You’ll find dozens – if not hundreds – of casino games to play at any respectable casino. Most of them fall into a handful of categories, though. And the odds for each are different.
The odds aren’t the only thing that determines how much you’ll lose over time playing each of these games, though. The amount you bet per hour is the other big factor, and that’s determined by 2 factors:
Bets on slot machines also have an expected value, but they’re all negative. A negative expected value means that, on average, you’re going to lose money. Here’s an example of expected value on a slot machine. If a slot machine has a house edge of 5% and you bet $1 on every spin, the expected value is.05 per spin. Excitement of the casino to the comfort of your home! 756-8248 International / Local: 513-469-6486 100 Office Park Drive, Fairfield (Cincinnati) OH 45014.
The first is how much you’re betting on each outcome.
The second is how many bets you’re making per hour.
When you multiple those 3 factors by the house edge, you learn how expensive your favorite casino game really is.
How Much Does The House Edge Cost You?
The easiest way to define the house edge is as the difference between the odds of winning and the payout odds when you win.
For example, in roulette, the odds of winning a single number bet are 37 to 1. The payoff for that bet is 35 to 1.
In the example of roulette, the house edge is 5.26%.
Mathematically, every time you put $100 into action at the roulette table, the casino expects to win $5.26.
Of course, that’s a long term average and an expectation. Actual results in the short term will vary widely from that.
For example, if you place a single $100 bet on a single number at roulette, you’ll either lose $100 or win $3500. It’s impossible to lose $5.26 on a single bet.
In fact, you can’t lose $5.26 on 2 or 3 bets, either.
It has to be a long-term average.
How Expensive Is Baccarat?
At an average baccarat table, you’ll see 70 hands per hour.
For the purposes of this post, I’m assuming that you’re a low roller, and you’re betting the lowest possible amount on the game. If you’re playing in Vegas, the lowest bet you can place on baccarat anywhere in town is $10.
This means you’ll put $700 per hour into action at the baccarat table.
What’s that going to cost you in the long run?
It depends on which bet you place. The house edge in baccarat varies based on which bet you’re placing:
- Banker – 1.06%
- Player – 1.24%
- Tie – 14.36%
The smart player is only going to place the banker bet repeatedly, so his expected loss is 1.06% X $700, or $7.42 per hour.
As gambling goes, that’s pretty cheap entertainment.
Keep in mind, too, that real money baccarat requires no skill other than to have enough sense to make the banker bet every time.
But let’s see how it compares to some of the other games here.
How Expensive Is Blackjack?
Blackjack is well known for having the best odds in the house, but to achieve that low house edge, you must master basic blackjack strategy. That’s easy enough to do, though.
The best blackjack game you’ll find in Vegas these days has a house edge of 0.4% and a minimum bet of $5 per hand. Those tables are usually full, so you’ll probably only see 60 hands per hour or so.
This means you’re putting $300 into action per hour.
The expected loss per hour on that is only $1.20.
Even if you’re a bad blackjack player, you’re probably still not going to lose more per hour than you would playing baccarat. Even if you make lots of basic strategy mistakes, the house edge on this game probably won’t go above 2%, which is an expected loss per hour of $6.
So far, blackjack is the cheapest casino game you can play.
How Expensive Is Craps?
Real money craps has a wide variety of bets you can make, but for the purposes of this post, I’ll assume that you know enough to stick with the pass line bet – the most basic bet in the game.
The house edge for the pass bet in craps is 1.41%.
You’ll get 100 rolls of the dice per hour in craps, but only 30 of those will result in a decision, so that’s the number you use to get the hourly expected loss.
At $3 per bet, you’re only putting $90 per hour into action.
With a house edge of 1.41%, the expected loss per hour is $1.27.
This makes craps just as cheap as blackjack.
Many craps bettors will have multiple bets operating at once, though. If you’re one of those, you might be putting a lot more money into action than $90.
How Expensive Is Roulette?
I’m going to keep using Vegas for these examples. In Las Vegas, most roulette tables have 2 zeros on them – they’re called American roulette games. The house edge for these games is 5.26%, which sounds high. In fact, you might think you’re looking at an expensive game.
You’ll be surprised at how affordable roulette can be, though.
It’s reasonable to expect to find a $5 table, and if you’re only placing one bet every spin of the wheel, you’re looking at 50 bets per hour.
That’s $250 per hour in action.
5.26% of that $250 is $13.15.
So far, real money roulette is the most expensive game on the list, but we’re not done yet.
Also, if you can find a roulette table where the minimum bet is $3, you reduce you’re hourly action to $150 and your expected hourly loss to $7.89.
How Expensive Are Slot Machines?
Slot machines will cost you more money than any other game in the casino, even though you can bet less on the slots than any other game.
That’s because the amount of money you’re putting into action per hour is staggering.
The average slot machine player makes 600 spins of the reels per hour.
Let’s assume that you find a penny slot machine where you only have to bet 9 cents per spin.
That’s only $54 per hour in action.
But a slot machine game with stakes that low is going to have a house edge on the high end – maybe 15%.
So, you’re still looking at losing $8.10 per hour.
And that’s playing for 9 cents per spin, contrasted with $5 or $10 on most of the other games I’ve discussed so far.
You’re more likely to be betting at least $1 per spin. That’s $600 per hour in action.
At higher stakes, you might cut that house edge to 8% or even lower.
That’s still $48 per hour in expected losses.
I just don’t have that much fun playing slot machines.
Also, it’s impossible to tell what the payback percentage for a specific slot machine is.
How Expensive Is Video Poker?
Video poker games look like slot machines, but they’re a lot more varied. You have dozens of video poker games to choose from, and most of them have multiple pay tables to choose from.
For purposes of this post, I’ll assume that you find a Jacks or Better game with a 0.46% house edge. The minimum bet per hand is $1.25 on this theoretical game.
You’ll probably make 600 hands per hour at video poker, too.
That’s $750 in hourly action.
With a house edge of 0.46%, your expected loss is only $3.45, making video poker a much better bet than a slot machine.
But keep in mind that other pay tables can result in a much higher house edge. In fact, video poker can be just as expensive as slot machines if you’re not careful.
Conclusion
How expensive did your favorite casino game turn out to be?
Were you surprised?
I’m a blackjack player, so I’m happy with my expected hourly loss of just $1.20.
I also love craps, and I don’t lose much more than I do at blackjack, so that’s awesome.
Your best bet is to treat your casino game money as entertainment money, and measure your enjoyment of each game as entertainment.
If you’re entertaining dreams of owning your own casino one day, you’ll need anywhere from a few thousand dollars to a few billion.
The casino business is so lucrative that every time a new casino opens as “the most expensive casino ever built,” investors pop champagne bottles and raise a toast. It wasn’t always that way. Only a few decades ago, casino operators built on slim budgets.
Steve Wynn gambled big in the late ‘80s when he opened The Mirage in Las Vegas. Wynn and his backers invested an unheard-of $630 million in the new casino. At the time, industry analysts calculated the casino would have to turn an average daily profit of at least $1 million to meet its financial obligations.
In 2019 dollars, that isn’t so bad. If a casino has only 1,000 gaming machines, it can turn a $5 million daily profit just by retaining an average $1000 per machine.
According to a 2015 Las Vegas Sun article, about 40 million people visited Las Vegas on an annual basis at that time. That works out to nearly 110,000 visitors to Las Vegas daily. There are just over 100 casinos in Las Vegas.
In 2017, it was then reported that annual visitors had climbed to more than 42 million.
If each visitor loses only an average of $100 per day, Las Vegas is raking in $11 million in casino earnings every day. The reality is much more startling.
In 2013, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas published a study on the daily revenues of the 23 big casinos on the Strip. To be included in the study, a casino had to produce gaming revenue at least $72 million a year. The average for each of the big 23 turned out to be over $230 million per year.
Slot Machine Average Cost Per Pulley
That’s a far cry since The Mirage opened in 1989, but competition has changed the city’s gaming industry. Here is a deeper look at what it costs to build a casino.
Location, Location, Location
If you want to build a casino for as little as possible, buy cheap land. Where that wicket becomes sticky is in finding the right land. Not only do you need favorable laws allowing gambling and zoning for casinos, but you also need at least a good nearby highway.
Las Vegas is a hub for three Interstate highways and several US highways. The city is also home to McCarran International Airport. About 40 million passengers pass through the airport every year.
Considering AmTrak carries passengers to the city as well, tourists visit the city by car, bus, train, and plane.
If you decide to build your own casino, lacking the transportation channels that Las Vegas boasts means your location will attract fewer annual visitors. This probably explains why few cities dominate the casino industry. The casinos need both good zoning and access to transportation to attract visitors.
Hence, you should expect to pay a lot of money for the land.
Size Counts In Every Way
The Mirage currently boasts about 2,000 slot machine games. While that sounds like a lot, the WinStar World Casino in Thackerville, OK has about six times the floor space as The Mirage. The WinStar opened in 2003, making it 14 years younger than The Mirage.
According to their website in 2019, the WinStar holds about 8400 slot machines. They also have a 55-table poker room, all squeezed into 400,000 feet of floor space. If you want to compete with the WinStar, you’ll need a lot of floor space and thousands of more games.
The casino is owned and operated by the Chickasaw Nation, who had plenty of available land for development. That’s an advantage over the average commercial developer. By owning the land as part of their reservation, they were able to invest more in creating a high-quality resort.
You Need a Hotel and Restaurant
One reason why good casinos cost so much to build is the bigger casinos contain or are paired with big hotels. By providing their visitors with safe, comfortable accommodations, they ensure those visitors spend more time in their gaming areas.
On-site entertainment and dining venues enhance the hotel and casino experience. The farther away from Vegas and Atlantic City one gets in the United States, the less extravagant the casinos tend to become.
Only a handful of states and cities allow commercial casinos to congregate in their jurisdictions. The demand for suitable land limits the competition.
Biloxi, MS is North America’s third big commercial casino hub.
The Beau Rivage may be the best known of the Biloxi casinos. They only offer about 1800 slot games. Owned by MGM Resorts, Beau Rivage promotes its hotel, entertainment, dining, and nightlife venues equally with the casino.
These are not afterthoughts. They are part and parcel major pieces of the whole package.
According to Fixr.com, the average cost of a hotel in the United States is just over $22 million. A hotel comparable to the resorts at WinStar or Beau Rivage will easily set you back in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Factor in the Cost of Games
Assuming the hypothetical new casino brings in a lot of slot machines, how much do they cost?
Slot Machine Average Cost Per Pull Ups
The website HowMuchIsIt.org rounds up a list of price ranges for popular slot machines. Expect to pay at least several thousand dollars per basic game. The enhanced games may run $30,000 or more for the consoles.
If you can bring enough people in, the games should pay for themselves in only a few months. That’s not so bad.
However, the games will need to be maintained. A new casino must include the cost of hiring qualified staff or for paying authorized service contracts.
Plant Operations Are Expensive
Whether you’re building a roadside casino with 100 machines or planning a massive resort with more than a handful of casino games, the buildings will need electricity, water, heating and air systems, sewage, and maintenance areas.
Assuming a modest 200-room hotel is built on the property, it will have its own plant facility. Ditto for a small restaurant.
This new casino will need tools and equipment no one thinks about when pushing buttons and counting cards. There are lighting systems, sound systems, security systems, communication systems, and staff offices.
Employees will need dressing rooms and lockers, or at least their own break room.
Administration will need at least one office, maybe two if there is a dedicated full-time security team.
The cashiers will need a counting room and vault.
All these facilities must be built out, equipped, and brought online. This is all before you hire your first employee.
Conclusion
If the idea of building a new casino seems crazy, it is. This is an industry for billionaires and rich investment fund managers to play in. It’s not for the faint-hearted or small business person.
It’s true there are hundreds of small casinos that do just fine. With only a few dozen to a few hundred games, they cater to local customers. They don’t need big highways, trains, and airports.
Even so, the cost of setting up a small commercial will run into the millions of dollars. Most communities won’t accept commercial casinos. Most states don’t license them. The Native American tribes may contract with casino management companies but only the big ones.
In short, it costs a lot of money to open a casino. Buying one is out of the question for most people. Donald Trump is believed to have lost about $1 billion in investors’ money by trying to buy his way into Atlantic City.
Short of inheriting a small fortune or casino, this kind of development is one game well beyond the reach of typical investors and small business owners.