Loosest Slots in Deadwood, SD (2023 South Dakota Casinos)

If you want to see how gambling was in the old west, you should visit Deadwood, South Dakota. But the casinos in Deadwood only had table games like blackjack in the old days. Now they have casino slot machines as well. So if you visit, you need to know how to find the loosest slots in Deadwood, SD.

You can’t tell if a slot machine in Deadwood offers loose payouts by looking at the machine. But fortunately, there are other ways to find loose slots games.

Here’s a complete guide to finding the loosest slot machines in Deadwood, South Dakota. And you’re also going to learn about the tightest slots in Deadwood so you know what not to play.

How to Find the Loosest Slots in Deadwood, SD

If you want to learn how to find the loosest slots in Deadwood, SD, you have two choices. You can try finding the return percentages for individual slot machines or use statistics that show the average return percentages for slots games by denomination.

While you might be able to find return percentages for a few individual slot machines, these numbers aren’t usually published. The South Dakota Department of Revenue runs gambling in the state, though. And they publish reports that show slot machine returns by denomination.

And if you know the average return by denomination, you can see which slot machines offer the best returns. The slots with the highest returns are the loosest slots games in South Dakota.

South Dakota Gaming Statistics Monthly Summary

The reports you want to look at are the South Dakota gaming statistics monthly summary reports. These reports show how many slot machines by denomination are available in the state and the average returns.

Here are the average returns for slot machines by denomination from a recent monthly report. These slot machine returns are available on the gaming page.

• Penny slots 90.85% return
• Nickel slots 95.90% return
• City slots 89.48% return
• Dime slots 91.46% return
• Quarter slots 90.38% return
• 50 cent slots 90.01% return
• $1 slots 92.49% return
• $5 slots 90.46% return
• $25 slots 83.86% return

Loosest Deadwood, South Dakota Slot Machines

From the state statistics, you can see the loosest slots in Deadwood, South Dakota are nickel slots. But as you’re going to see from a report later in this post, nickel slots are rare in South Dakota. The entire state only has 33 nickel slot machines.

$1 slots are the loosest slot machines in Deadwood, South Dakota.

It looks like dime slots have a high return. But dime slot machines are rarer than nickel slots. Only two dime slot machines are available in South Dakota.

Surprisingly, $25 slot machines have a terrible return. But there are two things you need to understand about the poor return. Deadwood only has six $25 slot machines. And these machines don’t get a lot of action. So the numbers for one month vary by month.

Penny slots, $1 slots, and quarter slots make up the majority of slot machines in Deadwood, South Dakota. In fact, there are more penny slot machines than every other denomination combined.

Of the three, $1 slot machines have the highest returns. So $1 slot machines are looser on average than other slots games in Deadwood.

Casinos in Deadwood, South Dakota

Here’s a list of casinos in Deadwood, South Dakota. Deadwood has a lot of casinos, and all have slot machines. But most of these casinos only have a few.

The casinos in Deadwood, South Dakota aren’t like the casinos in Las Vegas or Atlantic City. These are small casinos.

Licenses for slot machines in Deadwood are for up to 30 slots games. So a casino that only has one license can have no more than 30 machines. However, in some cases two or more license holders partner so they can have more than 30 slot machines in one location.

Based on the total number of casinos in Deadwood and the total number of slot machines, each casino has an average of 116 machines.

• Buffalo Bodega Gaming Complex
• Cadillac Jack’s Gaming Resort
• Deadwood Gulch Gaming Resort
• Deadwood Mountain Grand Casinos and Hotel
• Deadwood Station Bunkhouse and Gambling Hall
• First Gold Hotel and Gaming
• Gold Country Inn Gambling Hall and Café
• Gold Dust Gaming and Entertainment Complex
• Hickok’s Casino
• Historic Bullock Hotel
• Iron Horse Inn
• Lucky 8 Gaming
• The Lodge at Deadwood Gaming Resort
• Main Street Deadwood Gulch
• Mineral Palace Hotel and Gaming
• Mustang Sally’s
• Old Saloon Number 10
• Oyster Bay Bar and Casino
• Silverado Franklin Historic Hotel and Gaming Complex
• Tin Lizzie Gaming Resort
• VFW Casino
• Wooden Nickel Casino

A few other casinos operate in South Dakota outside of Deadwood. All other casinos in South Dakota are owned by Indian tribes.

How Many Slot Machines Are in Deadwood, South Dakota?

Deadwood, SD doesn’t exactly qualify as the slot machine capital of the world. In fact, many casinos in other states have more slot machines than all of the casinos in Deadwood combined. But you can still find plenty of slots games in Deadwood.

So, how many slot machines are in Deadwood, South Dakota?

From the gambling reports the state of South Dakota publishes, you can see how many slot machines are in the entire state. But the reports don’t break the numbers down by area. However, the reports are still useful.

Most of the slot machines in South Dakota are in Deadwood. And all of the rest of the slot machines in South Dakota are tribal casinos. And tribal casino numbers aren’t reported by the state.

Here are the numbers for slot machines in Deadwood, South Dakota:

• Penny slots 2,038 slot machines
• Nickel slots 33 slot machines
• Dime slots 2 slot machines
• Quarter slots 133 slot machines
• 50 cent slots 7 slot machines
• $1 slots 225 slot machines
• $5 slots 59 slot machines
• $25 slots 6 slot machines
• City slot 52 slot machines

As you can see, penny slot machines are the most common games in Deadwood, SD. $1 slot machines are second, and quarter slots games are third.

And as you learned earlier, penny slot machines have poor returns. $1 slot machines are your best bet in Deadwood, South Dakota.

The numbers above are directly from the South Dakota gaming report. I don’t know what a city slot is. But I know from the return numbers, city slots have terrible returns. So if you run across a city slot, don’t play.

The Tightest Slot Machines in Deadwood, South Dakota

You know that $1 slots are the loosest in Deadwood. But what are the tightest slot machines in Deadwood, South Dakota?

When you look at the return numbers from the state reports listed earlier in this post, it looks like the $25 slot machines are the tightest. But you’re probably not going to play $25 slot machines and there aren’t many available anyway.

South Dakota also publishes an annual report that lists hold percentages. Hold percentages aren’t the same as return percentages, but they’re still useful. You can find the annual report here.

From this report, the hold percentage for penny slots was 9.29%. And the hold percentage for $1 slots was 7.24%. Quarter slots had a hold percentage of 9.28%.

Quarter slots in most states have a lower hold percentage than penny slots. But as you can see, in South Dakota, quarter slots and penny slots have basically the same hold percentages.

Another interesting number from the report was the hold percentage for $5 slots. They had a hold percentage of 6.2%. You might find this in disagreement with the return numbers listed earlier. But the report I’m using in this section covers a year, and the earlier report only covered a month.

The yearly hold percentage agrees with what I see in reports from other states. $1 and $5 slots tend to be looser than lower denomination slots. But in other states, quarter slots tend to be much looser than penny slots.

This doesn’t appear to be the case in North Dakota. So you should avoid playing any slot machines below $1 denominations in Deadwood, South Dakota.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for the loosest slots in Deadwood, SD, play $1 slots. But don’t get fooled by penny slots that cost $1 or more to play. You want to play slot machines that use $1 denominations.

Penny slots make up a large percentage of slot machines in Deadwood, South Dakota. But penny slots have a low return percentage. So you should avoid plying penny slots when you visit Deadwood.

Returns within different slot machine denominations vary. This means that some $1 slots have better returns than others. So if you’re not having any luck with one machine, play another machine to see if it offers better returns.