Reply #47: I saw a young NASCAR fan win $18,000 a few hours ago

[Awsi Dooger]

At the Venetian. He hit Triple Diamond/red7/Triple Diamond with two coins in on a $5 slot machine. So that was 9 times $2000 for $18,000. He hit it while I was checking out a progressive poker machine that was at an unusually high royal flush level, above $9000. Normally it is in the $4000 - $5000 range, and I was trying to figure out if it was worth playing at $9000. At that point I heard a sharp "Yeah!" and walked across the row to check it out. The guy was maybe 25 and about to leave town after coming here for the NASCAR race. He said he won $6000 on a machine the day before. But if he's playing high limit random slots, the big losses will come in bunches.

I play bonus machines in Las Vegas and win on them, but there aren't that many anymore. I look at them while walking to and from the sportsbook. It was a gold mine in the late '90s, when every casino was drenched with them. Friends of mine literally made hundreds of thousands. They are called Vision machines. Tourists unknowingly play them close to the bonus level, then abandon them.

For example, my favorite are the Diamond Mine machines. If you get 10 diamonds you get a payoff of 10 coins. So I'll walk past them and look for one of these scenarios -- any column with 9 diamonds, any machine with 8 diamonds in one column and 7 in another, or any machine totalling 16 diamonds in the three columns. Those are my minimum requirements, based on a computer analysis I did a few years ago. I will not deviate. The other guys in town don't prioritize Diamond Mines, or the equivalent like Fishin' For Cash or French Bread, so I have an advantage even with the vast majority of bonus machines now long gone.

Tonight I won $80 in about 3 1/2 hours. I walked the center Strip looking at the NCAA basketball lines, but waltzed past the bonus machines en route. Admittedly, that was above average. In the old days we calculated the bonus machines at $25 per hour. Now it's $10 or slightly less, especially since the Chinese bonus machine hawks will camp out behind a machine and rout for the tourist to leave a gem for them, even blowing smoke at the tourist to hasten the departure.