I attended a wedding recently in Las Vegas. I\u2019ve known the groom for about 25 years. We both were successful players at the MGM Grand during the time I was able to make $1 million there during a six-month period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was seated at the wedding reception next to a player I\u2019ve known even longer. \u201cSam\u201d now lives in California and mentioned he has some advantage plays in California, Oregon, and Washington. I asked him if there was anything he could tell me about the plays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sam told me he had partners and they were all sworn to secrecy. They believed the plays wouldn\u2019t last if other pros started showing up. I understood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sam later asked me if I was still gambling. I told him yes. There were a few casinos who were \u201cgiving away the store,\u201d so to speak, and I was managing to get my share of what they were giving away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He pressed me for details and I gave him approximately the same answer as he had given me, which was that I had a partner and we believe that if too many pros know the exact details, the duration of the promotion would be limited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Sam pressed on. He told me that we\u2019ve known each other \u201cforever,\u201d and that should count for something. Again, I demurred, he took the hint, and we began talking about something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The thing is, I do have friends with whom I share things. But those friends also share things with me. Currently, three of my best four regular plays came on a tip from somebody else. On one of them, when I got into the play and found out some extra things, I explained the \u201cenhancements\u201d I had found to the friend who told me about the play in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is there a possible scenario when Sam and I start sharing with each other? Sure. But I\u2019m going to need some useful information from him before I start sharing my \u201cgood stuff.\u201d I\u2019ve given him some hints in the past and so far, it\u2019s not been reciprocated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once a player, \u201cTom,\u201d told me he was willing to share a video poker play with me for single-line quarters where, including mailers and everything, the player had a 1\u00bd% advantage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I thanked him and told him I wasn\u2019t interested. That play might be worth $15 per hour — including the time it took to drive back and forth. There was a time when I would have jumped at that play, but now I want to spend my time on plays that are more lucrative than that. I played a lot for quarters as I was beginning my video poker career, and I certainly don\u2019t mean to put others down who are now in that position, but that\u2019s no longer my thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If Tom were actually a quarter player, then my best plays would be beyond his means. But he could easily know players for whom the plays were not beyond their means. I didn\u2019t want to have to give up plays for something that would be worthless to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I told Tom that if he found a good play on $5 or higher machines, I\u2019d certainly be interested. I could trade information or give him a finder\u2019s fee, whichever he preferred. But for me to pay, the information had to be useful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A player recently told me about a play at a casino that was exceptionally lucrative. Unfortunately, it consisted of four-times-a-week drawings — at a casino well over 1,000 miles from Las Vegas. That information wasn\u2019t going to be useful to me personally, but I\u2019m still glad I know about it. That might be information that someday I could barter with someone else in order to obtain knowledge that was potentially profitable to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another player, \u201cUlrich,\u201d told me about a play that had been good, but the casino changed the promotion a week before I showed up. Ulrich later swore he didn\u2019t know, but I wonder. There are players who will try to trade useless information in the hopes that they will receive something useful in return. Ulrich swore he\u2019d make it up to me. We\u2019ll see. It\u2019s been two years, and I haven\u2019t heard from him since.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I attended a wedding recently in Las Vegas. I\u2019ve known the groom for about 25 years. We both were successful players at the MGM Grand during the time I was able to make $1 million there during a six-month period. I was seated at the wedding reception next to a player I\u2019ve known even longer. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15763,"featured_media":843442,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[558,557],"tags":[561,585],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/spinach-2.png?fit=500%2C300&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871240"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15763"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=871240"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":871241,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871240\/revisions\/871241"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/843442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}