Usually, LVA is spot-on in its assessments of this, that, and the other. However, a couple of days ago, the News column highlighted Matt and Steve Bourie, the "Jackpot Gents," who livestream and record videos on YouTube playing high-bet ($25-50/hand) multi-line video poker, usually from the Dania Beach or Seminole Hard Rock casinos, both in Florida. The news paragraph mentions "Overcoming the house edge with skillful play," noting that they're about $20K ahead for 2025 after small losses the previous two years.
Uh-uh.
They almost exclusively play 5- and 10-play with some kind of multiplier feature, like Ultimate X Bonus Streak, etc. The base paytables are almost never fullpay, though they do occasionally play stuff that's over 99% base. The multiplier features usually add 0.1-0.2% when played optimally; still, they're fighting a house edge of as much as 2% in some of their games, and at least 0.5% in their very very best games (which they don't play very often).
They do elevate their results by vulturing leftover multipliers. Unlike plain Ultimate X or Ultimate X Bonus Streak, the multipliers in UX Gold stay on the screen until hit, and continue to build. So there are possibilities of +EV play there. But again, they mostly play games that are unavoidably -EV. (And FWIW, the UX Gold games where they play have pretty crummy paytables, returning 98% or less base.)
They generally make two videos a day, each 20 minutes long, unless they're substantially ahead after 10 minutes, in which case they end early. They earn zero comps because of a kerfuffle they had with the FL casinos wherein they were AP'ing the joint and exploiting promos. So I guess the deal is, you guys can film, but you won't get bupkus from us.
I've analyzed their play and concluded that they do generally play good strategy, but far from perfect. I estimate their aggregate disadvantage to be about 0.9%. Now, can you finish a six-month period fighting that disadvantage and wind up winning 1%? Absolutely! Without whipping out my slide rule, I estimate their results to be 2.3 standard deviations above the mean. Lucky? Yes. Impossible? Not even close.
There's another guy out there named "Leon," who posts on the 2+2 primarily poker message boards...he LUVVVVS Triple Double Bonus and plays it on the Strip for usually $1 10-play. NO place there offers the game at 9/7 (99.58%); the best he can find is 9/6 (98.48%). Despite this, he went on a two-year heater. But....sadly...he's now in free fall.
The lesson here? You can definitely obtain positive short-term results, and the best strategy on any given game will help with that. But can you overcome the house edge with skillful play? No. NO! HELL, NO! A positive result doesn't mean that you've "overcome" negative EV. It only means that your results fell inside that smaller positive area of the bell curve.
I just wonder how many people watch these videos, read these posts, and conclude that they, too, can strike it rich, and leave for the nearest casino with a song in their heart, a tap in their shoes, a bundie of hundies in their wallet, and a gleam in their eye. To the Gents' credit, they post whether they win or lose, so it's not a matter of them artificially enhancing their results. But that $2 million they've slammed through the machines should have cost them about $20,000, and you, Joe Gamblepants, will lose that much if you try it yourself. Or worse.
I hasten to add that whatever revenue the Gents obtain from YouTube may very well more than make up for the -EV they fade, and their better-than-expectation results are just icing on the cake. Good for them, I say. But let no one say that an inherent house edge can be "overcome." It can only be evaded, and only for a while.
