I don’t just read and write about gambling. Sometimes I read about how to be a better writer.

• Best Slot Machines To Play In Oklahoma Lottery
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Recently, I read a blog post that suggested I write my posts to an imaginary avatar—an individual who needs my help and advice, and I should write to that person as if we were just shooting the breeze around a campfire.

I have an avatar in mind now. He visits the Winstar Casino in Oklahoma every Friday, and he usually takes one of his 2 girlfriends there.

He plays the slots, and he’s lost almost $7000 this year already. He’s obsessed with climbing the VIP club ladder, too.

1. Oct 28, 2020 My favorite slots are The Duck, 777, most of three reels. And a couple of the 5 reels Gold Fish, Wolf and Beauty. The ones that I least like are Wheel of Fortune, Wonka, and Nuke Places to play are the slots around the poker tables and eating areas. Play the first machine that you see. 9 out 10 times you will win Try it before you make a judgement.
2. “ We went to play at a casino and we took our 3 kids with us we have so much fun on the swimming pool at day and Casino at nigh food is the best buffet is a little expensive but very worth it will go on July again ”.

Gaming machines: 2,600 Table and poker games: 40 Restaurants and bars: 9 Employees: 1,743 Tribe: Cherokee Nation Location: Catoosa, Oklahoma See Casino Details. Click For Practice Play FREE SLOTS. No Signup. Instant Play Exclusive Free Play! Select any of these three slot games for exclusive access inside BOVADA CASINO. No player signup.

Here’s my advice to this Oklahoma slot machine player:

1- Start Playing Poker Instead of Slot Machines, You Nitwit

The payback percentage on the slot machines in Oklahoma is awful.

We’re talking about games in a jurisdiction where the casinos aren’t even required to report their payback percentages.

In many jurisdictions, the payback percentages for slot machines must be above a certain number, and they must report their actual paybacks over time.

Neither of these rules apply to the casinos in Oklahoma, so you don’t have any way of knowing what the payback percentage on these games is.

My guess is that they’re only slightly better than the payback percentage you’d see playing scratch and win lottery tickets.

What does this translate to in terms of hourly expected losses?

I know that you play for at least $3 per spin, and you probably make an average number of spins per hour—600. You’re putting $1800 per hour into action.

At that 80% figure, you’re getting back just $1440 in winnings, which means you’re losing $360 per hour on average. It might be even more than that.

That’s expensive entertainment, man.

Seriously, how many movie tickets can you buy for $720—the predicted cost for 2 hours play on those machines?

But I know you want to keep gambling, so here’s my advice:

Switch to poker.

You like playing poker, and you enjoy socializing with the other players at the table. The only downside to poker for you is the slow action.

You’re probably never going to be a winning poker player, but you at least have a chance in poker.

And no way do you play so badly that you’re operating at a 20% disadvantage.

2- Stop Trying to Climb Higher on the VIP List for the Slots Club

I know you’re excited about the perks of being a high roller on the VIP list in the players club there. You only mention it every time we talk about the casino.

But don’t you realize that the amount of money it’s costing you to climb that VIP ladder far exceeds the amount of monetary value you’re getting in return?

The program has 3 tiers, and you’re already in the 2nd tier, trying to move up to the 3rd tier.

And what kind of perks do you get for that 3rd tier?

A 20% discount at the spa?

Really?

I don’t know what’s in the VIP gift packages, but whatever they include, I guarantee you could buy it cheaper if you stopped losing money playing the slots there.

Yeah, the free stuff is cool, and you feel like a VIP, but you can feel like a VIP just by spending money and come out ahead.

3- Host Your Own Poker Game Instead of Going to the Casino Every Weekend

I love playing in an actual cardroom in a casino, and you’ll find plenty of action at whatever stakes you prefer at the cardroom in the Winstar.

But even that’s not free.

The Winstar, like every other casino in the United States, charges a rake in exchange for hosting the poker game. This takes the form of 5% of each raked pot.

Even if you’re just as good as the other players at the table, you can’t break even when the casino is taking 5% out of every pot.

On the other hand, you know lots of poker players here in town. And I know you own a poker table and clay chips.

The only trick is finding poker players who want to play for the same stakes you do.

I know you enjoy cooking and playing the host, too. You can go to bed after everyone leaves without driving for 45 minutes to get home, too.

Most importantly, you stand a better chance of winning money in your home poker game because you’re not having to pay the 5% rake to the casino out of every pot.

4- Find Some Women to Hang Out with Who Don’t Like to Gamble

I know that part of the reason you visit the casino so often is because these 2 women you date both love to gamble.

I also know that they love gambling with your money, not theirs. After all, we’re talking about one woman who cleans the rooms at a nursing home for a living, and the other woman is a waitress.

Neither of them can afford to gamble at the levels you like to gamble.

I know how much money you’ve lost at the casino this year, but I wonder if that amount accounts for the money you’ve given these 2 girlfriends?

You have a few rational choices here:

You could try finding other activities to engage in with these women. They might like these activities, or they might not.

I doubt either of them would break up with you just because you stop taking them to the casino.

You could try getting these 2 women to learn how to play poker. I’ve met both of them, though, and I’m convinced that neither of them are going to be great at the game.

Even so, they’re not idiots. If they’re willing, they can learn to play Texas holdem well enough to do better at that game than they do at the slot machines.

Finally, you could just dump both these gals and find new ladies to spend time with doing other stuff.

We live near Dallas. You can find plenty of educational and culturally things to do that don’t involve pouring money into gambling machines on the behalf of these women.

I know you struggle with dealing with life without using beer and marijuana as crutches.
But your lifestyle as a degenerate gambler all ties together.

No one—not even you—makes good decisions under the influence.

They especially make bad decision when it comes to gambling.

Losing as much money each year playing slot machines as you do is objectively a bad decision.

You have so many more fulfilling things you could be doing with your money than drinking, smoking, and gambling with it.

If you enjoy the risk involved with gambling, you could try gambling at something that involves higher risks but potentially much higher rewards.

And you’ll have far more influence over your destiny gambling on an investment in your own business than you ever will playing slot machines at the Winstar Casino.

Any of these opportunities at least affords you the opportunity to succeed and win money. It’s also easier to write off your losses as a business owner than it is to write off your losses as a gambler.

In fact, the only way you get to write off your losses as a gambler is if you come home a winner.

Otherwise, your losses are just an entertainment expense, which is not generally a tax deductible expenditure.

You could even combine your love of gambling with a new business. I don’t recommend starting your own underground cardroom, as tempting as that is in this area.

It’s a felony to run a gambling hall in Texas, after all.

But you could open a store in the mall selling poker equipment and do quite well with it.

Poker tables, poker chips, and playing cards are all available wholesale and you can make big profits re-selling such items.

You could even expand your inventory to include things like dart boards, pool tables, and jukeboxes.

You could even sell gambling books and DVDs.

7- Travel to Vegas a Couple Times a Year Instead of Going to Oklahoma Every Weekend

Sure, traveling to Las Vegas a couple times a year might cost a little more than visiting Oklahoma every weekend, but I think you can still come out way ahead—even with the travel costs.

Let’s look at the numbers again. We already figured out that you lose an average of $360 per hour playing slots in Oklahoma.

And you go every weekend, so let’s be generous and say you only spend an hour playing each weekend.

That’s 52 hours at $360 per hour, or over $18,000 per year in gambling losses.

I know, you’ve only lost $6000 or $7000 this year, but if you keep playing, the Law of Large Numbers will ensure that your actual results will eventually start to look like the expected results.

Now let’s say you decide to go to Vegas twice a year instead. We’ll assume you’re going to spend $2000 on flights, and another $1000 on your rooms.

Let’s call it another $1000 for meals and entertainment.

That’s $4000 for the travel expenses to Vegas, including entertainment and food. Your total might be different depending on when you go and where you cut corners.

I know you can fly out there for a lot less than that, but I’m assuming you’re flying first class or something.

Now let’s assume you’re going to spend 3 days in Vegas on each trip, and you’re going to spend 2 hours per day gambling. That’s 12 hours total.

The slot machines in Vegas have a payback percentage of closer to 92%, so the house edge is about 8%–give or take.

If you spend 12 hours putting $1800 into action, you’ll put a total of $21,600 into action.

Your expected loss on that kind of action is $1728.

So you’re looking at $6000 or so in total expenses traveling to Vegas to gamble twice a year, compared to $18,000 if you travel to the Winstar every weekend.

You’ll enjoy the Vegas trips more, too, I promise you.

8- Go Ahead and Open that Online Sportsbook Account You Keep Talking About

I know you watch football every weekend, and I know you participate in the betting pools at work. I also know you’ve been thinking about signing up for an online sportsbook like 5Dimes.

You should go for it.

You don’t have to limit yourself to 5Dimes, but they’re rated 4 stars on our site, and they’re happy to accept action from United States bettors.

Other options include bet365, Bookmaker.eu, and Bovada. Each of them has its pros and cons.

You could get some money into action every weekend during football season, and maybe that would satisfy your gambling urges as well as or better than playing slot machines in Oklahoma.

I’d much rather see you risking your money this way than playing slots or even the lottery.

9- Don’t Worry about Using Up the Rest of Your Player Points this Year

That’s how they get you, man.

If you don’t visit the casino, you can’t lose money on their slot machines.

And the only way you can redeem those player points for something of any value is to visit the casino.

By buying into this incentivized gambling scheme that the casino has going, you’re just keeping that monkey on your back.

If you do decide that you’ve earned so much incentives that you just can’t forgo using them, at least limit yourself to the poker games when you visit.

If you’re not sure you have the self-discipline or self-control to do that, skip it.

Or call someone who’s willing to hold you accountable before, during, and after you visit to the Winstar.

Even better, take someone with you and explain to them what you’re trying to do on your way there.

Those incentives are worth FAR less than the amount of money you’re losing on the slot machines there.

10- Read Some Good Books about How Gambling Actually Works

For most gamblers who want to become better educated about how gambling actually works, I suggest reading Winning Ways: The American MENSA Guide to Casino Gambling by Andrew Brisman.

It’s a great book, and you should definitely find a used copy of it and read it.

But I have another book you should start with:

Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas

This is one of the most eye-opening books you’ll ever read about how slot machine gambling works in any casino, even though it specifies Las Vegas in the title.

Natasha Dow Schüll wrote this one.

Some people consider me a gambling expert, and I know a lot about slot machines and how they work.

But Addiction by Design STILL made my jaw drop with surprise at how nefarious the design and implementation of slot machines works.

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Once you’ve read those 2 books, in either order, you should move on to some more general gambling thinking books like Getting the Best of It by David Sklansky.

You should also read books about winning at poker, like The Theory of Poker (also by Sklansky).

And if you decide to follow up on my sports betting suggestions, pick up Sharp Sports Betting by Stanford Wong.

You can find a lot of great information about gambling on the internet for free, but you have to wade through a lot of junk to find informative and educational pages like the ones I write on the internet.

When you’re reading gambling books—especially the ones I recommended above—you can be confident that you’re getting accurate information that might actually help you win some money over the course of your gambling career.

I might sound really negative about Oklahoma slot machines, but I don’t mean to.

I’ve written this post with a specific audience in mind—the guy who spends too much money gambling on the slots in Oklahoma.

If you’re like me, and you only visit Oklahoma casinos 3 or 4 times a year, much of this advice doesn’t apply.

You’re a recreational gambler paying reasonable amounts for your entertainment.

What advice would you give someone who’s playing too many slot machines in Oklahoma?

102 casinos are in the state of Oklahoma, making it a surprisingly big casino destination in the United States.

After all, you don’t often hear people talking about Oklahoma as a gambling epicenter.

It’s not Nevada.

But they legalized casino gambling in Oklahoma in 2004, so the casino scene has exploded over the last decade and a half.

And, the state of Oklahoma has more casinos than any other states besides Nevada.

In this post, I’m going to look at some of the interesting details about the number of casinos in Oklahoma.

What Are the Casinos Like in Oklahoma?

Until recently, the only kind of casino gambling allowed in Oklahoma was gambling machine oriented and bingo oriented. In fact, even the gambling machines – both slots and video poker – were based on a bingo algorithm.

In fact, you could see on the face of all the machines in Oklahoma a bingo card which lit up with the electronic bingo results. These bingo results corresponded to the various slot machine reel combinations. It was easy to ignore, and the practical effect for the gambler was almost nil.

Now, of course, Oklahoma gambling has expanded statewide. The use of playing cards was the first restriction to loosen, and, for a while, you could play craps games and roulette games where the results were generated by using a deck of cards.

Even more recently, Oklahoma has legalized using dice and spinning wheels for their results.

And they offer more traditional slot machine and video poker games, now, too.

As for what the casinos are like inside and out, it varies widely. The Winstar World Casino in Thackerville is literally the largest casino in the United States, and it offers many – if not most – of the same amenities that are available in a larger casino resort in Las Vegas.

Many local casinos, though, are small, non-descript buildings made of brick and filled with gambling machines. My understanding is that these smaller casinos target locals and have better payouts, but they don’t publicize specifics about their payout percentages.

Class II versus Class III Casino Games in Oklahoma

Class II casino games are games where the results are generated via a centralized computer system running the equivalent of electronic bingo games all day. From a legal perspective, this is a separate kind of gambling than regular slot machines or even blackjack.

Class II gaming includes bingo, electronic bingo, and pull tab machines.

For years, these were the only kinds of casino games available in Oklahoma.

Class III gaming is what they offer in Las Vegas and many other traditional casino destinations. Traditional casino games like blackjack, craps, and roulette are all Class III games. Traditional gambling machines like slot machines and video poker – with their individual random number generators – are also in the category of Class II games.

You can tell the difference between the Class II games and the Class III games in Oklahoma casinos by looking for the electronic bingo card on the front of the machine. If it’s there and lights up with results every time you spin the reels, you’re playing a Class II game. If it’s nowhere to be found, you’re playing a Class III slot machine game.

Quirks of Oklahoma Casinos

One interesting quirk about the casino games in Oklahoma is the “ante.” In poker, an ante is a forced bet that drives the action and ensures that players don’t just fold until they have a premium hand.

But in an Oklahoma casino, when you play blackjack, craps, or roulette, you’re required to place an ante in addition to your bet.

It’s not really an ante, though, as you lose the ante regardless of whether you win or lose.

Usually, you’ll see a so-called ante of 50 cents per hand on a blackjack hand of less than $100.

I’m not a fan of these kinds of table games, and I suggest avoiding them unless you’re playing for higher stakes. The more money you’re risking, the lower the effect of the ante on the house edge.

50 cents, when compare to $50, only amounts to an additional 1% added to the house edge instead of an additional 10%.

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That will make a big difference to your bottom line, although, unless you’re playing games with positive expectation, you’ll eventually lose all your money either way. It’s inevitable because of the math behind the games.

Which Oklahoma Casinos Are Closest to Texas?

It’s probably not a surprise that a lot of the gamblers in Oklahoma have actually traveled from another state to get a little action. And many of those gamblers hail from the Lone Star State.

But which casinos in Oklahoma are closest to Texas?

The Winstar Casino in Thackerville is probably the casino closest to Texas. It’s only 80 miles north of Dallas, and, if you’re driving north on I-35, it’s located at the first exit in Oklahoma.

The Choctaw Casino in Durant is also close to Texas. It’s only 95 miles northeast of Dallas. If you’re living on the eastern side of Dallas or in one of the suburbs there, it’s closer than the Winstar.

You would get to Choctaw Casino by driving north on 75 instead of taking I-35. It’s not as big as the Winstar, but it’s a major destination casino with all the amenities you’d associated with a larger casino resort.

Of course, those aren’t the only casinos in those destinations. Border Casino in Thackerville is a smaller, slot-machine-only casino also located in Thackerville. I have friends who claim the slots there are a lot looser, but it lacks any amenities beyond the gambling.

How Did Casinos Become Legal in Oklahoma?

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Casinos in a lot of states are owned by Native American tribes. They’re recognized as independent nations, but not entirely independent. They operate within existing United States law with treaties called compacts.

In many states, these compacts include the tribes’ rights to operate casinos within their jurisdictions.

Oklahoma tribes lobbied for the situation to change for years before States Question 712 passed. Once that happened, it only took 4 years for 94 casinos to launch in the state. I remember when this happened. The Winstar Casino, at the time, was nothing more than a giant circus tent on the other side of the Red River.

What Is the Best Paying Casino in Oklahoma?

In many states, the casinos are required to post details of their financials – especially as those financials relate to the payouts for that casino. This is why you’ll see casino guides publishing information about overall payout percentages and individual casinos’ payout percentages.

Oklahoma, though, doesn’t require the casinos to reveal their financial information related to their payback percentages.

So, what is the best paying casino in Oklahoma?

Who knows?

It’s impossible to ascertain, although you could theoretically spend some time at each of them recording your results and drawing conclusions from those results.

With over 100 casinos in the state, you wouldn’t realistically be able to spend much time in each state at their casinos recording results. You’d get some results, but the statistical validity of those results would be questionable at best.

Which Casinos in Oklahoma Offer Poker Games?

Not all of the casinos in Oklahoma offer poker games. In fact, most of them don’t. Here’s a list of those that do offer poker rooms:

• Apache Casino
• Cherokee
• Choctaw (Durant)
• Choctaw (Grant)

• Choctaw (Pocola)
• Downstream
• Firelake
• Grand Casino Resort

• Hard Rock
• River Spirit
• Riverwind
• Winstar

Still, that’s a dozen casinos to choose from if you want to get your poker on.

I’ve played live poker at the Choctaw in Durant and at the Winstar in Thackerville. Both offer huge, clean poker rooms with plenty of action for the most popular poker variants – especially real money Texas holdem. I even found occasional Omaha games to play.

Conclusion

How many casinos are in Oklahoma?

With 102 casinos, Oklahoma has more casinos than any other gambling state in the USA. Only Nevada has more casinos.

But the gambling scene in Oklahoma is a little different from the gambling scenes in other states, so be sure to give it consideration the next time you’re planning a casino trip.