Your wins are too good – at least that’s what some players worry;
I visit a couple of casinos in Oklahoma on a weekly basis. I am retired and the casinos offer small comps for seniors on certain days. It seems that whenever I find a machine I like, the next week it is replaced by a new, more volatile machine. Do casinos replace machines that pay out too much?
Donna V.
The only time a machine “pays too much” is going to be when there’s some sort of mistake, whether a bug or a configuration issue, and that could lead to a machine being removed. Your having a lucky run, however, won’t impact these decisions at all, because the slot will make money in the long run and short term winning streaks aren’t enough to spook a casino.
Slots have moments where they’ll pay big prizes and that’s built into the long term expectation of how it will operate.
The replacement of slots with more volatile ones though has been an ongoing process for many years now, as players are gravitating more towards them and the casinos are going to put on the floors the ones players are more likely to play.
Those same machines likely spin faster and have larger bet levels, two other things that will encourage more wagers in a certain window of time, helping the casino’s bottom line given the machines are designed to hold back a percentage of the wagers for the house over time.
So the more likely culprit is simple economics – new machines are generally more enticing to players, get them to bet more and play longer, and make more money as a result for the casino. Some games will have longer lifespans than others, but there comes a point when a machine’s output is no longer productive enough, relative to what else is available on the floor, that the time has come for it to be replaced.
Some casinos will be more aggressive than others in this regard, replacing machines at a faster or slower pace, but for all casinos the reinvestment budget is there and it’s inevitable.
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