Where to Win Big in Missouri? State's Luckiest Casinos

When we sat down to write this article, we googled “what is Missouri famous for?” and the answer was “random oversized objects”. Now we’re really distracted, thinking about giant slots, or a roulette wheel the size of a swimming pool. I bet you’d get really lucky if you played on one of those.

Anyway, back here in the real world, gambling in Missouri has a long history, going all the way back to the 19th century, when gamblers would wager on poker, roulette, and 21 in traditional saloons.

More recently, the first form of legal gambling was charitable bingo, which was legalized in 1982, and steamboat casinos were allowed in 1992, although without slot games. Slots finally came to the state in 1994, and the rest - as they say - is history. 

There are now a total of 13 casinos in Missouri. Over 24,000 people are now employed across the gambling industry in the state, and the gross gambling revenue in 2023 sat at $1.92 billion, according to the American Gaming Association. 

To determine which is the luckiest casino in the entire state of Missouri, we decided to do some hard-hitting research on Tripadvisor. 

If people are talking about their wins online, the casino has to be lucky, right? So we assessed all of the reviews, looking for words like "lucky,"  "jackpot,"  and “hand pay,"  and based on that, we were able to rank the luckiest casinos in the state.

These are the ones we ranked:

Now it’s time to get right into it. 

According to the results of our research, the luckiest casino in the state of Missouri is none other than St. Jo Frontier Casino, which received an impressive 39.39% on the Luck Scale. 

There were 26 keyword mentions out of 66 reviews - six people used the word "winning,” and there were even four mentions of "jackpot.”

Billed as the “ultimate gaming experience," Jo Frontier Casino claims to have over 400 loose slots, and the reviews seem to agree. 

As one person put it, “The slots have never let us down, tight enough to keep you interested, but loose enough to keep you playing. And people are winning and cheering in there every time we've gone. It's a fun atmosphere.”

Century Casino in Cape Girardeau didn’t do too badly either, achieving second place with a Luck Rating of 34.78%. 

With 800 slot machines and 19 tables, Century Casino promises to enhance the experience with lots of promotions, plus there’s entertainment and dining options to keep you interested. 

According to one review, “Once you enter the doors to go inside the casino, it comes 'alive'. The sound of 'winnings'! is music to your ears.” We love the sound of that!

In third place, we have Argosy Casino in Kansas City, with 34.03%. With over 1,100 casino games, a loyalty program, and a spa, this one sure sounds promising.

Said one happy gambler, “Put 20 in a dollar slot and on the second pull, I won 375. That's never happened to me before so I guess I heard right about them having good oodds." Yeah, or maybe you just got lucky at this lucky casino!

But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows in Missouri after all - there are a couple of casinos that unfortunately rank very poorly on our scale. Right at thebottom of the list was Lumiere Place Casino, with a rating of just 13.32%, amounting to 87 keyword mentions out of 653 reviews. 

It rebranded as Horseshoe St. Louis in 2022, but that doesn’t seem to have done much to increase the chances of winning. No one used the term “hand pay” and only one said they were in profit. 

“Although there were many players, there was no winning at all.” said one review, and another person mentioned something that sounds a lot like bed bugs, so we might give this one a miss.

At second from the bottom was Hollywood Casino St. Louis, which got 13.74% on our scale, with absolutely no mentions of “success”, “bonus”, or “profit”. 

Methodology

Casinos.com utilized Tripadvisor reviews to do an in-depth analysis of phrases associated with luck to determine the luckiest and unluckiest casinos in the state of Missouri. We calculated the percentage of luck-rated mentions in the total Tripadvisor reviews and extrapolated them as if all casinos had the same number of reviews for fairness.

Keywords tracked: Lucky, Luck, Winning, Big Win, Winner, Bonus, Profit, Success, Jackpot, Hand Pay

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