How to Play Slot Games All Day on $100

If you enjoy playing slots, there are two facts you need to be aware of. The first one is that slots have a high house edge, often as high as 10%. The second fact is that slots can burn through your bankroll faster than just about any game in the casino.

The good news is that it’s still possible to play slots for hours on a small bankroll. On this page, I’m going to show you how you can enjoy playing slots all day on $100 or less. I’ll also give you the tools to determine how big your bankroll needs to be.

This knowledge is helpful when you plan a trip to the casino to play slot machines. It will also help you if you ever go to Las Vegas.

I’ve seen gamblers blow through $100 in an hour playing slots. So, it might seem like a tall order to be able to play all day on only $100. But once you understand the information below, you’ll be able to stretch your bankroll and still enjoy hours of fun.

The Importance of Expected Value in Slots

You need to understand the math behind the game in order to play slots all day on a small budget. This is fairly basic information, so don’t worry if you’re not a mathematician.

The truth is you don’t really need to understand the math on a deep level. You can just plug numbers into the simple formula that I show you later.

Expected value is at the root of every type of gambling game. Simply put, the expected value is the amount you can expect to win on any given bet on average. The important thing to understand is that expected value is an average based on hundreds of thousands or millions of times making the same wager.

On any single spin of the reels on a slot machine, you either win or lose. When you lose, you lose your entire wager. When you win, you win an amount that varies a great deal based on the combinations of the reels.

The easy way to view expected value is using the casino house edge or the payback percentage for the game you’re playing. The casino house edge is the percentage of every bet the casino keeps in the long run on a game they offer.

The house edge for slot machines varies a great deal from machine to machine. The casino industry doesn’t like to share information with the public. Most slot machines have a house edge between 2% and 10%.

If you know the house edge, you can simply multiply it times the amount of money you bet to come up with the expected value. You can do this for a single wager or for a longer time, like an hour.

Take this a step further and say you make 400 bets in an hour of $1 each. In this scenario, you can expect to lose $40. Here’s the formula:

The total amount of your wagers is determined by multiplying the amount of each bet times your number of bets. So, if you bet $1 per spin and take 876 spins, the total amount wagered is $876.

You simply plug in the relevant numbers into the formula to determine how much you’re going to lose on average. Remember that this is an average, so you can possibly win or lose a great deal more than expected. But over time, the expected value always becomes true.

Using Expected Value to Determine Bankroll Size

Now that you know how to determine the expected value, you can easily use this information to figure out how big your bankroll needs to be and how to manage your bankroll to play for a set amount of time. In the example above, when you make 400 bets every hour with a 10% house edge, you expect to lose $40 an hour.

Or you could only make 200 spins per hour at 50 cents. You would need a bankroll of $100 to play for 10 hours.

Let’s say you’re planning a trip to Las Vegas and want to play slots six hours a day for five days. This is a total of 30 hours of slots play. You like to play a progressive slot machine, bet $2 per spin, and usually take 400 spins per hour.

Here’s how to determine the required bankroll:

The truth is that you need to plan for a higher bankroll amount because the expected loss is a long-term average. To make sure you don’t run out of money, you should take a bigger bankroll. Or play on a machine with a lower bet amount, and/or take fewer spins per hour.

Playing Slot Machine Games All Day on $100

Now, let’s look at exactly how you can play slots all day on only $100 using the information above. I’m going to use a 10% house edge because it’s about as bad as you’re going to end up playing.

If you’re lucky enough to find a machine with a lower house edge, the expected value is better for you. This means that you can play longer.

Slot machines are designed so you can play hundreds of spins every hour. The casinos want you to risk as much money as possible, so they design machines that are easy and fast. Some slot machines can run 500 to 600 spins per hour.

In the calculations below, I’m using 300 spins per hour. This is still a fast rate of play, letting you take five spins every minute. If you play faster than this, you need to slow down or you’re going to burn through your bankroll faster.

While most casinos advertise nickel and penny slots, the truth is that you can’t just bet a nickel or a penny. The lowest minimum bet machines in many casinos let you bet a quarter. So, the first thing is to find a slot machine you can play for 25 cents per spin.

Here are the numbers we have so far:

You should be able to play over 13 hours on a bankroll of $100. But remember, the expected value is an average and you can lose more than expected in the short term. On the other hand, games with a lower house edge would increase your expected value.

These should offset, allowing you to easily play slots for eight hours on just $100.

I suggest running the numbers with fewer spins per hour to see just how long you can stretch your bankroll.

Conclusion

Many people dream of being able to play their favorite casino game all day, every day. With the simple steps we outlined above, you can make that dream a reality. The formula above will help you learn how to play for eight hours on just $100.

To learn more about real money slots and other games, read these blogs.