The Las Vegas Massacre and Me

Many of us are sick and tired of discussing the terrible events of October 1 and the speculation afterwards of what made this unhinged man do what he did. If that’s where you are and you want to skip this article, I won’t blame you.

Once it was discovered that Stephen Paddock played video poker, I started getting calls from a variety of news outlets. Although I didn’t get nearly as many calls as Anthony Curtis did, when something related to video poker makes the news, my name comes up as someone who might be able to offer some insight.

For each telephone interview, I started it off with the fact that I didn’t know the guy and had never heard his name until after he was dead. I don’t know if he was a winning player or not, but I have my doubts. And in my opinion, there is nothing inherent in the game of video poker that will create such a monster. So, with that said, how can I help you?

Some reporters wanted to know the difference between video poker and regular poker, or video poker and blackjack, and those were easy for me to answer. Some wanted to know why the game was so popular. To my mind it’s because the game is beatable, and even casual players can get relatively inexpensive casino vacations out of the game.

From there, the questions usually evolved to what other casino games were beatable. Years ago, I would have said blackjack, poker, and sports betting and that would have been the end of my list. But since I’ve been hosting the Gambling with an Edge podcast I’ve become aware that there are LOTS of different avenues for profiting in a casino other than just these games.

Some wanted to know how many winning players there are, and I had to say that any number I came up with would be a wild-assed guess.  I don’t know how much any other player nets, let alone how many of the tens of thousands of players (most of whom I have never met) had net scores greater than zero.

One question from the Associated Press was one that I didn’t want to address. The reporter argued that this attack exhibited a great deal of planning and would a successful video poker player have the ability to do such planning? I didn’t want to answer this question because the answer is “Yes!”

What I said was that a successful lawyer would have those planning skills, as would a successful architect, as would a successful chef, as would a successful political advisor, as would a successful reporter, as would basically a successful anything. So yes, you can add successful gambler of any stripe onto that list, but the list is very long.

One reporter told me that CNN reported Paddock was ahead more than $5 million in a recent year. Was this possible? I told them it was very possible that a high-stakes player had more than $5 million in W2G jackpots, but that’s an entirely different matter than being ahead that much. Or even ahead at all! Getting the total of W2Gs from the IRS might be obtainable by the police. But knowing whether he was ahead or behind was a totally different matter.

Four days after the shooting, Bonnie and I left for a long-scheduled two-week cruise from Boston to Quebec City and back again. While in Boston the night before the cruise, I checked my email and found one from Ryan Growney, the general manager of the South Point. He said that an FBI agent wanted to talk with me about the shooting and I should call him back right away to get that FBI agent’s phone numbers. Since I teach classes at the South Point and that casino sponsors the podcast, that casino was a reasonable place for the FBI to start looking for contact information.

Shit!

I’ve heard Bob Nersesian and other attorneys say you NEVER should talk to a police officer without having an attorney present. I figured that went double for talking to the FBI. Still, I was a couple thousand miles away from home and about to sail northwards soon. The $3.99 a minute charge for talking when the ship is actually at sea is relatively small change, of course, but I still didn’t want to pay it. I figured I could handle this, so I found out the number of the FBI special agent and called him.

The agent told me that my name was mentioned by several people when they asked, “Tell us the name of the most likely person you know who might have known Stephen Paddock.” Due to our “video poker connection” and the fact that I play what many would consider high stakes, it didn’t surprise me that my name had come up. When I said I had never heard of him, basically the interview was over.

Except, the agent wanted to fill out the form in front of him and he asked me if my name was Bob, or perhaps Robert? Another question I didn’t want to answer, but I told him that Bob Dancer was a pseudonym used for teaching and writing purposes.

This led to the next question of, “Would you mind telling me your real name?” The truthful (unspoken) answer was of course I minded, but I told him anyway, along with my address and phone number. That information could be easily obtained by the FBI anyway if they really wanted it, but I would prefer I wasn’t in their databases.

Oh well. I wasn’t going to lie to the FBI and making a big stand about something that wouldn’t be difficult for them to find out anyway would just make me look suspicious.

I said at the beginning of this article that I had my doubts that Stephen Paddock was a winning player. Why did I say that? Because articles said he’d been playing for high stakes for more than a decade and he was still allowed to play at a number of the biggest Las Vegas Strip casinos. From both personal experience and talking to many other successful players, I know that these places tend to restrict and/or remove players over whom they do not believe they have an advantage.

So, if he did have an actual advantage, he would have needed to fool several different casinos for more than a decade. And this, I believe, is unlikely. Even more unlikely is that the casinos would have allowed him to be $5 million ahead in one year.