Tag: slots

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An Interesting Slot Club Plus Other Thoughts

Bob Dancer

I received a strange email from a reader. I’m not 100% positive what I’m telling him is correct, but it’s what makes sense to me. Here it is:

I play slots and get weekly free play from MGM Grand and related properties in Las Vegas. If I redeem the free play at the MGM itself, it’s $100. If I redeem it at Park MGM, Aria, or any other MGM property on the west side of Las Vegas Boulevard, it’s $125. What gives?

The most likely explanation for this, in my opinion, is that the MGM Grand itself has looser slots than the other MGM properties. Assuming you’re going to play $20,000 or so through the machine when you come in (in order to keep getting the mailer), they’d rather you do it at the casinos with the tighter slots — so they reward you for doing so.

If you know about beating slots, shade your strike numbers depending on which side of the street you’re playing on. That is, if there was a game where you normally look for the minor being at least 17 before you play, use that number at the MGM Grand and 18 or 19 across the street.

Depending on how much you value your time, it’s probably best if you cash your free play on the west side of the Strip and do the vast majority of your playing at the MGM Grand itself. Even though the properties are right across the street from each other, the casinos are so large it can be a 10- or 15-minute walk to get from one to the other.

So Long to an Old Friend

At the South Point, I’ve played 9/6 Jacks or Better on the Five Play Multi Strike machines for years. Denominated in quarters, it was a 100-coin game, so it took $25 to fully load. It was a 99.8% game. In early April they downgraded these machines to 9/5 Jacks or Better, which makes them too tight to be interesting to me.

Even when they had the good pay schedules, they had nickel and dime games on the same boxes that were much tighter, and even the quarter games other than Jacks or Better were pretty tight. 

There are plenty of other games to play at South Point, but I’m sorry to see these particular ones go.

So Long to Another Old Friend

At the Four Queens in downtown Las Vegas, the dollar 10-7 Double Bonus machines are now gone. They’ve been a fixture at this casino for at least 30 years. Playing 50 cent 9/6 Jacks single line may be the best video poker alternative. It’s still slightly positive with the slot club, mailers, and promotions.

A Seven Stars Perk

One of the benefits of being Seven Stars in the Caesars/Harrah’s/Eldorado system, at least if you’re in Nevada, is that you get a monthly $150 free bet from Caesars Sports Book when you bet $100 or more. You used to be able to use Reward Credits to qualify for this free bet, but no longer.

The free bet is set up so regardless if you win or lose, you do not get the initial wager back. That is, if you bet at -200, which means you should win two-thirds of the time (not counting for the vig), you’ll collect a total of $75 for that $150 free bet. If you only collect that bet two-thirds of the time, that means your free bet is worth $50.

If you bet at +200, which means you should win one-third of the time (not counting for the vig), you’ll collect $300. Collecting $300 one-third of the time means your free bet is worth $100. Much better! And it’s easy to conclude that betting underdogs using free bets is better than betting favorites. I generally find a bet between +250 and +350 for my free bet.

For my initial bet, I find a bet around -200. I’m not sure why, but a sports bettor I respect told me I give up the least vig that way. 

Since these bets are a relatively small part of my monthly betting budget, I can use these quick rules of thumb without knowing a lot about successful sports betting. These markets are efficient enough that, so long as I get the bonus bet, it’s basically a certainty that I’ll profit over time. While I did learn a little about successful sports betting from co-hosting the podcast where we interviewed a number of successful sports bettors, my “expertise” is limited and the rules of thumb presented here are satisfactory enough for me.

If they stop giving away the bonus bet, I’ll continue using RCs to bet. Since I get to bet the RCs at face value, even if I’m only playing a 94% game at the sports book, that’s much better than playing a 50% game by redeeming the RCs for free play. 

When I stay at a Caesars property, which I do when I’m out of town, the hosts must use my accumulated RCs before they are allowed to comp anything. Since I play enough to merit being comped, I zero out my RCs at the sports book before I leave because the RCs would disappear if I didn’t. Some of the bets will win, so I’m virtually guaranteed to profit over time if I do this.

An NSU Puzzler

You’re playing NSU Deuces Wild, and the first four cards dealt on a hand are a deuce, a four, a five, and a king —- all spades. Of the 48 equally likely cards that could be dealt as the fifth card, how many are there where the correct hold is deuce, four, five? 

Rather than give you the answer immediately, I’ll spend an entire column on this puzzler soon.

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More About Slots

Bob Dancer

When I write about slots, it appears that I frustrate some of my readers. A typical response I get lists several demands. Following is one of those responses simplified:

  1. Where exactly did your “adventure” happen? I’m not interested in telling you that. The games I write about are found in many casinos. Slot club promotions are not irrelevant, but they are not as important as they are in video poker. In video poker, most of the games return less than 100% and you need the slot club benefits to make the game playable. The slot machines I play are typically in the 105% – 120% range, so getting double points for an extra 0.05% doesn’t mean too much.
  2. There are several hundreds of different slot machine titles around. Exactly what game are you talking about?

    I’m not interested in telling you that either. If I told you the game, some readers would want to know all the ins and outs of playing that game profitably — such as when to get on and when to get off, and how does that vary by denomination and, occasionally, slot club details. However much I share, there will always be players wanting more information.

  3. How can a slot machine pay 120%? We’ve always heard that slot machines return less than video poker, and no video poker game (other than a very occasional super-high progressive or a huge casino mistake) pays anywhere near that much. This I can talk about, and is indeed the subject of today’s blog.
  4. Where can I get more information about advantage slots? Michael Shackleford wrote a decent introductory section on advantage slots in the recent update to Gambling 102. There are several places on X, formerly Twitter, and YouTube.com where this is discussed. Look and you will find what you want to know, but I’m not going to give you an easy-to-follow roadmap. There are already many, many slot professionals out there. If you do decide to go this route, know that there will be lots of competition for the best games. 

In the past I’ve written about the hypothetical “Red Bob” slot machine and how it is played. Today I’m going to write about the equally hypothetical “Green Bob” machine — which is played differently than the “Red Bob” machine. Neither machine is an exact clone of a real machine, but slot players will recognize similarities between these games and games that do exist.

Assume the following about Green Bob: The game has three meters, Mini, Minor, and Major. Randomly the meters grow. Randomly the meters “go off,” and when that happens, the player gets as many free spins as are on the meter that just went off.

Assume further that the reset value of each meter is 6 (meaning if you hit the Mini meter immediately after just hitting the Mini meter, the second time you hit it, you would get six spins.)

If you don’t count the meters going off, the game returns 60%. You get some pays from three or more identical symbols in a row. The game gives occasional wild cards, both in and out of the bonus rounds, which help. If the meters don’t go off for a long while, you will be losing at a pretty rapid pace.

Based on how often each meter increases and how much each bonus spin is worth when the meter goes off, assume you’ve calculated the meters this way:

Each increment over 6 for the Mini meter adds 1% to the return on the game. The Mini bonus round is played on a 5×3 matrix with 243 ways to win. (All pay lines go left to right on this game. There are some games where pay lines go both ways, but this is not one of them.)

Each increment above 6 for the Minor meter adds 2% to the return on the game. The Minor bonus round is played on a 5×4 matrix with 1024 ways to win.

Each increment in excess of 6 for the Major meter adds 3% to the return on the game. The Major bonus round is played on a 5×5 matrix with 3125 ways to win.

With modern slot machines, it is very common for differently sized displays to happen at different points in the game.

Let’s assume that you see a machine with all three meters at 15. It’s being played, but the player is down to only a few credits. If that player leaves, you want to sit down and play that game. If the player pulls out another $100 bill and inserts it, you can read body language to get an idea whether or not to wait.

That is, you can sometimes tell if that’s the last $100 bill the player has just by the way he pulls it out. If it’s a $1 per spin game, $100 is going to last for a while. If it’s a $30 per spin game, $100 probably won’t last very long at all. Of course, if it’s a $30 per spin game and you don’t have several thousand dollars of cash on you, you run a very good chance of running out of money before one or more of the meters goes off.

Since the Mini meter is 9 units above the reset value of 6, it adds 9% to the 60% base level of the game. The Minor meter is also 9 units above reset, so it adds 18% to the 60% base level of the game. The Major meter too is 9 units above the 60% base level of the game, adding 27% to the value of the game. Adding these numbers together, you’ll get 60% + 9% + 18% + 27% = 114%. This is definitely worth playing — if you can be the player who gets the machine when the current player leaves. This is not a time for sauntering. If that player stands up, move in immediately.

If you get on the machine and the Mini meter goes off first (and the other two meters haven’t risen), the game will still be at 105% and well worth playing. If the Minor hits, the play is over. If the Minor hits, the play is “only” 96% (assuming the other two meters haven’t risen), but the typical case will be that one or both of the other two meters will have risen and so the most likely scenario when you sit down is you’ll play until either the Major goes or both the Mini and the Minor go off.

So far, we’re assuming a lot of information. Next week, I’ll discuss how to figure out the numbers we assumed this week.

Over time, the game will return 88% or whatever it’s set at. Sometimes it’s at 60% and sometimes it’s at 120% or higher. Perhaps you can understand now how if you get on and off at the right times, this game that returns 88% overall can be well worth playing.

This is a case of looking forward, not looking backwards. When the Major goes off, you’ll probably collect a W-2G. This is NOT a time to keep playing because you’re running hot. When the Major is only 6, it’s not a play. Similarly, if you’ve already lost $3,000 on the play, assuming you have the bankroll, so long as the numbers are high enough, keep going!

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New Slots To Play and Have Fun

This post is syndicated by the Las Vegas Advisor for the 888 casino group. Anthony Curtis comments on the 888 article introduced and linked to on this page.

A.C. says: Despite the fact that slots are the most-played gambling game in American casinos, we don’t talk a lot about them. The reason is simple: With few exceptions, slots aren’t beatable and at LVA, we concentrate on the beatable games. But because slot revenues are such a big portion of the casino-revenue pie, the competition to create new games is fierce and lots of intriguing themes and innovative pay components hit the market every year. In this article, one of the top gambling writers out there, John Grochowski, describes five of this year’s new offerings. The article was written fresh off the most recent G2E conference, so these games are just making their way onto casino floors. Return percentages and related mathematical considerations aren’t addressed – again, keep in mind that these are negative-expectation games – but the descriptions provide insight into the experience that each game offers and, more important, give prospective players a head start on understanding what they’re rooting for once the wheels start spinning (the learning curve on the more complicated slots can be steep). Speaking of the competition among game developers, note that a different manufacturer is behind each of the five slots featured.

Continue reading New Slots To Play and Have Fun
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A New Experience for Me

I’ve had an amazing experience that is new to me as a gambler.

I’ve been learning a bit about advantage slots — and playing them with moderate success. I’m not going to go into detail, but some games are the type that if one particular number is above 40 and another particular number is above 30, the player has the advantage for some length of time. 

Continue reading A New Experience for Me
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Interesting Promotion at the M

I received a postcard from the M where they are trying to get new players. The promo was:

  1.         I get $100 in free play right away for bringing in a new player,
  2.         The new player also gets $100 in free play — plus a kiosk spin (usually $5 in free play, I think, but it could be more),
  3.         For every point the new player earns in the first day, I get 10x points, up to a total of 50,000 points,
  4.        Good (if you got the postcard and the new player has NEVER had a card at the M) from June 1 to July 31.

The slot club is 0.3% (slightly more, actually, because they give you $3 for $999 coin-in rather than $3 for $1,000 coin-in). 50,000 points is worth $150 of free play — which is way more than the house’s expected win if you’re playing the best machines.

The loosest game is $2 9/6 Jacks or Better. There are two such machines — newly installed — in the high limit room. There is no choice as to the denomination and no telling how long they’ll last. 10x points (which is worth 3%) on top of a video poker game returning 99.54% seemed possibly like a mistake, except that it was limited to $150 max which might be a reasonable cost for a new player.

I don’t actually know if this was a mistake or not. I hooked up with a player friend, “Kevin,” who lives near Aliante — which makes the M geographically undesirable for him. Which is why he didn’t already have a card. I know some non-players for whom I technically could have played the free play, but that’s strongly against the rules there and I’m well known. No thanks. If I had to use a non-player, I would have let them play and talked them through their $105 in free play — which we would probably have played on 25¢ 8/5 Aces Bonus. If they were a non-player, any possible W2G could have been a problem for them.

As it happened, June 1 was a normal free-play pick-up day for me (they have 6 to 7 such days per month). Kevin and I agreed to go in and play the promotion on the first day it was active.

We were certainly not going to ask for clarification as to whether the 10x points included video poker or not. The booth personnel (who are also the cashiers) would likely have said, “I don’t know. Let me make a phone call.” If they did that, it’s possible that signs would have been posted saying “slots only.” If we could arrange it, we didn’t want such signs posted until after we played.

Our deal was, we would play the promotion and also play an additional 850 points which entitled us to a “free” lunch buffet. Other than the amount of my free play, we split everything based on my $850 worth of play and his $5,850. Whether this split was overly generous or not didn’t concern me. Kevin is a friend. And enjoying lunch together was part of the attraction of the “date.”

I often play for a buffet on my free -play pickup days there. There have been incidents where players who only picked up free-play without any additional play were punished for this. As a known professional player, I am hyper-sensitive about creating situations where it would be easy for them to justify restricting me.

The $205 in free play we got between the two of us more than covered the expected loss of playing $5,850 for him and $850 for me. If we got the additional $150, great, but it was still a decent play if we didn’t. (And yes, we could have lost, but the decision beforehand is made based on EV, because you don’t know what your actual result is going to be.)

I had him play $5,850 rather than just $5,000 because the M usually doesn’t allow you to “double dip.” If there’s a gift of the day you can get for 800 points and you also want the free buffet, it takes 1,650 to earn both. We only had one shot at this and if they decided to give us 10x points on only 4,150 points (which would be 5,000-850), that would cost us $28. No thanks.

We didn’t split the $150 on the day we played because I wasn’t certain whether or not we were going to get it. It could be that they “intended” it to say “slots only,” but they didn’t put that in writing. How it would be enforced down the road was an open question.

I hadn’t decided how aggressively to pursue the 10x points if they denied that it applied to video poker. It was “only” $150 (split between two of us) and you need to pick your battles. In a somewhat similar situation at the Silverton I wrote about a few months ago, we were talking about an $8,000 difference between getting the multiple points or not. I’m willing to fight a lot harder for $8,000 than I am for half of $150.

Eight days after we played, I received an email saying that 50,000 points had been placed on my card, so I sent my friend an email saying that I owed him $75 next time we saw each other.

I never had to decide how hard to argue for this. It’s possible that future players will be told “slots only” when they sign up. I don’t know. But this was a case of taking advantage of the situation before they made changes to it. If they keep the promotion “as is,” then whether we did it early or not doesn’t matter. If they restrict it later to slots only, it matters $150 worth. For me it was a no brainer to do it as early as possible.

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Was She Talking Like a Woman or Talking Like a Man?

Using stereotypes to say “women are this way and men are that way” in today’s political climate is a formula guaranteed to generate multiple negative comments. Rightfully so. There is very little interesting where you can say that every female (or every male) is a certain way. There are always exceptions.

With that said, there are also tendencies that appear to be there. A tendency doesn’t mean a certainty. For example, I can correctly say that in general men tend to be taller than women. And that’s true on average — but we recognize there are some taller and shorter examples of each sex.

What brings this up is something that happened to a friend of mine, Reuben, who is also a competent video poker professional. He was playing at a casino whose name he doesn’t want me to publish, and playing a game that is still around. He said that if I wrote about it, I could call it $5 Multi Strike — just to give it a name — but in fact it was a different game.

He was playing two machines at a time — which happened to be the only two $5 Multi Strike machines in the casino. He believed that the game plus the slot club plus whatever promotions were going on gave him enough of an advantage to justify him being there.

He rarely played two machines at a time. It often announces “I am a pro” to a casino which tends to reduce your longevity there. But in this particular casino, he had run unlucky and to date was a big loser — even though he had always played games with positive EV. Since he figured this casino wouldn’t make him as a pro, he could play more aggressively than he otherwise would.

After playing a while, a woman he had never seen before came up and asked if these were the only two high-denom Multi Strike machines in the casino. Instead of his usual “I don’t know,” which is generally the smart answer in cases like this, he told her that yes, he believed they were.

The woman then asked, “How long do you intend to play?” Reuben said he hadn’t really decided yet. It depended on how much he lost and how quickly. Which was nonsense, of course. Reuben was planning on playing until midnight, which was when the promotion ended. She looked at the machines longingly for a while and then left.

Reuben speculated that she was waiting for him to offer her a machine. After all, in Reuben’s experience, women tend to be more empathic and less direct in their requests. Had it been his wife instead of a stranger, his wife would have expected him to realize that she wanted a machine — and hence, given one to her because it was the polite thing to do.

Still, keeping both machines was the desired goal and if this lady wanted a machine, she was, at a minimum, going to have to explicitly ask for one. Whether Reuben would have said yes or no wasn’t a certainty. He would have made a decision when necessary — but not before. There are often extenuating circumstances one way or the other.

Reuben considered the possibility that the woman would go to the slot shift boss and complain that she couldn’t get a machine and one guy was hogging both of them. He didn’t want that to happen, although it was largely out of his control. He preferred to be a “low maintenance” player. It doesn’t take too many incidents for some casino employees to conclude this player is “always” causing trouble. If he developed that unwanted reputation, close calls down the road (such as whether to pay him in a sticky button situation — or whether to allow him to remain even after he starts winning) might not go his way.

If the slot shift boss came over and asked for a machine for the woman, Reuben’s answer would have been an immediate, “Of course.” He likely would have added, “All she needed to do was to ask me, but she never did.” The last four words were absolutely true. The first nine — maybe. But the slot shift boss couldn’t know that.

It’s possible the woman believed she shouldn’t have to ask. She possibly believed even a guy should have been able to understand she wanted a machine. It could seem to her to be common courtesy that should prompt Reuben to give up a machine. That definitely was Reuben’s best guess as to what his wife would believe were she the one wanting a machine.

One thing that Reuben felt was a bit of a safety cushion this time was that the slot shift boss was a man. Right or wrong, he believed a male shift boss would be more sympathetic to “she never actually asked” than a woman shift boss would. Reuben’s actions would likely have been the same with any boss, but he would expect the aftermath to be gentler on him when the boss was a male.

Could Reuben’s stereotypes and assumptions based on them have been way off? Of course. No player or boss acts exactly like you expect him or her to.

Is he smart to use such stereotypes and assumptions in his decisions? Absolutely. You are frequently called on to make decisions based on incomplete information, and sometimes stereotypes give you some extra information that is useful.

Would Reuben be called prejudiced or sexist if he verbalized his thought processes? That too. You can’t please everybody, and people will use whatever ammunition against you that you give them. Often, it’s better to make your decisions quietly and not discuss why you made them.

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More Dogs Than Bones

The following story is fictional, but based on real events.

The Gold Mine in Las Vegas was one of many casinos where Jack played. There were two, and only two, “good” machines. These were $5 single line Bonus Deuces machines that returned 99.45%. With the slot club, mailers, and promotions, these machines were playable, in Jack’s opinion. Continue reading More Dogs Than Bones