We timed how long it takes to get a free drink at five Vegas casinos, here's what to sip while you wait

Free is a generous word in Las Vegas. So Gambling.com's team took a handful of dollars into five of the Strip's most famous casinos to find out exactly how generous, timing how long it takes to get a complimentary drink once you sit down at a slot machine.

The Flamingo won easily. Staff took the order after just 45 cents had gone into the machine, four minutes and 20 seconds after sitting down, and the drink itself turned up a little over three minutes later. The Bellagio took ten and a half minutes to note the order and 23 minutes to deliver, by which point $27.30 had already gone into the reels. The Cosmopolitan needed just over 13 minutes to take the order and $50 before the glass arrived. Planet Hollywood managed the order in 19 minutes, the drink itself in just over five, $21 spent along the way. Caesars Palace never delivered at all. Not after $90 of play. Comped drinks fall within rules set by the Nevada Gaming Control Board, though clearly some casinos take the idea more seriously than others.

There's a reason casinos hand out free drinks at all. Keep someone at the machine longer and they play longer. It's not charity, it's arithmetic. Which makes Caesars a genuine outlier here: $90 in, still nothing, when the whole point of the exercise is to keep you there.

Worth remembering too: none of this is a Vegas-only trick. Free drinks, loyalty points, the odd comped buffet, casinos everywhere run some version of the same play. Vegas just does it at a scale big enough that someone can actually go and time it across five different floors in one trip.

Do the maths and, outside the Flamingo, you're better off just buying a drink at a regular bar. The average one in Las Vegas runs at about $10. That's the kind of detail plenty of people check before they even land, including a growing number of New Zealanders planning their first Vegas trip, who browse Gambling.com, home of the online casinos NZ players compare, working out where their money and their patience will stretch furthest.

If you're going to lose 20 minutes waiting on a free drink anyway, know what to order, or make the equivalent before you go. A Paloma is a decent starting point: light enough that you're not falling asleep over the blackjack table, with enough tequila and lime to still feel like a proper Vegas drink. Want something with more occasion to it? A French 76 does the job, vodka and prosecco with a splash of lemon, not far off what you'd hope to get handed at the Bellagio if the wait weren't quite so long.

Staying up past midnight? An Espresso Martini earns its keep at the tables in a way a mocktail never will: vodka, coffee liqueur, a splash of sugar syrup, shaken hard enough to get a proper crema on top. It won't get your order taken any faster at Caesars. You'll just be more awake for it.

And if you strike out entirely, $90 down with nothing to show for it like our Caesars visit, make yourself something proper once you're back in the room. A Fitzgerald needs no wait at all, just gin, lemon juice, sugar syrup and a dash of aromatic bitters, stirred until it tastes like you won something. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority puts annual visitor numbers to the Strip in the tens of millions, so a slow drink clearly isn't putting anyone off the trip itself.

Free is relative in Las Vegas. Sometimes it just means you paid with your time instead of your wallet. Pick your casino, and your cocktail, accordingly, and maybe don't sit down at Caesars expecting service any time soon.