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    Golden Touch CRAPS

Playing Slots Every Day by Frank Scoblete

I received a letter from a man who wished to play craps every day and wanted to know how much he would need in a total bankroll and what his monetary expectation would be. I gave him this and wrote a column about it.

Then it hit me; what kind of bankroll would you need to play slots every day for one year? Of course, the slot question is a tough one since there are all sorts of machines out there with all sorts of paybacks. One could also say there are all sorts of craps bets too but my correspondent had only two bets specifically in mind so it made judging what he needed to play and how much he would lose fairly straightforward.

So let us take two typical slot players – one a 25-cent player and one a dollar player. Each will play three coins in the machines every day for one year using four hours a day as the playing time. Let us figure 12 spins per minute, with 720 spins per hour, with 2880 spins per day, with a total of 1,051,200 spins in one year.

The typical 25-cent machine has a payback of about 91 percent. That means the house edge is 9 percent. The total amount of money played in a 25-cent machine and how much the expectation for 75 cents will be as follows:

25 Cent Spins

Money Played

Money Lost

12 (one minute)

$9

81 cents

720 (one hour)

$540

$48.60

2880 ( one day)

$2,160

$194.40

1,051,200 (one year)

$788,400

$70,955

 

On the dollar machines we can say that the payback is about 92 percent and therefore the house edge is 8 percent.

$1 Spins

Money Played

Money Lost

12 (one minute)

$36

$2.88

720 (one hour)

$2,160

$172.80

2880 (one day)

$8,640

$691.20

1,051,200 (one year)

$3,153,600

$252,288

Looking at these figures I would speculate that very few players would have the resources to take a $70,956 loss. Unless you were one of the few mega-millionaires, swallowing that gargantuan $252,288 loss in slots would be out of the question.

So how can you reduce those losses and still play every day in a single year? Here is a list of what you can do.

  1. Play 7 spins per minute.
  2. Play one coin, not three.

The 25-cent player now reduces his losses. Watch:

25 Cent Spins

Money Played

Money Lost

7 (one minute)

$1.75

16 cents

420 (one hour)

$105

$9.45

1,680 (one day)

$420

$37.80

613,200 (one year)

$1,073,100

$13,797

$1 Spins

Money Played

Money Lost

7 (one minute)

$7

56 cents

420 (one hour)

$420

$33.60

1680 (one day)

$1680

$134.40

613,200 (one year)

$613,200

$49,056

You can go even further and do five or six spins a minute and reduce your expected losses even more. As you can see the losses are rather high even with my cost-saving strategies. Is it any wonder the casinos win a fortune from the slot machines?


Frank Scoblete, #1 best-selling gaming author, is director of Golden Touch advantage-play seminars in dice-control and blackjack. Websites: www.goldentouchcraps.com and www.scoblete.com.

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