The Horseshoe in Cleveland is a couple months old now and the Ohio Gaming Com puts out revenue reports and I find it very interesting...

I am curious to find what the average revenue % is for table games and slots and what makes more.

For the month of June 2012 the Horseshoe CLE:

94 table games
$42,941,113 in dollars played
$7,592,721 in AGR (adjusted revenue or $ in-payouts)
17.682% of all table game wagers are lost or kept by the casino

2088 Slots Machines
$159,578,682 coin in
$18,523,050 AGR (actual adjusted revenue)
11.607% of wagers lost


These numbers show that the casino actually pays out more in slots. But slots have a worse EV (state payout of 88%, so thats close).


Hollywood Toledo Ohio

80table games
$19,634,360 in dollars played
$2,681,781 in AGR (adjusted revenue or $ in-payouts)
13.659% of all table game wagers are lost or kept by the casino

2000 Slots Machines
$195,606,139 coin in
$17,762,290 AGR (actual adjusted revenue)
9.081% of wagers lost


Mohegan Sun
July 2011

84 table games
$4,060,586 in revenue
I cant find any info on money played or %, only revenue or AGR

2332 Slot machines
$269,664,416 coin in
$20,654,195 AGR
7.659% of wagers lost



I find this very interesting... Table games should only have about 4-5% house advantage overall. I am sure the house advantage is less than 4% but we have to assume the majority does not play optimal strategy. But how are the Ohio casinos getting 17.6% and 13.6% on table games?

You might find this interesting, it's the same data for all the Indiana casinos. They have it broken down for each game and each denomination of slot machine.

http://www.in.gov/igc/files/2012-06-Revenue.htm

It's because people don't wager exactly what they buy in for at a table game.

For example, let's say a person buys in at a table game with $100. They make Ten $10 dollar bets and walk away. if this game had a 4% edge against them, obviously they would on average lose $4 out of that $100.

But that is not what usually happens when people play. If that person keeps plays through until they are broke, they might have actually made a few hundred dollars worth of bets. The edge hasn't changed at all, it's just deceiving at first glance. That % up there is called the casino hold. It's not the EV of the game.

Yeah opla is right because the only thing casinos can track with table games with any accuracy is casino "hold". With machines however, all wagers are tracked, so "hold" = house edge.

Games like blackjack have a hold of roughly 15%. The carny table games tend to be anywhere from 20 to 40%. The number really depends on players behavior at the game (i.e. the length of time they play there) on their initial buyin. Example, If a player buys into a game for $100, abruptly changes his mind and cashes out immediately, then the casino hold for that person at that game is 0%. If he loses $40 at the table before leaving, then the hold is 40%. If he won $20 at the table before leaving, it is -20%.

I'm impressed that horseshoe only has a slot to table game ratio of 2.5:1.

The numbers at the biggest St. Louis casinos are closer to Toledo's in terms of volume and table/slot split.

The average table game "hold" in MO is 19.75% for May 2012. Slot/video poker payout 90.743% (9.257% house edge or "hold"). $15.8M Table Game revenue; $131M Slot/video poker revenue statewide.

Here it is corrected --

For the month of June 2012 the Horseshoe CLE:

94 table games
$42,941,113 Drop
$7,592,721 Win
17.682% Hold

2088 Slots Machines
$159,578,682 Handle
$18,523,050 Win
11.607% Hold

On table games they don't actually know the "dollars played" which represents the Handle, they only know the checks purchased, or Drop. On slots, the actual Handle is reported. In order to estimate the Handle on a table, you have to divide the Hold by the theoretical Win % and multiply that by the Drop -- so for the 94 table games, if there is a theoretical win of 3% you can use (17.682/3)*42,941,113 = 253,094,920 -- giving you a Handle of almost six times the Drop.

Makes sense stated like this.

Yeah, the hold is the key driver. the public ones talk about it, at length sometimes, in the Q CCs.

Also note that for games with strategy, e.g., blackjack, people genwrally perform worse than the theoretical EV of the game.

thats where I was going with this. Even if you play a table game badly, how bad can it get % wise?

I've seen people who use the "beat the dealer" strategy in blackjack, e.g. they'll hit a 15 against a 6 or a 14 against a 5.

Well, games like blackjack, you could theoretically give the house most of your money if you refuse to ever stand even on 21. The only thing that would save you is when you hit blackjacks and got automatically paid. So this would make the house edge roughly

~ (20/21)(-1) + (1/21)*(+1.5) = -0.881

Now it's possible that the dealer may have to refuse hitting you on 21 (I really don't know the rule), the house edge is probably lowered to about 70% since you'll get 21s some of the time.

You would probably do better throwing away all cards on a video poker machine on every hand (~65% house edge).

As far as non-crazy strategies go, if you always assume the dealer has a ten in the hole, that would cost you 10%.

Also you could fold every hand in a casino poker game and create a 100% house edge as well.

It can get pretty bad. In one club I kept a single $5 table open on every shift. That table was always full, and everyone was betting the minimum, which made it extremely easy to calculate the total handle. Even though our theoretical was only .5% with basic, the table steadily won 6% of the action. With a mix of good and bad players, blackjack still generally wins ~3% of the action.