Slot influencer observation

I confess I like to watch alot of the slot influencers.    I find it quells my own desire to flush my own money down them.    I kinda do anyway - but not as much.

I've noticed something anecdotally.  I have no scientific data set to work with.     

Before COVID seems like the average max bet on a penny slot  was around $3 or so.    Tons of slot influencers would play the machines with that bet.   SLot Lady was a favorite of mine then.    Hand pays were frequent.   I mean they still lost alot of money....but the handpays came at least once every two weeks or so.   With $3 spins.

Now it seems like handpays are alot more infrequent.    Watch Travel Ruby.    She's playing $8-$10 spins.    I think I've only seen one handpay of hers in the last 2 months and she plays almost every day.    Same thing with Slot Queen in Reno.

Bottom Line:   Bigger bets are yielding fewer handpays is my unscientific observation.      What are you seeing?   

Most of the handpays I see from slot influencers (Vegas Lowroller,  Spin Queen, etc), are at the $8 to $10 level, usuallyplaying5 and 10 cents.  My handpays have come at the 10 cent denom, playing between $5 and $7.50.  Wife hit one $1500 hand pay) at Yaamaava a few weeks ago on pennies with a $2.25 bet.  

Anymore you need to play bigger bets at bigger denoms.   Not always,  but not very many happening at 1 cent with small wagers.

While I've never been mentally unstable enough to ever play slots, it seems to me that the basic line pay is almost a thing of the past entirely. I watch those influencer channels on occasion, and almost all of the machines have 12 or more possible symbols, so lining up just three of them on a payline is very difficult. The games seem heavily dependent on the bonuses, so much so that I estimate that 90% of the payback is from them. This means that you lose lose lose lose lose tiny win lose lose lose lose lose tiny win lose lose lose lose lose bonus. Kind of boring to watch, actually.

As the payback is so heavily skewed toward the bonus game(s), I think one adjustment the slot manufacturers have made is more frequent bonuses, albeit with the same overall payback. So you're much more likely to get your bonus money in more modest chunks than in handpays. The game would be too demoralizing if the vast majority of your spins were losers AND the bonuses were infrequent as well. I think it extends TOM (time on machine) to have twelve $100 bonuses rather than one $1200 bonus.

Each machine is different depending on the vendor and how the casino orders the return to player on the machine.  I think you are far more likely to get a 12-20x bonus than 100x from what I've experienced or watched online.  

Some machines are notoriously high variance but the bonuses, though harder to get,  pay back huge once you can get one.  I avoid these at all costs.  

I'll take an old $1 3 to 5 reel with minimal symbols that are displayed on the front of the slot versus a frankenstein or huff my puff or whatever with 80 symbols and 100,000 combinations any - though I do play some occasionally if they are something I've played online.

Playing something simple like Top Dollar or Pinball may not seem as exciting since it doesn't have all kinds of noises or perceived progression with a stack of firecrackers or a bubbling pot, or even a vibrating chair, but you'll likely hit something decent or sometimes spectactular every 30-60 spins on the older style slots.

"Mentally unstable"  wow, as somebody who occasionally plays slots and deals with mental illness... 🖕🏼🖕🏼

My BFF and I like Dragon Links.  I spread my money around to tables and VP, while she plays DL exclusively.

She plays the $2 denom for $10 or $20 a pull, sometimes higher.  She hits jackpots, anywhere from $1250 up to $10K on DLs ALL THE TIME, including at the airport.   Three times in recent history she has filled in all 15 spots for BIG money.

I play the $1 or lower denom, rarely hit a jackpot.  I occasionally try the $2 denom, but I don't have the bankroll to stick with it.

What I am suggesting is that playing the higher denom must trigger more jackpots.  I see it over and over again.

Last trip she ended up with so many W-2Gs she lost count.  And at the airport hit two DLs for 8K+ and 7K+, same machine, and the same machine was up to $700+ (fed $100) when we had to go to our gate to get on the plane!  I'll admit I was a little envious.  I always hate myself for playing at the airport.  I have no intention, but she's always saying "just play a little in this one" next to her.  Just adding to my losses for the trip.  Grrr.

I accuse her of having a horseshoe up her a**!  LOL.

Candy

If by "jackpots" you mean W2-G hands, higher denom play will naturally produce more of them, because it would take a smaller win in terms of betting units. If five dragons or whatever pays 600-1, that's a W2-G at $2 but not $1.

As to whether upping the denomination on the same game on the same machine increases the payback, the answer is, "maybe." They have the capability to do that kind of fine-tuning. Can you tell, though? No.

Also...a $1200+ jackpot isn't all that uncommon at $20 a pull. It also isn't all that wonderful. It's a 60 to 1 payout. If it was video poker, it would be like hitting four 8s on Double Bonus. Nice, but not enough to justify doing cartwheels :).

Kevin, here's the deal on Dragon Links.  And, funny, it isn't so much about Dragons.  But here is your tutorial:

The 'bonus' amounts are seen on the high portion of the machine.  Its all about the bonus rounds, really.

There are 4 bonuses: 1) Mini; 2) Minor; 3) Major and 4) Grand, accessable only by drawing at least six 'Orbs' on a spin.  Get six Orbs on your spin and it goes into Bonus Round.  You get three spins.  Get at least one more Orb and get three more spins, another Orb gets three more spins, on and on until you don't get any more orbs and the Bonus Round is over.  There are 15 slots for possible Orbs.  You hope to fill in the 15 spots to win the Grand.

Each Orb turns into an amount of money, such as $100, or an Orb can be a Mini, Minor, or Major Orb, with which you win the money represented up top.  All Orbs and their amounts add up at the end of your spins, however many you manage to get.  

The Mini and Minor display $ anounts, and the amounts change according to the Denom played.  For example, select the $1 denom and the Mini will show $200 while the Minor will show $1250.00, a hand pay of course.  Select the $2 denom and the Mini will show maybe $500 and the Minor $2500.00  The Major usually resets at maybe $500 and changes with play, increasing up to $1000 before it resets after being hit.  Play at lower denoms have pays of lesser amounts though they can hit more often.  A player can do well at lower Denom, if he is lucky.  I may be off on those amounts but pretty close and you get the idea.

The big one at the top, the Grand, is won only if all 15 Orb spots are filled in...15 Orbs, which is very infrequent.  The amount won usually resets around $10,000 or more and increases up as the machine is played.  The Grand can be won at the lowest Denom of play, which is what keeps everybody hopeful, even playing at $0.50 cents a pull. 

It is very seductive.

That is how my friend seems to hit those higher paying Orbs so often, playing the higher Denoms.  She often get an Orb itself with $1000!  I've witnessed the last two times she filled in all 15 spots to win the Grand.  One was $14,000+, the other $12,000+ in the past four months, one in AC and one at Beau Rivage in Biloxi.  The other was at Wynn, which I wasn't on that trip for.  Of course, her jackpots take out a bundle in taxes, state and Fed in Biloxi and AC.  Just Fed in Vegas.  She learned the hard way in 2023 to always have them take out the Fed or face having to write a big check at tax time the following year.  She had someting like 27 WG-2s that year.  Yikes!

Candy

Candy, there's something your friend should be aware of. It has to do with the tax consequences of the Big Turd Bill.

First of all, slots, especially outside of Vegas, return about 90%. This means that she will lose $1 for every $10 she puts through the machines, one way or another, regardless of how many "jackpots" she hits.

She now can only use 90% of her losses to offset those reported (W2-G) jackpots. Thus, at the end of the year, if she had, say, $1 million in W2-Gs, but $1 million in losses to offset that, she would have taxable "phantom" income of $100,000. Given that she can afford to play at those stakes, that would up her tax bill by about $35,000. And of course, she would have to itemize, killing her standard deduction.

So any time her losses are less than 10% of her total action, she'll have taxable phantom income. Thanks to the Turd, she'll have to pay taxes on her LOSSES.

And her choice of game makes it even worse, with all the W2-Gs--and the fact that most of the payouts in games like Dragon Drag or whatever it's called are stuffed into the big bonuses. So the gummint will receive a flurry of W2-Gs--and the onus will be on her to offset them with proven losses. But as I said, only 90% of those losses will count.

How much does she actually stuff into the machines? A "spin" takes about six seconds. At $20 a spin, that's $120 a minute, or $7200 an hour. It only takes about 140 hours of play to reach $1 million coin-in. Given her several trips a year, I'd guess that her coin-in is more like $3 million.

That will result in a phantom taxable income of $300,000...on her LOSSES.

The only defense is to play games where the maximum payout is lower than $1200. But she likes those big big big jackpots--so she'll have to pay pay pay. 

She isn't one bit interested in the 'new math' for taxation.  Maybe her tax person, who goes to casinos with us sometimes, can explain it to her.