Quote:
Originally Posted by toddbowker
EVERY GAMBLER CARES ABOUT TAKEOUT, even if they don't know what it is.
Because they absolutely know how fast they go broke.
Take your average Joe who sits down at a slot machine. He puts his $100 in a machine and plays for an hour and loses the $100. Then he moves to another machine (or another casino) and plays for two hours before he loses his $100.
Which machine do you think he plays next time? He may not know that machine #1 had a 25% takeout and machine #2 was at 10%, but he knows he got 2x the play out of machine #2, and is going to gravitate there the next time he sits down to play.
Same thing if Joe goes to the track with $100. He plays the races and maybe loses the last of his $100 in the 8th race of the card each day. Then the track raises the takeout, and he finds himself done after the 6th. How do you think he feels about the value he is getting for his $100? He might not have a clue what the takeout is, or if the track raised it, but his wallet knows.
It's actually worse on the parimutuel side because of churn. Joe's $100 might have led to $700 in wagering before, but now it's down to $500.
Smart gambling businesses tweak their takeouts (or house advantage on the casino side) to maximize player experience and revenue. As an example, Tampa Bay Downs was always good at this. For several years they moved their takeouts around to see what worked and what didn't, before settling into a pretty good program. To their credit, I expect Keeneland is now doing the same. There was probably a realization somewhere that they might have gone a bit too far, and now they are making a few changes to see if they work better. Wouldn't surprise me if they made another set of adjustments after they see how the Spring Meet goes.
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You are ignoring that variance is huge in gambling. You have to bet a LOT of money to hit the convergence point.
Slots have so much churn that they are a special case, although reducing takeout isn't the only way to increase Time On Device. They also use bonus rounds.
But for most forms of gambling, the casual player takes a LONG time to bet enough where the main causal factor isn't short term luck. Hence, the need to discriminate and charge them higher takeout while charging less to players who care.
