Sub $1 Vouchers

It’s so annoying, and they are banking on people to do just that: think it’s too much of a hassle to turn them in. Then they’ll have slot attendants go through the casino and collect these discarded tickets, whether they’re left in a machine or left elsewhere.

You can donate your ticket as you cash out at a kiosk, and the cynical side of me figures that’s a nice yearly tax write-off for the casino. But if there’s a charity that speaks to you (sometimes you’ll have options), by all means.

These small tickets can be useful if you want to check for plays on games such as Phoenix Link or Buffalo Link (which you can read about on those linked pages).

If I’m not saving a small ticket for that, it’s going to come down to a few factors. If it’s greater than 50¢, I’m too much of a grinder to just discard that. I’m going to the cage. I don’t care if I’m wasting time and could make more money by checking machines in the time it takes.

If I’m in Las Vegas for a week, let’s say, and I have a 35¢ ticket from Aria and I go there multiple times per day, I am going to stick the ticket in the back of my wallet and use it later. It’s a pain to be sure, as sometimes I’ll have 10-plus tickets piling up in there, but it’s the principle.

If we’re talking about 12¢ or something, yeah, I’ll probably just chuck it. I’ve seen some folks give them to people actively on machines. That’s not a bad idea, either. I’d feel a little weird giving someone 12¢, but hey, it’s better than the alternative.

You can probably tell that I’ve given this a lot of thought over the years haha. It grinds my gears that they rarely just dispense coins from the kiosk.

Personally, I either keep them for checker tickets or take them to the cage. Cashiers get paid to be bothered with my coin, and the casino does not get to keep a penny of my money. Besides, eventually, all that extra coin adds up to paper money, and singles keep the cocktail waitresses and slot floors happy.

^ I used to do that back in the day, but I’d advise against that, especially if you’re playing advantage slots. The casino could boot you. It would be exceedingly rare, I’m sure, but I’ve heard of it happening before.

One of my local spots gives you the chump change ticket, and it’s not possible to stick it to a machine in the future. So I just have a stack of 23c tickets in a pile on my dresser. At the end of the year I’m going to cash them in for like $20 or whatever. I go pretty often and it’s annoying I can’t use them in a machine. I too, feel like they shouldn’t get a dime of my money.

On Ben Rosenthal said

Something sort of related happened to me recently: I forgot which casino, but I needed to show ID when cashing in a ticket under $1.

I’d imagine if I came with a pile of tickets, that might have caused an issue, as they might have assumed I went around the casino looking for vouchers. Although if I were doing such a thing, I’d just combine them all in a machine anyway.

Maybe it’s more if you keep coming in throughout the day with like 50 of these tickets. Or maybe they figure a homeless person might not have ID, or perhaps it’s just to identify someone like that so they can keep better tabs on everyone.

That’s exactly what it is. In Vegas, particularly on Fremont Street, homeless folks go around and cash out money left in machines, and very few of them have ID. Many of them are also aware of the principles taught here, although their entry points leave much to be desired. Having the cashier check ID before redeeming a sub-$1 voucher is an easy way to keep the homeless people from coming up on the money actual players leave behind, although it’s by no means a perfect solution. Gathering enough tickets, sticking them all in a machine, and then cashing out a voucher over $1 would defeat that, but most homeless people also have addiction issues, and they’d be more likely to play what they’ve gathered in desperate hope of getting lucky and scoring some drug money than cashing out a $1+ voucher. Video keno is a common game for homeless folks for precisely that reason; if you see a rather disheveled individual playing video keno, there is a .90+ probability that said individual is a homeless drug addict.

Interesting stuff. Who knew this would be one of the more popular topics!