Players often want to know when the best time to try their luck would be. Is it during weekdays, when casinos are often slower? Is it on weekends, when there’s more players feeding the machines?
The answer is pretty simple: It’s when you want to play.
Why is that? Slot machine paybacks don’t change based on time of day, day of the week or what part of the month it is. They don’t change for holidays, anniversaries or birthdays. The number of people in the casino don’t have anything to do with it either.
A machine’s payback will be set when the machine is set up, and except for rare occurrences, it tends to be left alone until the machine is moved or replaced. Casinos have an overall goal in mind of what they want the average payback percentage to be for games on their floor, and once a machine is set up to help achieve that, they rarely need to make changes, unless of course their goal changes.
The number of people in the casino doesn’t matter either; you may see more winners in the casino when it’s busier, but that’s simply because there’s more people playing. It doesn’t improve your individual chances of winning just because more people happen to be playing when you are.
So the good news is you don’t need to worry about when you’re going to visit the casino to get better chances of winning. If you’re an early bird, you’ll benefit from a relative lack of players and get your choice of machines. If you’re a night owl, you may have competition for the popular machines but you’ll also have a vibrant and happening atmosphere to enjoy.
Both have their benefits, but neither will guarantee you a better chance of winning, so don’t worry so much about that and enjoy your visits when you can schedule them.
Please tell me why you say “big numbers attract big numbers “. How can that be when it’s a random number generator?
Hi Susan – thanks for your question! Big numbers can attract big numbers because of the design of the game. Check out this article for a deeper dive on this aspect of things, and then here’s a post about when Brian had scenarios where big numbers attract big numbers.
A follow up question – do casinos on Native American reservations have more control over payouts than other casinos?
Presuming we’re talking standard slot machines (like the ones found in Vegas), tribal casinos are buying the same machines as their counterparts in commercial casinos, so the same payback options and settings apply. So they have the same payback choices as any other casino, and the games use the same RNG to determine outcomes. In that way it’s identical.
Thank you so much for the information you provided.
Thanks Darrell! Happy you found it useful!