You'll have to make sure you can afford at least the casino minimum, which is never less than $5 on the Vegas Strip and downtown, but $10, $15, or $25 at many casinos. Most slot machines come in penny, nickel, quarter, and dollar flavors. The anwer is in the table at right.

1. Vegas Survival Guide: Beginner Slot Machine Gambling Tips
2. How Money Should I Take To Vegas For A Weekend Trip? Las ...
3. How Much Money To Gamble In Vegas 2020
4. What Is The Most Profitable Casino In Las Vegas
5. How Much Money Should I Bring For 3 Days In Vegas? Las ...

I’m just an average guy who loves Las Vegas gambling. I’ve spent years visiting Sin City and playing casino games there. I’ve won and lost fortunes.

1. Top 10 Las Vegas Tips. Hotel rooms often cost three to four times as much on the weekends as during the week! Plus, with weekend crowds you'll wait in line for everything.Mid-week visitors save tons of money and have a much better time.
2. For a 3 or 4 day trip I will take around $2000 to gamble with 30% slots 70% blackjack.I mainly stay and gamble @ Planet Hollywood, and play $25 blackjack and.25 to $1 slots. I have stayed @ PH/Aladdin 10 times and always get discount room offers and maybe a $40 food credit but nothing great.
3. Gambling 101 This article is about gambling in general.If you're looking for info on how to play casino games, then see our Crash Course on table games instead. Last update: June 2019. The odds are against you. The casinos don't win because they get lucky, they win because the odds are on their side.
4. I would suggest that you start with small denomination penny slots, and bet small, such as 9×1 or, if you can afford it, 20 to 30 cents x 1 (if you play any higher, your money will disappear more quickly than you think); enjoy yourself, pace yourself, see how the game works.

After gaining all that experience, I’ve realized that much of what’s written on the Internet about Las Vegas gambling causes mistakes—big mistakes that cost you more money than you probably realize.

Below I’ve listed and explained these 7 Las Vegas gambling mistakes that you’re probably making.

1. You’re Staying at the Wrong Casinos and Hotels

This mistake probably applies to everyone, but for different reasons. If you’re a luxury traveler who loves a specific resort in the city, you’re probably costing yourself money by not taking advantage of some of the specials available at the other resorts in town. On the other hand, you might be a budget traveler who only stays at fleabags, not realizing that you can get a better property for the same price.

You might be someone who only stays in Vegas on the weekend. That’s a big mistake, as the prices on the rooms skyrocket on Friday and Saturday nights.

But staying mid-week doesn’t guarantee you the best rate, either. You might be traveling during a convention, in which case the mid-week rates might even be higher than the typical weekend prices.

The mistake you’re making is not paying enough attention to detail and not putting enough effort into your planning.

The more flexible you can be with where and when you’re staying, the better value you’re going to see for your money.

This means spending a little more time in advance doing the planning, but it pays off, especially if you’re staying for 4 or 5 nights.

Shop around—not just for hotels, but also for dates.

You can find other interesting ways to save money on your hotel stay, too. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, you can buy other people’s unused hotel reservations and save up to 74% on your stay. You can find these deals on RoomerTravel.com.

2. You’re Spending Too Much Money on Airfare

Most people don’t put as much thought into their airline tickets as they do their casino/hotel stay.

But you can save a lot of money on airfare by just paying attention to a couple of tips:

According to Hopper.com, the optimal time for getting the best rate on your airline tickets is 14 days prior to your arrival. They claim that you can save $200 by booking at least 2 weeks in advance.

But, as it turns out, you don’t save much more money by booking further ahead than that.

Why do airline prices work this way?

It’s all about supply and demand. The longer you wait to book your tickets, the fewer tickets are available. The airline can charge more for those tickets.

Look at it this way:

Suppose you own the world’s smallest airline, and you only have a single airplane with 100 seats on it.

And let’s also suppose that, just for simplicity’s sake, that you only have one flight per day.

This means on any given day, you can sell anywhere from 0 to 100 tickets.

If it’s Friday, and you have a flight scheduled for Monday with 50 unsold tickets, you’re likely to reduce the prices for those tickets.

You want to fill those seats.

The cost of the flight for the airline is the same regardless of whether the seats are full.

The process of pricing these tickets is the same process the hotels use to price their rooms. Less availability means a higher price.

This is called revenue management.

You can also save money flying to Vegas on a Sunday and returning on a Tuesday. The same reasons apply—supply and demand. Most people have time off during the weekend, but even if they don’t, they’re not usually taking time off work at the beginning of the week.

This means that fewer people are traveling on those dates, so the rates are lower to stimulate more activity.

If you’re committed to getting the best price on your airfare, book your flights 2 weeks in advance, depart on a Sunday, return on a Tuesday, and travel in August or October.

3. You’re Spending Too Much Money on the Attractions

Some people go to Las Vegas just to gamble. Others like to gamble and drink. And there are degenerates who visit Sin City to gamble, drink, and visit strip clubs. (I don’t judge.)

But most people visiting Las Vegas are there to see some of the attractions, too.

As with airfare and hotel rooms, you can spend a lot of money on these attractions or just a little.

One of the easiest ways to save money on attractions in Las Vegas is to stick with the attractions that don’t cost much to begin with.

Vegas.com offers a list of 20 things you can see and do there for less than $20. Attractions on that list include the Mobster Museum, the Neon Graveyard, and Brooklyn Bowl.

But you can also find lists of free things to do in Las Vegas. Travel and Leisure has a list of over 30 free attractions in the city.

I suggest you bookmark that link.

That way if you lose all your money at the craps table, you can still find something to do during the rest of your vacation. Being broke in Vegas isn’t the same as being broke in other cities. You can still find plenty to do.

4. You’re Spending Too Much on Transportation

You don’t just have to get to Las Vegas and find a place to stay. You must also get to and from the airport.

And most places in Vegas, even those on the Strip, are too far to walk.

You can spend a fortune on cab fare.

But that’s not a requirement for getting around.

According to TripAdvisor, you can get a 24-hour pass to use the bus in Las Vegas for just $8.

And the bus system is Las Vegas is far more convenient and accessible than you probably think.

There are 2 bus routes on the Strip:

1. The Deuce – This route runs 24 hours a day and shows up every 12 to 30 minutes at almost every hotel on the Strip.
2. The Strip & Downtown Express – This route runs from 9am to half past midnight. It leaves every 12 to 15 minutes most of the time, although it runs less frequently early in the morning. You can use this bus to get to and from Downtown and the Strip.

Maybe the bus isn’t for you, but you can’t beat the price.

Another strategy for getting around is staying someplace that’s located walking distance from a lot of the things you want to do.

I like staying in Downtown. Everything in Glitter Gulch is walking distance.

The Strip, on the other hand, is far longer than you might imagine—especially during the summer.

Vegas Survival Guide: Beginner Slot Machine Gambling Tips

But you can still find plenty of hotels and casinos that are centrally located to lots of things to do. I like Planet Hollywood for its location, in fact.

5. You’re Spending Too Much Money on Food

Las Vegas is one place where you don’t have to spend a lot of money eating. In fact, if you gamble even a little bit, you can get free meals at most casinos. It might just be breakfast in the coffee shop, but that’s a meal I never miss anyway.

Vegas Solo suggests that the best way to save money dining in Vegas is to stay out of the restaurants on the Strip. They even offer a list of some of the best meals in town for the budget conscious. Some of these include:

1. Ellis Island is one of the classic Vegas budget meals. You can get a steak dinner there for $6.99 any time of day.
2. The California’s Market Street Café is another example of a classic pennies-on-the-dollar meal in Las Vegas. You can get the prime rib special there for $7.95.
3. Planet Hollywood’s Earl of Sandwich offers breakfast sandwiches for just $4.

Another strategy for saving money on food is to eat at happy hour. Yeah, most people think of happy hour as a time to get cheap drinks, but why worry about drink prices when you can drink for free just for sitting in front of a slot machine game?

No, happy hour is a great opportunity to get cheap food. A lot of the places offering food during happy hour have meals for $6 or $7. Vegas.com suggests Culinary Dropout from 3pm to 6pm Monday through Friday. You can get grilled cheese sliders and meat loaf sandwiches there for $6.

Diablo’s Cantina has tacos for $4, and their happy hour runs 7 days a week from 3pm to 7pm. Being a good Texas, I love tacos, and I don’t mind paying $4 for them, either.

6. You’re Wasting Money Gambling

You’ll find plenty of advice on the Internet about how to get the best odds when you’re gambling, but what most of these sites neglect to mention is that…

Clever gambling writers suggest that you should think of casino games as an entertainment expense, and there’s much to be said for that mindset. But most don’t go into enough detail about how to estimate what a given casino game is going to cost.

Here’s how to do that:

First, understand that in the long run, the house edge is a fair estimate of how much of each bet you’ll lose when playing your favorite casino games.

Roulette has a house edge of 5.26%. If you’re betting $100 per spin, you’re expected to lose an average of $5.26 per bet.

But that’s an average over a long period of time—hundreds, maybe thousands, of spins.

No one would play a gambling game where they bet $100 and won back $94.74 every time they placed a bet.

But play long enough, and that will be close to your outcome.

But in the short run, here’s what happens:

In the extreme short run (a single bet), you either lose your entire bet, or you win a multiple of that bet.

An Example Using Roulette

The easiest example is an even-money bet (red or black, odd or even, high or low). If you win, you win the amount of your bet.

If you play one spin and win, you win $100 on a $100 bet. But if you lose, then you lose your $100 bet. Neither of those cases come anywhere near the expectation of losing $5.26 on that bet.

But suppose you place 38 bets in a row, and you land on every slot on the wheel. How much will you win, and how much will you lose in that situation?

You have 38 slots on the wheel. 2 of them are green, 18 of them are red, and 18 of them are black. Let’s assume you always bet on black (as Wesley Snipes suggests). You’ll win your bet 18 times, and you’ll lose your bet 20 times.

You’ll win $1800 on the 18 winning bets. You’ll lose $2000 on the 20 losing bets. Your net loss is $200 ($2000 – $1800).

If you average that $200 by the total number of bets you made (38), you’ll see that you lost $5.26 per bet, on average.

Of course, even if you place 38 bets in a row, you won’t see mathematically perfect results. You’ll see the same number come up twice or three times. You’ll see some numbers not come up at all.

The Law of Large Numbers

This is where the law of large numbers comes in. The more you play, the closer your results eventually start to look like the mathematical expectation.

But just knowing how much you expect to lose per bet doesn’t tell you how expensive the entertainment is. You have to measure a couple of other factors.

One way to consider entertainment costs is by looking at how much time you’ve been entertained.

For example, if you buy a novel with 600 pages that takes 10 hours to read for $7.99, you’ve been entertained for about 80 cents per hour.

How Money Should I Take To Vegas For A Weekend Trip? Las ...

On the other hand, if you go to a 2 hour movie for $9, your entertainment cost is $4.50 per hour.

You can estimate the same calculation with a gambling game.

Casino Games’ Average Bets per Hour

You just need to know how many bets per hour you’re going to make on average.

This varies by game:

• Baccarat at a full table = 15 bets per hour
• Blackjack at a full table = 50 bets per hour
• Blackjack one-on-one with the dealer = 250 bets per hour
• Craps = 100 bets per hour
• Mini Baccarat one-on-one = 200 bets per hour
• Roulette = 40 bets per hour
• Slot machines or video poker = 600 bets per hour

Once you know how many bets per hour you’re making, you can multiply that by how much you’re betting per bet to find out how much money you’re putting into action each hour. Multiply that number by the house edge, and you know what your hourly expected loss is.

You’re playing blackjack one-on-one with a dealer at $100 per hand, and the house edge is 0.5%. 250 hands per hour multiplied by $100 is $25,000 in action per hour.

Your expected hourly loss is 0.5% of that, or $125 per hour.

On the other hand, let’s say you’re playing craps and betting the pass line only. The house edge on that bet is 1.41%. $100 per bet multiplied by 100 bets per hour is $10,000 in action per hour.

1.41% of that is $141 per hour.

Craps is only slightly more expensive than blackjack in this situation, but consider this, too:

Not everyone who thinks they’re good at basic blackjack strategy are good at it. That 0.5% assumes perfect basic strategy.

Let’s assume you’re not good at basic strategy, and you make enough mistakes that your house edge is 1%. That’s not uncommon at all, in fact.

Now your hourly expected loss at the one-on-one blackjack game is $250, which is a lot higher than at the craps table.

And the beauty of that craps bet is that it doesn’t take any kind of strategic thinking at all.

How does the hourly expected loss at these table games compare to slot machines?

Most people aren’t going to risk $100 on a single slot machine, but let’s assume that you’re willing to play for $5 a spin. At 600 spins per hour, that’s $3000 in hourly action.

But the house edge on slots varies. It’s probably at least 5%, but it’s more likely to be in the 7% range.

$3000 at 5% is $150 per hour, but at 7%, it’s $210 per hour.

Even though the size of your bet on the slot machine game is only 5% the size of your bet at those table games, your expected hourly loss is still in that $150 – $250 range.

Of course, you can reduce any of these factors to reduce your hourly expected loss.

For example, if you played that slot machine more slowly—at half the speed—you’d only lose $75 or $105 per hour.

If you take a 15-minute break at the blackjack table every hour, you’ll reduce the amount you lose per hour playing blackjack by $30 or so.

Or you could play blackjack at a full table and get fewer hands per hour that way.

You can also bet less, but reducing the size of your wagers decreases the excitement factor.

Think about it this way:

Suppose you’re playing roulette for a penny per spin, and you’re making single number bets. Those bets pay off at 35 to 1.

How excited are you going to bet at winning 35 cents?

Compare that to the excitement of winning $3500 on a $100 bet.

How do you know how much you should be betting?

I like a concept I read about in a book by John Vorhaus called Poker Night. He was writing about how to set the stakes for a poker game, but the concept applies equally well to casino games.

He suggests having a “gulp limit”.

How Much Money To Gamble In Vegas 2020

The idea is that you buy in for an amount that would make you swallow hard if you had that much money in your wallet and lost it.

This amount varies based on your temperament and how much money you have.

Some people might swallow hard if they lose a wallet with $5 in it.

Other people might not bat an eye at losing a wallet with $500 in it.

The point is that gambling is meaningless unless you have a meaningful amount of money on the line.

I’d be bored silly playing penny slots for an hour.

But increase the amount I’m betting per spin to $5, and I’m a lot more interested.

Common sense applies, too.

If you’re struggling to make a $1000 a month rent payment, you have no business plopping down at the blackjack table and making $100 bets.

That’s not entertainment.

That’s just foolishness.

What Is The Most Profitable Casino In Las Vegas

7. You’ve Joined the Players Club

If you pay attention to almost every other gambling writer in the world, you’ve read the advice that you’re supposed to always join the players club at the casino.

And yes, there are advantages to being a member of the players club.

You get a tiny percentage of your overall action back in the form of rebates and free stuff.

Here’s what you trade for those tiny rebates:

Privacy.

That might not sound like a big deal, but think about it. You have entities with staggering amounts of money tracking every penny you spend while you’re gambling.

Their goal when tracking that spend is to determine what marketing buttons to push to get you to spend more money.

The casino can use this information to send you hyper-targeted direct-mail advertising to convince you to visit more often than you might otherwise.

This means spending more money gambling than you might do otherwise.

And if this kind of marketing weren’t profitable (EXTREMELY profitable), the casino wouldn’t provide the rebates at all.

You visit a casino 4 times a year in Las Vegas. You spend an average of 2 days there each trip, and you spend 4 hours gambling each day.

The casino expects you to lose $500 per trip, 4 times a year, or $2000.

But they can tell by your action that you love playing Wheel of Fortune slots.

In fact, they can tell that this is far and away the most popular game among slot machine players. As a result, they decide to hold a slot machine tournament featuring that game on a specific set of dates—a set of dates you wouldn’t normally be visiting.

They send you mailers inviting you to the tournament.

You decide to make an extra trip to Vegas for the tournament, so you lose $500 more that year than you would otherwise.

For many people, this isn’t a significant amount of money.

But for the average American, it is a significant amount of money. The average person in the United States earns about $50,000 a year.

Gambling losses of $2500 a year represent 2.5% of that person’s income.

And that doesn’t include the cost of getting to and from Vegas and the cost of staying there.

Let’s assume you spend an extra $200 flying out there for the tournament and an extra $300 on lodging. Those expenses count, too.

You might say that since you’re so well-informed about these kinds of advertising tactics that you’d be immune to them.

And you might be right.

But according to Cultwatch, you should beware of thinking you’re immune to mind control.

Just knowing how mind control and persuasion tactics work isn’t sufficient defense against such things.

I just pass on the players club.

It isn’t a fair trade.

Conclusion

You can make a lot of mistakes gambling in Las Vegas.

But you can easily avoid most of them, too.

And honestly, not all the mistakes I’ve listed are what you would consider mistakes. Some of these are just matters of personal preference.

As with most things in gambling (and life, for that matter), a little mindfulness goes a long way.

Figuring out a trip budget when going to Las Vegas is like the weatherman trying to give the forecast, it’s usually wrong, it’s unpredictable and it always changes based on what you’d planned. This is a city that eats, sleeps and breaths money, and there probably isn’t anywhere else in the world where so many fortunes and made and squandered every 24 hours.

Even though that’s the case, the good news is that in a town as diverse as Las Vegas there are tons of options for everyone from the low roller to big spender, and increasing competition in the market means there are tons of ways to have an enjoyable trip on a low, medium or high roller budget. Below I’ve provided an in-depth look into the potential costs associated with a trip to Vegas as well as budgetary recommendations for different types of travelers looking for different experiences.

For a typical weekend stay (Thursday to Sunday) here is what I recommend for budgets:

• Low Roller – $650 (including hotel) or $350 without hotel
• Mid Roller – $1,200 (including hotel) or $600 without hotel
• High Roler – $3,000 (including hotel) or $2,000 without hotel
• Whale – Over $50,000 for 3 days in Vegas, don’t worry about hotel, it will be comped

Where To Stay and What To Spend?

The chart above shows the average prices for weekend stays at most of the properties on the Vegas strip. The average cost works out to about $167 per night and can give you a decent estimate on what your hotel cost would be, although bare in mind that hotel prices fluctuate wildly based on season and any big conferences or events that may be in town. If you are looking for more affordable accommodation you can always stay off-strip in Old Vegas where you can get rates as low as $25 per night at places like the Golden Nugget and Four Queens, which is also a cool experience but the Strip is recommend if it’s your first trip.

So, using our average from above let’s say that a typical Thursday-Sunday 3 night trip would be around $570-$600 when you factor in taxes and resort fees as a good rule of thumb for your total hotel cost.

Drinking, Eating & Shows

Drinking:

If you’re like me this will be a big part of your budget when you come here and you’ll want to ensure you have enough money to keep your belly full and liver working hard. When it comes to drinking on the Strip you are probably looking at about $7-$11 per mixed drink and around $7 per beer inside the casinos at the bar, while in Old Vegas, this goes down by about $3-5 per drink and is a much more affordable option. Drinking in nightclubs is ridiculously expensive and you can expect to spend upwards of $15+ per drink, with bottle service ranging anywhere from $1,000 to unlimited (people have spend hundreds of thousands).

If you’re on a really strict budget the best thing we can advise you to do is hit up one of the local liquor stores, make drinks in a to go cup in your room and go out and enjoy all the Vegas has to offer. You are allowed to carry drinks around all over the strip, so this is a good option if you want to avoid the costly drink prices that you’ll find in the hotels and casinos. Another option that seems popular with travelers is the Yard Stick drinks from Fat Tuesday, which are basically a Yard long alcoholic slushy that you can walk around with for $17.99.

Eating:

When it comes to dining options the great thing about Las Vegas is there really is something for everyone’s taste and budget. For breakfast, you can expect to spend around $15 per person for some of the more reasonable options like Planet Dailies inside Planet Hollywood. For a more upscale experience, definitely check out Mon Ami Gabi inside the Paris Hotel that offers an awesome menu for breakfast, which will run you about $25-$30 per person depending on what you get.

For lunch options, there is a ton of places you can check out with prices ranging from under $20 for Sandwich/Fast Food options to up to $60 or more if you want a fancy lunch. One of my personal favorites for lunch is Holsteins inside The Cosmopolitan which features a ton of different burger options and has really good milkshakes, it will cost about $25 – $50 per person depending on what you order.

For dinner, the sky is the limit and you can pretty much spend as little or as much as you want, with anything from fast food to five star dining on the menu. If you are looking for the lower end of things, try checking out one of the bars on the strip that also serves food and will have reasonable prices for dinner. At these places you can grab a meal for around $20-$25 and can fill up for a fraction of the fancy restaurants. When it comes to 5 star dining there is no limit of what this city offers, and you’re looking to spend anywhere from $100 per person up to $500 per person at some of the finest establishments.

Shows:

How Much Money Should I Bring For 3 Days In Vegas? Las ...

Vegas is a great place to take in a show with some of the best entertainment productions in the world, but it can get a bit pricey. On the strip there are a bunch of different booths that specialize in selling last minute ticket specials and this is your best bet to get the cheapest price to the many shows on the Strip. For premium seating to the most popular shows, each ticket is going to run you over $100 per person but using the discount sellers you can usually find decent seats for around $50 to a bunch of different productions.

Gambling Budget

As for gambling this is a really subjective and tough thing to budget for, it really depends on how much you like to gamble. If you’re primarily a slots player, you can low roll for about $50 a day if you stick to the lower denomination slots and don’t want to play for much more than an hour or so. If you want a few hours of play per day I would say around $150 is a decent budget to get some solid play on the slot machines. For table game players, on the low end I’d plan on $200 day even if you are only playing the $5 tables as a stroke of bad luck can crush that kind of a bankroll pretty quickly. For mid-range table game players around $500 per session is more reasonable, again it really all depends on what you personally can afford and want to play.