Mirage Dubbed “Luckiest Casino” on The Strip

By Scott Roeben, on December 04 2023
3 min read 9 comments
Gambling Las Vegas Las Vegas Casinos

Luck is a wondrous thing. One day, it gives you a handy on the High Roller Ferris wheel, the next a swift kick to the meat clackers.

Our spirit animals at Casino.org decided to figure out which Las Vegas casino visitors consider luckiest based upon Tripadvisor reviews, and Mirage came out on top. Which is another thing that sometimes happens on the High Roller, by the way.

Let do a shallow dive into why Mirage won, Resorts World tanked and some of our favorite casinos weren’t in the running.

Soon to be the “former Mirage.”

We should say we tend to be skeptical about such “studies,” all due respect to our colleagues who, we suspect, will not be inviting us to any Taco Tuesday office outings anytime soon.

Such “reports” and “studies” and “surveys” are often questionable because: 1) they’re strictly for entertainment purposes, 2) they’re thinly-veiled attempts to get Web traffic and media coverage, and 3) the methodology is thin at best. Oh, and it’s Tripadvisor. It’s like when “studies” are done about the best restaurants based upon Yelp reviews. Currently, Hell’s Kitchen is ranked the best restaurant in Las Vegas on Yelp, with Yardbird being second, Carson Kitchen is third. Anyone who agrees those are the top three restaurants in Las Vegas needs to check themselves into a clinic immediately. Carson Kitchen doesn’t even serve Captain Morgan. Please.

Anyway, luck.

We have blogged and podcasted about luck often, as it’s a fascinating part of the Las Vegas experience.

Casino.org’s lucky casino report extracted keywords related to luck on Tripadvisor: Lucky, luck, won, winning, success, jackpot and hand pay. You get the idea.

That’s actually a fun way to glean guest sentiment about a casino, short of doing a real survey, which is expensive. We know, we’ve done them professionally. If we never have to cross-tab anything again, it will be too soon.

It’s worth mentioning this report only included 15 casinos. Las Vegas has about 60 casinos.

When we saw the results, we became instantly triggered because there were no downtown casinos included, and no Ellis Island and no locals casinos and actually a bigass number of our favorite places (Circa, Plaza, Four Queens, Downtown Grand, Golden Gate, Red Rock, etc.) were not even considered for being ranked. We asked Casino.org about it, and were told the list was narrowed down to Strip casinos based upon the number of reviews. Which sort of makes sense, but 15 casinos does not a reliable “Luckiest Casinos in Las Vegas” list make.

Apparently, a lot of Mirage reviews contain one or more of those luck-related terms. We wouldn’t have predicted Mirage would win this luck throwdown, despite our assertion we know everything.

We would, however, could have guessed Resorts World would rank last on the lucky casino list.

About 6% of Mirage reviews contained mentions of luck and winning, Resorts World’s mentions were around 0.78%.

To be clear, the number of luck-related words in a casino’s Tripadvisor reviews has virtually zero correlation to the “probabilities of hitting a jackpot” at that casino. It does, however, make for great conversation. And we don’t like tacos all that much, anyway.

We love Resorts World, but we have actually been told by a longtime slot expert Resorts World has the tightest slots on The Strip. This expert has seen the PAR sheets. PAR sheets show a machine’s hold and let’s just say the airport is loose compared to Resorts World.

This doesn’t mean you can’t get lucky at Resorts World! Luck is weird like that. People win million-dollar jackpots at the airport all the time (two times, but just play along).

Luck is wonderful because you never know when or where it will sit on your face.™

We frequent casinos where the holds and pay tables aren’t the best, but we win there on a fairly regular basis. We have certain casinos where the slots are presumably loose and we can’t win a penny.

It comes as a surprise to some that slots downtown are now tighter than on The Strip. It sure doesn’t feel that way, but math is math.

Ultimately, luck is a mindset. If you’d like to learn more about luck, we recommend a book called “The Luck Factor” by Dr. Richard Wiseman. We talked about the book on episode 13 of our podcast.

There are lots of strategies to improve your “luck” when gambling. We would share those strategies, but that would take time away from gambling.

Basically, find old reel machines and avoid the flashy video ones, and really avoid the ones themed after TV shows or movies. Avoid the slots with huge progressive jackpots. Play as high a denomination as fits into your budget. Overall, the higher the denomination, the better the return-to-player (“RTP”). Penny slots have the biggest casino holds. Always play max bet and don’t pay anyone to choose a lucky machine for you.

Now, check the lucky casino list and get busy winning.

Oh, and remember, the absolutely best way to have better luck in a casino is to find us in the casino and let us rub your butt. This is a proven strategy with guaranteed results. Women only. Don’t ask why this free good luck strategy is only effective with women. That’s just the way luck works.