Those who bet high enough often wonder the importance of denomination to their bets. Here’s a great example of a question we get all the time:
Is it better to play a lower denom with max bets or higher denom with lower bets?
Patty F.
Generally speaking, the higher denomination bet is better in the long run. The main reason for this is when you review the data that casinos report to their various jurisdictions, there’s a common pattern that generally speaking, with each step up in denomination, there’s an overall step up in the expected return to player, or RTP.
The thinking is pretty simple – higher denomination bettors are generally expected to be betting more. On a penny denomination slot perhaps you can bet as low as 50 cents, but could bet as much as $5.
But on the dime denomination of the same machine, perhaps your minimum bet is $2.50 and as high as $25. And if you find a high limit version of that same machine, it might be a $5 minimum bet on dime denomination.
On multi-denomination machines, casinos have settings that let them choose the payback for each denomination. Casinos can, but don’t have to, set those higher denominations to better payback options. And some do. So for that reason it makes sense to opt for the higher denomination.
But with more machines having higher denomination variations, those are even more likely to be set to a better payback, simply given their higher minimum and maximum bet ranges.
So we’d prioritize in this order, using that same $5 bet as an example:
- $5 minimum bet on a high denomination machine
- $5 bet on the highest denomination of a low denomination machine
- $5 bet on penny denomination
The same sort of thing could be said for max betting $8.80 on a low limit Dancing Drums vs. minimum bet on a high limit Dancing Drums – the high denomination version is going to be a better bet over time.
Now, that doesn’t mean you’ll consistently do better – a single session can be wildly different, as we know – you can win a handpay or you can lose your bankroll. But in the long term, higher denomination slots tend to pay back a higher percentage of your bet back, so you’ll do better over time.
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