One of the most common complaints we see from players is that money doesn’t tend to last as long at casinos than it used to. Players often suspect it’s casinos tightening payouts. But when you look at the reported data, given the types of complaints we’re seeing, the data doesn’t really line up with it. Maybe there’s fractions of a percentage point difference, but that’s not going to cause such a big shift on its own.
But the reality is that’s not the only thing going on, and it’s not even the biggest shift going on. Whether it’s slots or tables, there are changes happening that impact players every single day. Let’s look at some of the trends, and what’s happening.
Slots
There’s a variety of changes that are happening to slots that are driving up how much casinos are making off of them over time. And because many of the newer slots have many of these features, and they’re replacing machines that don’t have these features, it helps explain why casinos have been so aggressively updating their floors with newer slots, particularly in recent years.
Higher Bets
Minimum bets have grown quickly on slots, particularly lower denomination ones, in recent years. 20 years ago it wasn’t uncommon to see slots with 20-30 cent minimum bets. 10 years ago, with the advent of Lightning Link, 50 cent bets were often in play.
Increasingly, 75 cent, 88 cent and $1 bets are much more commonplace as a wagering floor. High minimum bets often also mean higher bet increments, although some manufacturers like IGT are taking this into account and establishing an additional bet level in the $1.25-$1.50 range to soften those steps for players in the $1-2 range.
Of course, this, too, could encourage a player that’s fine with 88 cents but not $1.76 to perhaps be OK with betting $1.38, itself encouraging bigger bets.
Faster Everything
The speed at which the reels spin is faster than it used to be. The count-up music is shorter than it used to be. Some makers who used to count up the final win after a bonus now skip that step, or do so much faster than they used to. Some slots let you speed up the pace of the spinning too.
Slot machine bonus design will factor in how long the bonus will take as an element that can also be tightened. While some bonuses are purposely open-ended and potentially longer, the fact they’re harder to get now vs. in the past also means those non-betting windows are less frequent.
All of this is designed to get you to the next spin faster. If the payback percentage is the same, but they can get you to complete more spins per hour, in the long run they’ll make more money, simply because you’re betting more in a shorter window.
And this doesn’t even account for those who rapid fire through spins and take other actions to speed it up further.
Slot Volatility
The biggest change of all is the increasing volatility of slots. With bigger payouts tucked away in harder to get places, you could simply run out of money before reaching a bonus. Of course, get a bonus and you could come out well ahead.
But that can be a key contributor for those who were playing slots because of how they used to be, and now with the changes, along with the higher per-spin cost, faster play, etc. could feel their budget burning away much faster, particularly during droughts between lucky bonuses.
I recently got my first handpay in more than two years, winning a Major progressive jackpot on a game I had never won a Major before. Most of my lifetime handpay jackpots are connected to a Major or Grand jackpot win, and so when you go awhile without winning one, it can be easy to watch your money flitter away in the absence of something else happening.
Table Games
Table games aren’t immune from changes either – in fact, they’re more ripe for updates that speed up the house win per hour.
Pace of Play
There’s been lots of innovation to speed up the number of hands that can be completed in an hour. Electronic table games are a key advance, as well as ones that use live dealers but electronic wagering.
The elimination of chips means payouts can happen instantly, as well as accurately, which can be a huge time saver. A few months ago I was at a Blackjack table where a dealer was heavily struggling to handle side bet payouts. Calculating 7 to 1 payouts on a $3 side bet was proving challenging, to the point of 30 seconds of waffling, us actually telling her what to pay, and her trusting us to guide her correctly, which was wild.
But now imagine how little that casino is making by all that time where the game is stopped to do the math. Compare that to some of Interblock’s advancements in this field, where players can bet on nine side bets at once on an electronic screen with a live dealer, but the dealer doesn’t have to keep track of all of those payout tables, and instead just make sure the cards are dealt accurately.
On the flip side, these changes make lower minimums sometimes possible, since the casino can make it up with a faster paced game. So it doesn’t have to be all bad.
Game Changes
We’ve seen the most vocal complaints about this when it comes to things like the replacement of 3:2 Blackjack payouts with 6:5, which certainly has an impact, but it can come in more subtle ways like pay table changes on some of the carnival games, or even outright replacements of games.
For instance, the shift to Face Up Pai Gow from traditional Pai Gow on the surface seems like an improvement, given the house edge vs. traditional pai gow is lower. But the format of the game means the game moves along much faster.
With more hands per hour completed, presuming the same bet requirements, the casino will make more morey, just like on the slots – because more total bets per hour are resolved, with a house edge that appears on every bet, making up for the reduced house edge.
My colleague John recently wrote about table games changes in more depth, if you wish to explore further.
Takeaway
If you haven’t changed how you play, or your budget, over time, it’s not surprising that you might find a casino trip more frustrating than it used to be, and that’s because the casino floor is evolving in ways that help casinos make money. That shouldn’t be a surprise, but that means taking steps to account for this.
What does this mean? Perhaps your bets should go down a bit to make room for the faster pace. Perhaps your budget should be increased (even if that means you go less often to balance out the bigger budget). On machines where you control the action, like a slot or an electronic table game, perhaps you don’t start the next spin or hand quite as fast, to slow down the pace.
But ultimately, casinos can hold the line on payback percentages thanks to other changes that push up overall betting volume. How we process that information and react is up to us.
