The Easy Vegas thread
April 30th, 2025 at 6:49:39 AM
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NY commercial and VLT revenue reports (weekly and monthly) These are not owned by the state, but the system they run on is operated by the New York Lottery.
RW NYC is a VLT parlor in NY. Yearly coin in is around $8 billion. They do $170MM in play per week. Real casinos in NYC will make an absolute killing. If you have a spare several billion dollars, buy that NYC license.
Class II is bingo and bingo-like or bingo-adjacent games. The feds wanted to give native american tribes the ability to have bingo without any approval from the state outside of bingo being generally legal in that state. The tribes took advantage of this and started making crazy bingo games. The first ones were live caller with a blower, but linked between halls for huge jackpots. Then they made electronic bingo games that did the same thing, but were still clearly bingo. Class II "slots" came from those electronic bingo matches. To make them more appealing, they use slot reels and bonus features to display wins.
VLTs are some form of lottery. Washington has a lottery system for tribes that uses virtual scratch tickets that are randomly placed into deals and then sold in order until expended.
RW NYC is a VLT parlor in NY. Yearly coin in is around $8 billion. They do $170MM in play per week. Real casinos in NYC will make an absolute killing. If you have a spare several billion dollars, buy that NYC license.
Quote: DieterOn a technicality, VLT's cannot be Class II.]VLT's are operated by the state, not by a tribe. All Class II gaming is tribal, under IGRA 1988. Tribes may operate Class II TLS games, which are very similar.
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Class II is bingo and bingo-like or bingo-adjacent games. The feds wanted to give native american tribes the ability to have bingo without any approval from the state outside of bingo being generally legal in that state. The tribes took advantage of this and started making crazy bingo games. The first ones were live caller with a blower, but linked between halls for huge jackpots. Then they made electronic bingo games that did the same thing, but were still clearly bingo. Class II "slots" came from those electronic bingo matches. To make them more appealing, they use slot reels and bonus features to display wins.
VLTs are some form of lottery. Washington has a lottery system for tribes that uses virtual scratch tickets that are randomly placed into deals and then sold in order until expended.
April 30th, 2025 at 7:17:30 AM
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Quote: itsmejeffNY commercial and VLT revenue reports (weekly and monthly) These are not owned by the state, but the system they run on is operated by the New York Lottery.
RW NYC is a VLT parlor in NY. Yearly coin in is around $8 billion. They do $170MM in play per week. Real casinos in NYC will make an absolute killing. If you have a spare several billion dollars, buy that NYC license.Quote: DieterOn a technicality, VLT's cannot be Class II.]VLT's are operated by the state, not by a tribe. All Class II gaming is tribal, under IGRA 1988. Tribes may operate Class II TLS games, which are very similar.
link to original post
Class II is bingo and bingo-like or bingo-adjacent games. The feds wanted to give native american tribes the ability to have bingo without any approval from the state outside of bingo being generally legal in that state. The tribes took advantage of this and started making crazy bingo games. The first ones were live caller with a blower, but linked between halls for huge jackpots. Then they made electronic bingo games that did the same thing, but were still clearly bingo. Class II "slots" came from those electronic bingo matches. To make them more appealing, they use slot reels and bonus features to display wins.
VLTs are some form of lottery. Washington has a lottery system for tribes that uses virtual scratch tickets that are randomly placed into deals and then sold in order until expended.
link to original post
Mostly sounds good. I was under the impression that TLS (tribal lottery system - pull tab or similar based games) fell under the Class II umbrella. Is that not your understanding?
The crux of my disagreement is that a VLT parlor cannot be Class II, because the operator is not a tribe. The games on offer may be practically identical.
May the cards fall in your favor.
April 30th, 2025 at 9:15:21 AM
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Quote: Dieter
Mostly sounds good. I was under the impression that TLS (tribal lottery system - pull tab or similar based games) fell under the Class II umbrella. Is that not your understanding?
The crux of my disagreement is that a VLT parlor cannot be Class II, because the operator is not a tribe. The games on offer may be practically identical.
link to original post
Tribes do not need special permission from the states to conduct Class II gaming. They need a compact with the states to conduct class III gaming. The TLS (Tribal Lottery System) is part of the compacts and is generally considered Class III.
Not that it makes much sense to me, but I think the problem is that Class III is not very well defined outside of Vegas.
April 30th, 2025 at 9:38:50 AM
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https://easy.vegas/games/crash
A "crash course" is one in which the reader learns about a particular subject in a short period of time. Consider deleting most of the options in the drop-down menus for the average loss calculator. There are far too many options. Anyone who can make use of the ability of the calculator to provide such granular information has long past graduated from a crash course in calculating EV for various casino games.
Call the first column "bets per hour", because that applies to all the games. "Rounds" and "rolls" are game-specific. For each game, reduce the number of options to three. For slot machines and video poker, the average is approximately 600, so make the other two options 300 and 1200 (slow and fast, respectively). For table games, label the slow and fast options "online". In the real world, a newbie is not going to play at a slow or fast table game for 10 hours that runs significantly different from the average.
Change "bet per round" to "bet amount".
For house edge, reduce the number of options greatly. If this is to be a crash course, it has to be something that can be digested by a reader whose knowledge of casino games is limited to the fact that slot machines and table games are different. Don't drown them in options.
Slot machines should have options of 5%, 8%, 10% and 12%. No one plays the 22% Megabucks without the intention of hoping to win the jackpot. No one can tell what the payback % is of anything, only a range based on location and denom.
Roulette only needs three options: single zero, double zero and triple zero.
Not only are the video poker options too numerous, some of them are wrong. 8/5 Bonus Poker is a 99.17% payback, not 97.40%. Reduce the options to 1%, 2%, 4% and 6%. The column is labeled house edge, not payback percentage. There is no need for exact percentages for video poker because the real-world wins are two to four percentage points less than optimal because of suboptimal play. Newbies are unlikely to memorize perfect VP strategy before going to Las Vegas for the first time.
Baccarat should have 1.24% player and 1.06% banker with commission, 1.46% no-commission, and 14.36% tie.
For craps, the options should be pass, don't pass, field, any craps and any seven. Adding place and buy bets (between pass line and field, percentagewise), adds more options, and if the list gets too long, newbies will not understand. It's a complicated game for newbies anyway unless they only do the pass line with odds, in which case they don't need calculations for all those other options.
And then there's blackjack. This game can have the widest range of house edge of any casino game, ranging from negative (counting cards) to insanely high (awful play plus side bets). Make the options 0.6% (good rules with optimal play), 1.5% (bad rules with optimal play/good rules with imperfect play), 5% (terrible play or side bets) and 10% (really terrible play and side bets). The granularity of whether or not you can surrender or six decks vs eight is unnecessary.
You should add live keno. Yes, the house edge is very high, but it only runs at 10 games per hour. Some casinos run a separate RNG in the keno lounge at 20 games per hour. If one bets a small amount (as little as $1/game), live keno is pretty cheap on a $/hr basis.
Finally, you should consider deleting the phrase above the calculator "One of my goals for this site is to get players off of slots and onto games that don't suck your money away hand over fist". Be objective about the difference between slots and other games. That statement reads like it came from a slot hater.
The reason why people can lose lots of money playing slots is because they get sucked into betting a large amount per spin. The latest development in that arena is the ridiculous (in my opinion) buying a bonus for hundreds of dollars. Yeah, I know, betting 25 cents per spin gets boring. Players can lose lots of money on table games too. All they have to do is play badly or chase their losses. All these games are different, and none of them are intrinsically worse than all the others.
A "crash course" is one in which the reader learns about a particular subject in a short period of time. Consider deleting most of the options in the drop-down menus for the average loss calculator. There are far too many options. Anyone who can make use of the ability of the calculator to provide such granular information has long past graduated from a crash course in calculating EV for various casino games.
Call the first column "bets per hour", because that applies to all the games. "Rounds" and "rolls" are game-specific. For each game, reduce the number of options to three. For slot machines and video poker, the average is approximately 600, so make the other two options 300 and 1200 (slow and fast, respectively). For table games, label the slow and fast options "online". In the real world, a newbie is not going to play at a slow or fast table game for 10 hours that runs significantly different from the average.
Change "bet per round" to "bet amount".
For house edge, reduce the number of options greatly. If this is to be a crash course, it has to be something that can be digested by a reader whose knowledge of casino games is limited to the fact that slot machines and table games are different. Don't drown them in options.
Slot machines should have options of 5%, 8%, 10% and 12%. No one plays the 22% Megabucks without the intention of hoping to win the jackpot. No one can tell what the payback % is of anything, only a range based on location and denom.
Roulette only needs three options: single zero, double zero and triple zero.
Not only are the video poker options too numerous, some of them are wrong. 8/5 Bonus Poker is a 99.17% payback, not 97.40%. Reduce the options to 1%, 2%, 4% and 6%. The column is labeled house edge, not payback percentage. There is no need for exact percentages for video poker because the real-world wins are two to four percentage points less than optimal because of suboptimal play. Newbies are unlikely to memorize perfect VP strategy before going to Las Vegas for the first time.
Baccarat should have 1.24% player and 1.06% banker with commission, 1.46% no-commission, and 14.36% tie.
For craps, the options should be pass, don't pass, field, any craps and any seven. Adding place and buy bets (between pass line and field, percentagewise), adds more options, and if the list gets too long, newbies will not understand. It's a complicated game for newbies anyway unless they only do the pass line with odds, in which case they don't need calculations for all those other options.
And then there's blackjack. This game can have the widest range of house edge of any casino game, ranging from negative (counting cards) to insanely high (awful play plus side bets). Make the options 0.6% (good rules with optimal play), 1.5% (bad rules with optimal play/good rules with imperfect play), 5% (terrible play or side bets) and 10% (really terrible play and side bets). The granularity of whether or not you can surrender or six decks vs eight is unnecessary.
You should add live keno. Yes, the house edge is very high, but it only runs at 10 games per hour. Some casinos run a separate RNG in the keno lounge at 20 games per hour. If one bets a small amount (as little as $1/game), live keno is pretty cheap on a $/hr basis.
Finally, you should consider deleting the phrase above the calculator "One of my goals for this site is to get players off of slots and onto games that don't suck your money away hand over fist". Be objective about the difference between slots and other games. That statement reads like it came from a slot hater.
The reason why people can lose lots of money playing slots is because they get sucked into betting a large amount per spin. The latest development in that arena is the ridiculous (in my opinion) buying a bonus for hundreds of dollars. Yeah, I know, betting 25 cents per spin gets boring. Players can lose lots of money on table games too. All they have to do is play badly or chase their losses. All these games are different, and none of them are intrinsically worse than all the others.
April 30th, 2025 at 10:37:58 AM
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Quote: MukkeQuote: Dieter
Mostly sounds good. I was under the impression that TLS (tribal lottery system - pull tab or similar based games) fell under the Class II umbrella. Is that not your understanding?
The crux of my disagreement is that a VLT parlor cannot be Class II, because the operator is not a tribe. The games on offer may be practically identical.
link to original post
Tribes do not need special permission from the states to conduct Class II gaming. They need a compact with the states to conduct class III gaming. The TLS (Tribal Lottery System) is part of the compacts and is generally considered Class III.
Not that it makes much sense to me, but I think the problem is that Class III is not very well defined outside of Vegas.
link to original post
That is news to me. I honestly thought TLS didn't require a compact.
Class III is easy - (almost) everything in tribal gaming that isn't Class II, including banked card games and Nevada style slots.
(Class I doesn't apply to anything casino related.)
May the cards fall in your favor.
