Get your tinfoil hats ready, as today’s comment taken from our social media is a bit of a doozy…
Don’t use your card and shut off your cell phone so they can’t track you to a machine since most high rollers give casinos their phone information. If you access the casino by your cell phone to track your play, they can track you in the casino if you have won some big hits prior.
Gunthar R.
We’ve gone over elements of this pretty consistently here, so instead, let’s consider a spicy take: None of us as players are that important to the casino for them to bother with any of this.
The 2024 statistics have been tabulated and commercial casinos (not including tribal casinos in places that don’t report their data) generated $71.92 billion in revenue in 2024. This is a record, and reflects the continued evolution of an industry that now features mobile sports betting in the majority of states among recent additions.
Is that $1,500 jackpot really something they are going to go nuts over and chase after? No. Heck, is that $15,000 jackpot one they would stress about? Still no.
Do casinos need to do anything to make money off of players over time? Yes, but it’s simple – install games with a house edge, as all casino games do, turn them on, and let players play. That’s usually about it.
Slots have a house edge of between 5% and 15%, depending on things like denomination. That means a slot makes a casino, on average, between $5 and $15 for every $100 wagered. That adds up fast – the average slot generates a couple hundred dollars in wins, per day. And most casinos have hundreds to thousands of these machines.
There’s a faction of players that seem to think that casinos sweat a jackpot – they don’t, and that’s because they know those payouts are built into the structure of a slot that is designed to make them money. Even with those payouts, that 5-15% will be achieved over time. So they don’t need to do anything.
And by the way, that house edge is far beyond the edge of most other casino games available – slots require less staffing, and generate more revenue, than just about anything else on the property. They don’t need to do anything to get your jackpot back, because odds are most players will return to the casino over time, and eventually spend that and more.
But there’s also the part where they can’t control the outcome either. Casinos can set what the machine will payout over the long run, but they can’t influence an individual spin or session. They also can’t change the payouts based on which player is at the machine, whether or not they know who it is. We even confirmed this with the experts at IGT.
So feel free to leave your phone on. And please use your card pretty much anytime you’re playing to avoid missing out on the comps you qualify for from your play. And if you’re that suspicious of a casino, we highly recommend picking another form of entertainment – it’s not healthy to believe the business you’re spending your money at is actively trying to scam you. They’re not – it’s all in your head.
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