Value of quarter slots

I noticed an interesting statistic while thumbing through the American Casino Guide: From July '08 through June '09, quarter slots returned more to players (as a percentage) than any other denomination of slots in the gaming district defined by the state as Boulder Strip. This district -- which I believe includes many Henderson casinos well off Boulder Highway -- is also where slot payback was highest overall in the Las Vegas area. So quarter slots outperformed all others in the area's best district for slot play. This came as something as a surprise to me because the rule of the thumb has always been higher denomination, higher payback.

Here are the numbers for "Boulder Strip":

Penny: 90.03%
Nickel: 95.41%
Quarter: 96.82%
Dollar: 96.77%
Megabucks: 90.77%
$5: 96.02%
$25: 95.42%
ALL SLOTS: 94.96%

Do these stats lump video poker together with reel and video slots? Results might look different if vp is considered separately.

Quote: nyuhoosier

I noticed an interesting statistic ... quarter slots returned more to players (as a percentage) than any other denomination of slots.

Careful. I believe that for certain purposes the Gaming Commission considers video poker a slot machine and therefore video poker returns as well as quarter-slots would be in this grouping.

I looked and it says they do include video poker as well. That does change things a bit. More people probably play video poker at the quarter level than at the $5 level.

They really ought to consider VP separately.

Yep good point. Those numbers seem high to me. I've been doing a similar analysis from the Indiana GC's numbers, and have found that $0.25 machinces here are returing about 92.5%, $1 machines 93.2% and $5 machines 95.4%.

This is a combination of Slots/VP. However, there are A LOT more slots than VP machines at Indiana casinos. I don't know what the ratio is in Nevada. Also, with the amount of competion, I'm sure the payback %s are higher in NV.

Is there any change that some of the statistics show what the machines, on average, pay, vs what the machines, on average, are set to pay?

I.E. Maybe the quarter machines pay more because they are PLAYED more.

Quote: FleaStiff

Careful. I believe that for certain purposes the Gaming Commission considers video poker a slot machine and therefore video poker returns as well as quarter-slots would be in this grouping.

I believe that too. You can see in the 2009 Gaming Revenue Report there is no row for video poker. In the industry "slots" are a term for any game that plugs in, probably because there used to be a slot to put a coin in. If you want to refer specifically a game with spinning reels, whether physical or virtual, then the industry term is "reels."

Quote: DJTeddyBear

Is there any change that some of the statistics show what the machines, on average, pay, vs what the machines, on average, are set to pay?

I.E. Maybe the quarter machines pay more because they are PLAYED more.

They will be different because of random variation. Sometimes the really high denoms will show a pay of over 100%, because they get played so little, and somebody got lucky and hit something big. The more they are played, the closer the actual return will get to the theoretical return.

You can go to the gaming commission website and look at that report for that month. There are very few slot machines in those higher categories. Most of the slots are multi-denominational on the Boulder Strip.

There is simply not enough machines to have any reliable statistics. There are only 14 (out of 21K) machines that are $25 machines.

Denomination	Payback	Number of machines
Megabucks:	90.77%	66
Penny:	90.03%	4,928
Nickel:	95.41%	1,505
Quarter:	96.82%	2,032
Dollar:	96.77%	995
$5:	96.02%	78
$25:	95.42%	14
Multi:	95.31%	11,164
Other		206
ALL SLOTS:	94.96%	20,922

If the casino guide had used July 2009 instead of June 2009 the $25 return would be 96.39% (for the previous 12 months). In the month of June 2009, the 14 machines collectively made $13K, in July they collectively lost $43K.

Video Poker is a subset of the multi-denomination machines.

"Boulder Strip" is a region that the NGC has been using for over 20 years. Prior to about 1999 that was primarily Sam's Town and Boulder Station. Since then the NGC began including every casino in the city limits of Henderson (which were formerly very small slot clubs mostly). In the last decade though, casinos like Fiesta Henderson, Sunset Station, Green Valley Ranch, Eastside Cannery and the M resort are all in that group. The other ones are all the little places, plus the bowling alleys, the slot clubs at the golf courses, and the Wildfire casinos.

South Point is not included because it is not within the convoluted city limits of Henderson. Green Valley Ranch and M Resort are actually inside the city limits, but at the extreme edge.