I didn’t see that option on the Room Service menu at Wynn. Is that a Venetian offering?
I’ve spent several months on holiday in Vegas over the past few years.
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Slots make a profit for every casino.
That’s why there is so much floor space devoted to them.
Just as with roulette, there is no ‘system’ to beat them.
Since there are vast numbers of people playing, there will be some winners (a minority of course.) But it’s luck, not skill. -
No slots player has ever bothered me, whether I’m wandering through the casino, eating or playing poker.
Therefore, as long as they are playing for money they can afford to lose, I have no criticism of such folk. -
I personally would rather play poker.
You get a professional dealer, casino chips, a chance to use your skill to win (“All in!”) and beautiful cocktail waitresses will serve you a drink every 30 minutes or so.
But slots are in constant use, so they must appeal to many people. And the money they lose to the casino means my hotel room and buffet are good value.
It sounds like we’re fundamentally in agreement here, but have different overall philosophies on the subject. I enjoy playing slots now and then. It’s fun, and a little bit exciting. Even when I lose, I usually walk away smiling. It’s entertainment, and people pay for entertainment all the time.
So saying that the only way to never lose at gambling is to never gamble, you’re absolutely right, of course. But you’re also sort of missing the point.
Sorry, that’s just not the way it works. Statistics is a bitch. But look up flipping coins. If you start off on a losing streak (say three heads and seven tails in the first ten), not only are you very unlikely to ever get back to even from there, you are likely actually to get further away from even as the number of flips increases. And that’s with even odds, not a casino’s bias. So if you take a hundred guys who are determined to walk away whenever they get ahead but just keep playing otherwise, until they do, then most of those hundred guys are going to leave the game having lost all their money. They will never have been ahead at all, not once.
I play slots. Not a lot, but when we went to Vegas we probably played at each hotel, maybe $10-$20 at a time. Sometimes we made it back (once we made $100), sometimes we’d lose it.
We didn’t go to the slots that were plain and boring. Our favorite was this two player one where you could both sit together, that was nice. Or the Wheel! of! Fortune! one that would shout and spin the wheel and flash lights.
It’s just entertainment is all.
Seriously? You think that if you flip a coin a million times, starting off with 7 tails will make it unlikely that you’ll wind up with 500k heads at the end? Only if your coin has two tails on it.
Not 500k heads. More than 500k heads. And she’s right. Check out random walks: like everything else regarding probability, they are weird and unintuitive.
I’m not missing the point and I haven’t disputed that it can be money well-spent for some people. What I’ve disputed is Bo’s claim that it’s not money spent. If you want to say “I’ve got a system that makes it fun,” that’s indisputable. If you say “I’ve got a system that makes me money,” as BoBettie did, you’re flat-out, dead wrong.
Now if she wants to come back and say “You’re right, my system doesn’t win me money in the long run, but it’s still fun,” then we can say we’re in agreement.
That’s what he’s saying, and it’s true. It’s not impossible, of course, but it’s less likely than getting 499,993 heads and 500,007 tails.
If you start off flipping a fair coin, the over the long run, it’ll trend to even. But if you end up getting a run of anything other than even in, say, the first ten spins, then the coin will forever trend to that count. That is, if you get 7 heads and 3 tails, then the long-term trend with forevermore be toward +4 heads. Oh, the percentage will head back toward 50%/50% as the flip counts gets higher and higher, but it’ll always be +4. The only way to stop that trend is to say “Those first ten flips don’t count anymore. We’re starting over.” and then it’s back to +0 heads.
Even 500k is unlikely. Even 499,994 is unlikely. And by ‘unlikely’, I strictly mean less that .5000 probability of happening, not that I’d be floored if it did just so happen.
I’ll buy that. Since the last 999,990 flips will tend to be 50/50, we would expect that our final count will be +4. Makes sense. (My reaction was based on the (perhaps faulty) reading that Normal Phase was saying that the **percentage **will forever be weighted towards tails.)
Technically, it will always be weighted, as if you agree that there will always be +4 heads not matter how long the projected run is, then you must agree that the percentages can never be equal. The percentage actually approaches a limit of 50, which means it never gets there, no matter how many real-number flips you want to project out.
Keep in mind that this only hold before the 11th flip. It’s like saying “What if I flip it 100 more times? 1,000 more? 1,000,000 more times? A bajillion more times?” Naturally, once you actually do the 11th flip, at +4 long-term expectation becomes a +3 or +5 expectation, which becomes a +2, +4, or +6 expectation after the 12th flip, and so on. Thus is the random walk.
I go to Vegas reasonably often (once or twice a year), and am mainly a table game player (poker and craps mostly these days), but I’ll usually throw 20 or 60 bucks into slot machines during my few day stay there. I find them fun and relaxing. It’s entertainment - entertainment with a (admittedly, small) chance of paying for said entertainment and walking away with more money then I sat down with.
I remember my first experience with the new(er) breed of video slot machines, years ago. It was the first Star Wars video slot machine, which is what drew me to it. I sat down and put in $20 and began to play. There was so much going on in the game, I literally had no idea what was happening. So much on the screen, I couldn’t even tell how much money I was going through - in hindsight, I’m pretty sure the money must have been set to display in credits rather than a dollar amount, which is why I wasn’t noticing it. Things were happening, lights were flashing, occasionally the big Death Star at the top of the machine would spin… After about 15 or 20 minutes of this, and still not having any better idea of what was really happening and a little frustrated, I decided to cash out, still not sure whether I was up or down. The ticket printed up… and I was delighted to find out that the $20 I’d put in had turned into a bit over $120. I was no longer frustrated.
That isn’t the only time I’ve walked away a winner on a slot - my biggest win was $500 on a Wheel of Fortune machine. I walked away as soon as I won it, and paid for a nice meal for my friends and I. The biggest win I know of from someone I know personally - a close friend of my uncle won a jackpot from the same Wheel of Fortune machine (well, not the SAME exact machine, I mean). He won a bit over a million dollars. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he’s given it all back since then, though. He and his wife live in Vegas now, and apparently gamble quite a bit.
But yeah - the majority of the time, you are going to go through your money. But - even then, I’ve always felt entertained. The Lord Of The Rings slot machine is a lot of fun, actually.
That’s my personal favorite 
Ours, too. That one they added additional hooks to to get you to play with the various trophies in each bonus round (which mean nothing) and the miles collected to unlock additional bonuses. Total manipulation of the weak-minded.
-silenus (325 miles, 28 trophies)
The best I witnessed on WoF was $20 to ~$1000. The thing about that game and others: it requires you to make the max bet on the machine in order to activate the Wheel! Of! Fortune! spin. Other machines like progressives might require max bet as well in order to start the big draw of the machine. IIRC these don’t normally require you to bet all lines, however.
My recent favorite is one of those with 4 or 5 chairs in a row. The entire top is a semi-seamless row of video screens. It is a fishing theme, and your character up top catches fish as you play, all different species in an improbable biome.
hmmm thanks for that.
See I’ve never been in a casino. Staying in AC soon,at Caesars. Just for fun and bec ause sometimes I have beginners luck, ( someone in our party has to hit it big) I was going to warm up on the slots, my strategy was to steal an oldladys seat. to me penny slots sound like torture, as do the movie style ones. But if can parlay my pennies into a pile I’ll then maybe venture to blackjack. 
Then I’m sure you know you can play little Flash games online at http://playerslife.com/ with your game login/password to earn more miles for the next time you play the slot at the casino?
NO I was not. This is altogther awesome. I need to bank some miles for my visit in July
Thanks!
All told I’m at least $200 ahead playing slots. I could stay that way by never playing slots again. So there’s a perfect system. 1) Win first 2) Quit playing. Granted step 1 is the tough one. And I’m not doing step 2, I played the slots initially just to have a little fun, and I’d have to lose a lot more before I quit doing it. There’s also another way to win. Go on the slow nights when they’re giving free drinks to players. Put some money in the machine. Take the drinks. Cash out before you ever spin. But you’ll never get anywhere trying to make the odds work in your favor, because they aren’t.
It’s pretty cool; I love the interactiveness of the new games have (and yes, I realize it’s mainly manipulation to get you to continue to play - but damnit, it’s fun!).
The only thing about the online miles is, it’s only good until you reach the next checkpoint. Then you need to go play on the actual slot before you can start online again. Or something like that.