This is an interesting question and one we’ve had trouble getting to the bottom of. It’s true that you’ll rarely get a $50 bill in your winnings, so we phoned a number of casino cages around town to see if anyone knew the reason why. The answers were far from conclusive.
The Las Vegas Hilton told us that they hold some $50s, but that many casinos don’t order them, because they’re considered unlucky. (They also said that casinos tended to avoid dealing with them in the past because of their resemblance to $100s and the risk of error, although we’d have thought that this would apply more to $10s.)
The Plaza acknowledged that a bit of superstition surrounds the $50, with some people considering them lucky and others the reverse, but they didn’t know the reason behind either belief.
Stratosphere claimed its Asian customers like getting $50s, while the Imperial Palace stated that its big players do not like them.
The Golden Gate said they don’t hold $50 bills, i.e., if they receive them they’re not given out, only banked. But they didn’t know why.
Bally’s, Binion’s, and Caesars had all heard of the unlucky connotations but they all keep and give out $50s.
Aside from an evident, although vague, aversion among many gamblers, the absence of $50s in the casinos’ cash flow could also be attributable to the fact that ATMs tend to dispense only $20s and $100s in Las Vegas casinos. The dispensing of $100s here is unusual: From what we understand, most ATMs around the country dispense only $20s, although we’ve read of machines on the East Coast also giving out $10s and $50s. For a machine to dispense different denominations, it must be equipped with technology to code read the different notes and to switch between different "buckets" (like a photocopier with different paper trays) when dispensing them. Since this makes the machines a lot more expensive, when ATMs were introduced it was decided that the $20 bill was the most practical single denomination to dispense. Since casinos must take a lot more $20s and $100s than they do $50s, it makes sense that they also tend to give out these denominations far more frequently.
