You're more than welcome, Gioco. I appreciate the comment.

I suppose you think I owe you two beers now?

No, I didn't. After PMing Adam and not getting a reply, I pretty much gave up/forgot about doing so. (Incidentally, I met Adam briefly and I'm quite certain he would have responded had he read the PM. I don't want to imply that he would have intentionally ignored my request.)

I'm gonna show my slot ignorance. What's an "HA of 5%" and how is this a poor return?

I suspect the prospect of facing the iron-fisted wrath of the CMO would preclude any possibility of this happening at your hospital.

That said, it was an unusual situation and I was quite surprised that it had arisen. I think calli had asked how they ultimately filled the shift. They parted with enuf money to do so.

HA = House Advantage, and he's suggesting that for every fun ticket your wife shoveled in, she only got 95% of it back.

No clue if that's a poor return or not, but that's what "HA of 5%" means.

Awesome TR Leo - very much enjoyed reading it like many others.

A HA of 5% or a hold of 5% would be pretty dang high on a $1 slot. Many properties have 98%+ paybacks. Of course there are worse out there also.

And just because on machine in a row or carousel has a sign stating 99.9% payback, does not mean that the slots in and around the vicinity also do.

It means that for every dollar she bet, she could expect 95% back. HA (House Advantage) of 5% = EV of -0.05. Blackjack played perfectly should have a HA of between 0.5% and 1%, blackjack played typically has a HA of 2%; craps pass line is 1.4%, other bets vary from 5-15%; roulette is 5% except for the 5-number bet; sports bets are usually around 10-15%; keno is something like 25%.

It's difficult to equate these bets with poker because EV or HA is always amount expected divided by amount bet; because in poker the amount bet varies from hand to hand (you bet $0 if you fold preflop and are not a blind) and also within a hand (you might, for example, bet $10 at a 10% advantage, $50 at a 50% disadvantage, and then $150 at a 100% advantage) the EV at poker is really hard to quantify. WR differs from EV because WR is amount expected divided by number of hands.

I thought 5% on slot machines was pretty standard, and that some were as bad as 10%-20%. At a 2% house advantage, her expected win was 20 h x 500 spins/h x $5/spin x -0.02 = -$1,000 and she ran bad. Some video poker machines actually were EV+ (HA < 0%) if you played perfect strategy, but I don't think Vegas has any of those and they're usually lower denominations only anyway.

The rule of thumb of comps is, or at least was in the past, 25% of your expected losses are returned in comps. So if Aria expected to get $1,000 out of her in slot play, they'd comp her about $250 worth of stuff; if they expected to get $2,500 out of her, they'd comp her about $600 worth of stuff. If she was playing on loose slots, that might explain why they were a little stingy with the comps (they didn't expect much from her). [Edit: still very poor customer relations work, though]