What amount of slot cash makes it a 100% game?

[FloridaPhil]

Your chances of winning a drawing are probably much better than those of drawing a royal and time spent at a drawing is time not spent at a negative game.

These free play drawings are held throughout the day. It would be nice to hit a royal and win a drawing on the same day. If that happens, I'll run out and buy a Mega Millions ticket immediately.

[Jojo2018]

My casino has been having a "contest" where you pick a card on check in and get some free slot cash. For the past few weeks, I've been getting a minimum of $5 slot cash. Sometimes $10 the most has been $25 (1 time).

My question: what is the amount of slot cash that will make my session a positive one? Also, the best paying game in this casino is 98.45% and at the $1 level. Thanks in advance.

Let's look at this a bit more deeply. New2vp's answer was fine as far as it went.

You said "check in." Did you mean check into the hotel or swipe a kiosk to start your gambling day? If a hotel room is included, that adds value assuming you have use for the room.

Is this the only promotion? Do they award slot club points that are redeemable for cash, free play, comps, etc? Do they ever have multiple points? You say you get a mailer. $10 from a mailer counts just as much as $10 from this drawing.

My point is that all of these benefits are additive. Insofar as your financial bottom line goes, it doesn't really matter if the money comes from the game, the slot club, or other promotions.

Sometimes you need to play "on the come," meaning the math of the particular game doesn't add up, but mailers just might make it positive in the future. After you play enough to get some data on how this particular casino works, you can make adjustments. If you've been playing at a casino for months and you're not getting sufficient mailers yet, you probably aren't going to get them.

Thanks, Bob. I meant "check in" to the kiosk. Not check in to the hotel (I'm local). I haven't been getting any other mailers or anything. Slot points are not awarded as much if I were to play slots (friends tell me). For example, in a regular session, I accumulate 25-30 points. However, any kind of bonus opportunities start at 100 slot points.

[jsm2016]

The return of this machine is 98.45%. To figure how much "cash back" you'll need to make this a positive play, yes--you'll need some algebra.

Without slot cash, the play will never be positive. With the slot cash, though, the situation changes:

98.45% + 98.45% x (slot cash returned as a percentage of your play...just call this "S") > 100%.

So

98.45% + 98.45% x S > 100%

or

98.45% x (1 + S) > 100%

You'll find S has to be greater than about 1.57%, and not 1.55% as you might think. (That little "extra" comes from having to play though the slot cash at least once before leaving.) In other words, for every $1,000 (or 200 hands at max coin) played, you would need more than $15.70 in slot cash.