Commerical percentages over 100

[dogwrangler]

Do casinos ever use percentages of 100% (or more) for slots on the floor?  (not including tournaments).  Kind of like a "loss leader" at a store to lure folks in.  At one small casino I know, it seems the return on one penny denomination slot is very close to 100%, decreasing quickly when you advance to the .25 to dollar range.  Just curious.

Cheers,
-Greg

[slotsteve]

I would bet not  , why would anyone get off a game that gives you more than you put in it?  ,I know I wouldn,t

[brichter]

"Loss leader" is a term used to signify thaat an establishment is taking a loss on certain things to increase revenue by selling other things.

For instance, surfboards are very labor intensive to manufacture, and stores can't sell them for what it would take to recover the cost. They rely on the purchaser of the surfboard to buy more related items like wax, wetsuits, car racks, etc., and those items have high profit margins, so the business recoups more than it loses on the board.

Another example would be cell phones, which cost a lot (especially for the high end models), but the cell phone plans more than recover the loss of the phone, especially when you get into the data side of things for phones like the iPhone and Crackberry.

It's very possible that they would have very high percentages on the penny machines, and rape you on the $100 machines...

Not sure if they'd go over 100%, but it's certainly possible if they put them in high visibility areas and rotate the payout between several so the suc customers can't make a living at it.

[slotsteve]

People that play penny games  DON,T  $100  machines

[brichter]

Of course not, you're missing the point.

When those high rollers see the guys in the high visibility places (usually by the doors) hitting payouts like crazy, what do you think their inclination is?

[StatFreak]

I have seen a club advertise a slot at over 100% ONCE in my lifetime. Back around 1990-91, Fitzgerald's in Reno had a small, well defined dollar slot area just inside the front door and to the right. At that time, $1 slots were considered high denomination machines. They advertised that every slot in that section payed AT LEAST 97% and that ONE machine (undisclosed) payed back something like 100.2%. They actually had a plaque on the wall that listed the number of machines for every payout percentage in that section; (e.g., "97.0% -- 3 machines", "97.5% -- 4 machines", etc.) they just didn't specify which machines were which.

Of course, VP is a different story. There are many examples of current VP machines that pay over 100%. The catch is that the player must play perfectly, and since almost no one does, the casino gets the benefit of advertising the payout while still making a healthy profit from the machines each month.

[slotsteve]

On my trips to reno it was  my 1st choice to play  slots  bad part with those old paces /jenning  1 coin machines when you got drunk it was easy to pull off a hand paid jackpot I would go up stairs and play a whole row of those old $ machines there were afew that were welded together 6 reels 2 coin slots and 1 handle for 2 bucks you had a fair shot at 5k

[StatFreak]

... those old $ machines there were afew that were welded together 6 reels 2 coin slots and 1 handle for 2 bucks you had a fair shot at 5k

  I wouldn't say that, exactly. The old machines had 20 stops per reel, so the odds of getting all six reels across two machines for $5k at $2 a pull was a whopping 64 million to 1. You'd have a better chance of hitting Megabucks today for $10 million at $3 a pull. The odds there are only 50 million to 1. Now it's possible that there were two combinations of the top prize on each 3-reeler. If so, then the odds would have been a measly 16 million to 1. 

If you compare this to an S+ Five-Times Pay 2cm with a top prize of $10k for $2, the odds on the S+ were 729,000 to 1 -- much better than those on the old tethered Jennings machines.

<ADD> An S+ Wild Cherry 2cm would be a closer comparison, with odds of only 373,248 to 1 of winning the same $5k for a $2 bet.

[uniman]

Fitzgeralds in downtown Vegas used to have little signs on various machines stating "This machine payed out over 100% last week". Which just means someone got lucky last week.
Not sure if they still do it. Often wondered if it attracted players?
Circus Circus has a bank of $1 machines that are Universal Magnificent 7's and a Bally's equivalent. The overhead Marquee states all machines pay 97.4%.
That's the best I've seen.

[rickhunter]

I've never seen a PAR file with percentage over 100%, in fact, I've never seen one with percentage greater than 99%.

[brichter]

I have, but only on a tournament chip...

[dogwrangler]

All very interesting.  I suppose it would be really difficult for me sitting in front of the machine, to tell the difference between 98% and 100% in an hours worth of reel spins.

So do they make 99-100% payout chips?

I have experienced this in a small casino in n. tahoe, and a small casino stateline on the way to reno.  The machines were multi-denomination.  The lowest denom (1c?) would pay all day.  I would be winning 20c or a buck and thinking "if only I had played quarters".  Of course, when I changed the denom, the winning stopped...  After this happened a few dozen times, I started to think... "hey, somethings different".  It's like luring out the "high roller" without having to change machines.  Not that I am a high roller...

Cheers,
-Greg

[jay]

A chip with 101% would not be hitting every spin, and in fact it would still be hardly noticable against even a 86% chip.

If you look at a simple pay table where you bet 3 coins and get 6 out, thats a simple 2:1 payout. Which means @100% for every win you would have had to have a loss.
As you move up the paytable to the next win of 15 coins for 3 played thats 3:1. Which means for every win you would have had 2 losses.

So by the time you reach the top award there would still need to be lots of losses to compensate for the win......
The problem with advertising 100% payback on a machine would mean that the guy who puts in 3 coins and pulls a dud would be over at the slot managers office complaining of false advertising...

Even a tournament chip that pays back in the 768% range does not hit on every spin.....

[dogwrangler]

Well all I really know is I sit down and put $10 in, and after an hour I still have about $10 of credits in the machine.  Ok, maybe $9.50 

[stayouttadabunker]

Well all I really know is I sit down and put $10 in, and after an hour I still have about $10 of credits in the machine.  Ok, maybe $9.50  

What happened there is you hit a nice tiny, little warm spot in the payback percentage.
Let's throw this out there then you'll understand more as to what really happened.
The chips percentages are designed to payout certain percentages over a number of pulls.
10,000,000 pulls....that's a lot of zeros in TEN MILLION.
now, how many pulls do you think you pulled in one hour?
Now you see how small that "nice, tiny little warm spot" was?

[jay]

If you were playing a 3 coin 1cent slot (none of which exist anymore) you would have 1000 credits on a $10.00 bill, This might (and thats a loose might) last you 1hr assuming you hit some minor wins.
You almost certainly would not have 9.50 after an hour......

TITO (ticket in ticket out) was introduced likely due to the 1c machine.
Most 1c machines take more than 120 credits for max play... some take as much as 700 credits.
The 1c concept is a physiological ploy to open wallets.
You can't expect anyone to sit there and feed the machine 1 coin at a time thus TITO eliminates this and speeds up play.


On a basic paytable with the top prize being 1200 credits on a 3 coin bet. Thats a 400:1 ratio. You have to loose 400 times to break even aginst a single win.
Assuming your playing $10.00 at 25c denomination .... you have 40 coins.... at 3 coins per pull you get 13 pulls.
If you were to put in $300 you "might" be more mathamatically in the zone to start to break even......but we have not factored in the math for all of the other minor prizes that the machine must accumulate losses for.
Also as stated the percentages are against 10million pulls so you are going to have some long dry spells (no payback) and other times it may appear to pay frequently.

You would need to be in the 700% range to get the type of behavior you seek.

The Japanese manage this better through flatter paytables with the largest win being 5:1 and some predictable bonus rounds that guarentee some series of wins.  So one of their machines that is a 60% chip appear to pay fairly frequently.

[knagl]

I suppose it would be really difficult for me sitting in front of the machine, to tell the difference between 98% and 100% in an hours worth of reel spins.

It would be difficult for you to tell the difference between an 85% and a 100% chip in an hours worth of reel spins.  Really.  The payback percentages are calculated over millions of spins.  Anything could happen in an hour, including winning more on the 85% chip and losing everything on the 100% chip.

[StatFreak]

To give you an example, I have a Bally 5500 Proslot with a Blazing Sevens clone. The chip has a 92.83% payback and a very small number of permutations: it has only 34 stops (39,304 combinations). The odds of hitting the top prize are only 4,913 to 1 as it is a buy-a-pay, so it is one of the shortest-odds machines ever made.

When I first acquired the slot, it consistently paid out about 103% for over 15,000 pulls before it finally started to slowly drop towards the long-term expected payout of 92.83%. The total payback was still close to 98% or 99% after something like 30,000 pulls.

If a person plays once every six seconds, that comes to 600 spins an hour. It may seem like one plays faster than that, but it's actually a pretty good pace when you consider the delays of occasional large wins being paid out, and the player stopping to pet the dog, argue with the spouse, yell at the kids, etc.     Most slot players play between 450-900 spins an hour. So 15,000 spins represents about 25 hours of play. I had other machines, so I played it perhaps one or two hours a weekend. At that pace, the machine "seemed" to be overpaying for months. In fact, it was still way ahead of the expected return after over a year. Of course, we're talking very limited home play, not casino play.

Now there was/is absolutely nothing wrong with my machine. The payback was within the expected range of standard deviation. It was just as likely that I could have experienced the other side of the spectrum and had a machine that was paying me only 83% for all of those months -- and this is a machine with an extremely short pay cycle. Machines with long pay cycles can take several hundred thousand spins to start to approach the stated percentage. For a home user, that's an eternity.

In fact, I put a Mikohn progressive in the machine back in 2007, and the da^ned thing hasn't hit the top prize since -- that's over 2½ years! What is one to do? That's the way it goes.

[stayouttadabunker]

Have you since, reset the progressive?
What's it up to now?  
If I come over and play it and hit the big one, will you pay me? 

[StatFreak]

Have you since, reset the progressive?
What's it up to now? 
If I come over and play it and hit the big one, will you pay me? 

SH-UOOO-R I will..   It IS from the SpaceQuest casino. I have messages reminding players to eat at Quarks and to play Dabo. The Federation uses either "credits" or "gold pressed Latinum" as currency. I'll see if I can dig up some Latinum for you.  

Actually, the battery went dead, but the CHAMII+ retains the progressive data. It only loses the messages and display settings that I programmed in. Regardless, I need to get it up and running again. In addition to that, the Mikohn won't trigger in test mode like it's supposed to, so I'm still not sure if the darned thing will even trigger when the top prize it hit!     Under the circumstances, you may not get anything, even if you do hit.
"Malfunction voids all pays and plays"
                                       


It's a 25c machine. The jackpot starts at $250. Statistically (long-term), it will hit after incrementing $184.24, so the average jackpot would be $434.24. If it were to go twice as long as expected without hitting a jackpot, the progressive would get up to $618.48; three times as long: $802.71. Let's just say that it's a hair shy of $1000 at this point.  

[dpalmi]

I've bought higher percentage chips for kits that I own, going from like a 85% to a 98% - and I've never been able to notice the difference.  I actually had one kit that seemed like the higher chip was playing worse than the lower percentage one was..lol.

Dan #2

[StatFreak]

I've bought higher percentage chips for kits that I own, going from like a 85% to a 98% - and I've never been able to notice the difference.  I actually had one kit that seemed like the higher chip was playing worse than the lower percentage one was..lol.

Dan #2

Short-term fluctuations. In most cases, the higher paying chips have a few more of the low-level payouts. In some cases, they add a few more of of the mid-level pays. Just about all of them have the same odds for the top prizes. There are some exceptions, particularly in the games which have different numbers of stops and top prizes in the lower percentage chips.

It is still best to get the highest paying chip that you can for any home game, even if you don't seem to see any difference. At the end of the day, the odds will catch up with you, and we all like our home slots to keep us in credits as long as possible.
   

[Gusco]

quote from a random article i located

"Nevada casinos advertise as much as a 97 percent payback, with some machines set above 100 percent, Thompson said. Casinos advertise the rates to draw customers, and the 100 percent machines are scattered on the casino floor. "

referneced from http://www.problemgambling.com/ca_indian_casinos_payback.htm

[stayouttadabunker]

The article is about sovereignty.
If I were a state government, I'd question whether or not these tribes have true sovereignty
and bring these tribes to court.
There is not one tribe in the entire US that is sovereign.
How can any tribe that has a compact with a state be considered sovereign if
they have to pay a percentage of the take to the state?

Look at it this way, does Nevada pay any percentage of their slot take to Canada?

[jay]

Occasionally but then I usually lose it again at the tables ......