I've been hearing about loose slots my whole life. When you grow up around gambling you hear these things. Vig, house-edge, front-money, loose slots - the vernacular of casinos. The beautiful mother tongue of the gaming industry. Well, all right, the loose slots part is mostly the catch-phrase of the marketing department, which shouldn't really be considered part of the casino, but it is. Don't get me started!
Anyway, I love Reno. There, I said it, Reno and Lake Tahoe are awesome, and the slot machines and video poker games are very competitive. In fact, in a comparison done by my old friend Anthony Curtis at the Las Vegas Advisor, Reno as an area had less than a 5 percent hold on slots (which includes video poker). That means the return percentage was over 95 percent, on average.
Because the State of Nevada Gaming Control Board does not list individual resorts, and few resorts actually release their actual slot machine revenue (other than to say they offer loose slots), it is very difficult to qualify or quantify actual results. Nevada as a whole wins 6.14 percent, returning 93.86 percent. The Las Vegas Strip comes in at 7.19 - come on, those places cost a lot of bread to build, what did you expect?
Now just off the Strip, the Palms Resort sits with thousands of rooms in three luxury towers, and 1680 slot machines. Is it any surprise that they were willing to tell Curtis what their slot machine win percentage is? Probably not. With a paltry 4.54 percent win rate, they are 36.86 percent lower than the average slot on the Las Vegas Strip.
Is that a substantial amount? People clip coupons for 20 percent off their purchases and stay up all night to stand in line for Black Friday deals to save 40 percent. Anybody want to save 36.86 percent on their slot play?
Comments
Well Moe, 36.85% sure sounds real good, however it has been my experience that the Palms slots are just as tight as in any casino on the strip.
We go in the Palms every year on our annual trip for a bowling tournament at the Gold Coast across the street, and I rarely win even a small amount on their slots. The Palms is all about celebrities, beautiful people, hype, Playboy, high hotel prices, expensive merchandise, etc; the casino is hardly ever as crowded as those on the Strip.
I would enjoy spending more time there, it’s really nice decor, and because of the very nice movie theatre and good places to dine, but I go through money too fast there.