I can say with almost metaphysical certainty that the Vegas a-hole didn’t make a red cent playing video poker. Those things are designed not to pay out, just like every single game of chance in Vegas. The only way you can make money is from the sports book and playing against humans.
Now it’s possible that he didn’t lose much while collecting all of those Vegas comps. So in that case, what he got was a very cheap vacation.
Former pro gambler here.
Some Vegas vp returns 99.5%. He would have lost at the game itself but made it up in cash and non-cash comps. Maybe to a net edge of .5% - 1%. A hard way to make an easy living.
I’m pretty sure I’ve had that suite before, back in my pro-gambling days. Creepy.
Btw, 100k/hour is at the upper limit of what’s possible based on available machines, limits, and the time it takes to clear the machine from jackpots requiring a w2g. They can set it to a special “keyed-credit” mode that makes it much faster, but it still takes up time. He could have been playing $5 10 play at $250/spin and 400 hands an hour for 100k action “coin-in”, but typically it only goes that fast when you’re losing. Also, playing fast makes it way too easy to make mistakes, which are quite costly at that level.
That’s my impression as well. People think he made mad money from that because he had “a system”. For all of the publicity that this a-hole drummed up, Vega$ is loving that one.
I get how he used his VP playing as a way to get free comps, but it sounds mind numbing to me. Spending the bulk of your time playing on a crack machine? No thank you.
It’s actually quite civilized at high limit machines, since you’d only have to play a few thousand hands on a trip. But that’s at the expense of ridiculously high variance.
The competition for gamblers at that level is intense. He could have had that suite for as little as two hours of play on the $5 multi line machine i mentioned, maybe less during a slow period and on a short 1-2 night stay.
Obviously. He wouldn’t be caring about killing his average daily theoretical since it was likely he’d be leaving in a body bag 
I doubled my money once at Vegas. I played a $5 slot and one $10.
The quality of gambling “systems” can be all over the board.
Here is an example of a losing system:
Here are some examples of winning systems:
Ha. I quit my job shortly after the 007 Casino On Net promo.
I can say with almost metaphysical certainty that you are misinformed:
I did a fair share of bonus hunting back in the day, but sat out that promo. It sounded too good to be true and was I pretty sure they’d either find some excuse to cap it or wouldn’t have enough to cover their losses, not to mention me being a poor college student at the time who didn’t have a lot of capital to throw at it. In hindsight, I could have made more off that promo than I made from casinos the rest of that year!
How well did you make out?
Did he win? Doesn’t look like it. And over time the house is almost certain to come out ahead.
And the answer to the riddle is this:
Your friend the Expected Value.
Gambling on casino games, I believe the EV is published somewhere. All of them are E < 0
Investing, you expect to make money, so E > 0
From the article:
The means with which to play at those levels may have been buoyed by $5 million in gambling income reported on his 2015 taxes…
If I walk up to a blackjack table and bet when the count is sufficiently favorable, am I really investing? Or am I gambling unless I happen to know the count is good enough, in which case I’m investing? Or something else?
With a stock, let’s say earnings are coming up and the insiders know they suck. Are all the buyers ahead of this gamblers because the EV is negative given what the insiders know? Or are they just about to be unlucky investors. The guys who get a tip from the insiders and short it are definitely investors, although I guess not if the SEC catches them and the fines wipe out their profits and then some.
Doesn’t much matter if your profits were from investing or gambling at the end of the day. The dollars buy the same amount of H&B either way.
It is simple, but not fundamental.
What is your basis for concluding that he didn’t win? I mean in a greater non-gambling sense he certainly lost at life (unless you consider leaving the casino in a body bag and screwing up the lives of other people including your family and friends “winning”). It’s entirely possible that in the end it will come out that his net-worth was $0 or negative, but he certainly was reported to have a lot of behaviors more in line with an advantage player than your run of the mill gambler.
I was never anywhere near his level of advantage play, but I can tell you that it’s very different from gambling. Gambling is actually kind of fun for those who enjoy it as a hobby (the environment, the emotional pings that come with the occasional win, etc.). As a gambler at the blackjack table you might feel like your decision of whether to hit a hard 16 against a dealer’s King is of importance and agonize over it and as long as you keep your losses at a reasonable level it can be an enjoyable experience.
Being an advantage player is completely different. When you’re doing that the actual gambling part of the activity is rarely enjoyable. In fact, comparing the odds of your different options and weighing how a particular promo might offset a house edge is the only part of the process that would be likely to be interesting about it. When you’re playing blackjack or video poker there is no emotion in the decisions you’re making. In blackjack you’re automatically hitting hard 16 against a dealer’s King without any real conscious thought or feeling. In video poker you’ve memorized where different card fragments rank relative to others for the particular flavor of video poker you’re playing and are simply scanning for the highest ranking fragment to hold. When I would play blackjack online I wasn’t usually paying attention to whether I was winning or losing, but had a mouse in one hand, a mechanical tally counter in the other hand, and was simply burning through hands until I reached N on the tally counter and was no longer required to wager to meet the terms of the promotion. If I was slightly up or down in the end relative to my EV I wasn’t playing additional hands to try to hit any sort of target to cashout. That would be like the clerk at McDonald’s sticking around after punching out to serve a few more customers fries. In fact, a couple years of doing that online killed any enjoyment I’d get out of playing blackjack (or most gambling really) in a real casino for over a decade. Even now I no longer get those same emotional pings from gambling that someone who enjoys it as a hobby might get and I can make myself go through the motions if I’m with friends at a casino, but it’s probably just playing blackjack at whatever the table minimum is until they get sick of playing and walking away +/- $20 from where I started. I’m not complaining here mind you, just noting that the qualities and appeals that might stem from advantage play are very different from those that would stem from gambling as a form of recreation or an addiction.
My lifetime return on full-pay deuces wild video poker is slightly positive. With perfect play, for every $100 you play, you have an expected value of $100.76.
(I played once for about an hour, hit the high-variance outcome which causes the +EV, and left.)
Where did you get that EV for video poker? These should be published somewhere. I can’t imagine any casino in the world putting those games in, even if they are a loss leader.
Full pay jacks or better (99.54%) isn’t that uncommon. Most players make enough mistakes that the casino still makes money. The sharp places also adjust their theoretical on the machine to take the lower house edge into account.
Full pay deuces wild is rare at anything over .25 denomination.
Here’s a discussion of the pay table that leads to an expected $100.76 return on $100 investment: Deuces Wild
Last time I saw these was in Sam’s Town, there was a bank of six machines where a $0.25 bet earned $400 on a natural royal flush. I think I also remember seeing machines where a $1.25 bet earns $2000 on a natural royal flush. If you can play this perfectly at a superhuman rate of 1000 hands per hour you’ll earn almost $10 per hour.
I couldn’t agree with this more. In my early 20s, I would gamble, mostly playing craps and I loved the thrill of it. Later, I learned about counting cards and taught myself basic strategy and a simple high-low count. It was mostly to test to see if I could do it. I made a few bucks, but I was bored out of my mind and exhausted after a few hours of play each time. The enjoyment of gambling was gone. I switched to poker when it became popular and I mostly broke even. I then got bored of that, too. I’ve been to casinos dozens of times since then, but I’ve had no desire to play. I guess once you know the optimal way to play, you can’t play any other way.