Question of the Day - 06 December 2025

Sorry, but there’s no such animal (or vegetable or mineral).

While the returns from video poker machines are eminently quantifiable, payback rates on slots vary a lot (by property, machine, denomination) and casino companies don’t publicly disclose return percentages for each machine or even an average for each casino.

That said, there are a few ways to guesstimate them. 

For example, you can make an educated guess about a casino's general return percentage at slots based on the generosity of its video poker paytables. Of course, since you can determine the exact return percentage of a video poker machine by the paytable and you can't tell anything about a slot machine's, it can never be a direct correlation. But some assumptions can be made and you can read about those in a QoD we posted on this subject last year. 

Many jurisdictions, including Nevada, publish aggregate data on how much casinos hold (win) on slots. For example, in 2024 the “slot machine win percentage” statewide was about 7.2% of coin-in. This is further broken down in Las Vegas by Strip, downtown, Boulder Strip, etc. You have to do a little research on the Gaming Control Board's website, which posts the totals every month. But a publicly posted “average” or “hold by denomination” doesn’t necessarily reflect what any specific machine is doing. 

And of course, variance is always an issue; even a “good” (relatively speaking) return percentage is a long-term average and in the short term, the ups and downs of slot (and video poker) machines can be huge.

Bottom line: With slots, you bets your money, takes your chances, and hopes for the best.