In the context of casino gambling, “action” refers to the amount of money bet over a certain span of time.
When measured per hour, action can be a useful tool for measuring how much you expect to lose or win as a gambler.
If you’re a high roller and have a casino host assigned to you, they’ll expect you to bring a certain amount of action to the casino on a trip.
Being “in action” means having money on the line. That use of the term is more commonly used in sports betting.
How Do You Estimate Your Hourly Action on a Casino Game?
You could track your action on a casino game specifically. If you’re flat-betting – in other words, betting the same amount on every wager – you just add that amount to a running tally. You’ll probably have to do this mentally because using computers or cell phones while playing casino games is frowned upon.
If you’re not flat-betting, but instead raising and lowering your bets, you’ll want to add the actual amount you’ve bet to your running total.
Most casinos and players, though, just estimate your hourly action. The first step is to decide what your average betting amount is. When a casino “rates” a player at a table game, they estimate how much your average bet size is.
An Example of Being Rated and Hourly Action Projections
Years ago I accompanied my then-wife on a trip to Kansas City. We stayed at Harrah’s there, and I spent some time at the blackjack tables. I was counting, but I was doing a lousy job of it.
And I was ranging my bet sizes from between $10 and $100 per hand based on the count.
I was also hoping to earn a comped meal. I wasn’t making much progress toward the comped meal, either.
Finally, I asked the dealer what they had my average hourly bet estimated at, and she told me that I was rated as a $10 per hand player.
I explained to her that I’d been ranging my bets from $10 to $100.
Bad idea, really.
After all, most people who are that aware of their betting range in blackjack is probably counting cards. And you know what casinos do to card counters, don’t you?
In my case, they started shuffling every hand, which made it impossible to get an edge.
I still had fun, though, and I broke even for the night. And they were comping my whiskeys, so I actualy came out a little ahead.
The Formula for Calculating Hourly Action Is Simple
The formula for calculating your hourly action is simple. It’s just the average size of your bet by the number of bets you’re making per hour.
In the example above, I was playing heads-up with the dealer. This means I was probably seeing 200 hands per hour. At $10 per hour, that’s an estimated hourly action of $2000.
I’m a basic strategy player, and since they were shuffling after every hand, I couldn’t get an edge by counting cards. I estimated that I was facing a house edge of 0.5%.
The house edge is the mathematical advantage that the casino enjoys over the player. It’s based on the difference between the odds of winning and the payout odds for your bets.
When you multiply the house edge by your hourly action, you get the statistically estimated hourly loss rate for the game.
In my case, 0.5% multiplied by $2000 meant that my expected hourly loss rate was $10.
No wonder I couldn’t earn a comped meal. The casino wasn’t making much money from me at all. I think we only played for 3 or 4 hours, so their expected win on my action was only $30 or $40.
And I was drinking 2 comped whiskeys per hour, so I was already getting some comp values without getting the comped meal.
What Kind of Hourly Action Can You Expect at Most Major Casino Games?
The biggest casino games I can think of are these:
- Blackjack
- Craps
- Roulette
- Slot Machines
- Video Poker
The best you can do with most of these games is to estimate how many bets per hour you’re looking at. You need to do your own multiplication because the amount you’re betting on each wager is individual.
Some people reading this post are betting $5 per hand on blackjack, while others are betting $50 or $100 per hand.
The average number of bets per hour in blackjack vary based on how many players are at the table with you. At a table where you’re playing heads-up with the dealer, you can easily play 200 hands per hour. At a full table, that number might be closer to 50 hands per hour.
In Craps…
The average number of bets per hour depends a lot on how many bets you’re making. You have a variety of bets to choose from on any given roll. You could theoretically bet on something every time the dice are thrown. Most craps players, though, are sticking with the pass/don’t pass bets, and the way to calculate your action on those is by looking at how often those bets are resolved per hour.
Even though there are probably 100 rolls per hour at the craps table, the average number of pass or don’t pass resolutions are about 30 per hour. Most craps tables will be full of players, but if you’re the only player at the table, you might make as many as 250 rolls per hour, which means 75 decisions per hour.
If you’re disciplined and just bet $10 on each come out roll, you’re putting $300 per hour into action. This makes craps one of the best deals in the house in terms of expected hourly loss. Even playing heads-up at the craps table means you’re only putting $750 per hour into action.
Roulette, like blackjack, moves faster with fewer players. If you’re the only player at the table, you’re looking at 100 bets per hour. At a full table, you might see 30 or 40 spins per hour.
I cover slot machines and video poker in the next section because they’re different.
Slot Machine Action and Video Poker Action
In the last section, I covered the 3 big table games and how many bets per hour you’ll make at each of them. The numbers don’t change much from one table game to another. The biggest factor is the number of player at the table.
Slot machine and video poker games are games where you have some control over how fast or how slow you play. Unfortunately, the games are set up to encourage you to play faster. The average slots or video poker player bets 500 times per hour.
Some players are above average and get in 700 bets per hour instead.
And, even though the bet sizes are smaller for these games, the number of bets per hour is so high that it has a major effect on your hourly action.
Let’s compare a full blackjack table with a slot machine game. You’re betting $10 per hand at a blackjack table where you’re seeing 50 hands per hour. You’re putting $500 per hour into action.
On the slot machine game, let’s assume you’re playing for $3 per spin. At 500 spins per hour, you’re putting $1500 per hour into action.
If you assume that both games have the same house edge – which they don’t – you’ll lose 3 times as much money on the slot machine game as you would on the blackjack game.
In reality, the blackjack game probably has a house edge of 0.5% compared to a house edge of maybe 5% on the slot machine game.
Which means losing $2.50 per hour at the blackjack table versus losing $75 per hour on the slot machine games.
Guess which game I suggest you play?
Action Requirements at Online Casinos
Online casinos offer signup bonuses but they require a certain amount of action from you before allowing you to cash out. They do this so that you can’t put yourself in a situation where you have a statistical edge over the house.
These action requirements are usually called “rollover requirements” or “playthrough requirements.”
They’re normally a multiple of your deposit amount combined with your bonus.
Here’s an example:
You sign up at a casino with a $200 signup bonus on a $100 deposit – a 200% bonus. You start with a bankroll of $300 – your $100 plus the $200 bonus.
But the casino requires a 35X playthrough on this amount. That’s $10,500 in action before you can cash out.
Let’s assume you’re a slot machine player. At $1500 per hour in action, you need to play for 7 hours before being allowed to cash out.
Of course, if you lost every bet you made, you’d lose $10,500, but that’s never the case. You’ll win some bets and lose others.
You can estimate how much you lose by assuming a house edge for the game. With an online slot machine, a 5% edge is reasonably.
On $10,500 in action, the expected loss is $525.
You started with $300, so guess how likely you are to walk away with some winnings after you achieve your action requirement.
Conclusion
“Action” is a useful concept in casino gambling for multiple reasons. It’s used to estimate losses per hour, total losses, and how much free stuff in the form of comps you’ll get.
It’s easy to estimate, too – it’s just the amount you bet multiplied by the number of bets you make at that amount.
Michael Stevens
Michael Stevens has been researching and writing topics involving the gambling industry for well over a decade now and is considered an expert on all things casino and sports betting. Michael has been writing for GamblingSites.org since early 2016. …
