04.05
Slot Machine positioning
Volumes have been written on this issue, and the bickering and squabbling about where the "hot" slot games are positioned in a casino are still happening – over 60 years after the slots were first installed in the casinos.
The quintessential rule is that the better one armed bandits were located just inside the main entrance of the casino; so that potential gamblers passing by would see jackpot winners and be baited to come into the casino … play. Our view is that this is definitely no longer true.
The majority of the big name casinos these days are titanic complexes … you no longer can see inside from the sidewalk, so there’s no longer a reason to position the ‘loose’ slot machine games near to any of the doors.
Yet another traditional rule is that loose slot machine games are put on the major aisles inside the casinos, again so that more potential gamblers could see winning jackpots and be encouraged to play. Importantly though, we find that this also isn’t a universal rule any more.
What casinos found over the years is that people walking down the busy aisles were frequently on the way to somewhere else. If they played slot games at all, they would simply put in their loose change because they happened to be walking by. Win or lose, they would very often not stop to keep playing. And the very last thing a casino wants is for someone to win a jackpot by playing only a few coins and then not stay to put it all back in!
Today, casinos are constantly changing their perspective about where to place the loose slot machine games.