in the Rackets
So, you intend to try a visit to one of the Government run casinos in Ontario, Canada?
Hopefully the following information will give you some insight into your chances of winning anything at the slots. For example did you know that the "Percentage Payback" on slot machines (that is the percentage of the amount gambled by players that the Casinos claim to pay back to players) in Ontario Casinos is SECRET ?
Unbelievable but true. Slot players in Ontario Casinos are not allowed to even know what the odds are when playing slot machines. To read the full APPEAL ORDER PO-1745 on the subject click HERE - the red highlights are mine and my remarks are in blue - it is an eye opener!
Because of this Government monopoly this policy also applies to race-track casinos as well where competition is non-existant. The Government takes 75% of the gross revenues from these racetrack operations. You will never see slots in Ontario advertised at 90% or more "Payback" (or any "Payback" for that matter) because it is a Government monoply and they just do not need to compete.
Beyond that, 1260 members of the Chippewas at the Rama received $10,000.00 EACH in the year 2000, tax free of course. This cash comes from interest on Mnjikaning's $32 million trust fund that's accumulated since 1996 from leasing the land, and proceeds from parking, food and alcohol revenues provided by gambling patrons at the casino. This fund is not Government controlled.
Now lets take a look at some Casino Performance Figures that are available to the public on the Internet here (they have just recently made this information available again after keeping it secret since May 16 2001- maybe this site had something to do with this reinstatement). Remember that these figures are for slots AND tables.
Average loss per player are my calculations.
Fiscal Year 1998 -1999 Windsor Rama Niagara
Casino Gross Revenue $783.9 Million $492.7 Million $ 650.8 Million
Number of Players 6,308,700 4,641,300 10,212,900
Average loss per Player $124.27 $106.16 $63.72
Fiscal Year 1999-2000 Windsor Rama Niagara
Casino Gross revenue $838.5 Million $538 million $640.8 Million
Number of Players 6,755,584 5,182,049 9,255,593
Average loss per Player $124.13 $103.82 $69.23
Fiscal Year 2000-2001 Windsor Rama Niagara
Casino Gross Revenue $734.4 Million $444.9 Million $596.3 Million
Number of Players 6,554,107 4,490,786 8,514,000
Average loss per Player $112.05 $90.06 $70.03
Interesting figures here. The average loss per player leads you to believe that your chances at Windsor and Rama are far less than at Niagara. The average at Windsor being twice the loss at Niagara and Rama being half as much again as Niagara. All things being equal the law of averages would dictate that the more gambled, say at Windsor, the more would also be won while the opposite would apply at Niagara. So why the discrepancy between these three Casinos?
You bet there is. Lets take a look at what goes on in Nevada and compare it to what happens in Ontario. The Nevada Gaming Commission are at arms length from the casino owners and has inspectors constantly monitoring casinos to make sure that the patrons a getting a fair deal and that government get their share of casino profits. It is of no disadvantage to the Commission to protect slot players because taxes on winnings over $1000.00 are paid on the spot, so if they don't get it from the casino they get it from the player. Not so in Ontario. Because the Ontario Government does not tax winnings there is no incentive to let slot players win anything! Hence, slot machines at Ontario casinos are as "tight" as they can make them. What we have in Ontario is the fox in charge of the henhouse.
A Government that resorts to racketeering to increase revenues has lost the ability to manage the affairs of the the people it is supposed to represent.
Slot machine players are ultimately just taking money from each other when playing these machines. Those that win a jackpot simply receive money that other players have lost. With that in mind and this excerpt from APPEAL ORDER PO-1745: "This information reveals how patrons, as an overall group, are "charged" on a monthly basis for the use of the machines, expressed as a percentage of amount wagered rather than as a dollar figure".
(indicating players only RENT these machines to play against each other and the Casino "holdback" is the cost of the rental), lets figure out what their "RENTAL" charges are for 1 year at the Rama Casino on a new slot machine costing approximately $8,000.00 Canadian. Bearing in mind that it is accepted in the Casino industry that slots account for approximately 70% of total Casino revenue :
Gross Revenue 70% of Gross Number of Machines Average Rental for
2000-2001 EACH machine
$444.9 Million $311.43 Million 2,062 $151,032
Not bad rolling $8,000 into $151,000 in one year and still own the machine!
Now if this isn't rental racketeering tell me what is! That works out to $413.00 per day for each machine at the Rama while in Vegas the average return from each machine per day is expected to be approximately $200.00 It is obvious that the casino "holdback" or "charges" (as they call it) border on being criminal.
The law of probability states that if you put a monkey at a typewriter and leave him there long enough he will eventually and accidently type the full works of William Shakespeare. Remember that sentence when we talk about slots because slot machines function on the laws of probability. For example, Ontario casinos state that they "payback" 85% of all money gambled to the players - BUT THEY DO NOT TELL YOU OVER WHAT PERIOD OF TIME! How long does it take a slot machine to average out - is it one year, ten years or one hundred years, what? Maybe as long as the monkey takes to type the full works of William Shakespeare! Remember that the Law of Probability is really based to infinity.
The facts are that the casinos only know how much money they have made and have not a clue what percentage has been paid back to the players (read the Appeal Order and you will see that they admit it!).
In a modern slot machine, the odds of hitting a particular symbol or combination of symbols depends on how the virtual reel is set up. Each stop on the actual reel may correspond to more than one stop on the virtual reel. Simply put, the odds of hitting a particular image on the actual reel depend on how many virtual stops correspond to the actual stop.
In a typical weighted slot machine, the top jackpot stop (the one with the highest-paying jackpot image) for each reel corresponds to only one virtual stop. This means that the chance of hitting the jackpot image on one reel is 1 in 64. If all of the reels are set up the same way, the chances of hitting the jackpot image on all three reels is 64x64x64, or 262,144 to 1. For machines with a bigger jackpot, the virtual reel may have many more stops. This decreases the odds of winning that jackpot considerably.
The losing blank stops above and below the jackpot image may correspond to more virtual stops than other images. Consequently, a player is most likely to hit the blank stops right next to the winning stop. This creates the impression that they "just missed" the jackpot, which encourages them to keep gambling, even though the proximity of the actual stops is inconsequential.
Machines don't loosen up on their own either. That is, they aren't more likely to pay the longer you play. Since the computer always pulls up new random numbers, you have exactly the same chance of NOT hitting the jackpot every single time you pull the handle. The idea that a machine can be "ready to pay" is all in the player's head
Lets take a look at the town of Laughlin, Nevada not far from Las Vegas. The following information comes from The Nevada Gaming Control Board as reported in the Las Vegas Review-Journal dated Fri. Nov. 10 2000 and discloses the TOTAL GROSS REVENUE for ALL TEN casinos in Laughlin for the month of Sept. 1999.
(The link to this article is http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2000/Nov-10-Fri-2000/business/14794586.html)
"The Colorado River town of Laughlin was the sole Clark County region to generate an increase in win, which was up 1.5 percent to $44.1 million".
Now, using the Performances Figures for Ontario casinos for 1999 as shown in the tables above lets calculate the average monthly revenue from EACH Ontario casino during 1999.
Windsor: $838.5Million divided by 12 = $69.87 Million per month.
Rama: $538 Million divided by 12 = $44.83 Million per month.
Niagara Falls: $640.8 Million divide by 12 = $53.4 Million per month.
Ignoring the exchange rate, because a Dollar Machine is a Dollar Machine wether it's in Canada or the US, EACH of the three casinos in Ontario makes more money than ALL TEN casinos in Laughlin put together!
"holdback" - The amount the casino claims it keeps from total bets wagered.
"payback" - The amount the casino claims to pay back to the players from total bets wagered.
"hit frequency" - The frequency of any winning hits to the player.
"replay money" - The money the machine pays out that you can then replay.
The following is a very simple example of a $1.00 slot machine that has only 100 combinations with a "holdback" for the casino of 15% ($15.00)and a "payback" to the player of 85% ($85.00).
Out of 100 combinations:
1 combination pays $25.00 = $25.00 Jackpot
2 combinations pays $10.00 = $20.00
4 combinations pays $5.00 = $20.00
10 combinations pays $2.00 = $20.00
83 combinations pays $0 = $0
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TOTAL "PAYBACK" = $25+$20+$20+$20 = $85.00 or 85%
TOTAL "HOLDBACK" = $15.00 or 15%
WINNING COMBINATIONS = (1+2+4+10) =17
LOOSING COMBINATIONS = 83
The "HIT FREQUENCY" is the total number of combinations (in this case 100) divided by the total number of winning hits (in this case 17) = 6 to 1
Your chances of hitting ANY winning combination are 6 to 1 AGAINST YOU - each time you play!
( The above is just an example, with the three reel slots at the Rama it is probably between 10-15 to 1 against you hitting ANY WINNING combination including even a single cherry)
The answer is YES. The RAMA CASINO has already done it since it opened. They simply change the computer chip to decrease the number of winning hits and increase the Jackpot so that the player will have less "replay money" and not hog a machine for 1 hour with $20.00, especially at peak periods.
Using our example above here is how the RAMA altered the combinations (changes in red):
Out of 100 combinations:
1 combination now pays $55.00 = $55.00 Jackpot
1 combinations pays $10.00 = $10.00
2 combinations pays $5.00 = $10.00
5 combinations pays $2.00 = $10.00
91 combinations pays $0 = $0
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TOTAL "PAYBACK" = $55+$10+$10+$10 = $85.00 or 85%
TOTAL "HOLDBACK" = $15.00 or 15%
WINNING COMBINATIONS = (1+1+2+5) =9
LOOSING COMBINATIONS = 91
The "HIT FREQUENCY" is now 100 divided by (5+2+1+1) 9 = 11 to 1
Your chances of hitting ANY winning combination are now 11 to 1 yet the casino "holdback" and "payback" percentages remain the same and within Government guidelines. This type of manipulation of slot machines will give you less "replay money" thereby clean you out quicker AND give you less chances to win the Jackpot.
The RAMA CASINO manipulated their "payback" combinations to their advantage about 4 years ago when they increased the amount of the Jackpots on the machines. I am not so familiar with Windsor or Niagara but they probably did the same after they had been opened for a while.
The best example of "Packing the Jackpot" at the expense of intermediate payouts, as explained above, are the 3 reel 4 coin Blue Sevens quarter machines at the Rama. That is the machine where if you play 4 coins and 3 Blue Sevens land anywhere you have won the small Jackpot. The large Jackpot on that machine (paid out if 3 Blue Sevens land on the bottom line) used to be 4000 coins ($1,000.00) now it is 7,000 coins ($1750.00). The same policy has been applied, as another example, to the "Double Double" machines which at the beginning paid 3200 coins for a two coin Jackpot and now pay 4000 coins.
This manipulation of slot machines after the Casino has opened is simply designed to hook players then stick it to them when they are addicted. The private companies that manage these casinos are allowed to do this with a wink and a nod from the Ontario Government. You can bet that the higher the net profit means more money for the management company as well as the Government so who the hell is protecting the players?
The claim by Ontario casinos that their "holdback" is only 15% for all players is proven nonsense by the obvious difference in "payouts" for "one coin" players and those that play two or three coins. Have you noticed the difference in Jackpot payouts on 2 coin machines at the Rama? Some of them pay out 1000 coins for a 1 coin Jackpot and 5000 coins for a 2 coin Jackpot! If the odds against all players are the same it is obvious that a 1 coin Jackpot should pay 2500 coins.
What we have here is virtually two identical machines appearing as one with entirely different odds for 1 coin and 2 coin players and if the odds change then the "holdback" and "payback" percentages must also change. To protect the casino and it's so called 15% "holdback" the operation of the machine would have to be based on the 2 coin plays and the 5000 coin Jackpot.
So, let's do a calculation on a simplfied Quarter slot machine with 1000 combinations paying 500 coins for a two coin Jackpot and see what their "payback" is for 1 coin players playing the same machine. Remember all combinations except the Jackpot pay out in proportion to the coins played ie: two coins played on any winning hit (except the Jackpot) will return double the amount paid on the same winning hit with only one coin played.
Out of 1000 combinations Out of 1000 combinations
1 combination pays 500 credits = 500 credits Jackpot 1 combination pays 100 credits = 100 credits Jackpot
2 combinations pays 100 credits = 200 credits 2 combinations pays 50 credits = 100 credits
2 combinations pays 20 credits = 40 credits 2 combinations pays 10 credits = 20 credits
3 combinations pays 10 credits = 30 credits 3 combinations pays 5 credits = 15 credits
10 combinations pays 8 credits = 80 credits 10 combinations pays 4 credits = 40 credits
----------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------
Total "payback" to player = 850 credits or 85% Total "payback" to player = 275 credits or 27.5%
Casino "holdback" = 150 credits or 15% Casino "holdback" = 725 credits or 72.5%
It looks like the Ontario Government thinks that the 1coin players do not need protection - where is the 85% "payback" for 1 coin players?
Do not get confused in the previous examples that after 100 plays the player will have received his 85% "payback", that could only happen if each combination is discarded after it has been played. In fact, discarding each combination as it is played is the ONLY way a Casino could guarantee a "payback" of 85%, and combinations are NOT discarded after they have been played. They CLAIM an 85% "payback" based solely on the Law of Probability - and we know what that means, to infinity! You can bet that machines which pay out over 85% are quickly removed from the floor, or "repaired", while those that "payback" less than 85% are regarded as not yet reaching their "payback" potential.
Anything is possible, but leaving an Ontario Casino with winnings without hitting a Jackpot is highly unlikely. If the Casino has decreased the number of intermediate winning combinations while increasing the Jackpot as explained above then the player is virtually playing for Jackpots ONLY, and the chances of accumulating a worthwhile "pot" are just about nil. Good intermediate payouts will always include the Jackpot symbol (10 symbol, 5 symbol, triple, double etc.) but take note the next time you go to the Rama, for example, how INFREQUENTLY these land on the payline even with a non-winning combination. The lesson here for the casino is "Decrease the Jackpot symbol hits on the payline the more profit for the Casino and less replay money for the player"
The Rama tries to bluff slot players that a lot is happening by the sound of "jackpots" coming from the 5 cent machines with bells and whistles going off for a measley $100 jackpot while the quarter slots pay nothing. Also, take a look the next time you see a "jackpot" on one of the video type machines, these people are playing 40 quarters ($10.00) a shot for a "jackpot" that is usually no more than a measley $250.00 which they will play back in 25 plays! The Casino gets it's "Jackpot Sound" which is what it intended.
Interesting question! Lets do a calculation based on the RAMA CASINO fiscal year 2000 - 2001 based on 70% of gross revenue ($444.9 Million). 70% being the accepted industry gross revenue from Casino slot machines.
Gross revenue from slots = 444.9 divided by 100 x 70 = $311.4 Million
Gross revenue from each slot = $311.4 Million divided by 2062 slots = $151,000.00 approx.
NOW REMEMBER THAT $151,000.00 IS THE 15% "HOLDBACK" OR CASINO "WIN" AVERAGED FOR EACH MACHINE.
"Payback" to the player would be $151,000.00 divided by 15 multiplied by 85 = $855,000.00 approx.
So, this means that if the RAMA CASINO really does "payback" 85% then, averaged on a daily basis, EACH machine would "payback" $855,000.00 divided by 365 days = $2,342.00 to the players daily.
Do you think that on average each slot gives a "payback" of $2,342.00 daily? When you consider that the bells and whistles go off at anything over $250.00 the sound of Jackpots should be continuos with 2,062 machines.
SO THE QUESTION IS - DOES $311.4 MILLION REPRESENT ONLY 15% OR IS THEIR "PERCENTAGE WIN" REALLY MUCH MORE?
IF $311.4 MILLION TRULY REPRESENTS ONLY 15% OF THE AMOUNT GAMBLED THEN THE AMOUNT THAT WOULD HAVE TO BE GAMBLED DAILY ON SLOTS JUST AT THE RAMA= (311.4 divided by 15 x 100) divided by 365 days = $5.68 MILLION DAILY!
FOR THE SLOT PLAYERS TO GO HOME WITH 85% OF WHAT THE CASINO CLAIMS HAS BEEN GAMBLED TO JUSTIFY THEIR PROFITS THEY WOULD HAVE TO LEAVE THE RAMA CASINO WITH A TOTAL OF $4.82 MILLION IN CASH DAILY!
IF YOU BELIEVE THAT HAPPENS THEN YOU STILL BELIEVE IN SANTA.
When Ontario casinos first opened the Rama Casino had revenues of $360 Million a year and it was a pleasant and entertaining place to go with a chance to win but then greed set in when they changed the chips in the machines and the revenue soared to around $500 Million. It must be assumed that these changes were with the consent of the Ontario Government or else they just have no control over the private company that manages the casino. Remember it is to the managamant company's advantage to rip off players if their contract gives them a percentage of the net profits - and you can be sure that it does. The US operators of the Windsor casino have been reported to have made $26.8 Million in profits from the casino in the 1994-1995 fiscal year. Add that to increased profits since then and the total take from all three major casinos must be well over $100 million per year for these rip-off artists.
Keep an eye on Mr Digalalis's $7 Million lawsuit against the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. for turning him into an addict, this could lead to a trend that will bring the the casino boys to heel. The tobacco companies were held responsible for their addicts, the same should apply to the casinos and they should be made to pay. Read the full story here.
In the Appeal Order the casino boys claim that they "cannot win more than 15%" of the amount gambled on slot machines. If that is the LAW then it has to be assumed that they owe Ontario slot players (and visitors) BILLIONS of dollars in illegal "holdback" money. When and how are they going to pay it?
It is interesting to note that as of May 16 2001 they have stopped publishing quarterly Performance Figures and as of the present they have not yet published figures for the year 2002.
NEW! It now appears that they have reinstated publication of their "Performance Figures" after 1 1/2 years of secrecy. In the process they have eliminated individual casino "Performance Figures" ensuring that comparisons cannot be made between casinos thus maintaining their attitude of a monoply.
Check for yourself HERE.
disclosure - it is an eye-opener!
