Hypothetical question on chances of winning....

Hypothetical Question:

This came up in a conversation with my stepdaughter the other day.

If you were going to Vegas and you weren't really a gambler (either didn't see the point or thought it wasn't fun) but had $100 to play the slots with would you do better playing (on average),

1) a 2 coin $.25 slot? (200 spins)
2) a 2 coin $1 slot? (50 spins)
3) a 2 coin $5 slot? (10 spins)

I told her that if I didn't care about the enjoyment and had $100 to burn I didn't care about I would play the $5 slot. If you did hint something in your 10 spins it has a chance of being larger plus the house gets a bit less!

What do you think?

As always, if one is not interested in the long-term and one is playing a negative-expectation game one's "best bet" course-of-action is to make a single large bet. In this case DonDiego would recommend a two-coin $50 slot, as it appears dclinton really wants to play two coins.
There is a very high probability of walking away with nothing, but it is one's best chance of winning big.

Actually, there are several ways to answer this question.

First, why play slots when you could play video poker and have a better chance of winning?
Second, you are correct that higher demonination slots generally have a better payback than lower denomination slots.
Third, how long do you want your $100 to last and are you factoring in the "entertainment value" of longer play for your $100?
Fourth, hypothetically anything could happen.
Fifth, $100 is too much money to win the Megabucks. You can only have $20 to win Megabucks. Everybody knows that.

If you aren't a gambler you would need a game that required no knowledge video poker would not fall in to that category, at least in my opinion.

If I only had 100 bucks and didn't gamble I would be in the sports book and bet on a couple different games that are not playing at the same time. You would get four of five hours of entertainment and likely to win at leat one game and you could make another bet.

Actually, If I only had $100 bucks I would go to a $5 craps table and put $5 on either the pass or dont pass and enjoy the fun. You have slightly less than a 50-50 chance of winning, and your money will last for at least 20 rolls of the dice in a worst case scenario. Given that the average throw comes every 20 seconds thats, in a worst case scenario, 400 seconds or about 7 minutes of fun. Heck $100 for 7 minutes of fun can also be purchased elsewhere in Vegas but with more serious consequences involved.

You titled this thread "Hypothetical question on chances of winning". If you hope to win, then unquestionably your best chance to win with a non-VP slot would be to drop the entire $100 on a single spin.

When it comes to slot machines, I don't really see the point nor do I think it is particularly fun, so maybe I can relate. I'd play the 2 coin $1 machine. 50 spins would be long enough for me to settle down and fell I had an experience but not long enough to get really bored. Also chances are slim that I'd be completely shut-out which is a bad feeling even if money really isn't an issue.

The expected value would be, without a doubt, identical. The standard deviation would be highest for the higher denomination and lowest for the lower denomination. So a high denomination is a roller coaster ride, and a low denomination is a gently rolling road. But with slot machines, they both go downhill.

And there is zero effect on the EV.