I’ve heard a great many players complain about the way certain slot departments, primarily involving video poker, are being run. I thought it would be an interesting thought exercise to decide how I would handle the job as a slot director if I were given that opportunity.
Before I get to my vision of loose video poker everywhere, great comps, and no one ever being kicked out, let me add that my hypothetical bosses might tell me that I have to generate $10,000,000 in gross revenue from my department or I would be looking for a new job next year.
That’s different. I may now have to rethink my strategy.
Before I can look at how to fix my slot department, I need to look at the casino itself. Is it a beautiful building with great restaurants? (That is, if I ran the Bellagio, I would probably have tighter games than if I ran the Tropicana. At the Bellagio, my games only have to be good enough to not get in the way of the overall ambiance. At the Tropicana, my games have to draw in the customers because the property as a whole isn’t a magnet). My casino doesn’t even have to be in Las Vegas. Most markets have one casino that’s a whole lot nicer than the others and one casino that’s a grind joint.
Related to the “how nice” question is “Who are the intended customers?” If we have very nice penthouse suites, four star restaurants, and world class performers coming through as entertainers, I’m going to need a much bigger high roller area than if my casino doesn’t offer these amenities.
Are we marketing to locals or out-of-towners? If we’re marketing to locals, I need a looser selection of games in the dollar-and-less denomination. If we’re marketing to out-of-towners, we’ll have tighter low denomination games and looser high denomination.
Again, before I look at how to fix the slot department, I need to check out the competition. If I’m a casino with no nearby competition (perhaps I’m on a cruise ship, or the nearest place is 50 miles away), my games are going to be much tighter than if I had three competitors less than two miles away.
Are there a lot of progressives in my market? How many I have partially depends on how many my neighbors offer. If my neighbors have 30% penny slots, I’m going to have somewhere between 25% and 35%. I can tweak the local formula, but I can’t throw it away. A slot director with Southern California experience cannot automatically apply that knowledge to casinos in Nevada or Mississippi or anywhere else. Every market is different.
How generous is the slot club at this casino? There’s a limit to the overall return players can receive while still allowing the casino to make money. A casino with a 0.1% slot club can afford looser games than one with a 0.67% slot club. The multipliers need to be accounted for as well. A 0.1% club with “every day triple points” and several 5x and 8x points a month might be the equivalent of a club that offered 0.5% all the time with no multipliers.
How big are the monthly mailers? A casino that offers $50 a week as the top mailer can offer looser games than a casino that offers $300 a week.
How big are the drawings? Does the marketing department like to give away $25,000 a month in drawings or $500,000? That affects how loose I can set the floor.
How knowledgeable are the players in my area? The players in Las Vegas, for example, are much more knowledgeable than those in Cripple Creek. Not that either group is inherently more intelligent; it’s just that casinos are pretty much THE business in Las Vegas where there are several dozen casinos, a player sub-culture, Gambler’s General Store, classes, etc. I would need to be a lot more careful against this Las Vegas-level of customer.
Also, what other parameters affect my salary? That is, do food comps to players come out of the marketing department budget or the slot department budget? If I’m going to be judged by how well my department performs, and not so much as to how the whole casino performs, that might well make me less generous when it comes to issuing comps. Give me different incentives and I’ll make different decisions.
I’m probably going to make penny and nickel machines significantly tighter than higher-denomination machines. First of all, it costs me just as much to put a penny machine on the floor as a $5 machine. If my machines have to average $100 in profit a day for me to keep my job, that’s a LOT of pennies and only a few $5 coins.
Second, as a general rule, penny and nickel players, especially the senior citizens, are far less knowledgeable and discriminating insofar as what they’ll play. Players who are younger and can afford to play higher stakes tend to be more willing and able to go to another casino if they don’t have good games here.
I have a desire to be slightly looser than my competition — should I have relevant competition. If only the best players in the world can make a small profit at my house, that’s probably a profitable situation for me. But it’s possible that this philosophy has been shaped by my being a player. I don’t know that I’d feel the same way were I not a player.
More specific game and pay schedule suggestions I can’t make right now. There are too many “it depends on other factors” to cover every situation in detail. Nonetheless, it was a useful exercise, for me anyway. If I’m going to understand the best way to attack these casinos, I need to better understand how they think. Putting myself in the other guy’s shoes helps me figure out what to do.
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