The inspiration for this poll was an interview Anthony Curtis did with Las Vegas Sun gaming-business columnist Liz Benston. Liz had been hearing from readers that Las Vegas casinos are "definitely" tightening their slots and she called AC for comment. Anthony’s position was that you could dig into a lot of numbers to make an informed determination, or take the shortcut route of looking at changes in video poker schedules, and drawing a conclusion from that. Using the second method, we’d have to say there’s little chance the casinos aren’t tightening, because we see evidence of it each month in the reports from Skip Hughes in his LVA column "Video Poker Lost & Found." But collective opinions have obvious value, so we also wondered what a poll of players would disclose.
You have to be careful what you take from a survey like this, as there will always be a significant bias toward the negative (i.e., "they’re getting tighter"). We have little doubt that happened here, but there’s certainly solid evidence that the casinos aren’t loosening to bring customers back. Considering the 1,965 voters who indicated that they play, 71.5% say it’s tighter out there, 25.6% say it’s the same, and only 2.9% say it’s looser. So 97% feel at least that things definitely haven't gotten better, and this might be the biggest problem for the industry, because better might be what it takes to coax them back.
