How much do publications actually help?

My personal thoughts on pubs is that it's literally a dice game whether you do or don't get one if you've worked in a lab >1000 hours (sometimes people get them with less but imo it gets shadier the less hours you spend). That being said, I rolled a lucky number and managed to get a second and a fourth author publication in good ACS journals. How much weight does this actually carry for admissions?