Las Vegas Slot Machine Odds
Casino With Best Slot Machine Odds In Vegas

As we’ve discovered, the best places around Las Vegas to play slots are: The Boulder Area — casino win percentage: 5.78% North Las Vegas — casino win percentage: 6.71%.

Introduction to Las Vegas Visit

In June of 2019, 3.6 million people visited Las Vegas. Perhaps you were one of them? Or maybe you’ve yet to have your first Las Vegas visit. Whether you’re a frequent traveler to Las Vegas or a newbie, you want to be better prepared at playing slots in Las Vegas.

So, if you want the best paying slots, play games developed by RTG, Arrow’s Edge, Rival Gaming and Betsoft amongst others. Online slots casinos – Slot machines with the best odds of winning are found online. Slot machines in Vegas, Atlantic City or any other major land-based casino center often have higher house edge and lower payouts.
Your odds of winning are better than this, as you can hit five bells, five whistles or five of any other set of symbols, so on this machine your odds of any set of five are actually 5 x 0.032%, or 0.16%. So once in every 625 spins of this hypothetical machine, you’ll hit your set of five identical symbols for the jackpot.

Good for you! Preparation is key. A little can go a long way, especially when it comes to your hard-won cash. In this post, I’ll start with seven secrets to winning on slots during your Las Vegas visit.

This article has the following sections:

Introduction to Las Vegas Visit

Nevada Payout Return Limits
Know Your Nevada Gaming Stats
Check the Most Recent Payout Return Statistics
The Many Wonderful Las Vegas Gambling Podcasts
Downtown Versus the Strip
When to Visit and When Not to Visit
Candidate Winning Slot Machines in Las Vegas

Summary of Las Vegas Visit

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1. Nevada Payout Return Limits

Nevada state gaming regulation #14 places a minimum legal limit on payout returns for slot machines. This minimum payout limit is 75%. Further, this lower limit applies per wager.

“All gaming devices must: Theoretically pay out a mathematically demonstrable percentage of all amounts wagered, which must not be less than 75 percent for each wager available for play on the device.”

Regulation 14.040: Minimum standards for gaming devices

What does this 75% minimum mean? Does it mean the player gets back 75 cents if they make a $1 bet on a slot machine? No, it doesn’t.

What it means is that the statistical average is at least a 75% return over many, many bets. The additional use of the words “per wager” in Regulation 14 means the slot machine must never be set less than an average 75% return.

For example, an unscrupulous casino operator might set a slot machine to have a 70% return for some time, then later set the payout return to 80% for an equal number of bets. Such a setup would also result in an average 75% return over both periods combined, but wouldn’t meet Nevada’s legal requirement.

Another close examination of the regulation shows something missing, which is well worth noting. What’s missing? There’s no mention of a maximum legal limit, which some states have put in place.

Without an upper legal limit on payout returns, casino operators in Nevada can offer the occasional slot machine which, on average, wins. Of course, casinos would lose money on slot machines set up this way. But, there are still good business reasons to do so.

I go over these reasons in How to Win at Slots in Older Casinos Built Before 2012. Suffice to say now, Nevada gaming regulations make doing so legal. Two questions naturally follow:

Do Las Vegas casinos set up the occasional slot machine to be winners?
How can a slots player find these winning slot machines?

The answer to the first question is yes. Casinos often decide to set up an occasional slot machine to win for promotional purposes. It’s a silent casino promotion because casinos choose to do this on slot machines situated to be easily visible to passersby.

It’s also worth noting that, like any business activity, it’s on a careful budget. Casinos can’t afford to do this often because, like everyone else, they are on a budget. But they do it. I know because I’ve found them before.

Later in this post, I’ll share some recent experiences from my fan base regarding candidate winning slot machines in Las Vegas for your consideration. But knowing they exist, and why they exist, is a necessary first step to finding them.

2. Know Your Nevada Gaming Stats

The Nevada Gaming Control Board and the Nevada Gaming Commission regulate the gaming industry in Las Vegas. This state gaming commission’s website is both thorough and comprehensive. The site offers several useful resources, but let’s consider the other side of payout returns: Actual payout statistics.

Legal limits and reported statistics are like the difference between a plan of attack and an actual battle. Remember the adage, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” Or, in more normal circumstances, having a budget isn’t the same as paying bills.

In terms of slots gameplay, we know that Nevada gaming regulations have set a minimum payout return limit of 75% per wager on their gaming machines. That’s the law. But what happened? How did it work out in the real world?

Some states, including Nevada, do more than define a theoretical payout return limit. Nevada provides comprehensive payout return statistics. Each year, I review these actual statistics in Nevada Slot Machine Casino Gambling.

Rather than repeat myself fully, I’ll point you toward the Payout Returns in Nevada section of the Nevada post just mentioned. For now, I’ll say Nevada provides actual payout return statistics by:

State region, including Downtown Las Vegas versus the Strip
Slot machine denomination, including most common amounts but also multi-denomination, Megabucks, and other
Duration, including the current month, last 3 months, and last 12 months
Casino revenue range, including all casinos, over $1B, $1B to $12B, etc.

Las Vegas Slot Machine Odds

While past statistics never predict future behavior, a truism from the study of statistics, we can look at the available actuals to see if we can spot business trends.

Maybe, just perhaps, we can find a slot machine denomination with the best odds of winning last week. And perhaps they still have high odds this week.

Why? Because, in general, casinos are businesses as described and slots aren’t table card games. The odds of winning at table card games can’t change unless someone cheats or the game rules change.

Slot machines are electronic devices. Yes, they have random number generators – but RNGs are adjustable as a tool by the casino operator trying to control their financial performance metrics finely.

3. Check the Most Recent Payout Return Statistics

Before your next trip to Las Vegas to play slot machines, visit the Nevada Gaming Commission’s website. Under Statistics & Publications, you’ll find an entry for Gaming Revenue Report with PDF files available for download.

At the time of this writing, the most recently available monthly gaming revenue report from Nevada is for June 2019. These reports include the gaming statistics for slot machines, table games, and sports betting. Further, the left-most columns are for the most recent month with the remaining columns for a combined three months and twelve months.

Page 1 is a state-wide summary. Since we are discussing a Las Vegas visit, we need to find two specific state regions in the report: Downtown Las Vegas and Las Vegas Strip. Both are situated in Clark County.

The gaming revenue statistics for downtown Las Vegas begins on page 8:

Page 8: All downtown Las Vegas casinos combined
Page 9: Downtown Las Vegas casinos with over $1 million in gaming revenue
Page 10: Downtown Las Vegas casinos with $1 million to $12 million in gaming revenue (none currently exist)
Page 11: Downtown Las Vegas casinos with over $12 million in gaming revenue

The gaming revenue statistics for the Las Vegas Strip are on pages 12 through 17:

Best Slot Machine Odds In Vegas