$1 Billion of Jacks (or Better) in the Box

Trying to get the courts mercy because of a "brain tumor" in 2010! Even if you give her that, she has been gambling large amounts since 2000.

Living with her sister now! That has to bite!

suppose she got a few comped buffets for that amount of betting?

Let's see. According to her attorney she once had a fortune of 40 to 50 million and now she's virtually broke and living with her sister along with being charged of stealing 2.1 million from her late husband's charitable foundation. The poorly written article states this: "She won about $1 billion from 2000 to 2009, according to winnings that casinos reported to the Internal Revenue Service, but lost even more. Iredale said her net gambling losses topped $13 million." Huh?

I should be so lucky.

So, Ellen, you think with a $13-million gambling bankroll she only played one credit at a time on that $100 machine at Pechanga?

Chilcoot got it right. She had coin in of a billion dollars.

Anyone who makes 7 Stars at Caesars puts through a minimum of $500,000 a year on slots, $1-million a year on video poker. You can do that playing $1 games and not even break a sweat.

I'm going to make the assumption she played at Pechanga which has full pay 9/6 Jacks, and pretty good DDB at 9/5. She lost less than one-half of one percent, and probably got back half of that in free play. Gee, if she only hit 32 more of those $400,000 royals she would have broken even.

Mr. Monney,

I cant prove it, but my hunch is she lost that $$$$ playing the Monopoly community slots game. That is a stingy money-grabbing slot. On my last trip, it gobbled a $50 before I could blink or even get drink service!

I don't think EllenMonster is understanding the math here.

Based on her attorney's figures, this woman put $1 billion into play and got $987 million back. For a gambler playing negative expectation games, that's very very good. She's still foolish, and I'd be embarassed to have done something that foolish, let alone something criminal like's been alleged, but pretty good as a gambler, compared to how much she could have lost.

I'm just saying that she could have stretched her $$ further by avoiding those sucker slots machine like Monopoly and that fishing game, whatever it is called, and by not pussy-footing around with less than max coin when playing VP.

EllenMonster might be onto something.... those burping Little Green Men slots downtown can be very addictive I lost two $20 bills before even getting bummed for a cigarette

Bob Dancer had his say on this today. Some choice passages:

The U-T San Diego headline reads "How to lose $1 billion in video poker." The problem is, however, that this never happened. It might be a clever headline designed to sell a lot of newspapers, but it is a grossly exaggerated number.

. . .

The part of this story I absolutely DO NOT believe is that she lost $1 billion playing video poker. It simply could not have happened.

Thanks Bob Dancer!

Thanks for the Dancer info Chilcoot

I may have missed it in the Dancer article, but how is there any correlation between coin-in and total value of W-2Gs?