When Should I Go Gambling? Find Out the Best Time to Go to the Casino

The short answer to “When is the best time to go to the casino to win” is “Whenever we want to, buddy.” But the reality is not that easy to define.

A variety of things will determine your ideal time to go to the casino, such as your choice of game, your agenda, and your nearness to one.

Sure, the best time is when you are free from stress, have adequate funds you are not loath to lose, and have a casino within walking distance.

There are definite advantages to playing certain games at certain times. Whether you’re just having an unplanned couple of hours at the casino or you’re there for a variety of non-gambling reasons, you need to know what to expect.

If you’re a beginner at the casino, I’ll be going over the best time of day, weekday, or weekend to visit below.

First things first, let’s break down the best time of day to go to the casino. After all, everyone’s schedule is different, so the time of day is most important.

A general guide for casino visitage (rhymes with garage, but said with a French accent, the haughtier, the better) would be simply splitting the day between light and dark.

Unsurprisingly, casinos are mostly busy in the evenings and throughout most nights.

So, if you’re looking for the best time to go to the casino to win, you’ll find that it depends on what types of games you are going to play.

Progressive slots—particularly the must-drops—are more likely to hit for much the same reason—the jackpots are being driven ever-higher by the multitude of people frantically hitting that PLAY button.

High-stakes poker is best played in the evening because it is when the high rollers come out to play.

The pro is that most tables will be open, and you’ll have that many more opponents to play against.

The con is that poker rooms can get pretty tight in seating, which means that you may either be sitting outside the poker room playing a penny slot while you wait for a seat to open up or seated at a game that is too rich for your blood but has a seat immediately available.

You’ll find more open table games in the evening hours. Games like blackjack, pai gow, roulette, and craps are good to play at any time because you’re battling the house, not your fellow gamblers.

But the evening is when the casino opens up the most tables, so that’s when you’ll have the best opportunity to find a seat at the game you want to play.

There are also reasons why the best time to go to the casino to win is in the daytime.

If you’re a social poker player (i.e., not a pro here in Vegas to grind out the entry fee to the WSOP Main Event), you may find daytimes in the poker rooms preferable to late evening play.

Table games of all sorts are more accessible during the daytime, and because you’re playing against the house rather than other gamblers, a crowd is neither necessary nor welcome.

Ultimately, deciding the best time to visit the casino can often come down to two things; how social you want to be and what games you want to play.

If you prefer a quiet scene and an endless amount of games to choose from, I recommend signing up at a reputable online casino.

When is the best day to go to the casino? The best days to visit the casino depend on your gambling preferences.

Still, in the case of conventions and other business or social occasions (see next section), you may find the days you can gamble—and even the time frames—a bit restricted.

Assuming you don’t have a case of the Monday’s, you may be interested in gambling right away to start your week. Hopefully, after you clock out, of course.

This is the Sargasso Sea of gambling when the action is relatively dead during the day and only increases mildly during the evening hours.

Naturally, if you’re visiting a local casino, the difference between weekday and weekend attendance may be minimal.

You’ll typically find available seats at all the table games—the trick is finding one manned by a dealer. Regular slots play works in this time frame, but save your progressive slot play for busier times.

Destination resorts like the MGM Grand or the Tropicana tend to rock on the weekends, making their minimal weekday action more surprising.

Friday is when metropolitan areas within a few hours of your casino fill the freeways between themselves and your casino with barbarian hordes of weekend revelers.

By Friday night, your favorite casino will be very, very busy. Saturday continues as more invaders join the Friday vanguard, so Saturday night sees every venue in the casino—from the casino floor itself to the dance clubs, nightclubs, bottle clubs, and auditoriums—overpacked with people.

Sunday tends to start early, and most Saturday revelers are too busy regretfully packing up and preparing for the drive home.

It’s incredible how much longer a three-hour drive is on Sunday than on Friday. Sunday play favorites should be table games (when they’re open), video poker, and online slots for real money.

So, the best time to go to a casino and win depends on how you enjoy gambling.

If you prefer going when it’s busy, Friday and Saturday nights work best. Weekdays or Sundays will be better for those of you who prefer smaller crowds.

If your target casino is part of a resort, it’s possible that your main reason to be there is not so much to gamble as it is to see a concert, enjoy some fine dining, or even for an extended vacation stay.

Whichever time of day or night you prefer to gamble, if you’re at the casino for reasons other than doubling your money, you still plan to squeeze in a wager or two, so let’s look at your best gambling options for the venue, the time of day, and for your schedule.

Unless you only do breakfast dates, your window of gambling opportunity will be in the evening hours—and probably on the weekend.

Since this is also the time, everyone else in the free world chooses to go on a date, expect dinner reservations to be elusive, show tickets to be expensive, lines for everything—all topped off with a casino floor awash with humanity in varying stages of inebriation.

Any excuse to enjoy the best food at casinos is a good excuse.

The games you’ll want to concentrate on are those that favor short-term evening play like progressive slots, craps, and roulette.

If, on the other hand, you choose the quiet, contemplative games where your deep thoughts are not interrupted by the computerized sounds of a jackpot (keno, anyone?), the best time to go to the casino to win might be between 9 am and 5 pm, preferably Monday through Thursday.

Mornings are a special time in a casino. The staff is chipper and polite and has not had its professional good humor broken against the rocky shoreline of the Umbrage of a Thousand Guests.

Of course, this is also that time of the day when the vacuum cleaners come out to play, and carts loaded with whatever it is they’re constantly shuttling about in the casino—money, maybe? Luggage? Card-counters? Whatever.

The important thing is that people are sparse on the casino floor in the early morning hours and through daylight hours.

If you want to know when to go to the casino, daytime is a great time to smoke a cigar and play keno, especially if you don’t like other people.

Okay, you’re already in a bad situation because no conventioneer’s plan survives first contact with the casino as with war.

You may have the best intentions of schmoozing potential customers to stock your innovative left-handed sprockets. Still, the siren song of the casino floor keeps making your eyes lose focus while your thoughts turn to all the houses you will buy with your progressive jackpot wins.

Don’t stop at nearby casinos. Instead, find one that isn’t hosting some auxiliary convention, and play there. Do that if you are a slot or table game player.

If you prefer live poker rooms, however, stay in the casino hosting the convention—the hold’em tables will be filled with fellow out-of-towners who are more likely to be eager to test their untried skills at this “hold them” game they’ve heard so much about.

If you plan to book-end one of the best Las Vegas shows with an hour of before-and-after gambling, you’ll be playing on the casino floor during the busiest time of the day: the evening.

If slots are your game, note that machines near the entrance to the show venue are likely to be swamped, even inaccessible, thanks to the swarms of show-goers eager to take a few last whacks at winning that jackpot before they fall asleep (again!) halfway through Cirque du Soleil’s “O” presentation.

Your best bets for before-and-after-show play are the slots, craps, and roulette games.

But what if your visit to a casino is specifically to gamble?

There are many choices, from slots and table games to poker rooms and racebooks. Not to mention keno rooms, but let’s not go there, m’kay?

Here are the best times for when you should go to a casino and why.

Poker rooms can provide refuge from the crowds but present their share of challenges. You’re not going to find it easy to flit from game to game as you might on the casino floor. Weekends and evenings are also tough on table-hoppers.

You’ll typically find yourself waiting for a seat at the table you want to play at during those busy times. Of course, you can always take a seat at a lower-limit table and hone your Texas Hold’em skills while waiting for that higher-end seat.

Naturally, for high stakes poker games and tourneys, you’ll want full tables, so you’ll want to play after dark. On the other hand, if you’re grinding the low-limit hold’em tables for lunch money, then pretty much anytime is good as long as the tables are relatively full.

We’ve all walked into a casino during the day and walked past table after table game, each manned by a dealer with nothing to do but stand there and wait for a player.

This is when table games will be the most crowded, the action fast and plentiful, and your opportunities to profit most abundant.

Additionally, more table games will be in operation, and those dealers who were dozing at their blackjack and pai gow tables at three in the afternoon have been replaced with the best dealers the casino has on hand.

At night—even during the weekdays—craps tables can look like a shark tank at chum time. Ditto the roulette tables. So, when is the best time to go to the casino for table game enjoyers?

Evening (particularly on the weekends) is when your table game choices are most abundant.

Mid-afternoon into the early evening are typically the best times to play the slots.

Evenings and weekends can make it challenging to get a seat at any of the more popular slots. Progressive slots are the one exception here.

You’ll want to play a progressive slot when that slot bank is at its busiest—usually in the evenings and the weekends, and whenever the progressive jackpots are nearing their sweet spot of winning.

In fact, you can read up on how often they hit below.

When Do Progressive Jackpot Slots Hit? – How Often They Pay Out, Which Games to Play, and More

How often do progressive jackpots hit? The answer depends on what slot machine you’re playing. Hot drop jackpots tell you when they will be won, which makes them easily the best option. Winning a progressive jackpot is purely luck, meaning no strategy or...

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So, when is the best time to go to the casino to win?

The answer depends on your situation. You might prefer to go gambling during the day if you prefer a quiet atmosphere with easily accessible tables.

For those of you who enjoy the upbeat energy at the casino, I would recommend visiting on a weekend night. There’s nothing like getting on a roll in craps when you’re surrounded by fun people.

You don’t always have to make the journey to the casino in order to gamble, which is sometimes the reason why you don’t go.

Head over to the best online casinos so you can gamble whenever your heart desires.

Footnotes:

• Las Vegas shows are courtesy of Local Adventurer.