This is the minimum start:

• A 17x13 casino with one front door
  
• 4 rows of 10 slot machines - in back to back rows - trash cans and plants on the ends for "environment"
  
• a 3x3 cash vault
  
• a 3x3 supply storage
  
• two 3x3 bathrooms
  
• 2 ATMs
  
• Lights as appropriate

That's it.

To maximize early profit, reduce your staff levels as far as you can reasonably do so. This is how I set them to start:




Reduce your cash in vault to 10,000 from 25,000.

For your first delivery get 4 boxes of payout receipts, but as soon as those arrive, lower it to 1 box on hand of those.

As far as configuring the slot machines. You can just leave them at default set up ($1, 9% odds) or you can follow my guide on making money using slot machines.

This is the early phase. We'll come back when we've built up a small safety net for the next expansion.

Once you have saved back up to about $20k - it's time to add Bingo.

Bingo can be a good money maker if set up right. You can and should start somewhat small. Two tables, a caller, and a card counter. Set the schedules for noon to midnight/2 am. Then go in and set the price per game to the max (currently $25) and then set the payout to get price satisfaction between 90% and 100%.

Let this run for a bit.

At this point you should have a moderately profitable casino. The goal though is to get to hundreds of thousands of dollars in daily profit.

Maintain a safety net for low days and grow out basic services. Our goal would be to get to $10k daily profit before the next major renovation. In the meantime, add services, make small moves to grow, and get research ready.