Some California Casinos have more slots than many Vegas Strip casinos

You'd think that MGM Grand, the biggest casino in Las Vegas, would have the most slot machines in the country -- but it doesn't.

There are two casinos in Southern California -- within a 90 minute drive of Los Angeles -- that have more slots than the MGM Grand.

The latest stats from the MGM Grand show it has 2,500 slots and video poker machines.

But Casino Morongo along the 10-Freeway and less than 90 minutes from downtown Los Angeles has 2,700 slots or VP machines, and Pechanga Casino in Temecula which is also about 90 minutes from downtown LA has more than 3,800 machines. Pala Casino in San Diego County (about twenty minutes from Pechanga) has 2,000 machines and Harrah's Rincon has 1,700 machines but will be getting more once its casino expansion project is finished in about 18-months from now.

Here are more casinos under MGM and how many slots each has:

Bellagio 2,400
NYNY 2,000
Luxor 2,000
Aria 1,940
Excalibur 1,700
Mirage 1,650
Mandalay Bay 1,500
CircusCircus 1,500
Monte Carlo 1, 350

Pechanga, by the way, almost beats the MGM Grand for the number of table games. The Temecula casino has 132 table games, while MGM Grand has 135. The casino under the MGM umbrealla with the most table games is Aria with 145.

There was some minimum slot requirement for California Indian casinos which was in place in order to prevent poorly-funded casinos from popping up. I forgot how many was the minimum, but perhaps that's the reason for the high number of slot machines in CA casinos.

Typically slot payout rates are worse at CA casinos than Vegas (especially strip properties) because they face little competition.