1. Pick your games and pay tables
Decide which games you'll play and what full pay looks like for each. Write the two numbers down, or keep the full-pay guide on your phone.
Know your strategy for those games before you go. A full-pay machine played badly is no longer a full-pay machine.
2. Stay near the good machines
You'll play more where you sleep. If the best video poker in town is at a locals casino, staying there or nearby saves time and cab fares.
Weekday room rates are usually far lower than weekends, and players-club offers can cut them further.
3. Set a trip bankroll
Work out your coin-in: hands per hour times bet per hand. Quarters at max coins, 600 hands an hour, is $750 an hour through the machine.
On 9/6 Jacks or Better played perfectly, the average cost of that hour is about $3.45. Real sessions swing far more than that, because much of the return sits in a royal that comes about once in 40,000 hands.
Bring money you can lose without it changing your trip, and split it into a fixed amount per session.
4. Use the players club
Sign up at every casino you play, and ask about promotions on your dates: point multipliers, free play and drawings. Comps can cover a real share of what the game costs you.
5. Decide when you stop
Set a loss limit per session and a time limit per day, and keep both. Take breaks; tired play is expensive play.
Treat the money as the price of entertainment, never as a way to make money. Help is available if it stops being fun.