Yes, I think you’ll are right.
But then again, Uncle Al is never wrong; but he says that “others” do this, not he himself.
I’m only a guest here, but on another topic, on another night, I’d like to tell you Uncle Al’s 9-11 story!
I lurk here and I think it’s one of the best sites on the Web.
I read a book on casino gaming a while ago, and am too lazy to look up the information again to provide cites. But a couple of things I remember…
-In Nevada, if a game represents that it has a random outcome, it must actually have a random outcome. These slot machines mentioned upthread that are programmed to be streaky… I don’t think they’d be legal in LV. Similarly, if a game represents playing cards, then the odds on that game must reflect odds from an actual deck. That is, if there were some video slot game that let you win for “drawing” a spade, the odds for drawing it would have to be 1/4 (unless the machine explicitly mentioned jokers).
-Some standard video poker games have theoretical payouts above 100%. For those unfamiliar with video poker, your hand is not compared to any other hand to determine your winnings (that is - you don’t have to beat another hand). It is compared to a pay table. The worst paying hand is usually a pair of jacks. Any pair jacks or higher pays 1:1. Any two pair pays 2:1. Three-of-a-kind pays 3:1, and so on. The trick is that different machines will have different (openly displayed) pay tables. The differences are usually with straights, flushes, and full houses. A machine that pays 4:1, 5:1, and 6:1, respectively will, with perfect strategy, have a payout somewhere in the mid 90s. But if you look around and find a pay table that pays 4:1, 6:1, and 10:1 respectively, you will be around 101%.
Casinos keep these pay tables around because 1) perfect video poker strategy is mind-boggingly complicated, and people who think they know it often don’t, and 2)hard-core video poker players are drawn to them, which brings more people in the door. If the casino notices someone playing perfect strategy on a high-pay-table machine for any length of time, the casino will take measures. I wonder if the BIL in question is not playing traditional slots, but is instead at a particular video poker machine in a dark corner of a casino somewhere…?
-There is also a payout above 100% on pai-gow poker if you bank. But the edge you gain is against the other players, not the house, so the casino doesn’t care.
Wow. That’s spooky. Yes, that’s exactly what he does.
And he puts them on the grill still frozen.
Sorry to be so absent from my own thread. We took the kids to the beach for a couple of days and there wasn’t any internet access.
FWIW, I have no problem with people who gamble for fun. If you enjoy the thrill of spending money in casinos, go right ahead. BiL isn’t a sucker because he likes to gamble. He’s a sucker because he thinks that being a “high roller” is something to brag about. And because he thinks that winning regularly at slots is a viable business plan.
There’s no telling this guy anything. He’s decided he’s a sharp operator and the rest of us are just rubes. If you try to point out any flaws in any of his stupid plans he gets pissy and nasty. Since our main purpose on this trip is to let the kids see their grandparents we’re going out of our way to keep things civil. I told my wife to pretend BiL is a drunk in a bar. There’s no point in arguing with a drunk. You’re not going to convince him of anything. You’re just going to piss him off and get yourself in a pointless fight.
His girlfriend has health problems too. They’ve been together for almost a decade. I think she’s stays with him because she doesn’t think she can do any better. They certainly don’t seem to LIKE each other.
Oh … here’s another gem we found out on this trip! They’ve been engaged for years but have never made a move to actually get married. But, apparently, a few years ago, she went off birth control and he tried to get her pregnant! The mind boggles. They’re not ready for marriage, but they decided they were ready to be parents? Thank God nothing came of it. If there was a child involved I’d actually feel a moral obligation to get involved in this trainwreck instead of just quietly gritting my teeth for a few days every year.
This is a little known opportunity for advantage play. I’m surprised someone else brought it up. Even the great Stanford Wong had a book about banking Pai Gow Poker for profit.
Synopsis of book: Possible, but you need a bankroll of a minimum $50K and a table with enough action to overcome the 5% commission on your winnings.
Conclusion…not a viable option for most people. 
I knew a guy whose job was to take such a bankroll, supplied by “investors”, and go make more money with it. It paid pretty well, but it really seemed like a money laundering operation.
To get back to the OP, is BIL really a sucker? I’d use the SMAP, that’s the Standard Movie Admission Price for 90 minutes of entertainment. How much does it cost you for a movie and a trip to the concession stand? Multiply that times the amount of time the BIL gets to stay in his comp room overnight minus what he drops on the casino floor (and minus towels and soap in the suitcase.)
I don’t do really do slots, but I can imagine a situation where it’s clearly advantageous to the Casino to program the machines to tease people with a subtle reinforcement of the gambler’s fallacy. If the machines seem to act in a certain way people are more likely to think they can come up with a system, and the Casino will make more money.
This is why you can still find single deck blackjack tables – for every person who wins themselves small fortune by counting cards and not getting caught they have a thousand people who think they can count cards losing their pants. Spotting card counters for a Casino is a complicated balance of vigilance and theater – you don’t want to get ripped off but you also want to keep a lot of people thinking they have an advantage.
For the record:
I was lumping video slots in with slots, with a little pinball thrown in for good measure. One large error on my part was assuming that error correction software resets the odds when the credit counter reaches zero. This may be true of pinball, and I suspect video gambling but slots gives an immediate cash out so the credit counter is always zero. And by error correction software I mean the machine will adjust the odds if the payout is not what the operator set the machine for. For instance in pinball if I set the payout (number of games where player gets a replay) for 10% then the game will adjust the score needed for a replay to keep the replay level at 10%.
Now perhaps the programming has improved so much that error correction isn’t needed in gambling games. The first electronic gambling games where very easy to beat. You zapped the thing with a record (those roundy vinyl things) static discharger and the game program rebooted. The first few games were predictable even as to the cards dealt. Zap; wait for that Royal Flush hand; bet it all; cash out. Better than stringing.
Also, gambling games in Nev. or N.J. are different where the odds and the play are heavily regulated. In N.J. the video poker machine have to deal from a deck of 52 cards. This is not true in any of the other states. So again, they may not have error correction software.
That’s a great system. But I bet the OP’s brother (or brother-in-law or whoever it was) means something far stupider. I sell lottery tickets as part of my job, and there are PLENTY of people who have a system for scratchers. They play a ticket or series of tickets based on the serial numbers of said tickets. Then, they don’t win, and tell me, “Man, that is a dead roll of tickets!” but continue to play it based on the numbers on the back.
Joe
As I said above, BiL isn’t a sucker because he likes to gamble. He’s a sucker because he thinks he’s turning a cash profit doing it. And because he thinks that being a “high roller” is some sort of special achievement.
He thinks he can use his mad videogame skillz to time his button presses to make winning combos come up. Is that stupid enough?
One reason I think Las Vegas is a larger convention town than Orlando is because the conventioneers like to come back home saying, “I won back the price of the trip in the casino.”
It might be more accurate to say that they like the possibility of saying this. The evidence suggests that rather few actually do pay for their travel by gambling.
You know, liking the possibility of winning back their travel expenses and saying that they won back their travel expenses regardless of actual outcome are not mutually exclusive 