$10.88 | -$13.60 |
The fact that the scores are negative should not be a surprise. A 99.544% game means that the house has a 0.456% edge over you. When the house has any edge over you, on average you’re going to be a net loser.
Next, we look at the slot club. You have to figure it out in terms of percentages. A 0.1% slot club means that for every $1,000 coin-in you play, you receive $1 in cash back or free play. For our purposes today, I’m considering cash back and free play to be synonymous. A 0.1% slot club with a 3x multiplier is considered to be a 0.3% slot club. Obviously the faster you play, the more of this cash back you receive. (It is also true that the faster you play, the more mistakes you’re likely to make.)
| Slot Club | 600 hph | 800 hph | 1000 hph |
| 0.1% | $3.00 | $4.00 | $5.00 |
| 0.3% | $9.00 | $12.00 | $15.00 |
| 0.5% | $15.00 | $20.00 | $25.00 |
The slot club can be any amount, of course, but you can extrapolate from this chart to get the amount you would earn. If you look at 9/6 JoB, for example, you’ll see that when you are just including the game and the slot club, any slot club return of less than a half percent leaves you a loser. For NSU, you need a 0.3% slot club to have a very small advantage.
The slot club can return any amount, of course. If it is 0.05%, well that means half the return of 0.1%. If the club returns 0.6%, you can double the amount for 0.3%, or add together the amounts you get from 0.1% and 0.5%, or maybe, just see how it is figured and do it yourself.
The next thing to consider is your mailer. You must keep records on how much you play. The most common time period that casinos use to figure out your mailer is the last three months, one month removed. That is, the amount you play in January + February + March determines your mailer in May. For starters, assume that is the formula.
Also, know that some casinos punish winning players and reward losing players. That makes it difficult to determine how much your mailer will be. But do your best.
The next chart determines the percentage mailer, based on how much you play. Take your monthly coin-in and divide it into your monthly return. What shows up as $40 on the chart is often $10 a week. $200 a month means $50 a week. Etc. Once you see how it’s figured, the math isn’t too difficult.
| Average Monthly Coin-in | $40 | $200 | $400 |
| $20,000 | 0.20% | 1.00% | 2.00% |
| $50,000 | 0.08% | 0.40% | 0.80% |
| $100,000 | 0.04% | 0.20% | 0.40% |
The final part of the equation is the value of the promotions. Some of these are easy to compute. Some are difficult. Do your best. For example, the May promotion at the South Point was half-price gift cards for the first $83,340 coin-in. That’s easy to figure out. The normal slot club there is 0.30%, so the promotion is worth an additional 0.30%.
Other promotions aren’t so easy. If you get drawing tickets and there’s a big drawing, it’s really tough to get an exact percentage. But you can estimate. Casinos tend to give away about the same amount every month. In the case of the South Point, you know that one of their promotions is worth 0.30%. So, you assume they all pay that much. Your assumption will be inexact, of course, but sometimes an estimate is all you can do.
Finally, it comes down to adding everything up. That will give you your percentage advantage (or disadvantage, should you be a person who doesn’t insist on only playing games where you have the edge.) Once you have that percentage, you can now estimate how much a game is worth on a dollars-per-hour basis.
My problem is with averages. On average, if you put one hand in a hot stove and the other in a freezer, on average you’ll be at room temperature.
If you put through 100,000 dollars into a video poker machine in one month, you can very easily average 100,000 poorer.
Ask me and thousand of other morons.
If you put $100k through a machine and were down $100k you would be the unluckiest person to have lived. That means you would have to lose every hand, which is virtually impossible even if you are the worst possible player.
But you really aren’t talking about averages but rather variation.
Regarding the player who posed the questions to Bob, I’ll keep my fingers crossed that we’re talking a quarter player (not a dollar one, as assumed).
Even with Bob’s generous assistance, this player is not “ready for prime time””.
Why do you say that?
Actually, in order to give a totally satisfactory answer, we have to split it all into 2 scenarios: (1) You hit a royal flush during your playing session, and (2) You don’t hit a royal flush during your playing session. If you do hit one, you will be a winner for sure, a big winner. But if you don’t, then at a minimum, you have to deduct the royal component from the total EV to learn what you would expect to experience. That means with 9/6 Jacks, in which the royal component is 1.98%, non-royal sessions will average a net EV of only 97.56%. You would multiply 2.44% times your coin-through per hour to learn your expected loss per hour. I’m sure that the questioner is only ignorant and curious about non-royal sessions because I’m sure he knows that royals are rare and unpredictable.
Al
Why would you assume someone would only want to know part of the VP equation? Sometimes you have winning sessions without getting the elusive Royal. From my perspective, they must be taken together to get a correct picture of what your expected loss might be.
Would really appreciate a comment from Bob….
ND
There are people claiming wining at 1-2 no limit Texas Hold’em may be possible. They ignore the fact that the house rake plus tips is eating up most of their expected profit and they don’t even realize it. If you play videopoker for small denominations and a small bankroll and as soon as you hit a Royal Flush you get excited and buy your wife a splendid dinner, then you shouldn’t be surprised that by the end of the month there’s not much left from your winnings. I would reckon you end up being a small loser anyways.
This is only part 1 of the cold reality most of us small time players are facing. Still, and that’s the beauty of it, all the benefits and freebies coming along while playing such games as NSUD or JOB or other games close enough to 100 per cent return are giving you a lot of play for your money.
Tourists like me probably don’t “have to” win but try to win and hope to leave Las Vegas again with pockets full of money. Most of the times, it doesn’t work out, but sometimes when you get over-royal-ed after your 2 weeks’ or 3 weeks’ stay, this may happen. Last time when I was in Vegas for almost 1 month I hit 7 Royal Flushes while No7 happened the afternoon prior my departure. It was a special moment and a trip I shall not forget so soon.
Although I try to play nothing but the good games and focus on how to play the difficult hands, I know that I am far from playing perfect strategy. I try and try but it just doesn’t work over the stretch of 6 hours or longer. Mistakes occur and this can sometimes become costly. If you miss holding a “deuce” when there are 3 on the draw but one sticky button let’s 1 of them deuces vanish, then you may be in trouble some day. Still, with all the mistakes I do and the return close to break even with all the comps and points, I think videopoker is one of the best games to have big fun and lose little.
From Switzerland
Boris
I always enjoy your posts Boris, you correct to a certain degree about the house rake and tipping being an impediment to winning, since I enjoy being a big tipper immensely I will always have to overcome that, I just feel that as a retired person I have to give some love to workers, and that the difference between a dollar and three dollar tip is minimal when you consider the humanity. The key to winning at live poker is finding the good games if you ask me, scout them, be willing to walk away, if very little money is changing hands you will get stuck and have no hope to get your stake back. Poker is a 24 hour thing, a good player needs to incorporate and identify all possible skill factors into the equation. As Mick Jagger eloquently belts out, ” Time is on my side, yes it is”… Smart bankroll management is critical, and so is honest reflection about your play, we are not robots… The Bad beat Jackpot is like the Royal Flush in video poker, that is my complaint about playing poker in Las Vegas, most casinos do not offer them. Good luck to you Boris, hope you can come out to Las Vegas soon…
Hello Michael
I was flattered after reading your comment. It’s great making new internet friends and sharing opinions about the same passion. Videopoker has definetely become my No 1 game and live action poker is only ranked No 2 at best. Sometimes when I was sitting in a game at red rock or Green Valley Ranch I felt like I was wasting my time sitting there for hours trying to get great starting hands and flopping something. It’s tough to win a pot against people who know how the ball rolls so that was one of the reasons why I started playing videopoker.
All the percentage discussions on top of this with all the vales and EV- related points are important but not so important for a player that plays the games for the fun factor.
The tipping aspect is something that’s not being treated equally in other places outside the United States. In countries with higher living costs and living standards you just can’t expect somebody to be depending on tips and putting his lifestyle at risk and not knowing how much will be in your paycheck by the end of the month. I understand that you Americans believe that tipping is part of it and is important and it’s something that will always be part of the gambling business in the U.S. It’s up to us players to accept it and take care of the people working for tips. We Europeans do not always agree with the terms and rules , especially as it comes to the question why for instance a team member at Starbucks sells coffee at the counter with a tip box in front of the cashier register while there is no tip box at McDonalds. Why do we tip a food server in the restaurant 15-18 per cent while there’s not tip at the Albertsons supermarket. Why do they tip a helicopter pilot after a Grand Canyon tour and don’t tip the Southwest Airlines pilot who flies you into Vegas ? As you see, I brought up this topic to explain our point-of-view. To us it seems not logical why we “have to tip” a slot attendant who only gets notice of you if there is a hand pay but doesn’t even say hello to you until it happens. I just think that in modern times such as 2021 the old school tipping system designed probably 200 years back after your independance war is something to be re-defined. If the casino corporations would have to pay decent salaries to the staff then the tipping issue would not so much discussed and the professional gamblers would have completely different calculations about their net profit. This especially is about the slot- and live game poker players.
From Switzerland
Boris
I am just an American dude Boris, I love my country. I tip because it makes me feel better helping people out, and for example I would never tip a helicopter pilot, and the one time I got a hand pay I gave the guy ten bucks. It’s nice when everyone knows and loves you, it’s how I was raised. My father came to America when he was 2 years old, he grew up poor, his father died in his arms when he was 12, so he vowed to become a doctor and did. He taught me that leaving a good or better than average tip means you care about people. I do not make value judgements on tipping versus not tipping, it’s up to everyone to decide for themselves, but individual people in a country of 330 million people can not do very much about corporate culture and the rules. Green Valley and Red Rock are nice poker rooms, but both have older, better players, so you have to adjust. Try playing live poker on the strip, way more tourists and way looser action…
Please don’t get me wrong, Michael. I am not totally against tipping. I even believe that tipping helps increasing motivation and service quality to a certain degree. Once you tip someone who is doing you some sort of a service, then you show your respect or appreciation. We all know that. Also in trashy ol’ Europe, tipping is common in most countries and well appreciated. A taxi driver who recently drove a customer to his hometown location about 150 miles away said the tab was 470 Swiss Francs but he “volunteered” to stop down the meter once it was over 420 but the customer apparently was not interested to do so and even said she would give the driver a tip anyways. So the driver still stopped the meter at 420 or so and received a total of 500 (!!!!) for the ride from the exhausted gambling woman in need to get back home. Would you think the guy is paying tax for that 80 dollars extra tip?
Bottom line of this story is that the driver collected a nice extra tip which of course he will not declare for tax. And this of course is happening every day, everywhere all over the world. Most people that I know work on a salary basis and pay their taxes based on their shown income forms. Once people work at places where tipping becomes their most important way of making a living and making ends meet, this whole topic becomes a serious matter to them. We know that many job positions in casinos are based mostly on tips and if these people don’t generate enough tips they are in trouble and unhappy. At some places people receiving tips are even tipping their superiors to make sure to have their job tomorrow. Of course they say it’s because of other reasons, but let’s face the facts: It’s exactly what it is. So , tipping is so super-important to them , hence, it has become essential. To the corporations it’s a nice way to have their staff at low labor costs, and Uncle Sam has only estimates on how much that person receiving these tips will have to pay in taxes by the end of the year. These figures are floating as seasons come and go but people with low tips received can sometimes be in unfortunate situations. Stress is always a combining factor as these people wonder how much in tips they will make today.
Since you believe that this is the right way and I believe it is part of the American system, I accept it and do my share of tipping while I am there. Still I am not convinced that in 2021 this is the right way to go and I would rather think it’s time to pay the casino employees and the food and beverage workers fair money for their work. Perhaps some day this idea may indeed become effective by law.
From Switzerland
Boris
I always tip for handpays. All of the slot attendants know me. They are very friendly and I always get good service from them. It is nice to have friends who celebrate your victories.
Thanks so much Bob!