by Mark Pilarski 

Dear Mark: I recently saw an advertisement from a casino that said their slot and video poker machines are the loosest. How do they determine what loose is? Stan F.

What you saw, Stan is advertising gobbledygook; moreover, no one can truly give you a quantitative answer as to what "loose" really means, especially when it comes to video poker machines.

For slots, "loose" can mean one of two things, "more payouts" or “higher paybacks.” Now add this kicker, Stan: a slot machine’s payback is not necessarily related to the number of payouts.

You also might want to challenge the advertisement’s frame of reference. Does it imply that their casino slots are looser than a neighboring casino’s slots, looser than all the other slots in its gaming jurisdiction, that a select few of their own slots are looser than the rest of the machines on the gaming floor, or that their slots are now looser than in the past, meaning, Stan, that possibly their slot machines are now set for a slightly higher payback than they were last month.

As for loose video poker machines, no such animal creeps or crawls in the green felt jungle. Because every hand is dealt randomly, tightness and looseness of a video poker machine are strictly based on the machine’s paytable. A 6/5 paytable (6 coins returned for a full house, 5 for a flush with one coin inserted) would be considered very tight on a Jacks-or-Better machine, whereas a 9/6 machine (9 for a full house, 6 for a flush) would be loose.

You pin down the looseness of a video poker machine by standing directly in front of it, introducing yourself, and INSPECTING THE MACHINE’S PAYTABLE. The paytable reveals what the casino pays for a pair of Jacks-or-better, two pairs, three-of-a-kind, flushes, a full house, etc.

Scrutinizing one video poker machine’s paytable, versus another’s, Stan, is the simplest – nay, the ONLY way to determine loose versus tight.

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