Monday, October 31, 2011

Penny ante? Not these slots

A New Jersey reader emailed to ask about penny slots.

"There are a bunch of new machines that have 50 lines and you must play all of them," he wrote. "To me, these are 50-cent machines and no longer 1-cent because the minimum you can play is 50 cents. I assume that the payback percentages on these new machines are like other 1-cent machines, IOW, pretty low, under 90%."

I told him I'd noticed a similar thing at two Midwestern casinos, except with 2-cent games instead of pennies. The minimum bet was 50 credits, making these dollar-minimum games. And yes, these do have the low, 87-to-90 percent paybacks we see on other penny and 2-cent games.

There is a mitigating factor: The bonus rounds on video slots give us playing time without additional wagers, so we make fewer bets per hour on a video game than on a traditional three-reel slot. Still, average losses per hour will be higher when you bet a buck a spin on a 2-cent slot than a single dollar on a $1 three-reel game.

Does the entertainment value of video bonus slots make it worth your while to make the larger minimum bets that some machines now require? That's between you and your bankroll.

Saturday, October 29, 2011

A new beginning

Welcome to the revamped casinoanswerman.com. I've converted the front page to a blog, which will make it easier to update with casino news and views. You can expect something new here a couple of times a week, rather than the once in every three or four blue moons on the old site.

For those who don't know me, I'm John Grochowski, and I've been writing about casinos and casino games since the early 1990s. I write twice weekly for Casino City Times online, weekly for the Chicago Sun-Times, and am a regular in Midwest Gaming and Travel, Strictly Slots, Casino Player, and Southern Gaming and Destinations magazines. I also write on casino industry issues for the trade publications Casino Journal and Slot Manager. I blog four times a month Down the Road in Tunica, and I do two casino tips a week for WLS-AM radio in Chicago.

To those who are looking to buy my books, thank you for your interest, but I'm out of stock. You may be able to order some from Amazon, but my supply has dried up. I'm working on a new ebook, but more on that when it's closer to publication.

Thanks for visiting, and come back soon.