If you love the glitz and glamour of Vegas, you’ll love the chance to play Vegas-style slots for real, hard money. Not only is it exciting, but its’ a great way to broaden your gambling horizons quickly. When you consider that the average slot player makes about 600 wagers per hour, you’ll soon understand how much slots can and do add up. If you’re going to play high-limit slots for real money, you’ll need to go into the game understanding how much you can afford to lose at the denomination you’ve chosen to play. Fortunately, this is easy to do with a little simple multiplication and some educated guesswork.

Consider this: if you were playing slots in real-life Las Vegas, Nevada, the maximum house edge on those machines would sit right around 25%. This means that, in the worst possible outcome, you’d lose 25% of each bet you put down on a given machine. From there, you multiply it out: 600 bets an hour times $25 per bet times 25%. Given those stakes, you can expect to lose a whopping $3750 an hour – a number all but the best gamblers could not afford.

Of course, if you had sat down at a game with a higher payout percentage, your hourly loss rate would be dramatically lower. If you were on a game with a 90% payout percentage, for example, you’d only lose about 10% of what you put down on the machine, which slashes the above number roughly in half.

As you can see, it’s essential to understand payout percentages as they relate to minimum bets. This simple calculation will go a long way toward helping you stay informed and within budget, even as you play your favorite high-limit slots games.

What if You’re a Low-Roller?

If you’re still a little nervous about high-limit slots, there’s nothing wrong with sticking with penny slots. These games offer an average of about a 75% payout percentage, which means you’ll keep more money in your pocket as you play. Using the same calculations above, you’d only lose about $1.50 per hour – a much more manageable number for virtually every gambler out there.

The trick, of course, is to find a play denomination you’re comfortable with and to work your way up from there. Good gambling doesn’t rely only on high minimum wages and high-limit slots. Instead, the important thing is to have fun, stick to a budget you’re comfortable with, and avoid losing more than you can afford. After all, you want to play stakes that feel high enough to be exciting, but not so high that you’re losing the shirt off your back. Nothing ruins a fun day of gambling as quickly as finding out that you’ve lost more than you can afford.

Determine Your “Gulp Limit”

In the book known as Poker Night: Winning at Home, at the casino, and Beyond, author John Vorhaus describes a concept he calls, endearingly, the “gulp limit.” According to him, the gulp limit should be used by gamblers to determine the size of a given gambling bankroll. To be effective, the amount should be large enough that you’d gulp if you lost it.

Once you’ve decided on the size of your gulp limit, you can walk those numbers backward to understand how much money you have to play each hour, given your preferred play denomination, payout percentage, and more.

Say you’re going to Vegas to play high-limit slots for the weekend. You’re only spending two days gambling, but you plan to spend about four hours each day gambling. You want to have fun and still be able to pay the mortgage when you get homie.

If you’re playing penny slots during this trip, you’ll play about $10 or $20 and have a great time. If you’re playing high-limit slots, on the other hand, you stand to lose thousands of dollars over the weekend. With this in mind, here are some suggested slot machine limits to stick with:

1.$10-$20 for penny slots.
2.$50-$100 for nickel slots.
3.$250-$500 for quarter slots.
4.$1,000-$2,000 for dollar slots.
5. $5,000 to $10,000 for five-dollar slots.

While those are just rough guidelines, you can alter the size of your own personal gulp limit as you see fit. Remember that gambling often requires some trial and error, and it may take a few tries to find a gulp limit you’re comfortable with.

Playing High-Limit Slots Online

If you can’t easily get out to Vegas for a weekend – don’t fret. You can still play high-limit slots online, and the games are no less exciting. In fact, most online casinos have lower bet limits than you’ll find in big-name casinos in Vegas and Atlantic City. There’s a secret, though, that only the most experienced gamblers know: customer service departments will typically up the maximum bet numbers for specific, seasoned players. This means if you become a high-roller in the online casino world, you may be able to play for higher stakes at each spin. Iud you’ve been using a specific online casino for a while, it’s worth asking about.

In some cases, this might not be necessary. Say, for example, that the game has a high enough betting limit anyway. In that case, you probably wouldn’t need to increase it. Other games allow you to put bets down on multiple pay lines, which means the bet amount can get very high very quickly. If you’re betting $5 on a nine-line game, the bet amount is going to skyrocket rapidly.

Plus, online casinos offer higher payback percentages than their land-based counterparts. This means you have a higher chance of winning the money you’re wagering and enjoying a game worth writing home about!