One of the more interesting conversations I get to have with people who are close to me and also those not so close to me is that of what I do for a living. I wear a couple of different hats, but one of those is an advantage player. Of course, being an advantage player and proclaiming myself as such to people often results in the following questions:
- Is that even legal?
- Can you beat slot machines?
- Why don’t the casinos kick you out?
- Have you ever been roughed up?
There are other questions still, but those four above (or some variation) are probably the most common. By and large, it’s difficult to convince people that advantage play is something that someone can do and that it is generally legal. However, successfully convincing someone of the veracity of beating the casinos can also prove problematic as they decide they should be able to do it, too.
For those of you who are thinking about getting into advantage play, or for those of you who are merely curious as to how an AP handles these types of questions, this Editorial is for you.
It Depends on Who You Are Talking To:
Strangers:
The first thing that I should point out is that how in-depth you should go on this sort of thing depends largely on who you are talking to. When it comes to people who are largely strangers to me, the first thing that you have to accept is that they are probably not going to believe you.
That was especially the case with me because I drove a ‘Beater with a heater,’ for a long time
simply because it was cheap and it ran. I could certainly afford a better automobile, but I had no great interest in doing so because I did not see any tremendous benefit in doing that. I now have a better automobile simply because I could not bear the thought of another summer without air conditioning and it has been an unseasonably warm April (mid-80’s) in my area. Even then, I shopped around and got a car that I believe is a good deal, not because I want to show off.
The other thing is that people seem to expect an advantage player to be going around pulling hundreds out of every single pocket or wearing expensive clothes. The fact of the matter is that a Hawaiian shirt is about as, ‘Fancy,’ as I have ever been and as fancy as I will ever be. Again, if my two primary sources of income are gambling and writing, then why would I not want to be comfortable at all times? I have no interest in running around in a suit, if I did, then I would find a job where one is expected to wear a suit.
As far as pulling hundreds out of my pockets is concerned, I keep all of my money in my wallet simply because that is what an average person does. Besides that, I would constantly be hyper-paranoid about dropping some money if I had hundreds sticking out of every place. Another factor is the fact that the vast majority of the plays upon which I embark really do not require that much money to do. I’m still a pretty low-level guy, and if I am on a huge B&M play, it is probably because I am working for/with someone else or as part of a team.
The fact of the matter is that I am nowhere near some kind of big shot AP and I make in the low-medium five figures as a result of advantage play on an annualized basis. I don’t keep as strict of records as I should, but I would say that $35,000-$40,000 sounds about right coming directly from gambling. That’s what I am on pace for this year, anyway.
That’s essentially between $3,000-$3,300/month, but some months are better than others and some months are worse than others. You also have high points and low points. I can catch a $2,000 Royal on an Ultimate X vulturing play upon which I only had about $1.25 in expected profit (well, once) or I can have several must-hit plays with hundreds in expected profits and lose all of them for a prolonged period of time.
I do better tracking my expected results rather than my actual results because my expected results are what matter the most to me. If gambling were my only source of income, then I would be sweating the actual results a bit more. I probably have about ten phone numbers of guys that would have me work for them on a full-time basis immediately if I were available all the time. I’d pretty much be guaranteed the same money I make now plus whatever I could make for myself on the side.
Honestly, even if I were some $200,000+/year guy with a huge bankroll, I would still show up in casinos with my jeans, T-Shirt, baseball cap and a modest amount of money unless I was going to need more for some reason.
Anyway, if you want to tell people, you are an advantage player (or a writer, actually) be prepared to get some sideways looks from any number of individuals who are not going to take you at face value. They expect you to be in the six figures, if not better, but that’s pretty rarely the case. I would dare to say that most advantage players are right around my annual profit level, or just slightly better.
Friends (But Not Good Ones):
One habit that some of your friends are going to share with strangers is a tendency not always to take you at face value when you tell them that you are an advantage player. They always want to probe you to see what you are doing on the side. Even when I say that I make money from both advantage play and writing, (as well as lesser amounts of a few other things) they still seem pretty surprised that it is not more money. I’ve been more-or-less accused of having a traditional job and lying about it.
That’s actually the best case scenario when it comes to not-so-good friends. ‘Casual acquaintances,’ might even be the better term for these people.
The worst case scenario is having a bunch of friends who want to learn how actually to gamble at an advantage. Given where I live, I only have a limited number of casinos that I can get to easily. I would say that I have eight casinos within a two-hour drive of where I am sitting right now and I’m banned from one of them while two of them are basically always useless. There’s just nothing that can be played at the other two, the mail might be workable, but they are also too far out of the way to deal with multi-carding. The mail is probably only potentially profitable at one of the two.
Anyway, these casual acquaintances figure that it is an easy thing to do and they want to be shown how to do it. Even if I were in an exceptionally generous mood, I’m not going to go through and show people all of the beatable machines I play and explain how to beat them!!! It’s one thing to write about it, which I rarely do because most of the readers are not near the casinos I frequent. On the other hand, handing plays to people geographically close to me would be just foolish. It would be even more foolish to go in and show them how to do it.
I have one acquaintance who shoots me a text message almost weekly asking, “Are there any good plays right now?” He’s looking for good players club sign up promotions. I always tell him that I will let him know if something good comes up in the area, and sure enough, I get asked the same question a week later.
He’ll even send me messages like, “I’m going to Buffalo next week. Do you want to come and find good casino plays?” First of all, I do not want to go to Buffalo because, Buffalo. Secondly, I can’t just will strong new member sign ups into existence because it would be convenient for you because you are going there, anyway.
I respond, “Give me twenty minutes, and I’ll text you back.”
Twenty minutes later, “I don’t see anything in Buffalo that looks like a strong new player promotion. I have no idea what the mail is like in Buffalo as I have never played in any casino in Buffalo. Therefore, I can offer no advice other than signing up for a players club card at those casinos could be a waste of a new account. There may be better promotions in Buffalo in the future, but I obviously wouldn’t know.”
The friend responds, “Well, you can come and try to beat the machines, right?”
The fact is that when I am scouting around the casinos looking for machine plays, it is almost as more of a hobby than anything else. I’m doing it to have fun even though I am also making money at it. Other than rare occasions on machines, the biggest plays out there are almost always going to be taking advantage of promotions and mail. Some of the best, ‘Machine AP’s,’ out there focus only on promotions and mail and barely look for machines that are in and of themselves beatable because it bores them.
The fact is that I cannot just throw a dart at a map and go to the closest casino to where the dart lands and expect to make money because it simply doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t even work that way for card counters at Blackjack anymore because all of the tables (except heavily scrutinized ones) might be 6:5 for naturals rather than 3:2. There could be other guys at that casino essentially doing what I do already and I am unlikely to find anything expected to be profitable. There is also the possibility that all of the machines are garbage and that the progressives that would otherwise be decent are set to have insanely slow meters.
Like I mentioned earlier, two of the casinos closest to me are always not worth visiting. There are two others still that I think are barely worth visiting, although, I haven’t really checked either of them in a while. I am also aware of a few casinos that are VERY good for someone like me, but they are just outside of the range of how far I want to go. I’d no longer be having fun if I had to log all of those driving hours just to get to them.
The fact is that I cannot just pick a casino and decide I am going to, “Make money,” there. I might not have any advantageous plays to begin with, and even if I do, I still might lose.
Even when you look at the five casinos closest to me, I’ve been to all of those several times. I have a very good idea of what my average expected profit is at each casino before I even walk into the place based on what day it is and what time of day. Even with that, of course, a number of different things have to happen:
- There actually has to be a play. Just because my average expected value per visit might be good enough for me to justify a stop, it doesn’t mean there will be anything on THAT stop.
- Sometimes there are many plays with terrific value. This is kind of like the above, but when we look at average expected value, at times, I find expected value much better than that. There’s a casino nearby at which I think my expected value is about $40/visit (just on machines, not counting mail or anything) every time I stop there. Of course, I’ve walked in to find absolutely nothing on some occasions and, on one occasion, found expected value of nearly $1,000 in one visit! I didn’t want to throw my numbers, so in figuring the average/visit, I threw that result out.
- The play doesn’t always go as expected. In fact, plays almost never result in, to the penny, the expected profit. In the long run, they are expected to balance out and your actual results should approach your expected results, but on an individual play or a few plays, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.
Ultimately, it is for all of these reasons that I do not generally encourage the people that I know to get into any sort of advantage play. From time to time there may be small things (such as getting, ‘Clean,’ players club cards) that I might present them with because I think the initial mail might be good and I will be there to tell them how to play. Most of the time, though, I would just as soon they stay away from it altogether unless they have a passion for gambling.
It doesn’t matter what the subject is. The best advice I can give anyone is that the best chance they have at being good at something is to love what it is that they are doing.
Here is what I suspect is a fact about many people who advantage play that some of them are unwilling to admit: I’m an advantage player because I love to gamble and because playing at an advantage enables me to gamble. If I did not play at an advantage, I would eventually lose and not be able to gamble anymore, or at least, not for awhile. Hell, that’s even happened to me on a few occasions while playing at an advantage, but if you are playing at an advantage, you’ll generally be able to dig yourself out of a hole.
If you get into gambling just to make money and not because you love gambling, you may win, but you’ll find yourself both disappointed and bored in short order.
The People Closest To You:
When it comes to the people closest to you, this is where you will experience the most, ‘Variance,’ so to speak. It’s tough for me to offer any advice in this regard because I am only aware of my personal experiences with my family, so depending on your family, your mileage is probably going to vary.
It was at about this time last year that I became thoroughly fed up with my employer at the hotel at which I was employed as a manager. There were a number of reasons for that I do not plan to get into right now. Anyway, I was making some side money doing writing and had always made some money gambling. I was also offered a gambling, ‘Job,’ helping someone out with a series of plays on a temporary basis.
It was at that time I decided that if I was going to make a go at non-traditional employment that it would be as good of a time as any. I ended up leaving the hotel job (which I probably would have left for a different traditional job sooner-or-later anyway) and focused more on writing as well as spending more time gambling. I had the good fortune to be reasonably successful at both, and so far, those remain my two single biggest sources of income.
Most of the people close to me ask questions such as, “Well, what if either the writing or the gambling turn south?” The only real way for me to respond to that is to point out that traditional jobs also often turn south and people are demoted or fired all the time. Fortunately, if anything did happen, I have a solid enough resume’ that I would probably be okay and would find traditional employment in fairly short order.
As mentioned before, I’ve also established myself in the greater AP community as a reliable person and would not have any trouble finding work in that regard. The only problem is I would almost definitely have to relocate, which I would prefer not to do.
After you have answered that question, in my experience, the only thing that the people closest to you can do to give them confidence is to see it in action. I have not had a ‘Traditional job,’ in about a year now. The people closest to me are not necessarily convinced that what I am doing is going to work forever, but convinced that I am doing well enough right now.
You might have people who have a moral objection to gambling, as is the case with my fiance’s father. Fortunately for me, that is the only person who I would consider close to me who has a strong moral objection to what I do. Even with that, he sees that I get by just fine doing what I am doing right now and that I treat his daughter well. He once drunkenly admitted that he likes the fact that I am a ‘Crafty sonofabitch.’
Again, your mileage may vary, but those are my experiences in telling people what I do. The most annoying thing is people who are not so close to you wanting to get involved with it when you would be (literally) teaching them everything they know. AP is very largely an information-sharing type of endeavor, which means that you usually have to have information to offer to get information in return. There are only so many plays out there on so many machines or good promotions/mail in so many casinos. Therefore you can’t have everyone doing it.
Advantage play can exist ONLY because most people are not and the casinos make money. If too many people were then the casinos would lose money and they would either close or make advantage play impossible. That brings us to our next question:
Is Advantage Play Legal?
I sometimes answer, “Yes,’ and I sometimes answer, “Usually.”
The fact of the matter is that there is a definitional component to the question such that words have meanings and those meanings cannot be ignored. For example, do you want to call, ‘Cheating,’ an advantage play? I certainly don’t, I just call cheating, ‘Cheating.’ Do you want to call, ‘Defrauding the casino,’ an advantage play? Again, I just call it, ‘Defrauding a casino.’
The closest I have ever come to an illegal advantage play is that there is one state (and only one state that I am aware of) in which it might be illegal to use someone else’s players club card. For the time being, there hasn’t been any actual case law to support that assertion and there is some debate in the AP community as to whether or not that is the case. There’s also some question as to whether or not such an act even could constitute fraud as the casinos themselves declare, “Free Play Has No Cash Value.” Okay, so if they want to argue that you are committing fraud by using someone else’s card, but what are you defrauding them of, nothing? It has no cash value, they said so themselves.
Other than the question of that one state, I have unambiguously never embarked on any play that is illegal or otherwise fraudulent. I hope never to do so, and if I somehow do, it will be because of some mistake or misunderstanding. When it comes to the sort of advantage play I normally engage in, I can say that there is nothing cleaner than having an advantage based on a casino’s mail and also beating machines straight up.
Some people might look at taking out a ‘Marker,’ (line of credit) and not paying it back if they lose as a free roll and, therefore, an advantage play. It has often been brought up that those debts are unenforceable in a bankruptcy court. Personally, I would consider this fraud and would not do it regardless of the legality.
I can’t speak for everyone, and for people who directly cheat the casinos with tactics such as past-posting or card marking, they are definitely doing something illegal, but I don’t. Anything that is unambiguously illegal I would not suggest constitutes, ‘Advantage play.’
Does that mean you are safe from being kicked out?
Can Casinos Kick You Out?
It is a pretty common question that I get when I tell people that I am an advantage player, or at least, that is one of the hats that I wear.
The answer is: Yes, casinos can kick you out for whatever reason they like and even for no reason at all. If a casino kicks you out for any reason other than a discriminatory one that was illegal due to you being a protected class, (and kicked out for that reason), then there is almost zero recourse.
If a casino has kicked you out, then you might be subject to a criminal trespassing charge if caught within that same casino after being kicked out. The penalties for criminal trespass vary from state to state, but in most cases, it is a fine. If you ever intend to enter a casino from which you have been, ‘86’ed,’ which is to say officially trespassed, then I suggest you study the criminal trespass laws in the jurisdiction in question.
I have been trespassed from three casinos in my life, but have since been allowed back in two of them. One of them changed ownership and the new people did not have me as banned from that casino whereas the other casino essentially kicked me out by mistake.
Generally speaking, while casinos can kick you out at any time and will often kick a player out if they believe the player is winning too much, the kind of AP that I do is unlikely to draw attention. Even regarding lifetime winnings, at the casino of which I have won the most money lifetime, I am apparently not considered much of concern to them. While another person’s mileage may vary, the mere act of AP’ing machines and taking advantage of mail will not get you tossed unless there is a little more to it than that...which I’m not getting into right now. If you are already doing it, then you will know what I mean by that sentence.
In addition to the possibility of being trespassed, a casino may also choose to take the action of, ‘No-Mailing,’ you, which means that you will not get promotional offers anymore. In these cases, the player is often still allowed to play at the casino, but will generally have no reason to do so. I have been no-mailed at three separate locations, just that I know of, and there are probably a couple more at which I have been no-mailed and didn't know it.
It’s a shame, too, because I really liked one of them.
Do you get no-mailed just for beating the slot machines, and if not:
Can You Really Beat Slot Machines?
The simple fact of the matter is that any game that has some kind of Progressive can theoretically be beaten at some point. The only exceptions to this rule are, ‘Capped Progressives,’ (Maximum Progressive Meter Amount) which can be under 100% return even when maxed out. There is other slot machine still that can be, ‘Vultured,’ given certain conditions as well as some VP/Keno machines where progressives can be played or the machine vultured for other reasons.
Once again, machine play is something that many AP’s have in their repertoire, but for most, it is not a primary source of expected value. The majority of your machine AP’s are playing mail or playing promotions. Mail is generally the most, ‘Steady,’ of advantage plays whereas promotions are often infrequent, require traveling, but often have huge expected value over a short period.
I sometimes play promotions, but I am usually working for someone when I do. When it comes to promotions, the play is generally enough to take a game that would normally be mathematically bad and make it mathematically good. Some promotions may also derive expected value because of drawings.
While it is often difficult to break into the AP network, it is often necessary for an individual player who wants to seriously play the biggest of promotions unless that player has a huge bankroll. Even among some of the most well-bankrolled and successful players, teams are formed to go after promotions.
I’ll usually take part in out-of-town promotion plays if they are worth my time and I am essentially guaranteed enough money (usually hourly) to cover my travel and still make a reasonable amount of money. I’ll also sometimes do it even if I am just going to break even on all trip expenses because it is essentially a free trip somewhere and I can do other stuff when not working for whoever I am working for on a particular play.
The point is that the guys that take advantage of these plays most often are well-bankrolled, well-networked, and can put together powerful teams that can handle the risk as a unit. I would love to go solo on a play with an expected profit in the thousands but in which I could potentially lose ten thousand dollars, the problem is, I cannot afford to lose ten thousand dollars! These teams can and I have witnessed plays that have won or lost much more than that, but both the risk and the reward was divided amongst a team with each individual investing as much as he/she cared to risk.
When it comes to guys who focus largely just on finding advantageous machines, guys like me, we are often referred to as, ‘Hustlers.’ It’s not the flashiest form of AP, and it’s often boring, but it can be done and done profitably. Mainly, you just need to know as many plays as possible and have access to one or more casinos that do not have too much competition.
Have You Ever Been Roughed Up?
No, but many players have and most of them who have been roughed up recently have settled out of court for significant sums of money. I have not been roughed up at any point and would be surprised if it ever happens, though I do appreciate the fact that it is a possibility.
Here are a few other questions people have asked me:
Why Do You Do It If You Are Not Guaranteed to Win?
Why does a business owner own a business? A business owner owns a business because he enjoys it, likes doing something where he/she is only accountable to himself/herself and believes that he/she will be successful in the long run.
The fact of the matter is that most young businesses will make mistakes in the early going just like most AP’s and slot hustlers occasionally make mistakes. My biggest flaw is occasionally trying advantage situations that I am not well-enough bankrolled for and, for lack of a better term, would need to get lucky. I’ve been punished more frequently than I have gotten lucky in those situations. Fortunately, I haven’t done anything like that in over a year.
Just like a business owner has to learn (or already know) his business to compete in a particular market, an advantage player of any kind also has to know his stuff. An advantage player also has to determine if there is enough of a, ‘Market,’ for him to be able to thrive in a given location. For example, if you had a town with 1,000 residents and 500 restaurants, that would be one restaurant for every two residents, the market would be flooded and all of the restaurants would probably lose money. Advantage play works the same way, if there are too many people doing what you do and hitting the same casinos you do, then there will not be enough plays for everyone to make a profit that makes it worth the time.
I see this all the time even in the small number of casinos that I usually frequent. For example, there is one casino that is only technically, ‘Worth hitting,’ if I am literally going to be within fifteen minutes of it for some other reason, anyway. When it comes to the vulturing type plays, I know that there are so many people doing them there that I am unlikely to find anything that way. When it comes to the progressive plays, I don’t know if it is a matter of actual advantage players getting on there and playing them at an advantage, or if simply people get on there and play them way too early believing themselves to be at an advantage.
The average expected profit for walking into this place is probably right around ten bucks. I might be overestimating it. There are a few major problems there:
A.) Many of the machine titles there that could be must-hits (and are in other casinos) are not at this location.
B.) Most of the other progressives are linked progressives, so even though the jackpots build up more quickly (all else being equal, such as meter move), they are often not worth the risk on a subjective basis because someone else might hit them.
C.) Most of the individual machine progressives, quite simply, never seem to be good.
My analysis of the overall situation at that casino is that there are either several people who actually know what they are doing, or who think they know what they are doing and are well enough bankrolled to finish plays out. The bottom line is that it is not worth a stop unless I am practically already there.
That’s not to say that I have not had good hits there or that I have never found good plays. It’s just that the average value of what I find per stop is awful. I did find a few good situations on tables that I shared with people who I knew could do well on them if they wanted. At the same time, I’ve probably found less than twenty progressive plays there in two years and nearly 100 stops. Most of the plays I have found have been vulture plays of one kind or another.
Anyway, this is what you come to know about casinos when you have done this for awhile, and if I faced that kind of competition (or poor conditions). In all of the casinos near me, I would either need to relocate, travel more often or find something else to do to replace the income. If I faced this kind of competition at all of the casinos within two hours of me, then only one would be worth going to and that would largely be because of mail.
How Long Can You Do This?
The fact of the matter is that gambling is gambling in every possible way. The answer to this question is simply, “I don’t know.”
Many of these things are market dependent, which is to say that they are based on the market of the casinos in question, but in my experience:
1.) Mail
When it comes to the casinos closest to me, mail has been about the same. My understanding is that mail is much stronger at certain casinos in some other areas, but those other areas also have a tendency to kill players club cards if individuals are picking up free play without running coin-in comparable to previous visits. Every casino will eventually kill offers for such a player eventually, but some, in particular, have a very itchy trigger finger.
Again, for the casinos closest to me, mail is basically unchanged.
2.) Players Card Terms
‘Players Card Terms,’ might not be the best header for this, but it was the best thing I could think of. When it comes to multiplier days, a huge adjustment that I had to make was when one of the casinos that have decent mail (relative to coin-in) made it so that point multiplier days did not apply to a certain type of machine.At one point, due to the multiplier, it was possible to play a game with almost no chance of losing for a three hour session given the points multiplier as the free play percentage would exceed the house edge of the game. That is still the case on a few different games there, but this was a game that could be played with almost no variance whatsoever.
The second change is that there are fewer point multiplier times than there used to be which just absolutely sucks. In fact, there is only one every week now (used to be three), and I cannot always make it. Even though the mail is a full half percent more than my expected loss on the game, the multiplier days give me a 2.5% edge for that session right off the top. That’s pretty big because on the Video Poker game in question it means that I could miss royals completely (as long as I run as expected on everything else) and would be playing a break even game.
Neither of the above factors by itself is a deal breaker, but if the mail gets dramatically worse, then the only people who could play mail at an advantage are new players club members for reasons that we won’t get into. Even that could change eventually if the casino were to start killing players club cards faster. If all of those things happened, then my literal only advantage at that location would be to beat machines straight up or incorporate tables into my repertoire.
3.) The Machines Themselves:
Fortunately, this is one area that has improved for me quite a bit. Many of the slot machines that are getting put in now have some kind of a Progressive feature, or alternatively, are a must-hit. In fact, I have several machines upon which I want to do an Empirical if I ever have the time. If any of the first two items on this list go badly, then I will probably have a little more encouragement to learn these other games!4.) The Promotions:
I don’t play promotions very often because the casinos around me do not usually do anything, ‘Crazy,’ though I have played them on those rare occasions they have. Any promotions that a casino might be offering are just added EV for me, but I rely so little upon those in this area that I do not even count them in with my expectation.
Again, some promotions are simply more lucrative than others, but those are usually things such as four-of-a-kind bonuses or jackpot bonuses as opposed to drawings or little side games for earning so many points.
Conclusion:
The long and short of the matter is that gambling is just that: A gamble.
While it is possible to eventually get those closest to you to accept what you are doing, and while there are certainly legal ways to beat the casinos, gambling is not a long-term guaranteed way to make money. Regardless of what sort of advantage play you do, how long you have done it or how well you are bankrolled, the conditions are always changing.
My long and crazy journey into casino AP and writing about gambling started with finding a way to beat one machine, almost by happenstance. I said to myself, “If that machine is beatable, certainly others are as well,” and then from there continued to learn about gambling. I would advise anyone who wants to get into gambling to start small with recreational-type stuff before diving in headfirst. I also believe it is important to have a backup plan or some skill (mine is hotel management) to fall back on if conditions ever become impossible to manage.
There may come a time when I am faced with a choice of relocating or doing something else entirely. If that day ever comes, I hope that it will be more than twelve years from now (my kids will be grown up) so I can choose to relocate. If not, both the people closest to me and I know I am ready to go back into traditional employment if it becomes necessary.
If you have any questions, please fire away!
