How the heck is it possible to beat slot machines?

I hate to quote myself, but here’s a passage from my recently published book:

Why would a casino, a money-printing Goliath, have such exploitable “flaws”? Well, the casino, by law, needs to pay back a percentage of each bet to the customers. It varies by casino, but it’s usually in the 90 percent range.

In short, we’re not “beating” the casino. Instead, we’re taking high-percentage plays and leaving the duds for unsuspecting players. Sorry, fellow gamblers! It’s an important distinction because we are not exploiting some fatal flaw from slot manufacturers. The games are designed to give something back, so as my annoying neighbor used to say, carpe diem!

But why would a casino do this?

Here’s part of my reply to that in the Las Vegas Advisor’s “Question of the Day“:

The short answer is that these machines will still give the casino the same return as any other over a large sample. These advantage play machines have also proved more effective at prying money from the player base than your run-of-the-mill one-armed bandit.

Yes, all machines of the past were based on random number generators where prior spins have no impact on the current spin. But slot manufacturers correctly reasoned they could shear the player sheep a little more with these newer slots, where even a novice gambler can see they’re progressing toward something, with each spin the continuation of the one prior.

Now hold on a second. You have supposedly “cracked the code,” so why share all this?

Excellent question! I’m not the only one who knows this. From my book:

Believe it or not, the slot landscape is competitive. If I went into an average casino and always found most of the plays I’d be writing about, I would not be writing this book. In any major casino, at least three people are usually doing what I’m doing at any given time.

Is there still money to be won? There sure is.

How did you learn this in the first place?

In 2020, a friend from my local casino showed me how to beat one game, and for a while, I thought he was just getting lucky. But I finally took notice when he showed me a few more games and kept winning, even if sometimes it would be small wins, at impossibly high rates. Then it eventually clicked that he was looking for certain patterns on a few slot machines throughout the casino. In 2020, it really was just “a few.” These days, advantage machines make up a much bigger percentage of the games on the casino floor.

How much money do you make per year?

It might be a taboo question for some people, but it’s a fair one in this instance. I’m around $100,000 per year off slots. I also play a lot of poker (not included in this figure) and try to be an adequate husband and dad. Some slot pros make less than me and some make more. One of my friends says he pulls in over $300,000 per year. It all depends on how disciplined you are and how many hours you put in.

What will I get with a subscription?

Unlike other sites that explain how to beat many games to someone who deeply understands slots and gambling with complex charts and jargon, I offer a continuously updated catalog of tutorial videos. It’s currently at around 250 and growing every week. You won’t need to know anything about slots to understand these videos, as I break things down into the simplest terms.

I also include slot tours and my series “Random Slot Thoughts,” where I break down everything from “tips on saving time” to “tips on avoiding detection” to “good and bad signs while camping,” and everything in between.

In addition to that, I’ll also include a written breakdown of the games with photos. With the videos supplementing the text, you’ll have everything you need to make money playing slot machines.

Further, I will also check the website daily for any questions. Feel free to use this feature as often as you’d like, and you will get a reply within one day and often much faster. There are no “dumb” questions, so fire away!

Is it possible to beat every slot on the casino floor? How will I know what to look for?

It is not. Here’s how it’s explained on the back of my book:

The vast majority of slots are losers for the player. On most machines, each spin is an independent event; your current spin has nothing to do with the one before or after. But some machines don’t reset each time; instead, they accumulate from spin to spin. Known as “variable-state” and “perceived-persistence” games, slot advantage players can pounce and reap the rewards when they’re abandoned by unknowledgeable players in a state to return more than 100%.

Do not be intimidated by the explanation. My videos explain exactly what to look for with each advantage game included.

Why should you listen to me?

Well, the biggest, most reputable and longest-running source of gambling content in the world, Huntington Press, published my book and is running my website. If that’s not a vote of confidence, I don’t know what is! I’ve been doing this semi-professionally since 2020, and I’ve traveled all over the United States and to many countries successfully using this system.

All right, you bought the book or the video subscription service. How much money can you expect to make?

That depends on several factors. Most importantly, assuming you follow everything outlined correctly: your bankroll, the games your casino offers, the amount of play those machines get from fellow patrons, the level of competition from the wrong kind of patrons doing the same thing you’re doing, the sample size in question (i.e. are we talking days, weeks, months?), how many hours per day you’re putting in and what days and times you’re going to the casino. It may sound like a cop-out, but I will never guarantee you’ll make X amount of money following this system. There are too many variables to consider, and the slot landscape constantly changes.

Can you win money using this system with $50 or $100?

You sure can. You won’t be able to safely play some machines with that amount of money, but you can play plenty of games with as little as $20. In the videos, I will outline exactly which ones you can and can’t play with that kind of bankroll.

Is this all legal?

From the book again:

Is it legal to go from machine to machine and look for favorable plays? Short answer: yes. That said, the casino still has the right to tell you they don’t want your business. I’ve been permanently banned from two casinos and one cruise line for doing this. There’s a chance this will happen to you too, but other than asking you to leave, the casino can’t and won’t take it further..

Is it normal to not be finding tons of plays throughout the day?

Yes! If you’re finding profitable plays everywhere you look, you’ve either stumbled upon a rare untouched gem of a casino or you’re doing it wrong, and I’d bet it’s the latter. The more games you know, the better your chances of finding plays. But even with that knowledge, certain times of the day and casinos in general are difficult. It’s why I take frequent trips across the country, always on the search for that fertile new land.

How will I know how much I’m potentially risking?

I will clearly outline all of that for each game with a risk scale, which will be as follows:

Green = Generally 1-20 spins

Yellow = Usually 20-60 spins

Orange = Worst-case scenario could be hundreds of spins

Red = Might cost hundreds or rarely thousands of spins

I’ll often be able to be more specific than that. Most games will fall into the green or yellow categories, but I’ll be as upfront as possible about every game included.

A “spin” on a $1 bet is $100 after 100 spins. On a $10 bet, it’s $1,000 after 100 spins. Also, these colors are approximations. In rare cases, a game deemed red could be over in one spin, while some greens could go over 20 spins.

Why do you include so many losing videos? Aren’t you supposed to be winning at this?

I include everything. Or, perhaps more accurately, I include things when I remember to film and there’s something worth filming. I am never going to show only winning videos, as that is a disservice to everyone. I am more interested in explaining patterns and concepts than showing everyone all my wins.

As I wrote in my book: On any given day a non-advantage player could win and an advantage player could lose. Just like 72 offsuit can take down pocket aces every now and then in poker. Long term, the average slot player has no chance, just like the bad poker player. The more volume you have, the better.

But if we’re talking video to video, I will lose on some of them. I want everyone to get a realistic impression of how things work, and losing will always be part of it.

Why pay a monthly fee?

New advantage play games are released every month, and I know for a fact there are still some current games I haven’t included yet. There are just so many, and some games don’t make it to all the big casinos. The point is that I will always be updating older entries and adding new content every week.

Will this work in every casino?

Some casinos are removing some AP games from their floors, with Caesars at the top of the list. That’s rare, but your local casino may have jumped on board. If your casino has no advantage games, this method will not work. That said, because they are still so prevalent in most casinos countrywide and elsewhere, even if your local casino doesn’t offer many AP games, you can find them at most other casinos.

Do I need to be a casino wizard to understand this?

I touched on this earlier, but it’s worth hammering home: No! Sure, it would help to have a basic understanding of how slot machines operate, but even without that, I’m confident you’ll be able to pick up on everything quickly. You don’t need to know a thing about gambling or complex math to follow along.

How do you get all your numbers?

All pros will have slight—and sometimes more pronounced—differences in their minimum-play requirements. From the book:

Some plays are straightforward. With others, there’s more subjectivity, often based on the success or failure of sample sizes that aren’t always big enough. Every pro slot player is going to have slight differences with certain numbers. Mine are never going to be acres away from perfect, but for something like Cashman Bingo, let’s say, it’s going to be nearly impossible to have “perfect” numbers because there are thousands of different possibilities.

That doesn’t even address the fact that some casinos have worse paybacks than others, so in that sense even Pythagoras couldn’t provide rock-solid “perfect” numbers for every slot machine across every casino. And that’s not even factoring in comps or card building, meaning some pros will have reasons for playing slightly below-average numbers. That said, some folks just have the wrong numbers sometimes, and that may even be the case with some of mine from time to time. It’s bound to happen when there are hundreds of advantage games. I’m always updating my content as I get more experience.

All right, but how do I know about any of these? How do I even begin to ballpark what a minimum play on a machine might be?

There are a couple of ways. One is good old-fashioned trial and error over a large enough sample until I start seeing patterns. The second is having a trusted group of fellow slot pros to bounce numbers off when new machines are released. Then there’s a healthy number of games that have been around for years and almost everyone with a pulse will know when it’s a play from simple observation.

Many slots follow similar patterns, so often knowing how to beat one type of game (take Scarab, for instance) will guide you through plenty of others.

Why should I buy this now and not, say, six months from now?

Six months from now, this should all still be relevant information. But with or without my service, more and more people are learning about advantage-play slots. The quicker you access this, the faster you’ll be able to hit the casino floor with a true edge. Going into the casino and hoping to get lucky may work one day out of seven, but you will ultimately have no chance to come out ahead long term without this service or one like it.