Vegas Baccarat and Penny Slots More Profitable Than Blackjack

Slots and Baccarat

Nevada’s “Great Recession” might be overturned by two completely different ways of gambling – penny slots and baccarat.

During the last ten years, traditional casino games including blackjack card games and roulette, were overtaken by penny slots and baccarat. According to the Gaming Control Board’s figures, these two games broke all revenue records last year.

Almost $2 billion in revenues was collected last year from penny slots, a twenty percent increase from 2007 – a good year for both tourism and gambling. Baccarat generated $1.2 billion last year. These figures show that blackjack is losing the battle for revenue supremacy. Naturally, the number of blackjack tables in Nevada diminished by 815 in the last 10 years and Baccarat tables’ number rose by 149.

Despite more people becoming proficient at card counting systems, blackjack revenue decrease by almost twenty percent over the last decade, and over thirty percent compared to 2007. The publisher of Las Vegas Advisor, Anthony Curtis, explains that this trend is caused by the current economic downturn.

“Blackjack is a mass-market game played primarily by mid-rollers who been hit the hardest by the recession, while gambling’s high end, represented by baccarat, has been least affected by the economy,” Curtis said.

Penny slots’ popularity, however, lies in the existence of more paylines, that provide players with increased chances of winning. Despite payouts being small, gamblers get the feeling of winning in general.