The question

The GM wants to replace The Gilded Ace's 10 lowest-earning slot machines (fictional casino, synthetic data). We tested three explanations first.

Luck

From each machine's bet sizes and payout variance, we measured house win minus theo in standard deviations. Across 310 machines the spread matches chance: 20 beyond ±2σ against 14 expected. Most low earners are just unlucky.

Location

Nine of the ten sit in Back Forty, which earns 67% of the floor's theo per available hour for the same game mix. When renovation closed its walkway (Mar 3–Apr 6), Back Forty's play fell 31% relative to the rest of the floor, then recovered: access drives it. Three of the ten weren't on the floor all period.

Leak

Hit rate is far less noisy than hold, so we tested it against each game's published hit probability. M-1158 hits on 38.6% of spins against 31.5% published (z = 124, already 8.6σ on day one) and held 3.0% against a configured 10%. It's a lead for a paytable inspection, not evidence of wrongdoing.

Fair ranking

Against identical games in the same zone, only 7 machines floor-wide are truly weak, and none is on the manager's list.

Everything else on the floor

Downtime cost about $99k of theo (0.42%), 55% from Ridgeline cabinets, peaking 8 p.m.–midnight. Players (carded only) netted −$15.6M, close to $15.5M theo; the top 5% produce 52% of theo. Comps: on May 1 points per comp dollar halved; redemptions didn't move, but the unredeemed balance is now worth $7.6M instead of $3.3M.

Model

A log-linear weekday + known-event forecast, frozen April 30, scored $49k MAE on May–June against $218k for a constant mean. As a counterfactual, it shows February's tournament added about $72k of theo, which decides the promotion bet.

The $100k plan (July)

Inspect M-1158 ($1,200), add Back Forty wayfinding ($7,500; break-even lift 2.9%), and run one tournament weekend ($15,000): $23,700 for an expected $61k of theo (range $15k–$107k), keeping $76,300. Each action has a measurement plan on the dashboard. Replacing the bottom 10, extra technicians and preventive maintenance fail break-even within 30 days.

Tools

Gemini answers managers' questions from our cited evidence and floor notes retrieved with MongoDB Atlas Vector Search; every answer is logged for audit.

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