When Nevada’s Gaming Control Board releases its monthly revenue report, two numbers appear side by side for slot machines: win and coin-in.
We revise a page when the statute, filing or report behind it changes: if the source is not in front of us, the figure does not go up.
What is on this page
The board’s own internal-control guidance states that actual hold equals the statistical win divided by coin-in. Yet the same public document labels a separate field “Win Percent”—and defines it as the reported win amount divided by the total dollar amount played by patrons. A reader who treats either of these percentages as the return-to-player figure found on the machine’s help screen will misread the entire report.
That confusion is not accidental. State revenue reports follow accounting conventions, not player-facing mathematics. Understanding them starts with the raw terms the regulators require.
What the Regulator Means by Drop, Coin-in, and Gross Revenue
Nevada’s instructions for the NGC-31 monthly report require casinos to report “coins-in,” defined as the net increase in slot machine in-meter readings during the period. That figure must include all cashable and non-cashable credits wagered. Separately, the report demands “drop” for every game type—the physical money taken in, synonymous with “write” for counter games. Gross revenue for a slot machine, per Nevada Regulation 6, is drop less fills and jackpot payouts; for table games, it is the closing bankroll plus returned credit slips and drop, minus the opening bankroll, fills, and transfers.
South Dakota’s gaming internal-control manual mirrors the approach: win is gross gaming revenue, handle is the total amount wagered, and hold percentage describes the relationship of hold to drop or handle. That manual, like Nevada’s slot guidance, requires a monthly comparison of each machine’s actual hold to its theoretical hold percentage—an internal audit step, not a figure posted on a public dashboard.
Why the Same Word Can Mean Different Ratios
The denominator switches depending on the game and the state. Nevada’s slot guidance calculates actual hold using coin-in, which tallies every spin, including credits recycled from a previous win. South Dakota’s hold percentage can be expressed against drop or handle, and New Jersey’s monthly reports disclose win and drop/handle as distinct line items, with a win percentage derived from the relationship between the two.
Table games widen the gap further. Nevada’s table-game gross revenue formula ties directly to drop—the cash in the box—not to the total amount wagered across all hands, which is rarely captured. So a hold figure for blackjack based on drop will look different from a slot hold based on coin-in, even if the house advantage is identical. The internal-control guidance’s insistence on a theoretical-to-actual comparison exists precisely because the state wants to spot deviations from expectations, not to publish a uniform return metric.
What a Monthly Report Really Displays
Nevada’s Gaming Revenue Information page describes the monthly report as a summary of revenue for nonrestricted gaming activity. The January 2026 report, for instance, states that slot Win Percent is win divided by total dollars played—effectively the same ratio as the internal hold calculation but presented without any label that says “RTP.” New Jersey’s reports go further: they publish win, drop/handle, win percentage, and promotional gaming credits wagered as separate fields, making it clear that promotional credits are a line item, not necessarily netted from the win.
No state report examined here calls its published percentage a “return-to-player” figure. The Nevada documents use “hold,” “win percent,” “theoretical hold,” and “actual hold.” South Dakota’s manual defines hold percentage as the relationship of hold to drop or handle, never to the player’s theoretical expectation.
What a Revenue Report Will Never Tell You
Revenue reports do not disclose individual machine settings, par sheets, or actual RTP values. Nevada’s internal-control guidance expects casinos to compute actual hold and compare it to the theoretical hold programmed into each machine, but those comparisons remain in the back office. The public sees only aggregated win and coin-in. So a report that shows a 7 percent hold across a slot floor tells you how much of the wagered churn the house kept over the month, not that the machines were set to return 93 cents on the dollar. A machine designed to return 92 percent of each wager can easily produce a reported hold of 7 or 8 percent because coin-in counts recycled winnings multiple times while net revenue flows from the initial drop. The two numbers coexist, but they measure entirely different things.
Reading Hold Without Mistaking It for Return-to-Player
The denominator is everything. If a state reports hold against drop, a $20 bill inserted into a machine and played through $200 of coin-in will yield a smaller percentage than the same win divided by coin-in. New Jersey’s drop/handle field and Nevada’s coin-in expose this split directly. When you see “hold” or “win percent” in a state report, find the definition document—Nevada’s NGC-31 instructions, South Dakota’s administrative rules, New Jersey’s report headers—and check whether the ratio uses coin-in, drop, or handle. Only then can you tell how much the casino kept relative to what patrons actually put at risk. The same game can look different depending on the denominator the state chose, and that choice, not a machine’s payback design, is what fills the revenue report.