Luckiest and Unluckiest Casinos in Illinois

The name “Illinois” comes from a local tribal word meaning “land of the superior men”. Well, that’s debatable, but we wouldn’t blame you for feeling a bit superior if you manage to hit a big jackpot at one of the lucky casinos.

In 1990, Illinois was only the second state to legalize riverboat casinos (Iowa was the first). But legal gambling has a history going back much longer - betting on horse racing was legalized as far back as the 1920s, and bingo became legal in the 70s. 

There are currently 15 commercial casino destinations in the state of Illinois, and although many of them are located in the Chicago area, there’s also a decent selection further south. 

The economic impact is estimated at $7.04 billion, which is much more than in most other states, and over 28,000 are employed in some way by the industry, so it’s no small contributor to the state’s economy. 

We analyzed a whole lot of Illinois casinos to try to figure out exactly which one is the luckiest. And while we didn’t get to visit them all in person to test the games for ourselves (okay, fine, we didn’t visit any of them, let alone all), we trusted the good people over at Tripadvisor. 

By assessing reviews for mentions of words like “jackpot”, “winner”, and “bonus”, we were able to rank these casinos on our totally made up Luck Scale. 

According to our ratings, Hollywood Casino Joliet ranked top of the list as the luckiest casino in all of Illinois. It got a rating of 32.79%, with 100 out of 305 reviews mentioning one of our keywords. 

Hollywood Casino Joliet had a particularly high number of reviews mentioning “won” and “winning” (26 each). 

One review said “I had won 2 jackpots back to back and the staff was so friendly and attentive. They were just as excited as I was myself”. Sounds like the ideal experience to us!

Next up, Par-A-Dice Casino (get it? It sounds like “paradise”, but also you get a “pair of dice” in a casino? No? Okay, moving on) received a luck rating of 30.33%, with a pretty decent 32 out of 300 reviews including the word “won”. 

A few people called out five figure wins, but some of the reviews also mentioned smaller wins of around $50. One person summed it up pretty well by saying “I’d rather go to Vegas but....this may do for you”, I mean, same. 

And third on the list was Grand Victoria, with 30.03%, so it’s almost on par with Par-A-Dice (see what we did there?). This one had 29 mentions of “won”, seven of “jackpot” and even one “handpay”. 

This is a riverboat casino with over 1,100 slots, plus Vegas-style table games, plus a few dining options, so even if you don’t get lucky on the games, at least you can enjoy a nice meal. 

One reviewer said “I've gone to Grand Victoria for years. I've won a few jackpots, that's fun. The dealers are for the most part, fun”. Sounds fun. 

If we’re being honest, Jumer's Casino Rock Island got a pretty abysmal rating of 9.68%. There were over 2,000 reviews for this casino, and a measly 200 of them called out any of our keywords. The word that came up the most was “won”, with 86 mentions, so we headed to the reviews to check that out. 

While a few players did get lucky, much of the sentiment was similar to the review that said “If you want to lose your money go here! Tightest machines I have ever seen”. Well, we don’t want to lose money, so we definitely won’t be going here.

There was quite a jump from last to second last, and Argosy Casino Alton actually got a rating of 13.53%. Not the worst, perhaps, but still no mentions of a “handpay”, and only two “jackpots” in 170 reviews. “The sound of winning is non-existent”. That tells us all we need to know.

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 Illinois. 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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