"The price of a day's entertainment"

By John G.

When readers share stories about their casino exploits, it’s usually about big wins. Let’s face it, the wins are more memorable and more memorable to talk about than the more common losing sessions. Still, every now and then a reader looking for a sympathetic ear will e-mail me with a tale of a day when nothing went right.

Take Marcia. She loves the low-denomination video slots, especially ones with pick’em style bonus rounds.

“I don’t need to win big,” she wrote. “But when I go to the bonus, I like to win SOMETHING. If I get five free spins and they’re all losers, that’s not really a bonus, is it?” She started with a Jackpot Party machine, but lost $20 on a penny machine without getting to the bonus event. On to Goldfish. Another $20, no bonus.

“I thought I’d change my luck and play The Hangover. Every time I looked, one of my neighbors was playing a bonus. Not me.”

With losses at $60, she was reaching her tolerance point. “Then I saw a slot called Kilauea. I figured it was fate. My husband and I got married in Kauai, cruised around the islands and saw Kilauea’s lava flow twice. This had to be it.

“This time I did get to go to the bonus. But it was free spins, and I didn’t win anything. After that, I just walked around until my husband was ready to go. He broke even on video poker and had a good time. I didn’t break even, but that doesn’t bother me so much. It was just a little downer that I didn’t get to play the bonuses on the games I like.”

So it goes on video slots. Even a losing session is fun if you get to good run at a bonus or two.

Marcia limited her losses on penny machines. Nick emailed to say he learned an expensive lesson on a three-reel, $5 game.

“I’d always heard that the $5 slots paid more than the dollars or quarters,” he wrote. “Instead of going every week and taking a couple hundred to play the dollar slots, I decided to make one trip at the end of the month, and bring a thousand.

“I figured that if I hit the 7s, or even the triple bars, even once, I could win a few hundred dollars. I never got anything bigger than three mixed bars, and by the time I got that, I only had half my money left. When that first $500 ran out, I put in another $300. If anything, my money went down the drain even faster. I hadn’t been there half an hour, and already most of my money was gone.

“I decided to get out of there with what I had left, and take it as a lesson that I’m not cut out to be a $5 slot player. At least I got a breakfast comp out of the deal.” I wrote back to Nick and asked if that was the end of his $5 slot career.

“Probably. Maybe if I was way ahead sometime. But I’m sticking to the three-reel slots. Those are the games I have fun at, as long as they’re giving a little back.”

And Marcia? “Oh, of course I’ll be back. I lost more this time than I like, but it was only $80. It’s the price of the day’s entertainment. I just want to have some fun. That means actually getting to play the bonuses. Most of the time, it’s fun.”

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Q&A

Q. I have a question on slot payout percentages. On any given slot machine is there a minimum payout percentage that is mandated by the gaming commission, or can the casino set the payback percentage to whatever they want?

One other question: Are all slot machines of one denomination set at the same payback percentage? Are all 2-cent slots set to payback at the same percentage?

A. Every state that has legal casino gambling sets a minimum payback for slot machines. A common figure is 80 percent – that’s the minimum in states including Colorado, Mississippi, Louisiana and Illinois. It’s 83 percent in Indiana and New Jersey, while it’s lower in Nevada at 75 percent.

The minimum applies to every machine in a casino, not just to the casino’s overall figure. In Illinois, for example, the regulation is that no machine may have a theoretical return of less than 80 percent nor more than 100 percent.

In practice, virtually all machines pay more than the legal minimum. The object is to attract you and your wagers, not drive you away with machines with very low returns. Competitive pressures keep slot paybacks well above minimum levels.

On to your second question. Not all slots of the same denomination are set at the same percentage. You might have 2-cent slots that pay 85, 88, 91 percent in the same casino. You could even have high and low-paying versions of the same game right next to each other, though that’s not as common as it once was.

- John Grochowski