Thanks, for the information, BBT. At 2800 machines total they will be controlling about 16% of the market here. But I really don't see any changes coming. Its really just a swap of management companies. The rank and file of the company is going to stay the same.
As I understand it bar owners have the option to buy their own machines, or the slot route operator will place machines in the bars. The difference is
that the bar owner who owns their own machines gives up 20% of the earn to the slot route operator in exchange for the slot route operator keeping the machines maintained. If the slot route operator owns the machines then the bar gets 20% of the earn.
But no matter how its done you see the same machines in all the joints, in other words, the same manufacturers, Spielo, Summit, Fleetwood, Grand Vision, IGT. BTW, IGT is a very small player here. They don't have much of a market share. That's good for me because I don't have one single exploitable game on an IGT machine.
With about 1700 liquor licenses and 18,000 machines in the state the payback percentages are literally the same in all the bars. The keno games run from about 88% to some that are in the 95% range. The video poker runs in the 94% to 98% range but the players here are so horrible at it that I know they are giving up another few points to bad play.
I'm really not sitting on machines with a straight through advantage where I will be on one machine for hours at the time. The plays I put down are temporary advantages based on progressive meters and/or banking features. Most all of my plays take 40 minutes or less average seat time.
So the machines get 99.54% of their action from ploppies. Once I go through a slot parlor and clean out all the advantage plays, which generally only takes an hour or so, I won't be back to that joint until its had about two months soak time.
Another thing I don't do here is sweat plays. You won't catch me sitting there waiting for someone to get up off a machine. If I see a ploppie playing a game that's in advantage mode I just take note of it and I might return later to pick it off.
I don't think this new company is going to change anything. They are still making a healthy profit off the ploppies.
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