How long would it take the average gambler to lose $50 in Vegas?

January 17, 2007 9:32 AM

How long would it take the average gambler to lose $50 in Las Vegas? Assume that they're playing at the lowest-stakes table possible.

Some friends and I are about to travel to Vegas, and I am writing a challenge for a friend of mine to perform while we're there -- he has to gamble with $50 for X hours, and has to use the amount he ends up with to buy all his clothes for the next day (i.e., if he ends up with $1 he'll be practically naked.) However, I'm having trouble deciding on a time limit as I don't know the standard table stakes in Vegas -- if I make the time too little the challenge will be too easy, and vice versa. Any estimates?

posted by tweebiscuit to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (17 answers total)

is this restricted to table games?

i know that $50 on a penny slot machine will take quite some time to waste away
posted by BSummers at 9:41 AM on January 17, 2007

It's hard to find penny slots in most of the major casinos, but some of them still have nickel slots. You can play nickel slots for hours upon hours.
posted by kindall at 9:43 AM on January 17, 2007

Table games are going to go a lot faster, especially on the strip.

I couldn't find any table games for less than $5 on the Strip, although I didn't go into all the skeezy places.

There are $3 craps tables at the Casino Royale next to the Venetian, and if he just played the pass line with no odds, I bet it would take him a while.
posted by mckenney at 9:49 AM on January 17, 2007

Holiday Inn Boardwalk has 50 cent blackjack I think. Also 25cent roulette - that would take a long time.
posted by thilmony at 9:53 AM on January 17, 2007

http://www.bigempire.com/vegas/gamblecheap.html

has the cheapest gambling in vegas many $1 and less table games
posted by BSummers at 9:56 AM on January 17, 2007

On a 90% payout nickel slot machine making ten spins per minute, you would expect to lose about $9 per hour. I can't imagine you would find penny slots any longer. There are slot machines with better payouts, so if you are careful to find "loose" slots you could easily cut your expected loss to about $3 per hour.

Table games usually have a minimum stake of $5. Assuming a 0.5% house edge (a good multi-deck game) and perfect basic strategy, you would expect to lose about $1.50 per hour playing blackjack. The key variable is how fast you and your tablemates play. If you make random stupid plays (like insurance or splitting tens) you might lose more like $7 per hour playing blackjack.

If you make only pass line bets at craps for $5, your money will probably last a while. I'd estimate an average loss of about $2 per hour assuming about 80 die rolls per hour.

Pai Gow poker might be your best bet for making your money last. The game can be played extremely slowly. You might get as few as 25 hands an hour, which would translate to a loss of less than $1 per hour if you play correctly.
posted by Lame_username at 10:07 AM on January 17, 2007 [1 favorite]

I'm a black jack man when I'm in Vegas. The rule of thumb that I use is that you should sit down at a table with at least enough money for 15-20 hands ($25 minimum = $400 to $500). This usually is enough money to play for 2 to 3 hours (if you're not betting aggressively).

If your friend were to sit down at the $1 tables at the Boardwalk he could very well be OK for a good part of the day.

Something you may want to keep in mind - the larger Strip Casinos tend to set their minimum wage tables higher in the evening. You can walk around a casino and see a dozen $10 tables during the day then right around 6 o'clock there may only be 2 or 3 - these tables are usually packed and harder to get seats at (not impossible, just harder).

Also, you may want to make a rule that he can switch tables X amount of times. If you are on a losing streak at a table you can FLY through your money. If he can't get up and change tables chances are you're going to win.
posted by ASM at 10:27 AM on January 17, 2007

$5 tables are pretty easy to find, and I can't lose more than $50 a night at a $1 blackjack table. I would say at a $5 table, an average gambler could likely bust around 2 hours. Multiply that by five and you've got a long, long night at a dollar table. My choice for the buck blackjack, btw, is SlotsAFun. Nice dealers, generous bar.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 10:45 AM on January 17, 2007

If you are on a losing streak at a table you can FLY through your money.
By definition. Changing tables fixes that how?
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 10:55 AM on January 17, 2007

It eats up time. Plain and simple.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 11:13 AM on January 17, 2007

There are plenty of video slot machines are effectively penny slots and let you bet 1 cent per payline, because they're hoping that you'll bet on all 40-50 lines at once.

Of course, that doesn't matter if he's limited to tables only.
posted by metaly at 11:35 AM on January 17, 2007

On a 90% payout nickel slot machine making ten spins per minute, you would expect to lose about $9 per hour. I can't imagine you would find penny slots any longer.

You also have to realize most nickel slots don't actually play for just a nickel. Most slots play 10-20 lines. Hit a loosing streak, and loosing $10 can easily go in 10 minutes. Slots is one of those random games where his $50 can last 30 minutes or make him $1000.

I'd be more inclined to sit him at a blackjack table which I'd consider a much more controlled environment than slots. I agree with most of the bust estimates already posted. I play $40 at $3 tables and that will last me a good 5-6 hours when I can't take any more. A bad night and I'm out in a couple hours.
Particularly, I think Ambrosia Voyeur has a pretty good estimate of 2 hours at $5 table.

If you are on a losing streak at a table you can FLY through your money.
By definition. Changing tables fixes that how?
It flies in the face of logic, but tables have luck. I swear! There's one blackjack table in local casino where I just cannot win. On the other hand, there's a dealer whom I always seem to win with when sitting at another table. Some card players are superstitious like hockey goalies.
posted by jmd82 at 12:07 PM on January 17, 2007

Seconding Pai Gow. Not only are hands time consuming, but you have a large chance of drawing any given hand versus the dealer and pushing your bet. The payoff for the casino comes from the fact that if you lose you lose but if you win you get a payoff that is a bet less than 100% of your bet. It's like how a bookie operates, but the margin for a tie is very large (50%).
posted by vito90 at 1:06 PM on January 17, 2007

I can't imagine you would find penny slots any longer. There are slot machines with better payouts,


Not so. My daughter just won over $200 playing a penny slot in Vegas late last month. We both were pretty shocked!
posted by SoftSummerBreeze at 4:14 PM on January 17, 2007

I have a few friends who lived in Vegas and swear by SlotsAfun as the best place to play. Seemed like a sleezy place to me personally but these guys haven't steered me wrong.
posted by Octoparrot at 6:44 PM on January 17, 2007

If you are on a losing streak at a table you can FLY through your money.

weapons-grade pandemonium: By definition. Changing tables fixes that how?

jmd82: It flies in the face of logic, but tables have luck. I swear! There's one blackjack table in local casino where I just cannot win. On the other hand, there's a dealer whom I always seem to win with when sitting at another table.

This is not so crazy, actually. I'm a huge blackjack fan, and can play for hours without losing or gaining much. My last trip to Vegas, I estimate conservatively that I played 25+ hours all told and was up a net $100 on the weekend, plus all the tip-outs to dealers and cocktail waitresses, playing $10, $15, and $20 tables. Not a profitable line of work by any means, but I walked away a winner, AND got free booze, AND oggled well-supported busty cocktail waitresses. So... fuck yeah, I love Vegas!

Card counting is basically impossible these days, as most casinos have CSM (continuous shuffling machines) which randomize the cards hand to hand. But even with the CSMs, it is the case that the cards will be somewhat clustered (perfect randomness doesn't exist!). The nature of card counting is to increase your bets when the high cards are more favored in the deck- it means you're more likely to get blackjack and the dealer is more likely to bust on a required hit of soft 17 or lower.

If the deck, even randomly shuffled, has slight runs of high and low cards, then if you're in the middle of a low-card run you might as well walk away and look for a table where a bunch of people are getting up at once, looking kind of disgusted. That means that's a table that just broke them with a lot of low cards and dealer hitting 3 on a 16... which means it's going to lean towards high face cards. It clears your head to step away, eats up time, and lets you find a table that seems to have a slight likelihood of being favorable for a while as soon as you sit down. I can't tell you how many times I'd walk around, sit down at a $10 table changing a $100, and walk away 10 minutes later with $125. It offsets the occasional -$50 run.

This is a legal and fuzzier version of what those MIT teams did, which is to play low stakes at many tables, and when the cards where trending to favorable (due to card counting) the large money accomplice would swagger by and drop large bets, and offset any losses by the low stakes players. I just do it by watching the tables, and seeing how my "unintentional accomplices" are faring. :)

I've never walked away from a weekend of blackjack at Vegas with less money than I came with- never. But I also walk away whenever I win a bunch of hands at once, cutting myself off if I pass 100% increase in base stake or 50% decrease that I walked up with, and use conservative strategies to never bleed money quickly (i.e., every $25 I go up on a run, and then never touching that again- so I ratchet up my table winnings but never let them fall all the way back). the other players think it's weird that I get up when I just won a bunch of hands in a row, but that's why I don't lose money. Blackjack has tiny margins of house advantage, and I play basic strategy with great focus. I know the house will win in the end, but unlike the house I can always stop playing. That's the best weapon in my arsenal. :)
posted by hincandenza at 8:27 PM on January 17, 2007 [4 favorites]

I got back from Vegas two days ago, and I saw plenty of penny machines. And we stuck to the Strip. And didn't go in anywhere skeezy. Just FYI.
posted by pyjammy at 1:09 PM on January 23, 2007