Hollywood Gaming Dayton Raceway Casino Trip Review

Introduction to Hollywood Gaming Dayton

In southwest Ohio, near Dayton, lies Hollywood Gaming Dayton Raceway. This slots parlor with a horse racetrack offers Class III, Vegas-style slot machines.

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This is my casino trip report and review.

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Hollywood Gaming Dayton, 59 Miles North of Cincinnati

The original operators of Ohio’s four stand-alone casinos backed a proposed constitutional amendment. In November 2009, 52% of voters approved the constitutional amendment allowing one casino in the cities of:

• Cincinnati
• Cleveland
• Columbus
• Toledo

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Subsequent changes in state lottery legislation allowed pari-mutual racetracks to begin offer video lottery terminal (VLT) style slot machines in 2012. These were the first racinos in Ohio and included Hollywood Gaming Dayton Raceway.

Theoretical Payout Limit and Return Statistics

In 2009, a constitutional amendment created the Ohio Casino Control Commission. Its website is comprehensive but only applies to slot machine casino gambling at Ohio’s four stand-alone casinos.

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The Ohio Lottery eventually became responsible for, and controls, video lottery machines found at Ohio’s seven racinos starting in 2012.

Ohio’s Gaming Control Act states that the minimum theoretical payout is 85% for slot machines at Ohio’s casino resorts. This same payout limit applies to slot machines at Ohio’s racetracks with slot machines thanks to the Ohio Lottery’s Video Lottery Game Rules.

Ohio’s five stand-alone casino resorts have return statistics publicly available from the Ohio Gaming Commission. However, Ohio’s seven racetracks with slot machines have their return statistics available from the Ohio Lottery. Both sources offer return statistics by:

• Month
• Casino
• State-wide

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In December 2021, Monthly Casino Revenue Reports from the Ohio Gaming Commission shows return statistics for the four casino resorts were:

• State-Wide: 91.94%
• Hard Rock Cincinnati: 91.92%
• Hollywood Columbus: 92.15%
• Hollywood Toledo: 91.48%
• JACK Cleveland: 92.27%

The highest return for casino resorts went to JACK Cleveland at 92.3% while the lowest went to Hollywood Toledo at 91.5%.

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In December 2021, VLT Fiscal Revenue Reports from the Ohio Lottery shows return statistics for the seven racinos were:

• State-Wide: 90.85%
• Belterra Park: 90.04%
• Eldorado Gaming Scioto Downs: 90.93%
• Hollywood Gaming Dayton Raceway: 91.00%
• Hollywood Gaming Mahoning Valley Race Course: 90.73%
• JACK Thistledown Racino: 90.88%
• MGM Northfield Park: 91.01%
• Miami Valley Gaming: 90.86%

The highest return for racinos went to MGM Northfield Park at 91% while the lowest went to Belterra Park at 90%. Overall, JACK Cleveland had the best return of any casino or racino in Ohio while Belterra Park had the lowest.

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And as is often true in often, all four casino resorts had a better return than all seven racetracks with slot machines. Hollywood Gaming Dayton Raceway ranks second out of the seven racinos, just 0.01% less than MGM Northfield Park, and ranks sixth in the state.

Food and Accommodations

Otherwise, Hollywood Gaming Dayton is open 24 hours a day and seven days a week. The state of Ohio does not permit smoking in a commercial facility of this size. This racino does not have an attached hotel nor does it have a parking structure although it has plenty of lot space and including valet service.

Hollywood Gaming Dayton has three grills and a lounge serving drinks. Menus are limited.

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No masks are currently required by the state if guests are vaccinated but employees and vendors must wear masks.

The my choice Loyalty Program

Hollywood Gaming Dayton has its mychoice player’s club managed by Penn National Gaming. It has five tier levels, and at this time, spending $5 will earn you one point.

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Tier level point requirements are:

1. Choice for new guests
2. Advantage for those who have earned 1,000 points
3. Preferred after earning 18,000 points
4. Elite after earning 50,000 points
5. The Owners Club after earning 200,000 points

In the past, I’d reached Elite status twice but am currently at the lowest tier level.

I’ve just spent 2 hours at Hollywood Gaming Dayton with perhaps 90 minutes playing or moving from machine to machine. I walked in with a $300 bankroll in my wallet and left with two-thirds of it: $196.84.

I already had a players club card but haven’t used it since my Hollywood Lawrenceburg Casino Trip Report. On that trip I earned 192 points. During this visit, I also earned 192 points. If I were to maintain a rate of nearly 200 points per visit, I’d reach Advantage, the next level up, in three more visits.

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At a cost of $5 per club point, I spent $960 today at Hollywood Gaming Dayton. However, I paid $103 as my bankroll dropped from $300 to just under $200. Meaning, I cycled by bankroll slightly more than three times.

My Hollywood Gaming Dayton Slots Experience

Upon arrival around 2 p.m. on Sunday, I waited in line at the slow-moving promotions counter but, while waiting twenty minutes, had a nice conversation with Judy. No, I didn’t tell her who I was. Why not? Because I was doing reconnaissance rather than promoting myself.

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We discussed what Sunday afternoons were like at Hollywood Gaming Dayton in her experience. “Busy!”, she said. Not being a regular at this local casino, that was good information.

After getting a new mychoice card, I did what I usually do at new-to-me casinos. I walked it to see how it was laid out. Where were the biggest aisles? When crossing another aisle, which was the biggest intersection? How were the machines laid out at these intersections?

What about the rows and carousels of machines at the entrances? Near the sports betting area? What about over by the café and grills? What did the outside of the high-limit room look like? What did the inside look like?

Hollywood Gaming Dayton isn’t the biggest casino I’ve ever seen, not by a long shot, but it would have taken about fifteen minutes to walk around. I took a long longer than that.

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In my online course, 30 Days to Play Slots Smarter and Win, I teach this. Look up from your slot machine and take a few minutes to explore your casino. You might be surprised at what you observe once you start looking around.

But an advanced technique, something that has become habit for me, is to do several things at once. Yes, I walked the casino. But it wasn’t long before I recognized this “type” of casino layout. I still had to make sure I saw everything so there would be no surprises but at the same time I started testing for my Strategy 1, the 5-Spin Method.

As I walked over to the café area, down various aisles while passing through large and small intersections, I made up to five bets on highly visible slot machines. In this way, I was using my 5-Spin Method combined with my Strategy 9: Location, Location, Location to improve my returns. If you know my winning slots strategies, it doesn’t take long before you start combining them. Doing so feels natural.

While using my 5-spin method to test if this casino gave out tastes (Spoiler alert: It doesn’t), I would pause my testing when it seemed like I’d found a candidate winning slot machine. And that’s how I spent my ninety minutes reviewing this casino.

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Yes, I got tastes from ten out of twenty slot machines, which is basically a failed test. And most of the ten tastes I did win were worth a nickel or dime.

Yet testing for my strategy 1 wasn’t a waste of time because I was also evaluating machines using my 10, 20, 50, 100 bet evaluation approach. If I got a taste in the first five bets, and if that win wasn’t a nickel or dime from a minimum 60-cent bet, then I might have found a candidate winning slot machine.

I took this combined strategy approach to find candidate slot machines to evaluate as winners. I did this because the casino was so busy, and getting busier by the moment, that I felt I’d never get another opportunity to play that machine before leaving in an hour or so.

On a machine where I got a big taste within five bets, I’d continue to make bets up to twenty bets. Normally I’d stop at 10 bets and evaluate, but my prior win meant continue to twenty bets.

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And if I was happy with my winnings at twenty bets, I’d continue to fifty bets. And if it was still going well enough at fifty bets and continue to 100 bets before my next evaluation point. And so the casino trip went.

I did this on three machines where I was sad to leave the first machine. It turned out to be the best of the three candidate machines I tried.

On it, I was slowly winning with 60-cent minimum bets. So, I switched over to maximum $3 bets on this penny machine. And that’s when I promptly won $164 in a bonus round.

This last win brought that $100 bankroll up to $196.84. Why did I stop playing? Because, as I teach in my course, I was preserving my gains.

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I put the voucher into my deposit-only pocket of my jeans, a money management technique you can learn – or just buy a lockable wallet where you insert money into it while leaving its key at home. When I was leaving an hour later, I cashed it out and that’s how I was able to leave without having spent my entire $300 bankroll.

And I was glad that I did. Why? Because I spent the rest of my bankroll trying out other candidate slot machines.

As usual with short new-to-me casino visits, I had no prior experience knowing if the casino was busy or not. If I had known, I’d have been able to fold into my plan yet another strategy, number nine: The Casino Environment.

Otherwise, as I walked through the casino, I saw no hand pays. Zip. Nada. Zero.

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And while the high-limit room had a few people in it, they seemed to be simply coming and going rather than sitting and playing. I also thought very odd that their high-limit room had no aisle leading up to it. That told me Hollywood Gaming Dayton clearly don’t make their high-limit slots room any sort of priority. It shows.

Oh, and while I was there, few people were wearing a mask besides myself. I saw few employees, but they were wearing them. And given my long wait at the promotions counter, it does seem like they are currently short-staffed at this casino.

What to Play if Visiting Hollywood Gaming Dayton

If you get the opportunity to visit Hollywood Gaming Dayton in the next few months, recognize from my experience that Strategy 9: Location, Location, Location works great at this casino. Also recognize that Strategy 1: Only Win Immediately did not work for me during my visit. And, of course, you’ll want to check for yourself, especially if several months have passed.

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To help you get started with this strategy at Hollywood Gaming Dayton, I suggest you try to get on that first candidate slot machine I played. It was a Dragon’s Law Jackpots machine facing the big intersection just inside the west entrance. Enjoy playing it and good luck!

Summary of Hollywood Gaming Dayton

Hollywood Gaming Dayton is about an hour drive north of Cincinnati, Ohio, on I-75 in Dayton.

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It’s a horse racetrack with slot machines and sports betting, including simulcast but has no table games.

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