Casinos adjusting payouts?

[tobiathan]

Summary of responses so far:
* Two or three people have been told payouts get adjusted.
* A couple people state that they personally have not heard that from any casino employees.
* Various other people offer opinions on whether it's feasible or logical for casinos to do so. (Guys, I can speculate about this too, but really I just wanted to know if anyone else has been told by a casino employee that it happens. It was a very specific question.)

Yes but it was quickly descended upon by the expert vultures as made up by an employee who knew nothing, mine was actually on the busiest of weekends and when special events were going on, especially after an event when the crowd came to the casino floor.

Thanks Bubbavegas, for answering the question I asked. Just so I'm clear, were they saying the casino lowers payback at those times?

Buckle your seatbelt, tobiathan. The true believers will be getting their knives out.

Actually, I have heard the opposite: the locals lower the paybacks Friday and Saturday nights.

Yeah, despite wording the question carefully I've still stirred something up. :( Did you hear that from a casino employee, or a fellow player?

I think people grossly overestimate how many machines are tied to a server and are able to have their paybacks adjusted willy-nilly.

Hint: think about how much work and costs it would take to run Windows 8 on a PC made 15 years ago for Windows 98.

Yeah, but we're talking about a lot of machines that date back five years or so to the Windows 7 era -- like my current favorite, Money Blast, which according to a GGB article apparently came out in 2009. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they've got SBG.

Paybacks are not adjusted. I think it is illegal for anyone to adjust payouts on any machine. Everything is set to pay on some kind of average or whatever its called automatically regardless of the time of day or night or weekday or weekend. The minute you press the spin button, the RNG has the win for you. People can hit multiple jackpots in the same day on one machine or multiple big wins in a row like I experienced on Friday night. Also a machine can be alive paying good for hours and then all of the sudden not pay for a while. If you find a machine that is giving you a lot of dead spins, you know people won on it earlier. It is all timing

Gaming regulations are specific to the jurisdiction and the amount of actual enforcement probably varies too. Here in Minnesota, the tribes have a compact with the state that requires them to set slot payback between 80 and 95%. I'm not aware of any regulation compelling them to set the slot payback percentage to the same amount regardless of the time or day, and I'm not aware of any regulation requiring that they notify anybody if the payback is adjusted within the allowable range. (MN folks please chime in if you know more.) (Also: Any machine in the 80-95% range could deliver a series of wins or losses on any given day, so the fact that people can hit multiple jackpots in a short period of time is not evidence of anything.)

I've not heard that anywhere from employees. I hear gamblers complaining all the time!! I don't really think it feasible, either. 800 to 4000 slots in a casino. I don't think they would take the time to change each one a couple of times per week. There is no magic button whereby all games can be changed at the same time. Hold percentages are enough that the casinos do well, if they have butts in the seats.

My understanding of SBG is that they can indeed adjust the games easily. I understand the argument that they don't need to, that the hold pretty much guarantees a profit without any tinkering needed, although that doesn't prove the casinos aren't tinkering. We can all speculate til the cows come home... I was just hoping to see if anyone had heard anything concrete from a halfway reliable source.

[Bubbavegas]

I can't retrieve the private message since it was on SMF's now-broken site, but I asked Warren @ Coushatta directly about SBG & changing payouts. His reply was essentially "we barely have any SBG-linked machines on our entire casino floor" and "we have no desire whatsoever to micromanage slot payout percentages ever -- we're going to win anywhere from 5% to 12% of your slot bets anyway (depending on denom), why waste our time tinkering when we can work on other things?"

I'm sure I'm going to either be told that I made this up or that Warren was lying, but there ya go.

Interesting a place the size of Coushatta has hardly any SBG considering that every last casino here from the smallest dump to the biggest and glitziest has SBG. Now as far as the changing of payouts goes when it comes to La. they are more tightly regulated by the state with officers from the commission there 24/7 from what I understand. I would think all this depends on actual regulation which as was brought up already this casino the OP heard this from is NA the same as people like myself and Moneybags play in all the time, I can tell you this without question dollar for dollar when we play in Vegas the play is FAR better than here at home. It all depends on the place you play as whether this would be applicable to your own situation. Let me relay a little story to yall, dont Fu$%in start the typical "this is all conjecture and speculation" BS please as I have seen this more than once at multiple casinos here. Last week we went to a local where The Band Perry was playing, not to see the band but to have a quick night out midweek to chill. We arrived a little more than an hour before the show and with my level of play I lost a hundy and was down to nothing but $10 FP right as the doors opened to the arena. I used that 10, which I started just as the crowd was going in, you can see the arena entry from the non smoking area I was playing in case you wonder how I know, playing a WW2 I managed to turn that 10 into 40 before I felt the need for a smoke and left the room. For the next 2+ hours while the show was going on there was hit after hit not just us but others around us including me winning 1500 on three red spins of a .50 ClassII, in those two hours we went from 46 bucks DW had plus my 10 FP to over 2000, one hell of a night. This is where it got real interesting and as I said I have seen this at several other places during fight nights and concerts all around the state. The moment the crowd started filling on to the floor it was like that proverbial switch was flipped, we lost 80 each in less than 30 minutes, saw no hits from anyone and talking to others we played beside, some we knew some we did not, all said what the hell happened to the payouts. This place BTW has one of the most advanced SBG in existence, I know two of the IT guys from there from school as well as many techs, CWs and the former slot manager is how I know this to be true. Take it or leave it this is completely true and to prove it here is what we left with that night, all won during the concert and FWIW the floor was busy during the concert so it was not a case of being able to pick and choose your games.

[Bubbavegas]

Tobiathan yes that is when I was told they lowered PB%, that was from the former slot manager I mention in the above post who now is a casino manager in Colorado or last I talked to him he was.

[tobiathan]

Interesting - thanks Bubbavegas. (If I were a casino with my hand on the "dial" I'd probably be tempted to drop PB to the minimum allowed on event nights while the crowd is milling around before and after. A lot of those folks will run a twenty or two thru the machines and not expect to hit anything. But I digress. The idea was not to speculate but to gather concrete feedback like what you were told.)

Slotbender, good point about SBG.

[Scorcho]

Bubba -- while I don't doubt it's true what happened (and congrats btw), if you truly do believe that this is a causation and not merely a correlation, you'd be best served to be on their machines as much as possible while a concert in progress and never play during other hours, right?


I don't know anything about Coushatta (I'm west coast), I just know that Warren was an available slot director on the forum that would respond to any questions, so I asked. Personally, I don't like discussing slot machine operational theory/facts while including Native American casinos -- many are not regulated, not subject to public reporting like Nevada casinos, or are Class II only. I don't even prefer to play in them, really.

[Moneybags]

Did you hear that from a casino employee, or a fellow player?

Both.

[Moneybags]

This video proves that it is possible to change payback easily. The video even suggests that you might make the games more profitable during "peak times."

http://ballytech.com/Systems/Server-...Command-Center

[Bubbavegas]

Bubba -- while I don't doubt it's true what happened (and congrats btw), if you truly do believe that this is a causation and not merely a correlation, you'd be best served to be on their machines as much as possible while a concert in progress and never play during other hours, right?


I don't know anything about Coushatta (I'm west coast), I just know that Warren was an available slot director on the forum that would respond to any questions, so I asked. Personally, I don't like discussing slot machine operational theory/facts while including Native American casinos -- many are not regulated, not subject to public reporting like Nevada casinos, or are Class II only. I don't even prefer to play in them, really.

Scorcho the NAs is where at least in my eyes is where the % changes and SBG are the most common, in states like ours where SBG and a near total lack of oversight exist.

[tobiathan]

This video proves that it is possible to change payback easily. The video even suggests that you might make the games more profitable during "peak times."

http://ballytech.com/Systems/Server-...Command-Center

Very interesting - thanks MB!

[The Ponzzz]

I think people grossly overestimate how many machines are tied to a server and are able to have their paybacks adjusted willy-nilly.

Hint: think about how much work and costs it would take to run Windows 8 on a PC made 15 years ago for Windows 98.

The comparison doesn't work for slot machines. But just some words of wisdom. If the game is older, it's holding the data in the individual cabinet. If the game is newer, it has the option to be server-based. They're not going to be changing the old chips weekly, or even monthly. But any casino who has invested in SBG is likely taking advantage of it in some fashion.