For decades, the majority of the advertising you may have seen for Atlantic City casinos has centered around how loose the slot machines are.
Luxor Las Vegas — In Luxor, slot denominations start from $0.01 up to $100. This is definitely a place to look for the loosest slots since the casino still owns some traditional “reel” machines.
Slots are the most popular games in any casino and Atlantic City casinos have been trying to draw you in by promising the loosest slots in town. What they’re really saying is their slots pay out at a better rate than the competition. Some can even prove it using data from the New Jersey Department of Gaming Enforcement (NJDGE).
The NJDGE puts out the Atlantic City Casino Industry Casino Win Data report annually. It lists, by denomination, how much money the slots at every Atlantic City casino is taking in every year and how much of it they’re keeping. From there, it’s easy enough to extrapolate the Return To Player rates for slots at all nine Atlantic City casinos.
If you’re playing slots online you might not think this has much to do with you. That’s wrong. For the most part, the online slots you find at New Jersey online casinos are the very same ones you see on the gaming floor at Atlantic City casinos.
These days, almost 99% of slot machines are computerized. At Atlantic City casinos, the computer programs that run the slots are housed in the slot cabinets you find in banks all across the gaming floor. At NJ online casinos the very same computer programs run on servers you can access on the internet.
Since most of the games are the same, it would follow that the Return To Player rates for most of the slots at Atlantic City casinos are the same as the ones you’ll find at online casinos or in some cases, better.
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What Does Return to Player Mean?
The odds of winning at any casino game are often expressed in something called the Return To Player rate (RTP). It’s the opposite of the house edge the casinos enjoy on the games.
Essentially, return-to-player is the expected return a player can see, also referred to as payout percentage. The return is based around the life-expectance of the game, which in the case of online slots, is essentially infinity.
That means a game with a 90% RTP will pay back $90 for every $100 played on it.
The thing is, the payout percentage is based on long term performance of the slot machine. In other words, you’re not guaranteed to get $90 out of a game you just put $100 into.
It will take many, many sessions before you can estimate the RTP.
However, the slot machine payout percentage is a strong indicator of what you can expect from a casino game over the long haul. For slots in particular, RTP is far and away the best way to tell if a game is loose or tight.
Atlantic City Slot Machine Payouts
A look at the numbers in the 2018 Atlantic City Casino Industry Casino Win Data report tells us that Atlantic City casino slots had an overall average RTP of 92.11% in 2018. That’s a pretty good number for players because it means $92.11 of every $100 put into Atlantic City casino slots was paid back in prizes to those same players.
So, who really had the loosest slots in America’s playground in 2018? Here’s a look at the best Atlantic City slot machine payouts.
- Golden Nugget 93.15%
- Borgata 92.01%
- Harrah’s 91.97%
- Resorts 91.89%
- Tropicana 91.81%
- Bally’s 91.73%
- Caesars 91.67%
- Ocean Resort 91.45%
- Hard Rock 91.28%
Golden Nugget Atlantic City had the loosest slots in 2018. In fact, Golden Nugget’s $0.50 slots were the loosest in all of Atlantic City paying out a 98.5% RTP on the $2,750,730 they took in.
Penny slots might be the most attractive in Atlantic City casinos because they appear to cost the least to play. However, the average RTP of 88.7% for $0.01 and $0.02 slots in Atlantic City casinos in 2018 suggests they may not be the best bet. In fact, the $0.01 and $0.02 slots at Bally’s and Harrah’s offered the worst RTP in AC at 87.6%.
Ultimately, the data suggest if you can find a $.50 slot machine at an Atlantic City casino you should probably play it. The average RTP for $.50 slot machines at all Atlantic City casinos is 94.1%.
The next best bet is the high roller $25 slot machines, which posted an average RTP at all Atlantic City casinos of 93.4%.
AC Slots vs. Online Slots
Unfortunately, the NJDGE does not release this kind of specific Casino Win Data for NJ online casinos. That means we can’t tell you how online slot machines actually performed over that same period of time.
Fortunately, some real money casinos list the expected payout percentages for most slots in the description of the game. That means we can look at a selection of games you can find both at AC casinos and online and figure out an average expected RTP for those slots online.
Top 10 AC Slots Available Online
Here’s a look at the Top 10 AC Slots that are also available online and the RTP listed for the games at Golden Nugget Online Casino:
- Quick Hit Platinum:A retro Vegas classic five-reel and 30-payline slot with an RTP of 94.06%. Features include a progressive jackpot, free games, wild symbols, and the instant-win Quick Hit pays feature.
- Wolf Run: Forest-themed five-reel and 40-payline slot with an RTP of 94.98%. Features include an Auto Play function, bonus rounds, stacked wilds, free spins, and high quality wolf graphics.
- China Shores: A Chinese panda-themed five-reel and 30-payline slot with an RTP of 96.10%. Features include Asian-inspired symbols, a progressive jackpot, free games, and the ability to exchange free games for a random prize.
- Fu Dao Le: An Asian-inspired five-reel and 243-ways-to win slot with an RTP of 96%. Features include clumped wilds, mystery symbols, a free games bonus feature, a Red Envelope Jackpot, and a jackpot bonus feature with three jackpots.
- DaVinci Diamonds: An old-world Italian artistry themed five-reel and 20-payline slot with an RTP of 94.94%. Features include tumbling reels, free spins, scatters, and a bonus round.
- Hot Roll Super Times Pay: A classic Vegas dice game-themed five-reel and 20-payline slot with an RTP of 93.4%. Features include wilds, Hot Roll symbols and bonuses, and wild multipliers.
- Siberian Storm: An Siberian winter and white tiger-themed five-reel and 720-ways-to win slot with an RTP of 95%. Features include free spins and wild symbols. There’s also a Dual Play version of the game with 1440 / 2880 lines and an RTP of 94.22%. It’s features include the MultiWay Xtra feature with 1440 ways to win, a stacked wilds feature, and free spins bonus.
- 88 Fortunes: A classic Chinese-themed five-reel and 243-ways-to win slot with an RTP of 96%. Features include a free games feature, Fu Bat pick win bonus round, and Fu Bat Jackpot symbols giving you a chance to win one of four progressive jackpots.
- Dancing Drums: Another Asian-inspired five-reel and 243-ways-to win slot with an RTP of 96%. Features include wilds, free spins, scatters, the FU BABIES Jackpot Bonus and Free Spins Bonus.
- Zeus: A greek mythology-themed five-reel and 30-payline slot with an RTP of 95.97%. Features include free spins and a free games feature offering up to 100 free games.
RTP online versus live
The 10 slot machines listed above have an average payout percentage of 95.15%, which is even better than the AC best 93.15% RTP average of all slots on the Golden Nugget Atlantic City casino floor posted in 2018.
This suggests you’d be better off playing the games online than at a land-based casino. That may very well be the case, but before we declare that the slots at online casinos are looser than the same games at land-based casinos in AC, we should remind you of some important distinctions between the numbers.
First of all, the land-based casino RTP numbers are based on real data over the course of a year provided to the NJDGE by Atlantic City casinos. The online casino RTP numbers are basically theoretical and could take longer than a year to be realized.
Plus, the land-based casino RTP numbers are formed using actual data from every slot on the floor of an Atlantic City casino in 2018. The online casino numbers are theoretical RTP figures for just 10 games found at both land-based and online casinos in New Jersey.
Can I earn comps at AC casinos for playing online?
If you play slots online instead of at an Atlantic City casino you might think you’ll miss out on all kinds of comps, bonuses, and player loyalty rewards you’d otherwise earn. That’s wrong. Several online casinos offer the same comps, bonuses, and player loyalty rewards you earn on the gaming floor at Atlantic City casinos.
In fact, many online casinos will provide loyalty programs that allow you to earn points at their land-based locations or earn credits for the land-based program, thereby allowing you to both earn and redeem at the online casino or retail location.
Here’s a list of the online casinos where players can earn comps at Atlantic City casinos when they play online:
Caesars Casino & Sports – Caesars Rewards Card
Caesars Rewards offers the Tier and Reward Credits for betting online at the Caesars Online Casino. Caesars Rewards properties in Atlantic City include Bally’s Atlantic City, Caesars Atlantic City, and Harrah’s Atlantic City.
BetMGM – iRewards Loyalty
BetMGM offers two rewards programs, one for online players, called iRewards Loyalty Program and the other for brick-and-mortar players. You can exchange your iRewards Points into Express Comps and use it at any MGM Resorts destination in the US, including Borgata in Atlantic City.
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Golden Nugget Online Casino – Golden Rewards Program
Golden Nugget offers its own proprietary Golden Rewards program online. However, Golden Rewards members enjoy benefits and perks at Golden Nugget Atlantic City.
Harrah’s Online Casino – Caesars Rewards Card
You can earn comp points at Harrah’s online casino and convert them to your standard Caesars Rewards account.
SugarHouse Online Casino – iRush Rewards Program
SugarHouse provides a unique rewards program called iRush Rewards program. The rewards program is available at both both NJ and PA casinos. You can use these comp points at the Philadelphia SugarHouse Casino.
The online slots advantage
The truth is that online casinos are a lot more convenient for most people than their land-based partners.
If you want to play slots at an Atlantic City casino you must go out of pocket for transportation costs and unless you live next door to one, it’s going to take some time to travel there.
In contrast, you can login and start spinning online in a matter of minutes with no additional travel costs.
Since the slots are mostly the same at AC casinos and NJ online casinos, the fact online is more convenient and less costly makes NJ online casinos the obvious choice between the two. Plus, even though it’s theoretical, the fact you might enjoy a better RTP online than live makes the decision between the two a no brainer.
With RTPs over 90%, we recommend doing both. But if you have to choose one or the other there’s simply too many advantages to playing slots online over AC casinos to ignore.
The ultimate goal for a slot player is finding a loose machine amidst the vast sea of machines on the casino floor. Some equate the task equal to finding the proverbial needle in a haystack while others concede it is more like looking for a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Players dream of finding a loose slot machine but few achieve their goal. One reason for this is that the term “loose” when describing a slot machine is relative to the location and casino.
A player from Las Vegas who plays slots at a local’s casino getting 98 percent payback would not consider a slot machine in Atlantic City that is set to payback 94 percent as a loose machine. However the player from Atlantic City where the average slot return is 91 percent would consider this same machine a loose one. Older slot machines were set at a higher house percentage than new machines are.
First, we should define the term loose slot machine. Payback is the overall percentage that a machine will return to the player in the long run. A loose machine is one that is set to pay back a higher percentage than other machines so the term loose would be relative to the other machines in the same casino.
Fact or Myth
Over the years there has been much speculation and conjecture amongst slot players as to where the loose slot machines are located. There are many myths that have been circulating associated with the placement these loose slot machines on the casino floor. Here are a few to consider and some reasoning behind the myth.
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- Loose machines are surrounded by tight machines. The reasoning behind this myth is that many players like to play more than one machine at a time. If a loose machine is surrounded by a tight machine a player will give back the winnings from the loose machine if they simultaneously play the machines on either side.
- Loose machines are placed by the entrance. The reasoning behind this myth is that people will see players winning and this will entice them to come into the casino and play. The basis for this myth can probably be traced back to downtown Las Vegas where the casinos were in walking distance of each other. People walking down the street could see the players winning at the slots and walk into the casino. Most of the new mega-resorts have multiple entrances so I would doubt the validity of this myth.
- Machines near the table games are tight. The reasoning behind this myth is that the noise of the machines will distract the table game players. Another reason is that a table game player will be tempted to play any coins they have when they leave the table on their way to the cashier’s cage.
- Machines near the end of the row are loose. The reasoning behind this myth is that players seeing other players win will be likely to go down into the row to play the machines.
- Machines near the showroom and buffet are tight. The reasoning behind this myth is that players waiting in line for a show or for the buffet are a captive audience. They may be tempted to play a few coins to kill time while they wait. The machines are tight because they can’t leave the area to play other machines.
- Machines near the casino cage are loose. The reasoning behind this myth is that the casino wants you to see people winning while you are waiting in line. This will entice you to play more.
- Round Carousals of machines are looser that rows of machines. The reasoning behind this myth is that the carousels can bee seen from any direction in the casino. They want to put the loose machines where they winners are highly visible.
Think Like a Casino Executive
One of the problems with the myths is that no two casinos are the same. Each casino has a VP of slots who makes the decision about the placement of the machines. Try to think like a casino executive. Where would you put the loose machines?
Casino executives have heard all the myths concerning the placement of loose machines that the players have. If I were the manager I would not put a loose machine on the aisle. I would bury it further down the row. Think of this as reverse psychology. If I know where the players think the loose machines are I would want to put tight machines there instead.
Be Realistic
Unless you play an exorbitant amount of slots, the chances of really identifying a loose slot machine will be slim. You could just as easily have a very lucky winning session on a low payback machines as a losing session on a machine with a high payback percentage. You might never play enough to be sure.
This does not mean you should give up your quest to find loose slot machines. Playing different machines in search of a loose one will add some variety to your slot play. You might not find a loose slot but you might find a new game that you enjoy playing. The hunt for a loose slot machine can be fun and that’s what casino gambling should be.