One of our most talked about shared posts on Brian Christopher’s Facebook page recently was connected to an article we wrote here about whether casinos are obligated to pay a certain percentage back. Here’s one comment we got on the post:
According to here in Canada, the answer is no. Basically put in your money and hope for the best. lol I have put in thousands and not get a bonus/free spin or even enough for a ticket. They should be obligated to give back a certain percent. I get back 5% maybe of $2000. Lol
Chrissy B.
Here’s the thing – there are minimums set in Canada too. Here’s just one example around information around regulations set specifically for slot machines, in this case for Ontario:
The payback percentage, regulated by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO), is: Minimum: 85%.
PlaySmart.ca
It’s important to remember minimums are a floor, and casinos can and often will pay back above those minimums for a variety of reasons. For example, a statistic generated a few years ago confirmed the average payback in Alberta was above 92 percent.
What we experience in a session isn’t indicative of the long term payback of slots. Instead, it’s indicative of how volatile slots can be in the short term. In one session on a slot machine you can get a jackpot (or even multiple jackpots). You can also lose your butt.
Just because you have a really bad session doesn’t mean there’s not a minimum established. But if a slot machine was obligated to pay back 85 percent, and so every time you played $100 you got $85 back… well that’d be rather boring, and without much purpose, since you knew you’d be guaranteed to lose $15 each go-around.
That’s why slots only need to achieve this payback over the long term – and that long term gets into millions of spins.
A single session won’t give us any useful information about a slot’s long term payback, but it can generally give an indication about how wild a ride it will be to reach it – does it pay small amounts more often, or big amounts less often? The latter will be harder to win, but when you do you’ll likely win a lot more.
And so, yes, minimum paybacks exist outside the U.S., and regulatory systems do too.
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