With Know Your Slots already creeping up on three months since launch, and having written as much as I have about Advantage Play slots, you might be wondering how much money you can really make off of Advantage Play. For instance, could you make a living doing it?
There’s no good answer here, but we can talk about the factors that can make Advantage Play more or less successful, and I’ll conclude by talking about how I look at it personally.
Location, Location, Location
One of the biggest things that can determine the quality of life for someone attempting Advantage Play on slots (we’ll stick to our core subject matter here) is where you live. The reasons for this may seem pretty obvious, but here’s some factors that can impact Advantage Play potential:
- How many casinos are by you
- How many advantage play machines the casinos house
- Do they use multi-denomination configurations?
- Are the casinos busy?
- Are the machines in question played often?
- Are there others watching the machines?
That last one matters in part because if you have other people looking for these opportunities actively, you’ll have less chances to find and attempt to convert an Advantage Play opportunity yourself. The day before I wrote this I was at a casino where I ran into a guy no less than four times checking machines around me because he was looking for opportunities.
Location can also matter if you’re trying to take advantage of a promotion or coupon book. So if you’re traveling, doing a bit of homework to see what sort of promotions or gaming coupons you can leverage is also an aspect of things. Same goes for when a home casino does something like tier and comp multipliers.
What’s Your Budget?
If you’re going to be playing slots a lot, even those with Advantage Play potential, you need budget. Multi-denom games could have opportunities on nickel denomination with a 375 credit bet – that’s over $15 per spin, and you might need to complete multiple spins to see that opportunity through. And not every Advantage Play opportunity results in a win.
For other types of advantage play, like “must hit by” progressives, you might need a budget to ride the inevitable ups and downs of chasing such a progressive. There were times when teams would go into casinos and monopolize banks that were nearing a Must Hit By amount to ensure one of their players were most likely to hit it.
So if you plan on doing this consistently, you can’t walk into a casino with $20.
My Take on Advantage Play
I will complete specific actions, like coupon runs, in an effort to concentrate Advantage Play opportunities in a specific window of time. But otherwise I tend to look at Advantage Play as a chance to boost my bankroll during an otherwise trip to the casino for entertainment.
I don’t expect to take home money when I go to the casino, but if my bankroll is taking a hit I may check machines in the process of deciding what I’ll play next. I’ve had a couple of solid wins come off of Advantage Play scenarios I’ve discovered while checking machines, such as a Scarab machine with quite a few borders active (meaning they’ll turn wild on spin 10) leading to an over $100 hit on 75 cents. I love my 100x+ wins, so if Advantage Play can offer them up, I’ll take it.
Being able to stretch my bankroll and get more entertainment for my budgeted amount is a great thing, so even casual players can find some benefit to spending a few seconds checking various machines for opportunities.
How do you leverage Advantage Play on your trips? Let me know in the comments!
