Curious about the things casinos keep secret? During my 35+ years working in casino operations, I have learned a lot. Now, it's time to share them with you.
There’s a mountain of misinformation out there about casinos.
How they’re run, what their goal is, how they cheat the players (except that no, they don’t!), who their staff are, and so on.
Sadly, since anyone can post information on blogs and social media, anyone can share their opinion as fact, and unfortunately, many people believe what is written on the internet (because if it’s on the internet, it must be true, right?)
So even if the writer has never worked in a casino, only played once in their life, and is not really sure what they’re talking about, people end up believing what they’ve written and share it as true (even though they lack any kind of authority in the field).
Before you know it, there are all kinds of false statements out there.
This is where that stops. So, here’s the real story:
Let's dive right in!
All the video poker games look similar, so how do you tell if the one you’re playing has the best payback percentage, the best Return To Player (RTP)?
Here’s the way you should approach this:
Look at the Paytable to determine whether you’re playing a ‘loose’ machine or not.
Specifically, look at the Full House/Flush payout part of the pay table.
Sometimes a couple of the other numbers on the pay table may get changed a little, but it’s the Full House/Flush that is the dead giveaway.
That’s where the casino chooses the Return To Player (RTP) number that creates the hold percentage that they want on the specific machine.
Here’s a typical paytable for a Jacks or Better video poker machine:
- If the Full House wins 9 and the Flush wins 6, the RTP of that machine is 99.54%
- If the Full House wins 9 and the Flush wins 5, the RTP is 98.44%
- If the Full House wins 8 and the Flush wins 5, the RTP is 97.3%
As you can see, it makes a big difference in how much you can expect to win.
- The 9/6 game has an RTP of 99.54%, so it holds 0.46%.
- The 9/5 game has an RTP of 98.44%, so it holds 1.56%
- The 8/5 game has an RTP of 97.3%, so it holds 2.7%.
The best video poker game (from my experience)
The 9/5 game holds slightly more than triple the 9/6 game. And the 8/5 game holds more than 5 times the 9/6 game! Clearly, the 9/6 game is better for you to play.
In addition to that, the average video poker player misplays their hand sometimes, and overall I noticed that my video poker games routinely had an average RTP of approximately 4% below the stated RTP above.
The average player was playing at a skill level of minus 4% below ‘perfect’ play.
What kind of mistakes would you make?
Here is a typical poker hand that may get misplayed by the average player:
You would often keep the three spades, going for the flush, but should actually keep the four cards that give you a straight draw.
It certainly does, as long as you know a little bit about poker, such as the hand rankings, and how to play to maximize your chances of winning.
As you can see from the first section, a typical 9/6 game has a hold percentage of approximately 0.5%., while for a typical $1 slot machine will be somewhere between 4% and 7%.
And a penny game? Much worse.
You can’t.
No, really, you can’t.
Most slot machines these days are computer-based and have a random number generator (RNG) in them that chooses the next combination of symbols to appear on the screen or reels.
A player has just got up after playing for a couple of hours and people think ‘this machine is due to hit’.
No, it’s not! The machine has no idea who’s been playing it, what combinations hit last, or what combinations are going to come up next.
Remember
The RNG is generating up to 1,000 numbers per second, and so the ‘that guy just hit my jackpot’ scenario is virtually impossible, because to ‘hit your jackpot' the player would have had to hit the ‘Spin’ button at the exact same 1,000th of a second that you would have.
During the time it takes you to leave the machine and the other player to sit down, the RNG has generated tens of thousands of different combinations.
So there’s no way the machine is ‘due’ or that someone can ‘take your jackpot’.
Not going to happen.
The machine doesn’t know what the last spin did, what the last five spins did, or what the last fifty spins did. It is completely random.
The casino likes faster decisions because they make more money with more decisions.
That’s why modern slot machines are no longer based on mechanic reels. Instead, they “simulate” the reel-spinning effect using modern animation.
The video slot machines would work faster and it would be easy for us to have the ‘reels’ reset themselves to the next winning combination.
But we don’t set them up that way because the human playing the game wants to see the ‘reels’ spinning, so we make them spin.
The result is still the same combination chosen by the RNG.
The house edge on slot machines can be anything from 1% to 15%, depending on the amount you’re betting and the jurisdiction and casino you’re playing in.
Compared to table games, slots have a much higher hold percentage and therefore you’re more likely to lose when playing them.
As a general rule, the more you bet, the higher the RTP (Return to Player) so the lower the hold percentage of the machine.
A 25¢ machine is going to pay back less than a $1 machine, which is going to pay back less than a $5 machine etc.
So the solution to a successful gambling session is to play the highest denomination that you can afford.
Some casinos offer a printout of their hottest machines over the last week or few days.
“Why do they do that?
Isn’t it bad for casinos to do that?
Surely that gives the player an advantage because they can then play the hot machines and win more?
Well, no, that’s not the way it works.
This is called ‘the gambler’s fallacy’.
Many players believe that there are ‘hot’ machines and that if they could only find the ‘hot’ machine’, they could win a lot.
Unfortunately for them, gambling doesn’t work that way.
As we’ve already mentioned, slot machines don’t know what the last combination was, or the one before that, or over the last 50 spins.
The humans who play them like to think that the machines are hot because the events seem to be related.
This machine has paid out a lot, so it must be a hot machine, right?
Wrong.
The machine doesn’t know what it just paid out. The results are not related.
There’s no such thing as a ‘hot’ machine.
The casinos also offer a printout of the coldest machines, too.
Some humans think ‘well, this machine hasn’t paid out much so it must be about to change, right?
Wrong.
There’s no such thing as a ‘cold’ machine.
Again, the machines don’t know what happened
The whole ‘hot machine/cold machine’ thing is simply superstition and has no bearing on what’s happening.
The older ‘stepper’ machines usually had three actual reels, and the newer computer-based video games have four or five video reels.
Let’s take a look at how many combinations there are on the machines.
Example of mechanical 3-reel slot machine combinations
On a simple ‘stepper’ machine, an IGT S2000 Red, White, and Blue mechanical game, there are three reels, and each reel has 64 stops on it.
The total number of combinations is 64 x 64 x 64 = 262,144
It would take you 15 spins a minute for ten hours a day, five days a week almost six weeks to go through every combination on the machine.
Example of computer-based 5-reel game combinations
The video ‘reels’ have 128 stops on them, including some ‘ghost’ stops.
The total number of combinations on that machine is 128 x 128 x 128 x 128 x 128.
Which means a total of 34,359,738,368 combinations.
Yes, that’s 34 billion!
It would take the same player, playing the same way as on the Red White, and Blue machine, 14,683 years to go through that many combinations.
Many regular players have a favorite machine and play it for months or even years. And in so doing, the regular player could get a feel for how tight or loose the machine is.
On the newer machine, you would have to be on the game for your entire life to have even the remotest inkling of how it’s performing.
We could. But we don’t. Because changing the hold percentage on a machine is a major song and dance.
And why would we do that when the machine is already set to a good hold percentage?
Changing the hold percentage on a game in many casinos means you must get approval from the gaming commission, which takes up to a week.
Then, at 4 am or so, call Surveillance to let them know you’re going to be taking out the ‘Act of God’ key. This key is kept in the Cage and requires four employees from different departments to sign it out.
Hence the ‘Act of God’ name.
Then go to the machine, open the game on film and sign the MEAL card. Then break the seals in the presence of the gaming commission representative.
Then, remove the old chip(s), replace it/them with the new chip(s), then reseal the machine, and put it back into play. That’s just one machine. Now imagine doing that with fifty machines.
Casino Insight
Changing the hold percentage on a machine for the weekend is way too much work. Never going to happen.
We don’t care if you’re winning two or three hundred dollars. We don’t. You’re not even going to get on our radar at that level.
Are we paying attention?
Yes, but generally there is way too much going on for us to register it at that level.
Why don’t we care?
Because most guys who think they’re counting cards simply aren’t very good at it.
They don’t even play perfect Basic Strategy, and then they don’t know how to bet and manage their money. Some of them may as well have a big neon sign with them that says ‘I’m trying to count cards now!’.
We loved it when the movie ‘21’ came out in 2008.
It was about the MIT card counting team, who won big (for a while) by counting cards.
We saw a pretty big rise in the number of wannabe card counters – and a pretty big growth in our revenues from them.
So let’s say you’re winning a couple of hundred.
We don’t have time to be bothered with such a small amount, and we would have to hire a bunch more people to watch our games if we were.
And as anyone who knows anything about business will tell you, the biggest expense any business has is its payroll.
When you’ve got over a million dollars a week coming across the tables, and you’re holding (winning) about 20% of it, your little win of $200 doesn’t even register on the dial.
It’s a far more effective strategy to have our Floors be guest service agents and let the Pit Managers interact with Surveillance to catch the advantage players.
Here’s how that works on the retail floor:
A player buys in for $200. After half an hour or so, he’s got $1,200 in front of him.
The Floor calls the Pit Manager ‘Hey Mike, I’ve got a guy on third base on BJ 206 beating us for $1,000. He’s in $200’. ‘Okay, stay away from the game and I’ll get back to you’.
Pro tip
Before you can claim that you are a "pro card counter", I suggest reading my complete guide on how to play blackjack. It will help you master the game's basics, and only then you can start learning how to count.
Why would a Pit Manager tell the Floor ‘stay away from the game’?
Because if the Floor is watching the game closely, the player is likely to get spooked and leave before we have had a chance to review his play and see if he is a danger to us.
Then the Pit Manager would call Surveillance and have the player checked out by them.
They may have a software program or just run the video themselves to see if there is anything out of the ordinary with this play.
They may just watch a shoe and count it down themselves to see what the player may be doing. And most of the time, the answer comes back ‘he’s just winning – nothing going on’.
Keep in mind
A player winning $1,000 off a $200 buy-in is not an unusual scenario. It happens all the time.
And, of course, a player winning $1,000 off a $200 buy-in is great for our business.
The number of times I’ve seen people writing about how we hire former card counters to watch the retail players from Surveillance, and that we have plain clothes security patrolling the retail casino floor to watch for thieves, is simply not true.
Oh yes, we do have security.
Their job is to make sure everyone is comfortable and to help our guests have a great time, every time.
We often hear gamblers say:
"Once you start winning a couple of hundred, they send the cocktail waitress to give you more drinks, change the dealer, or tell the dealer to talk to you more to distract you."
No, we don’t. This is laughable.
We simply don’t have any reason to do those things.
All our staff follows pretty strict schedules. Dealers usually work an hour on and twenty minutes off; dealers talk to players, it’s part of their job; cocktail servers have sections to cover and don’t report to the casino guys, they report to the Food & Beverage guys.
Here's a way you can instantly tell if someone may know what they’re talking about
It’s the use of the job title ‘Pit Boss’.
The employee you will see if you’re playing blackjack or craps etc, who is in the sports jacket or suit behind the game is called a ‘Floor Person’. (I’m going to use Floorman because it’s too cumbersome to say Floor Persons, and the women who do this job are just as skilled as the men, and quite often, more so.)
And yet they are referred to as the Pit Boss by guys who don’t know even the simplest thing about a casino.
The actual Pit Boss usually has five or six Floormen reporting to them, and each Floor will have up to 6 games on the retail floor to watch.
The Pit Boss will almost certainly never do your rating, never change the cards on your game and never spend much time watching your game unless there is a problem, or unless a big player happens to land on it.
Many casinos these days have decided that their retail Floormen’s time is better spent dealing with the guest service part of the casino experience rather than what is generally referred to as ‘game protection.
This includes:
- watching the players;
- try to identify the advantage players;
- fixing dealer mistakes;
- making sure that the games are being run according to the rules.
It’s a bit difficult and time-consuming to tell if someone is card counting or if they’re just a hunch bettor who’s getting lucky, especially if you’re dealing with pit paperwork, rating players, drink spills, okaying buy-ins, and calling the beverage server, etc.
It’s also true that since the massive expansion of Tribal gaming across the country in the mid-1990s, many of the Floormen have limited experience as dealers.
It used to be that you wouldn’t get to be a Floor until you had at least five years as a dealer. Nowadays, that’s not the case.
Note how in the above paragraphs I’ve used the word ‘retail’. Retail means the main casino floor, where the minimums are $5, $10, and $25.
High Limit is where the real business happens. It’s a standard casino truism that 80% of our revenue comes from 20% of our players.
And that 20% usually play in the High Limit room. The minimums there range from $100 to $10,000 a hand for someone we don’t know, just walking in off the street.
Higher limits are available for the real whales – and some have their minimum limits set at $25,000 and more.
Sometimes a lot more.
The pro gamblers who play at that level are always known to us.
You can be certain that we watch those games very closely. We have at least a couple of expert card counters working on every shift.
We work with Surveillance, who also have a couple of expert counters to make sure no one is trying to take advantage of us.
I think it is now pretty standard practice for every table games department to have its own ‘count team’. I certainly had one when I had limits up to $20,000. And I positively didn’t hire ‘former card counters’ from the outside.
Why would I invite a fox into the chicken coop so he could share the intimate details of my Surveillance room with his friends?
My ‘count team’ was made up of (usually) Pit Managers and up who had an interest in advantage play, and who spent a lot of time learning their skills.
They were very good.
The guest experience folks are well-trained and great at making the players feel comfortable and relaxed, and the game protection guys are good at determining if anything untoward is going on.
And then, if we ran into a serious player who was winning and we weren’t sure if he was counting or not, we also had a contract with an advantage play consultant.
There are only a few of them nationwide, but a couple of hours of video was usually enough for them to determine exactly what was going on with this player.
Usually, it was just to confirm what we already knew.
And that’s one of the reasons why casinos have two distinct sections. The High Limit room and the retail floor.
Card counting software has been available now for at least 20 years which I know of, and maybe longer. It’s very fast and accurate.
It used to be called ‘Bloodhound’, but it’s called ‘BJSurvey’ now. There are a couple of other programs, too, but BJSurvey is the one I’m familiar with.
It’s easy to use and can give you an accurate picture of what’s happening in your game.
There is also a close-knit Surveillance community, certainly in the US.
Here’s one experience I had:
“A player was winning and following the count on one of my low-limit retail pit games.
We watched the video and it was obvious that he was counting, moving his money with the count, and so on.
He was up about $1,200 on the session, so I sent his picture to a friend who was the Surveillance Director at a casino on the Las Vegas strip. It came back within ten minutes.
Yes, banned all over town in Vegas, an advantage player.
His real name was Jimmy Hart (not his real name), description, picture of his car, and license plate.
He’d given us his name as Joe Turner (not the name he gave us). I walked over to him to talk to him at the table. ‘Hi Jimmy, I’m the VP of Casino Operations here, can I talk to you for a second away from the table?’
As soon as I used his real name, he knew we’d made him and he never said a word.
He just picked up his chips and walked to the cage and cashed out.“
It used to be that the Floorman’s job was to catch the dealers or the players doing something wrong:
- trying to cheat;
- counting cards;
- giving the wrong change;
- overpaying a player’s winning hand;
- and so on.
These days, most casinos want their Floor People to be guest service ambassadors by:
- making sure that the players have a Player’s Club Card;
- getting their drinks on time
- properly handling their comps
Thus, the casino leaves the game protection part of the job to the Surveillance department.
I’ve worked at several casinos across the country, and always had a great relationship with Surveillance.
The folks who work in Surveillance are the friends of the guys on the casino floor, they have our backs, and we work together to make sure the guests all have a great time, and that we protect the assets of the owners.
A typical mid-sized casino will usually have more than 1,000 cameras across the casino floor.
The Surveillance room in a mid-to-large-sized casino looks like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise and it is highly private.
There is a small viewing room where non-Surveillance people can go to watch videos.
Even as the VP of Casino Operations, I wasn’t welcome in the Surveillance room, although I did finally convince them to let me have a monitor in my office.
The cameras can dial down and tell you even the maker’s name of the watch you’re wearing.
As you may know, it’s a common practice in the casino to tip your dealer by making a wager for them.
The dealers are not allowed to tell you where to make the “tip bet”.
They can only do what you tell them with their tips, but most would prefer that you bet next to your bet for them, so that when you win, they win.
The reason is that you bet for them as a way to advertise that the dealers get tips.
If you just say ‘this is for you’ they have to take the money so there is no advertising to the less experienced players that you can tip the dealers.
Ever wondered why are the slot machine lights rarely green? They’re usually blue or red, or maybe pink, but never green.
Slot manufacturers are very aware of how people feel when playing their games.
They want to increase the players’ excitement and sense of well-being. That’s why you rarely see green as a predominant color.
Because people don’t look good in green light. They look good in pink or red light.
Ever seen a makeup table with green lights?
No, me neither.
It’s best to play the games you enjoy.
Having said that, there are a few "rules" you may want to be aware of.
The so-called "Carnival Games" (traditional casino games with a twist) generally hold more than the traditional big three games of blackjack, craps, and baccarat.
If you know what you’re doing on those traditional games (and our Academy is designed to make sure you know what you’re doing), you can reduce the hold percentage on those games by making the bets that have the lowest house edge against you.
All of them except roulette have a house advantage of 0.7% - 1.5% or less depending on the house rules for how the game is dealt and the bets you make.
The reason it changes is that the house rules are chosen by the casino and each casino may decide to run their games a different way to the casino down the street.
For example
Changing the rule about whether to hit a Soft 17 or stand on a Soft 17 changes the hold percentage of the game by 0.22%. (If the casino hits a Soft 17 vs. stands on a Soft 17, they make it worse for the player by 0.22%).
Blackjack, Craps, and Baccarat have the best odds for the player as long as you know where to bet.
Check out the Chipy Academy here and we’ll make sure you bet in places that have the best odds for you and don’t bet where you don’t.
Final Thoughts
There you have it: 17 of the most intriguing casino secrets that the operators are working hard to hide from the players.
I hope you've enjoyed reading this guide, and you will apply some of the new things you've learned in your next gambling sessions.
Of course, you can always enjoy an online casino experience. Just make sure you check the Online gambling guides in the Academy and master the art of playing at the casino.
Have fun!
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