French Lick casino attendance drops

[zach]

I used to go to French Lick Casino a lot. But the past year beginning in 2011 I have quit going. Mainly because they have their table games mostly closed. They never open their Baccarat game. They only have one or two cashiers on a shift. I do not want to stand in line for 10 minutes to cash in chips. Pathetic. Horseshoe is better in my opinion. Every table game is usually open if they are busy or not. I do not want to drive longer to go to French Lick just to find out that the Baccarat game isn't opened. Where I can go to Horseshoe every day and find Baccarat is always opened.

[digger]

a casino is not there to let you win. what the hell is wrong with you...fl isnt bad...

[Justin Bieber]

It's the FRENCH KISS, not the French Lick.

Yes, I am the father of 11 kids.

[WTF]

William Johnson wrote:

Having worked at both French Lick and Caesars, there is no doubt that French lick will eventually close. They have slots with payouts of 88%, when other casino's have payouts of 98%!!! As one of the vendors said while installing the slots "I guess they want to get all their money up front".
The IGC does make sure there is no tampering with the machines, but the casino sets the payout percentages.
If you want 'ambiance' go to French Lick. If you want to win once in a while, go ANYWHERE else.
At Caesars, we were given incentives (money) if we met certain goals, and were polite and friendly to the visitors. At French Lick, we were just happy to keep our jobs another day. Explains why the difference in 'percieved friendliness'.

Hey William... you are an idiot! The IGC reports slot payback percentages on their website. FL is within the range of all the other casinos in the state. Don't get me wrong, I hate the place with the passion of a thousand burning suns, but they run an above board and competitive game.

[WTF]

Casino wrote:

The casino has the worst payouts of any casino I've ever been too. They know people play certain machines in French Lick and believe me you know it right away when you start to play because you never win. If you're hoping to get a drink there, good luck, the waitresses are few, far and in between. You might die from dehydration before you ever get asked if you want a drink.
The only thing I've ever heard people do at the casino is complain about how bad it is.
Say what you will, their machines are rigged.

Another moron with a conspiracy theory. WAAAAAAH! Sorry you lost your $20 when you walked in hoping to break the bank. Must be some kind of "rigging" going on there. Yeah douche bag, they open up mega-million dollar casinos from the money they make from all the winners. DUH!

[WTF]

casino2 wrote:

<quoted text>
In this day and age, it would be tough to rigg a machine. The casinos have to report numbers to the state. Everything is audited, and generally it is public info.
If you're not afraid to do a little math, I can show you which casinos, and which machine denominations are paying the best.
If you look at in.gov/IGC go to publications on the left, then monthly revenue. Pick a month to review.
Look for the EGD (slots) summary sections.
From there you see three interesting tables. One is machine denomination and number of machines, one is coin in (money going in to the machine), and the third is WIN (money the casino wins).
For a given casino, take win, and divide by coin in. This gives you the casino's win percentage. Subtract that from 1, and you get customer win percentage.
For example, in august 2011, French Lick had approximately $6 million win on $73 million coin in, giving a win % of 8.71% for the casino (I used the actual numbers to get the percentages). This translates into the customer winning % of 91.29%.
Looking at casino Aztar, they had $8m on $86m coin in, for 9.38% casino win. The customer win is 90.62%.
For horseshoe (Caesars), they had $18m on $198m coin in, for 9.40% casino win. The customer win is 90.6%.
From those stats, it looks like
French Lick was the better place to play in august 2011. Not only did it pay the customer better, it also had a lower attendance, so less crowds to fight, and a better likelihood that the machine you want to play is available.
You can do similar calculations to see which denomination of games is paying off the best at your favorite casino.
For example, it's generally assumed that the odds are better in high limit; let's look at the $500 slot machine at horseshoe Southern indiana. The table shows that the casino had $26,500 win on $54,000 in coin in, giving that machine a whopping casino win of 49%, customer win of 51%.
Comparing to the overall customer win percentages from above, that machine is a bad bet for the customer!
Now look at French lick's highest denomination game, the two $100 machines.
They had -$25,700 win (casino lost money!), on $350,700 coin in, giving those two machines a casino win
of -7.3%, which gives the customer a win of 107.3%!
Those were the two high limit games to play in august at French Lick!
I know this probably doesn't change your mind about the machines being rigged, which technically, they are. It just happens that we as the consumers can look at the state's website and see which ones are rigged in our favor, and which ones are rigged in the casino's favor.
Keep in mind that past performance doesn't predict future performance, and you should never gamble with more than you are willing to lose.
The percentages above are from a month's worth of data. No one, not even a slot worker can tell you when a machine is going to hit. It's random.
Your best bet is to sign up for the player clubs, watch for special offers on the websites and in your email, and check social media sites for other specials and information.
Using the percentages above, and checking Facebook, it looks like french lick has a progressive that's over $200k in their new non-smoking section. Sounds like a good time for me and my $20!

WOW... A person posting to a French Lick Topix that has some intelligence. I applaud you sir on multiple fronts. 1) You investigated slot paybacks on the IGC website. 2) You constructed grammatically correct sentences. 3) You argue a point using facts and research. Well done... Well done.

[Jordan]

In my opinion French Lick needs to step up their game a little bit. I see a lot of comments about how well their machines pay out but that's just a lie. You can say you pay out 100% all the time but that doesn't mean you're paying out anything worth anything. If someone puts 200 dollars into a machine and gets a payout of 2 dollars in return that doesn't mean they have very good pay outs. It looks to me like French Lick employees are posting more responses on this topic than customers. They should, French Lick casino won't be around very long once the new casinos open in Illinois and Kentucky. Good riddance is what I say.

[Jordan]

Doesnt matter wrote:

You sound like you took money you didnt have to spend, and lost it. Everyone has an opinion, and I will leave it at that. We just went back up there a couple of weeks ago, and once again won $800 on a nickel machine. Then turned around and won $200 on a quarter machine. The new water park is opening up and cant wait to go see it also.
The place is growing and getting better all the time. A wise thing to do when going there. Take money that is not intended for bills. Then you wont be unhappy when you lose it. I dont care if I win or lose, because I take money that we have left over after the bills are paid. We enjoy the atmosphere and people, not just winning money.

Sounds like another post from a French Lick employee to me.

[casino2]

Jordan wrote:

The $200,000+ progressive jackpot at french lick was won by a player that put in around $60 from what I heard. From that single example, you could say french lick pays out extremely well. But no one would say that.

From the indiana gaming commission reports, you can see how much the casinos pay back. For example, at a 90% pay back to the customer, we can say that for all customers, over all money that went into the slot machines, over the entire month, the expected average result would be for a player to put in a dollar, and then win 90 cents back. If that were to be the actual result every time, casinos would not be a very fun place. The excitement comes in the form of taking a chance that you could win a huge amount of money for a very small bet. Or the excitement is the game itself. I enjoyed the eBay game that french lick used to have because it was fairly exciting, especially the community bonus game. I think the American idol game they have is similar, but I haven't had a chance to play that one yet.

What I think you might be talking about is the volatility of the machine.
Game manufacturers conduct a lot of research to figure out how to keep patrons entertained at a machine, and therefore continuing to put money in. For some people, they enjoy having a frequent win. Some players like the idea of large payouts. For a game to have frequent payouts, it has to have smaller wins. A machine that has larger payouts generally has winning spins less often. Manufacturers will program groups of similar games with similar volatility.
The trick is to find the game type that pays out how you want it to, and as important, one that you enjoy playing.

It sounds like you're playing games that have a low win frequency. I'm not a high stakes gambler, so what I do when I go to the casino is to take $5 or $10 and put that into a machine. If I like the game play, or it's winning fairly often, I'll continue to play. But if I see that I went through my money without ever having a winning spin, I'll move on to another machine. I would never put in anything more than $20 to find out if I like the game, unless it's a large progressive like the $200,000 one, in which case I'm not playing for entertainment, I'm purely playing because it's the lure of "get rich quick".

As for any new casinos, you're going to find the exact same thing. If you find a casino where you win every time you play, let me know so I can go there and play as well. Whatever casino you go to, they're going to have a house advantage, and over a period of time they'll take as much money from you as any other casino. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that if you just put in one more bet you'll hit the big jackpot. Odds are that won't happen. Predetermine the amount you're okay with losing and the amount of time you want to play. Take only that amount of cash into the casino, and don't get any additional money out. Play until you lose that amount, or your time is up. Either you've got some money left over, or you've lost what you were okay with losing.
My personal strategy is $200 or 3 hours. By doing the $5 at a time method, I play a ton of games, and eventually find one that either pays out well, or is a heck of a lot of fun to play. Either way, I've gone into the casino knowing exactly what the worst case outcome is going to be. I never know how much I'll win, but I always know I'll never lose more than $200.

If you don't enjoy a casino, or feel like you're being cheated, don't patronize that business anymore. Find a casino that has the games you like, the service you like, and the overall environment you like. Join their players club, and look for special offers.

[Mongol Man]

The only chance you have of beating an electronic gaming machine is, DON'T PLAY IT!!

[Fact Checker]

Rick wrote:

<quoted text>
Hello?
"French Lick Casino Ranks Last In Customer Winnings"
Google it and you will find all the information.

Sensational article title, but the reader misunderstood.

The article should have been labeled "French Lick Casino Ranks Last in Revenue".

The article explained how French Lick was lagging behind all other casinos in the amount French Lick wins from customers, not how much customers win from French Lick.

Just going off the title, and with the understanding of what it really means, French Lick would be the place you WANT to go and gamble. However, you would need to look at hold percentages to see at what rate the customer is actually winning money from the casino.

For example -
Casino A wins $9M from customers.
Casino B only wins $8M from customers.
Casino B would look to be the better place to gamble.

However, if you find out that Casino A had $125 million in coin-in, while Casino B had only $100 million in coin-in, Casino A is the slightly better place to gamble:
Casino A has a hold of 9M/125M or 7.2%
Casino B has a hold of 8M/100M or 8%.

I know it's a few years old, but I didn't see a clarification out there.