Volumes have been written on this item, and the bickering and face-offs about where the "hot" slot machine games are positioned in a casino are still rampant – more than sixty years after slots were first placed in gambling houses.
The traditional rule is that the best slot games were positioned just inside the main entryway of the casino; so that potential players going by would see real jackpot winners … be enthralled to come into the casino and play. Our estimation is that this is definitely no longer so.
Nearly all of the big name casinos nowadays are mammoth complexes and it’s no longer possible to see inside from the sidewalk, so there’s no longer a reason to have the ‘loose’ one armed bandits close to any doors.
Another classic rule is that loose one armed bandits are positioned on the major aisles in the casinos, again so that more potential gamblers could see winning jackpots and be galvanized to play. Notably however, we find that this also is not a universal rule any more.
What casinos found over the years is that people walking down the busy aisles were frequently on the way to somewhere else. If they played the slots at all, they would simply put in their loose change because they happened to be walking by. Win or lose, they would very often not stop to keep playing. And the very last thing a casino wants is for someone to win a jackpot by playing only a few coins and then not stay to put it all back in!
These days, casinos are constantly changing their philosophy about where to place the loose slot games.