A recent post we did about tougher slots and casino visitation definitely caught the attention of some of our readers. The most popular comment on Facebook was this:
I think “tough” should be changed to “TIGHT” slots.
Alice W.
Then there was this submission to our inbox:
I just cannot believe that you think that the slots are the same. I’ve been coming to Vegas for many years and now I live here and they are really really tight. There was a study done with one of the universities and they claim that the payout percentage has continually gone down.
Robert
Let’s start with Robert. The reporting from the University of Nevada Las Vegas is likely what Robert is referencing. The challenge is the news about the payback percentage constantly going down was accurate a decade ago when it comes to the Las Vegas Strip, for instance.
That changed around 2016. Since then, slot holds (the inverse of the payback percentage, or what casinos “hold” as profit for themselves) have been pretty steady on the strip. In fact, 2025 had the lowest hold since 2016!
So why did it decline for a decade and then stop? The answer has more to do with the shift from higher denomination slots to lower ones like penny denominations. According to gaming reports publicly available in Nevada, In January of 2004, there were 1,700 penny slots out of 57,100 machines on the strip. By comparison, in January of 2016 there were 15,300 penny slots out of 41,500 machines on the strip!
Given penny slots are generally set with a higher house edge than higher denominations like quarter machines, which were dominant on the strip in 2004, that alone easily accounts for the change in the percentage holds over that time. And with multi-denom machines becoming the norm, there has even been a bit of moderation in some cases recently.
The data confirms that Las Vegas strip slots are no tighter than they were a decade ago. So turning to Alice’s comment, that’s why we pointed to the toughness of slots being the changing factor.
Let’s define the terms. A tight slot is one that is set to not pay as much as, say, a looser slot. A tough slot still pays, but when the right conditions exist. There’s a difference
Lightning Link changed the rules as to what players wanted out of slots when it came out… and it is now roughly 10 years old. Fu Dai Lian Lian and its three bag model was a further revolution in how slots work since its release in 2019.
Those are the changes that have driven much of the evolution in the last 10 years. And those slots don’t pay less than the other penny slots they replaced, but they did shift the frequency and the size of the wins (less frequent, bigger wins overall, similar payback over time). That’s not tightness, that’s toughness.
And when you add other factors like they spin faster, require bigger bets, etc., it all contributes to the impact players feel because they can be punishing when bonuses aren’t coming out, while conversely they can be much more generous when the bonuses and line hits are coming.
We stand by what we said before. The biggest change to slots is not on the strip but downtown, and the shift largely coincides with the launch of Circa in 2020. In the past five years, slots have paid worse downtown than on the strip, data which leads us to question another conventional wisdom norm that you’ll always get better value downtown vs. the strip – clearly on slots, that’s not necessarily the case anymore.
Have a question? Submit yours here!
