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Gaming Guru
Payback changes5 May 2019
Yet overall payback percentages on slot floors evolve, and in some cases change dramatically in a short time. A reader e-mailed recently to say the returns at the casino where he plays most, paybacks had dropped from 92.5% to 90% within a few months. If it’s such an arduous process to change each machine, how could such a large change come about so fast? It can happen without tinkering with return on any one game. Examine the possibilities:
Let’s try a simple example. Imagine a casino with 1,000 slot machines, where 50% of dollars wagered was on penny slots returning an average of 88% and 50% was on dollar slots returning 95%. The average payback on that slot floor would be 91.5%. Now let’s say casino execs decided the area most likely to grow business was penny slots, so they removed a large share of dollar slots and added more 1-cent games. In doing so, they created a slot floor in which 90% of dollars wagered were on penny games and 10% on dollars. The paybacks on pennies were still 88% and remained 95% on dollars, but the overall floor average decreased to 88.7%. Real casinos have more slot denominations attracting their own player niches, but the basics are the same: Increasing the percentage of low-denomination slots will decrease the overall floor average. Casinos have to know their clientele and not create an unplayed glut of low-denomination games while failing to meet the demand of bigger players. But the balance of high and low-denom games is a major factor in the overall payback percentage in any casino.
The process would be spread out over months and wouldn’t have as immediate an impact as quickly turning high-denomination space over low denominations. It also creates the risk of ill will among regulars who notice with repeated play that they don’t win as much as they used to.
On a slot floor with hundreds or thousands of games, the payback variation on one machine will be buried in an avalanche of data, so random fluctuation should’t have a large overall effect. However, a month with a larger than usual number of huge, lifestyle-changing jackpots can show up in an increased overall casino average payback, while a month where the big ones don’t hit at all can bring an reduced floor average. All these factors can be contributors, but greater emphasis on lower denominations games usually is the largest factor. When you see a sustained drop in a casino’s average payback, that’s the first place to look. Look for John Grochowski on Facebook (http://tinyurl.com/7lzdt44) and Twitter (@GrochowskiJ). This article is provided by the Frank Scoblete Network. Melissa A. Kaplan is the network's managing editor. If you would like to use this article on your website, please contact Casino City Press, the exclusive web syndication outlet for the Frank Scoblete Network. To contact Frank, please e-mail him at fscobe@optonline.net. Recent Articles
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