Question of the Day - 24 February 2020

Free Play isn't a bad thing.

But it earns no points while playing on it.  At least the machines I play. So in that regard machines can "treat" Free Play differently.  

Have never used Free Play for table play, so I don't know about that.

From what I understand all US gaming jurisdictions require every casino machine to display its payout table so the player knows what he wins with certain symbol combinations. On a video poker machine the paytable is usually printed right on the front glass of the machine. On slot machines the paytable is often on an information screen that you can bring up by pressing the little menu choice buttons at the bottom of the screen. So you could check the paytable when you are playing with free play to see if something has changed. But I don't think the machine changes anything regarding your odds of winning when you use free play. Machines are streaky and you can easily have a bad sequence of play that doesn't win anything. People used to think there was a magic switch or software setting someplace so the casino could instantly downgrade your odds on a machine but there isn't. Technology could do that but it is illegal as far as I know and no casino wants to risk a fine or their license.

At the Casino Royale they used to issue a fun book with a huge number of free play spins. They only worked on certain machines that were dedicated to free play.  I think a number of the lower pay outs (ie 2 cherrys) reverted back to free play and the only time you ever got a cash payout was if you hit something worthy of a hand pay.

Back in the Bob Stupak/Vegas World days, Stupak was famous for unusual promotions that earned him scrutiny from the Gaming Control Board. 

One of these promotions was a "Get a Free Vegas $50 Bankroll!" coupon printed in the weekly tourist magazines. Part of the bankroll was $20 in coins that one had to play in slot machines with a certain colored light on them that one had to find amongst the dozens of slots as they were the only machines that accepted the special coins. (IIRC, those special machines also accepted real money, but my memory is foggy on that.) After extensive use of the "$50 bankroll," I estimated the hold on those slots to have been around 95%.

I got this $50 deal many times. The bankroll also contained $20 in "free play" for BJ, and $10 for something else that was completely worthless. The net from the whole free bankroll was always around $8 or $9. (When you won a $1 BJ game, Bob took the $1 dollar token and gave you a real $1 chip.)

I would imagine that a credit is a credit in every jurisdiction and on every legitimate machine. Getting or not getting slot points for running free play through is a function of the player's card/club mechanism that is "piggybacked" onto the machine and doesn't have anything to do with the payback percentage on the play itself.

That said, I wouldn't necessarily trust any self-regulating jurisdiction such as an Indian casino in this regard (or in regard to anything else, which is why I never gamble in Indian casinos).

I wondered the same thing a while ago.  At Caesars, the better pay table machines do not accept the free play.  Not all VP machines do.  All of the Keno machines do, and I have not seen any slots that do not accept them.  I looked at the pay table before I put in the free play coupon, and then looked at it afterwards, and it was the same.  Once you press the play button, you cannot bring up the pay table on VP.  On the Keno machines, the payouts are the same and they are always listed on the screen and do not change.  On the reel slots, I have not tried to look.  My opinion, after years of getting free play, I do not think it changes the odds or pay table.  You just cannot use them on the better paying machines.  I guess one hint would be that if the machine will not accept free play, its probably a better paying machine than ones that do.  In all that time, I have not tried table game free play, so I do not know that process or if there are any effects.  Pachenga works the same way.

 I don't know the answer, but I did hit a quarter Royal at El Cortez while playing free play. 

So i usually do a downtown freeplay run at least once a year. i have never noticed a difference between free play and normal slot machine payouts. in fact, i routinely hit $12-$20 on a $10 free play roll (and sometimes it is $4-$6 on the same). overall i have used the free play to then add to my match play blackjack coupon runs and have been very successful but getting back to the main question, for standard slot machines (not video poker) i have never noticed a discrepancy.

While it is illegal in almost any jurisdiction to have variable paytables based on freeplay vs. cash (or other factors), the other question is how freeplay is calculated for slot club benefits including theo.  Most systems just don't count the initial $500 deposited, but more and more don't give you any benefits until you lose the entire amount.

I can't imagine any state's gaming control board approving of a machine having differing payback percentages depending on freeplay vs cash. If it was one of those stand alone, freeplay only machines, then that likely has a bad payback percentage.

I found it interesting that the gaming control board did not respond. That does not speak well to open to the public