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Tag: Las Vegas

Sometimes What Happens in Vegas Should…Well, Be Exposed

To all you brokers and real estate players who make the annual trek to Vegas’s ICSC convention and dabble during off hours at the casinos, beware that the rules of several games have changed. Blackjack players on the Vegas Strip lost nearly $1 billion in 2022, the second highest on record. What’s going on, did Vegas see a huge influx of visitors or did folks simply adopt a more maverick style of play resulting in unprecedented losses? It turns out neither…something more subtle, and perhaps sinister, is at play that favors the house that few have seemed to notice. In an effort to cater to a more affluent clientele, certain Vegas casinos have raised the minimum bets during the busiest hours and reduced the total number of tables with dealers.  Smaller ballers, or bargain bettors as they are known in the industry, are often relegated to automated electronic blackjack and roulette, which don’t require a dealer and, in many cases, offer lower minimum bets.  

If these were the only changes, we should—in theory—see more money flowing into the casinos but it doesn’t necessarily account for the unusually high losses in 2022. Well, many casino executives on the Strip pulled off a bit of magic by reducing how much they pay for winning hands. Historically, blackjack paid out a ratio of 3:2 when a player hit 21 on the first two cards and now more than two-thirds of blackjack tables on the Strip are paying out at 6:5, according to gambling news and data company Vegas Advantage. To illustrate what this means in dollar terms, a player who hits 21 on the first two cards on a $1,000 bet now yields only $1,200 as opposed to $1,500 under the old payout ratio. For anyone paying attention, that’s a substantial or material tweak to the game but, let’s be honest, many tourists trek to Vegas once or twice a year and, for these gambling dilettantes, tracking the latest trends on the number of blackjack tables, minimum bets, and payout ratios just isn’t what they do. In short, it has gone largely unnoticed. Vegas knows this and even the savvier players among us may miss the fine print at the table scrolling along the bottom of a small digital screen. Vegas knows this too.

It isn’t just blackjack that casino, executives have tinkered with: roulette has undergone certain tweaks that undeniably favor the house. For those that don’t know, the centuries-old game roulette historically involved a wheel with 38 slots, including 18 red, 18 black and two green slots numbered zero and double zero and gamblers can bet on the ball landing on colors or numbers. The change adopted includes the addition of a triple-zero slot, lifting the house’s advantage and making it even more difficult for players to win. Of the 278 roulette tables on the Strip, 78 are triple-zero tables and 111 are double-zero. Expect these house-friendly odds to continue as they bring in higher value customers and so far tourists haven’t been deterred by this nor by the increase in prices for everything from hotel rooms to concerts to restaurants. More than ever, Las Vegas is becoming an upscale destination for the wealthy few who are either oblivious or apathetic to their shrinking odds at the casinos. For the rest of us perennial Vegas real estate folks, there is vintage downtown “Old Vegas” where the drinks may not be free but the odds are less lopsided.

Sayre, Katherine. “Why You’re Losing More to Casinos on the Las Vegas Strip.” The Wall Street Journal, 3 June 2023, www.wsj.com/articles/why-youre-losing-more-to-casinos-on-the-las-vegas-strip-73f6f3ab?page=1. 
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