The Venetian Las Vegas is one of the most luxurious hotels in Las Vegas and one of the best ones, so if you choose to go to this hotel and try your luck you will find thousands of slot machines and enjoy great awards. They are placed on two casino floors, so you can play on numerous slots available and choose one of the most popular games you. Slot machines consistently amount for 70 percent of all the business in casinos. These games have been popular since the 1980s. The slot machine offers jackpot amounts that can make someone a million dollar winner with a simple $3 bet. The progressive nature of the game makes the casino player feel like they have a chance to break the bank.
You have a lot to look forward to in Las Vegas—bright lights, constant partying, and endless opportunities. You also face an ocean of slot machines in every casino on the Strip and anywhere else in the city.
In fact, you’ll find over 200,000 slot machines in Las Vegas alone. And not all of these slot games are the same. Some casinos offer better rewards through their players’ programs, for example. Others have looser slots (games with a higher RTP).
Here’s my list of the seven best casinos for slots in Las Vegas.
1 – Aria
Aria Resort & Casino is one of the most luxurious properties on the Las Vegas Strip, and it also has one of the biggest slot machine areas anywhere in the city.
On top of that, they have the biggest and best high roller slot machine parlor in the entire state. It even has its own name, Spin.
It’s an architectural marvel, too. Famed New York architect Peter Marino designed Spin, which has more amenities than some casinos. This includes a staff of butlers to cater to your needs while you play. The cashier’s cage is separate from the gaming, and the bathrooms are all private.
Have you ever seen a full-service dining room inside the slot machine area? And Aria doesn’t just cater to high rollers. The casino has over 2,000 slot machine games available, including popular titles like Wheel of Fortune and The Walking Dead. They also frequently host slot machine tournaments.
2 – Bellagio
A lot of people think of the Bellagio as the best place on the Las Vegas Strip to play poker, and they are right about this, of course.
But Bellagio is also one of the best spots on the Vegas Strip to find slot machine tournaments and a wide variety of slots games to choose from. Including video poker games and slot machines, Bellagio has over 2,300 different gambling machines to choose from.
And they’re available in multiple denominations, catering to both low rollers and high rollers alike.
Many of Bellagio’s slot machines feature progressive jackpots where you can win $1 million or more on a single spin of the reels. No one offers better live entertainment or dining either.
Also, since Aria and the Bellagio are both owned by MGM, membership at the slots club there means that you automatically have a membership in M life Rewards loyalty program, which is the players club at the following casinos:
- Aria
- Bellagio
- Delano Las Vegas
- Excalibur
- Luxor
- Mandalay Bay
- MGM Grand
- The Mirage
- Park MGM
- New York-New York
- Vdara
3 – The Venetian
The Venetian is famous for a lot of things, and one of those things is the varied selection of gambling machines available there. The casino has two floors worth of machines to choose from, and they have a great loyalty program.
The Venetian also makes it a point of keeping the latest games on the floor, and they’ve done an excellent job of making sure they have newer games than some of their competitors. If you’re looking for games like the new Ghost Busters slots or the Game of Thrones slots, this is the place.
Like Aria, the Venetian caters to high rollers.
If you’re a customer here, you can even request your own brands of machine, and the casino will do its best to accommodate.
They offer butler service and a lounge where you can relax when you’re taking a break from the slots games.
If you’re a Gold or Platinum member of the Grazie loyalty program here, you get free transportation to and from McCarran Airport.
4 – The Golden Nugget
So far, this list has focused on slot machine games that cater to high rollers on the Strip. But not all the best slot machines are found on the famed Las Vegas Boulevard.
In fact, the payback percentages for machines in other parts of the city are usually superior to the glitzier properties on the Strip. And what better “other part of the city” is there than downtown?
The gaming floor at the Golden Nugget is huge, with over 1,000 gambling machines to choose from. They have some of the most varied games in the city, too. They carry the famous games like Wheel of Fortune, but they also have a bigger variety of “Buffalo” slots than almost any other casino.
They feature multiple progressive jackpot slots casinos, too. I’m one of those slot machine players who loves a good steak, so the presence of Vic and Anthony’s is a great reason to play here, too. It’s one of the 10 best steakhouses in the entire country.
5 – Sam’s Town
One thing you should be aware of about Las Vegas slots is that the payback percentage is lower on the Strip than elsewhere. The best places to play are older casinos that are a little off the beaten path.
Las Vegas Airport Slot Winner
Sam’s Town fits the bill nicely. What it lacks in luxury, Sam’s Town makes up for with high payout slot machine games.
One thing that Sam’s Town offers that isn’t available at other Las Vegas casinos is an online listing of the slot machine games they have available. You can search their database by denomination, type of game, or keyword in the game title.
Be warned, though, Sam’s Town is not your traditional Vegas experience. It’s older and a bit cheesier. It’s probably a more appropriate casino to stay at if you’re older or maybe if you have young children.
As far as the better payback percentages go, that’s worth a visit.
The payback percentage for a casino is the AVERAGE of the slots on the floor. You might play a game with a 75% payback percentage, while your mom might be playing on an identical machine next to it with a 95% payback percentage.
And since the house has the edge, if you play either game long enough, you’ll eventually lose all your money.
6 – Excalibur
If you’re more interested in payback percentage than glitz and glamour, you should look at some of the older properties on the Strip. Circus Circus and Excalibur both count, but Excalibur’s more recent renovations make it somewhat more palatable to the modern gambler.
Excalibur is old enough and low rent enough that they can afford to offer some of the best payback percentages on the Strip. And if you’re not a high roller, you should consider trying the slots here.
They have plenty of penny slots, and even their most expensive game tops out at $100 per spin—a far cry from the $5000 max at some of the other casinos in this group on the Strip.
That’s right. Excalibur is also owned by MGM, so you get to participate in the same huge slot club as most of the other casinos on this list.
7 – Downtown Vegas in General
Rather than close out this list with another casino recommendation, I want to recommend the Downtown Vegas area over the Strip for its selection of unusual slot machine games in various areas.
For example, the biggest slot machine in the world is the SlotZilla zip line. And when I say “big,” I’m being literal. It’s 128 feet tall. You zip down Fremont Street Experience on one of two lines, and the game has a huge video screen with reels and an animated arm to pull.
You can also view antique slot machines at the Main Street. They’re beautiful and well worth seeing. You’ll find them near the registration desk.
Many of the Downtown Las Vegas casinos offer huge, oversized slot machines. One place to find them is on the second level of The D. You’ll have to take the escalator to see this one. Also, you get to play for real coins here, which is a nice change of pace for old-timers who remember being able to cash out with a huge bucket full of coins.
You’ll also find a huge slot machine in The Golden Nugget.
Conclusion
Those are my picks for the seven best casinos for slots in Las Vegas. Do you disagree with my choices?
- Appendices
- Slots Analysis
- Miscellaneous
Introduction
The following table ranks the Las Vegas casinos according to the looseness of their video display reeled nickel slot machines. The returns are based on a sampling of five different types of machines. The data collected goes back as far as October 2001 so the information is a bit dated.
Las Vegas 5 Cent Slot Survey
| Rank | Casino | Average Return |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Palms | 93.42% |
| 2 | Gold Coast | 92.84% |
| 3 | Sahara | 92.81% |
| 4 (tie) | Bourbon Street | 92.63% |
| 4 (tie) | Imperial Palace | 92.63% |
| 4 (tie) | Slots a Fun | 92.63% |
| 7 | Key Largo | 92.60% |
| 8 | Western | 92.57% |
| 9 | Ellis Island | 92.56% |
| 10 | El Cortez | 92.56% |
| 11 | Orleans | 92.56% |
| 12 | Circus Circus | 92.56% |
| 13 | Gold Spike | 92.55% |
| 14 | Fitzgeralds | 92.54% |
| 15 | Fiesta - Rancho | 92.53% |
| 16 | Arizona Charlie's East | 92.51% |
| 17 | Barbary Coast | 92.50% |
| 18 | Terrible's | 92.49% |
| 19 | Arizona Charlie's | 92.49% |
| 20 | Hard Rock | 92.47% |
| 21 | Town Hall | 92.47% |
| 22 | Longhorn | 92.47% |
| 23 | Riviera | 92.23% |
| 24 | California | 92.14% |
| 25 | Lady Luck | 92.10% |
| 26 | Nevada Palace | 92.06% |
| 27 | Plaza | 91.94% |
| 28 | Luxor | 91.92% |
| 29 | Paris | 91.92% |
| 30 | San Remo | 91.88% |
| 31 | Excalibur | 91.84% |
| 32 | Palace Station | 91.84% |
| 33 | Ballys | 91.82% |
| 34 | Las Vegas Club | 91.76% |
| 35 | Four Queens | 91.75% |
| 36 | Texas Station | 91.71% |
| 37 | Casino Royale | 91.67% |
| 38 | Boulder Station | 91.55% |
| 39 | Aladdin | 91.5% |
| 40 | O'sheas | 91.48% |
| 41 | Hilton | 91.40% |
| 42 | Boardwalk | 91.28% |
| 43 | New York New York | 90.99% |
| 44 | Horseshoe | 90.96% |
| 45 | Sam's Town | 90.89% |
| 46 | Santa Fe Station | 90.87% |
| 47 | Flamingo | 90.86% |
| 48 | Golden Nugget | 90.85% |
| 49 | Stratosphere | 90.8% |
| 50 | Tropicana | 90.71% |
| 51 | Golden Gate | 90.64% |
| 52 | Silverton | 90.57% |
| 53 | Main Street Station | 90.56% |
| 54 | Westward Ho | 90.40% |
| 55 | Fremont | 90.37% |
| 56 | Castaways | 90.36% |
| 57 | Monte Carlo | 90.24% |
| 58 | Stardust | 89.97% |
| 59 | Frontier | 89.91% |
| 60 | MGM Grand | 89.81% |
| 61 | Harrahs | 89.32% |
| 62 | Treasure Island | 89.32% |
| 63 | Mirage | 89.3% |
| 64 | Caesars Palace | 89.05% |
| 65 | Mandalay Bay | 88.87% |
| 66 | Rio | 88.72% |
| 67 | La Bayou | 88.26% |
| 68 | Mermaids | 88.26% |
| 69 | Bellagio | 87.42% |
| 70 | Venetian | 86.66% |
| 71 | Airport | 85.02% |
Excluded Casinos
The Suncoast and Rampart Casino in Summerlin do not allow playing slots and taking notes at the same time. I can not include any casino that prohibits the method in which I gather data.
Location Averages
The next table shows the average return by location.
Returns by Region
| Location | Average Return |
|---|---|
| Off strip | 92.07% |
| Downtown | 91.66% |
| Strip | 91.47% |
| Total | 91.74% |
The above sign can be found across the street from the Palms. Although I did the study Anthony Curtis published it in the LasVegas Advisor, which is how it become well known. The'...' in the sign encompases quite a bit of information,which was conveniently left off the sign. Actually the study only says that the Palms had the lowest nickel video slotsof the casinos surveyed in Las Vegas. The small print at thebottom says, 'Independent study conducted between November2001-February 2002 on Austin Powers, Fortune Cookie, Reel'em In, and Wheel of Fortune games. They left off LeopardSpots, and the study began in October.
Observations
There seemed to be no truth behind slot placement myths. Machines on the end of a bank did no better on average than those in the middle. There was also no correlation between return and proximity to such things as the main door, table game pit, high traffic areas, and low traffic areas.
Most casinos were very consistent in their slot returns.If one nickel machine had a return of x% then all others like it also returned x%. However some casinos did mix up loose and tight machines, most notably Treasure Island and the California casinos.
Methodology
A kind and anonymous source provided me with par sheets for the games in question. The EPROM (Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory) chip is what tells the machine the order of the symbols on the reel, in some cases how the stops are weighted, how much each winning combination pays, and any other pertinent information about how much the machine pays.It is up to the slot manager to select which EPROM chip to order according to the return percentage desired. On atypical game there might be about 8 different possible return percentages, ranging from about 85% to 98%.
Each of the different par sheets has five sets of distinct reels. On video display slots the stops are not weighted; in other words all stops are equally likely. The distribution of each symbol on each reel is what determines the theoretical return of the machine. For example a higher paying machine may have more of the higher paying symbols.
On the machine itself three consecutive symbols arevisible on five different reels. By comparing actualobservations of results to the par sheets it is possible todetermine which reels the machine uses, and thus which par sheet and which return. There are various three-symbol combinations that appear in at least one but not all par sheets. So if one of these combinations occurs on an actualmachine it narrows down the possible par sheets. By playingenough the player can narrow down the possible par sheets tojust one.
To help identify the unique combinations I wrote a computer program for each game, which had the exact reel order of all 5 reels of all the par sheets. The program then counted the number of par sheets with each possible three-symbol combination. If the number was greater than 0 and less than the maximum then that combination was identified along with the associated par sheets it belonged to.
It is then a matter of simply playing the game and comparing the outcomes to the list of partially unique combinations. It only takes about 5-10 plays per machine to narrow down the possibilities to just one par sheet.
The averages in the table are actually an average of averages. For each kind of machine at each casino I took an average return. Then I took the average of these averages over the five kinds of machines I tested for.
Slot Machine Definition
There is some confusion about what constitutes a 'slot machine' or 'slot.' My definition, and that of most gamblers, is a gambling machine with either actual spinning reels or video representations of the them.
People in the gaming business and regulators generally refer to a slot machine as any gambling machine, including reeled slots, video poker, video keno, video blackjack,etc.. For purposes of statistics both casino managers and regulators combine all the electronic gambling machines together. For example, the Slot Chart in Casino Player magazine and reports by the Nevada Gaming Control Board do not isolate just reeled slots but consider all electronic games a 'slot.' Therefore my return percentages should not be expected to agree with those reported by the casinos or regulators. As far as I know mine is the only source to isolate just the return of reeled slots.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Rob Feldheim for helping with the slot play and record keeping. Rob helped me with most of the casinos on the east side of town and part of downtown. I would also like to thank par Sheet Pete (not his real name)for providing the par sheets, without which this project would not have been possible.
Internal Links
Go to slot machine appendix3B (Jean/Primm slot returns).
Go to slot machine appendix 3D(Henderson slot returns).
Go to slot machine appendix 3E(Las Vegas quarter and dollar slot returns).
Go to slot machine appendix 3F(Montreal slot return).
Go back to slot machines.
External Links
The main-stream media has covered this study in depth. Here are links to some articles.
- Turning'em loose, an article that appeared in the Las VegasReview Journal on May 19, 2002, about the possible effectsof this study.
- One-Armed Bandit or Robin Hood?, an article by myself for Contingencies Magazine explaining the methodology, results, and weaknesses of the study.
- Play by the rules and the one-armed bandits will still win. Boston Globe article about slot machines, in which my Las Vegas survey is mentioned and my advice quoted. (cache)
Written by: Michael Shackleford