What Percentage of Gamblers Leave Vegas a Winner?

Two questions for the forum:

1. Poll Question: What percentage of people who come to Las Vegas will leave for home positive with regards to gambling. Please note that I am only referring to the money that they had specifically set aside for gambling. If they were up $100 in gambling, but spent $1000 on their trip on hotel rooms, food, and non-gambling entertainment, consider them winners. Also, if they were up $100 in gambling, but spent it all on a $200 victory dinner, please still consider them to be winners.

2. Personal Question to Members: Of all the times you have gone to Vegas, how often have you left a winner with regards to gambling? Is your answer different from what you predict the general public to be? If so, why the difference?

1. What do we do with the % of people who come to Vegas and break even? There are those who gamble and have a net of $0 in terms of gambling money (which would still be a "win" as long as you get some comps) and those who do not gamble at all. Of those who gamble, I might say 10% leave as winners. Plenty of people have wins, but not that many people are disciplined enough to know when to walk away...or they simply don't care about winning, so they don't want to walk away and love the fact that their win(s) allowed them to play that much longer. Obviously, the old adage that Vegas wasn't built on people winning holds true. On a long enough timeline, everyone should lose; however, as many have pointed out elsewhere, it might take a million trials to actually get a reasonable expectation. Most people who go to Vegas have neither the time, nor the discipline, to play that many hands and/or become advantage players (i.e., card counting / varying their bets when the game is in their favor).

2. I imagine many people on the board have better results than the public, based on the simple fact that they're on this board to begin with. That means they likely care enough to discuss gaming to find an advantage or at least reduce the disadvantage(s), and from my experience on the board, most here are of above-average intelligence. I think about 50% of my trips are in the positive. My favorite trips are the ones where I come out ahead even after paying for everything -- and the most I seem to get comped is a buffet and a breakfast (trying to save up express comps for now). Spending a lot of time at the tables can actually save me money! Who would have thought...

1] maybe 5%, more than that I would be surprised, and my guess is less than 5%.

2] "Of all the times you have gone to Vegas, how often have you left a winner?" 100% sir!

Yep, I have only been there once and did win. Out of all trips to casinos, which isn't all that many either, it's 16.7% of the time. Quite easy for me to be exact here.

Isn't this the same as one spin of a roulette wheel?

The casino takes money from the losers and pays it to the winners.... and makes 0.26 on every 5.00 bet even though it never either pays out or receives 0.26.

So instead of looking at the Red/Black bets and One Spin of the Wheel, you are now looking at Visitors Leaving Vegas. Okay. Same thing. Some are up, some are down. Each heard the saying "Las Vegas: A Town Built By Losers". Which of course is more precisely stated as a town built by casino owners with the money from the losers. The trouble is that winners built Vegas too. Just as the wheel sometimes is Red and sometimes is Black,,, the Visitor sometimes leaves "Up" and sometimes leaves "Down".

If he is a gambler, he will be back He will be back with "the casino's money" if he is leaving town "Up" this trip. He will be back with more of his own money if he is leaving town "Down" this trip.

Its what every madam in a brothel learns best: The customer will always be back as long as he gets a little variety and a drink every now and then.

Gamblers leave Vegas either up or down but they leave. Then they come back. Each time they come back, the house gets its twenty-six cents and more. If the visitor is a "tight" player, the house gets its twenty-six cents. If the visitor is "loose", he makes wild bets, plays high house edge games, gets plastered, pigs out, and gives the house far more than twenty-six cents. Either way, the house provides the games, the booze and the broads. And the money keeps flowing. A slot spews out a jackpot? Thats why you have a staff photographer available! That gigantic check for umpteen million is for the photograph for the papers. Paying out the jackpot means nothing. Its the publicity about it that brings in visitors who dream it will happen to them too.

The money flows to the pushers. Heroin, cocaine, oxycontin, sugar, gambling ... it makes no difference. The tight gamblers nick the casino just a bit, the loose gamblers bring in money far faster. Yet always, the wheel keeps spinning at 5.26 percent.

So you ask about one particular trip? Visitors who leave Vegas after one trip have a smile on their face and dreams on their mind. Dreams of this time or dreams of next time, but dreams. Either way, they will be back.

People on this board are generally more likely to be sharpies than rubes. Some people pay tee-off fees, some people pay for free drinks, but in the end, everyone pays.

Quote: odiousgambit

1] maybe 5%, more than that I would be surprised, and my guess is less than 5%.

2] "Of all the times you have gone to Vegas, how often have you left a winner?" 100% sir!

Yep, I have only been there once and did win. Out of all trips to casinos, which isn't all that many either, it's 16.7% of the time. Quite easy for me to be exact here.

Hey I've left a winner 100% of the time in Vegas too! I'm also 20% on casinos as a whole...

I originally thought somewhere between 20-30% leave winners. If you are a smart gambler playing the good table games I think you probably have a close to 40% chance of walking away a winner. If you're using the martingale system you could easily have 95%+ chance of walking away a winner (yes, I know they'll still lose in the long run).

Every time I walk into a casino now the table games have disappeared and there are more and more slot machines. I think the majority of these people just enjoy plunking away until their last dollar is gone. Aside from the rare jackpot, I think almost every slots player walks away a loser before they're done. So now that I think about it, your 5% doesn't sound too far off.

I think the nature of your question almost guarantees a very low percentage. There is a very large percentage of the crowd that sets aside a relatively small amount of cash, $5, $20, $100 or $200 that they designate as money to play the slots. Most of them lose that money.

The money spent is a kind of entertainment expense.

In order for it to be a realistic question, you would have to at least limit yourself to people who play a minimum of $100 a day.

I tend to figure comps into the equation when considering whether or not I came out ahead. If, by the end of the trip, I'm down a few hundred bucks, but I got my room and meals comped, and they gave me a $500 gift card to a store that I like, then, yeah, I consider myself as having come out ahead, even though I lost money. (Or did I really? I don't think so.)

But, then, I don't really think of myself as losing money at the tables, particularly if I am playing baccarat, because I think of myself as paying for the experience. Playing baccarat is an experience worth paying for in itself, for me, anyway. So I guess that I always come out ahead, because I got what I paid for. If my winnings and/or the value of comps exceed what I lost, all the better, but that's a bonus, rather than my goal.

Quote: heather

But, then, I don't really think of myself as losing money at the tables, particularly if I am playing baccarat, because I think of myself as paying for the experience. Playing baccarat is an experience worth paying for in itself, for me, anyway

Please take this as an honest question - there's absolutely no disrespect intended here. But, I found this particular turn of phrase very interesting. Do you get something out of the experience that you couldn't get by playing for free? One of your other posts said you play ~$100/hand, right? Is there anything special about the experience that playing black chips gives you that playing reds doesn't?

If it's just about the experience of the game, and all that... I'm honestly curious about what I'm missing by playing reds and not greens or blacks (minus the comps, of course).

Quote: PerpetualNewbie

Please take this as an honest question - there's absolutely no disrespect intended here. But, I found this particular turn of phrase very interesting. Do you get something out of the experience that you couldn't get by playing for free? One of your other posts said you play ~$100/hand, right? Is there anything special about the experience that playing black chips gives you that playing reds doesn't?

If it's just about the experience of the game, and all that... I'm honestly curious about what I'm missing by playing reds and not greens or blacks (minus the comps, of course).

I can't speak for heather, but playing real vs. play money and blacks vs. reds is certainly a different experience for me. People come to the casino for excitement and the rush of gambling. People need to play at different levels in order to attain that. In addition to the added level of risk, playing blacks usually gives you more attention from both the dealers and other players. I generally stick with small bets, but it is nice to feel like a highroller once in a while.

The money spent on hotel, food, transportation (yes, including air tickets home-LV-home), entertainment etc should alll counted in,
because they are part of the cost of gambling.

I voted around the 20% range... mostly because, based strictly on gambling, 1 out of every 5 people I know go on about how they won a lot of money (or even just broke even). The remaining 4 talk about how much fun they had going to shows, the neat hotel, the endless buffets, and yeaaahh they lost but man it was fun.

I have to agree with pokerface though. Las Vegas is a gambling DESTINATION. As a result, you will spend a lot of money on everything BUT gambling. My last trip to Atlantic City, I ended DOWN 200 dollars. However, I spent about 100 on taxis. So really, I was only down about 100 for gambling. Plus the tips for food, drinks, etc. I probably was even, MAYBE even up a bit. But I factored in all costs.

Quote: PerpetualNewbie

Please take this as an honest question - there's absolutely no disrespect intended here. But, I found this particular turn of phrase very interesting. Do you get something out of the experience that you couldn't get by playing for free? One of your other posts said you play ~$100/hand, right? Is there anything special about the experience that playing black chips gives you that playing reds doesn't?

If it's just about the experience of the game, and all that... I'm honestly curious about what I'm missing by playing reds and not greens or blacks (minus the comps, of course).

I'll agree with iwannaiguana that playing with black chips vs. red chips is a completely different experience, and does make the game significantly more fun for me, but that actually isn't the experience that I was talking about in reference to baccarat. I mean the whole experience of playing in special rooms and having the staff pull the chair out for me and being served drinks in nice glass and having dealers in tuxedoes and the elaborate pointless rituals and the essentially meaningless scorecards with the weird red/black pens and the whole James Bond movie baccarat experience. That's what I'm talking about being what I'm paying for. Big table baccarat usually has $75 min or higher, so you're going to be playing with black chips no matter what.