The Nutty Professor

Introduction

Recently, a man calling himself, “Professor Slots,” has been brought to my attention in this thread here. OdiousGambit wonders about some of his advice in his Youtube videos, so I am going to do my patriotic duty and watch every single one of his videos and review them so nobody else has to.

For those of you who want some idea of what we are probably in for, Professor Slots has his own website and Youtube channel. On his website, he sells books, courses and one-on-one video lessons for hundreds of dollars per hour.

In contrast, the information published on our family of websites by our writers is completely free for people to read. That said, if you want to check out an online casino, please feel free to look into one of the ones that advertise here or on the LCB family of websites!

Still, all information you will see us publish (in terms of paid writers) on these sites is either definitely legitimate, or, when based on opinion, is based on the best information that we have available to us at the time.

The first thing that we will check out is the Professor Slots website, which I will also be reviewing. I want to shy away from any potential copyright issues, so most of his website review will consist of me paraphrasing what it says and then adding some of my own commentary. Also, I probably wouldn’t want to give him the web traffic by the time I am done looking into this.

The Professor Slots Website

The first thing that I notice about his site is that he also has an article section, which is down at the bottom of his homepage. I’m really not enough interested in dissecting the individual articles to get too much into that, so I’ll just mention that it’s there and move on.

The biggest part of the homepage is a link to his Youtube video where he first introduces himself. He’s sitting there in a suit and goofy looking bowtie, which I’m saure is meant to be there to give him an air of credibility. I wear a T-Shirt, in case you guys wondered. If I’m being interviewed, however, I will wear an open dress shirt if the person interviewing me asks politely.

His name is Jon Friedl, not that anyone actually cares. He states that he has won ninety taxable jackpots in nine months, of course, any regular casino gambler would know that does not mean credibility. For example, someone with enough money could play $500/hand Video Poker and win ninety taxable jackpots (especially with the W2-G bypass some casinos, such as Cosmopolitan, have now) with a matter of a few hours.

The next thing that he has to say in this introduction video is that, “I’m very good at pattern recognition.” That’s interesting. Do you know who else is good at pattern recognition? LOsing slot players. They see the patterns and thinks that the Free Games is, ‘Due,’ until it fails to hit and they lose all of their bankrolls, of course.

Another thing about the ninety jackpots is that it sounds terrific and makes it seem that this guy has some idea of what he’s talking about, but the main reason people wouldn’t see that many jackpots in nine months is simply because they aren’t making high enough bets. If you bet enough, then you will see jackpots sooner or later...or run out of money...depending on how much you are starting with. There’s nothing impressive about hitting ten jackpot a month---it just means you gamble a lot.

He has a bunch of college degrees, he says, in physics and engineering. I’m not sure if all of the readers out there are aware of this, though I’m sure that they are, slot machines don’t give a shit about how many degrees you have.

By the way, don’t engineers and college professors make a lot of money? Why is this guy selling lessons for hundreds of dollars an hour rather than just putting everything that he has online for free and growing his website? Why is he selling books rather than just publishing the information on the machines that he knows. It certainly seems like someone with eighty seven million college degrees shouldn’t have any real need for money.

When we’re applying, “Pattern recognition,” to slot machines by way of introduction, my advice is to buckle up and get ready for the ride, because we have almost certainly bought a one way ticket to Bullshit Land. Choo-Choo, time for the train to rumble down the track, baby! Actually, maybe Monopoly Mega Movers will be one of the games we, “Learn,” about, who knows?

That said, I have to admit that his casinos listings pages (state-by-state) are pretty solid. They’re obviously not nearly as descriptive or in-depth as my work on RealMoneyAction for states such as Ohio (and the other 49), but I’ll give credit where it’s due and admit the listing pages are pretty good work.

That said, it doesn’t escape me that the best way to sell someone on BS is to dress it up in very authoritative clothing. Basically, put enough on there to make him look like a bonafide gamblign expert, establish credibility, then start selling slot sessions.

The next part that I decided to click on was his page through which you can hire him as your personal consultant. Do you want to know something about the slot machines that I know? Let me tell you how: Ask me a specific enough question and I will more than happily answer it for free.

We start with the testimonials, starting with some lady who reportedly won a little more than $1,200 on a Tarzan machine. Even assuming that the review is true, that’s entirely coincidental and not relevant to anything whatsoever. If you want to know how to win playing a slot machine...here is the answer...play a slot machine. There’s nothing about this testimonial that would indicate this person was at any sort of advantage.

In another testimonial, a gentleman said that he was thankful for Professor Slots’ advice because it taught him that he can make his money last longer by playing high-denomination machines rather than poor returning penny machines. While it’s true that high denomination machines generally have a higher percentage return, that’s something that I could easily tell you for free, and in areas with Commercial Casinos, slot return disclosures (by denomination) are often a publicly disclosed statistic. In other words, Professor Slots is charging you for information that can be accessed for free...and they’re thanking him for that!

If you’re somehow still contemplating wasting your money on one of his private sessions, apparently, you will pay $297/hour for the privilege. I really hope he’s teaching actual advantage plays because you’re going to have to spend a few days in the casino for every hour spent with him to be breakeven on THAT overall proposition.

In general, though, it seems like he is mainly encouraging people just to play high-denomination slots, which would explain the fact that they are hitting more jackpots as well as how many jackpots he hits.

Hey, do you want to know how you can win $10,000 at Craps? Just bet $10,000 on the Pass Line and you will win $10,000 a lot more frequently than you were probably doing before. I’m not going to charge you $297 for that information, though. Also, in case you wondered, Craps has a lower House Edge than the Big Six Wheel---I know, riveting stuff.

A piece of information disclosed in another testimony was apparently one reader was encouraged to avoid playing during weekends and holidays and that the slots would hit for him on Thursdays---at least, that’s the way it reads. Whatever. Limited sample size. I would imagine that, if any casinos change their slot return percentages for weekends at all, that those would be in the minority.

Another testimonial comes from a guy in West Virginia who was apparently advised to play early in the morning and won two sessions in a row. I’m sure that couldn’t just be short-term positive results based on a limited sample size, or anything like that.

I have to borrow from one testimonial:

Greg from Ohio: Jon, as I go through each of your podcasts, it’s like sitting down with a cup of coffee listening to a good friend. Your instructional sessions have enlightened me in so many areas and even foster a continuance of that wonderful urge to play the slots that we all love so much. Passing on your knowledge is greatly appreciated.

The only thing that I think Professor Slots has fostered in this guy is delusion. Personally, I’ve never described wanting to play slots as a, “Wonderful urge,” but I could see how people might be inclined towards this attitude since they are most likely being sold bullshit that they want to believe and choose to believe...but I guess we will just have to wait and see if the videos hold any water.

In terms of the site’s policies, you should not be surprised to know that there is a policy of, “No refunds,” after a one-on-one consulting session has taken place.

With that, Professor Slots suggests that these one on one sessions are the best thing he can do for you, but if you can’t afford those---he suggests that you not be playing slots, either. Haha. No. He suggests that you buy his book where he proclaims that you will learn the following:

improved entertainment value

an extended length of play

greater profit

a higher player club status

And, also wants you to achieve higher status in clubs so that you can access to the following:

going to the head of the line: every line, every time

annual cruises

promotional gifts: enough to fill a spare bedroom

tickets to sporting events

and whatever else you and your executive host can think of

Again, I’m not sure how he plans for people to do that if they are in a financial situation such that they can not afford his sessions, but I guess that’s something that I just haven’t been taught yet.

Oh, and also, PLAY WITHIN YOUR MEANS AND DO NOT PLAY FOR COMPS!!!

Would you like an extended length of play on slot machines? Here’s my advice: play slower. See, that was completely free of charge.

He also sells an online course for $97. There’s also a book for $15.97, which I may review one day if I decide that doing so (I would be writing an article) is profitable enough for me to read this trash.

Professor Slots on Youtube

With that, the time has come for me to review some of Professor Slots Youtube videos, which falls under Fair Use. From time-to-time, I might quote from some of these reviews and it will, always be clearly indicated when I am doing so as quotes will appear in italics.

I’m going to try to approach the Youtube videos with an open mind, and if I want to be really optimistic, I think that I can hold out hope that the videos will not have any information that is flatly wrong. For this section, I will be watching every single one of his videos, but I will only mention the video’s title if I actually have something to say about it.

You can find all of Professor Slots’ Youtube videos here.

The first video that I am going to watch asks, “Can you guess who controls slot machine odds?”

Actually, I can. Here are the answers:

1. The individual states tend to have statutory minimums when it comes to the overall return to player (House Edge) of a device. For instance, this number is 75% in Nevada and 80% in West Virginia, to name two.
2. The slot machine manufacturers will typically design games with a variety of RTP settings available which can then be:
3. Chosen from by individual casinos based on what they want the slot machine returns to be at their properties.

The first five minutes of this video correctly summarizes basically what I said above and discusses, in brief, the difference between RNG-based and physical reel slot machines. With that said, I would consider everything said in this video to be pretty common information to those in the casino gambling know and not particularly useful in the context of winning.

The next few minutes of the video get into stand-alone machines, stand alone progressives, linked progressives and wide area progressives. Again, while this information is all correct (at least through one listen), none of it seems particularly useful.

One minor gripe is that he keeps referring to the slot machine, “Odds of winning,” when what he actually means is the House Edge or Return to Player. The, “Odds of winning,” at least to me, means the overall hit rate (percentage of returning spins) of a slot machine.

The next thing that he discusses is the difference between commercial casinos and locations with state-run lottery terminals.

For some reason, the Professor Slots seems to think that the age of a casino is the ultimate indicator as to whether or not the slots in a given property are stand-alone units or are linked units, in one way or another. What I can say is that most casino floors are a mix of different types of machines and there is no reason (unless most of the machines are coin-droppers---which I don’t think is true anywhere) to believe that the age of a casino has any bearing on this. For example, Caesars Palace Las Vegas is one of the older casinos you will find, but has some of the newest machines.

Here’s a quote:

It does matter who controls slot machine odds. Why? Because this is where we find patterns of winning. When slot machines are set up to be as random as possible, and that assigned level of randomness is unchanged over days and weeks, then long-term statistical principles apply. That means, over the long run, meaning over the long haul, people will always lose money playing slots.

Put another way, profits are only possible in the short-term. This specifically applies to slot machines controlled by the state, such as VLT’s.

With that, Professor Slots goes on to maintain that land casinos adjust their slots, “Hourly,” for, “Promotional purposes,” which is brand new information to me. Professor Slots also seems to ignore the fact that there are variable-state slot machines, even in some locations with state controlled VLT’s, inh which players can find themselves temporarily at an advantage. That said, it’s possible that he wouldn’t even be aware of such a thing.

The rest of this video has to do with trying to identify the times that casinos are setting their machines to return more that 100%, which makes me wonder---why the hell would a casino EVER be doing that? Casinos simply don’t need to do such things. I’ve seen people drop hundreds of dollars to slot machines in minutes, just to go back for more. THe goal of a slot machine is to simply create the perception in the player’s mind that there is some sort of pattern or that it can be beaten in the long-term, that certain things become, “Due,” as it were.

With that, Professor Slots is essentially suggesting that there are times when the casino itself is essentially setting slot machines to be, “Due,” which is total balderdash.

The next thing that Professor Slots gets into is that his opinion is that the casino floats between settings to pay more than 100% and then settings that are much less than that. He states that he uses, “Pattern recognition,” to essentially determine when the slot machines are sets high and can exploit those known settings.

Do I think any of that is true? Not at all. I guess it would be technically possible, especially with today’s technology, but what Professor Slots seems to believe (he said it, anyway) is that casinos want to adjust their performance based on individual nights, or even on individual hours, so that they can show certain financial metrics over certain periods of time.

Okay, I could certainly understand that, but it still doesn’t answer a very simple question: Why would casinos ever deliberately set the machines to return more than 100%...especially if they aren’t even going to tell the customers about it? He correctly maintains in the video that a casino’s goal is to bring profits to its shareholders, so why does it ever make sense to just set the machines to return more than 100%, even if it’s for an hour?

Apparently, Professor Slots proposes that he can teach people how to use his, “Pattern Recognition,” which I assume means observing the slot floor to determine when the machines are programmed with a greater return-to-player, compared to a lesser one and then to only play when the machines are set with a high return to player. He also seems to think that the ability to change return settings somehow makes the slots, “Not random,” but I can assure him that they are required to be random...and even if his nonsensical theory did turn out to be generally correct, the individual outcomes would still be random. You could trim a machine from 102% return to an 85% return and a player could still theoretically play profitably over the course of an hour.

With that, I think that Professor Slots is essentially going to encourage people to use his, “Pattern Recognition,” which will ultimately lead to making guesses as to when the machines are returning well based on a limited sample size of observation that can be skewed even if the actual return of the machines is unchanged on one day compared to another.

Also, does he assume that there is someone staffing the casino whose job it is just to remotely change the return percentages on machines on an hourly basis? What a waste of time and money that would be. You really don’t need to do much when most slot machines return 90%, or less, and people are happy to play them anyway...just set them and forget them.

The next video is called Take Control of Your Gambling, so let’s see how this goes.

My personal advice for anyone looking to take control of their gambling is to, rather than pay for this guy’s books or sessions, is to quit gambling. If you’re thinking about spending money to try to learn how to beat slot machines, then you haven’t read enough free (and legitimate) information that’s already out there and you’re probably not going to.

Basically, this first video started out well enough giving legitimate information. However, after discussing the truth of how slot machine House Edge is determined, he went into very theoretical territory...and that’s if I am being extremely charitable. Of course, having theories is fine, when you’re not selling them to people.

Here are his first three steps to success, and we are quoting here:

1. Assessing Casinos for Success.
2. Choosing Candidate Slot Machines.
3. Identifying Your Gambling Goals.

The next several minutes of the video are a restatement of the goals and then amounts to choosing the right casino and choosing the right machines. Of course, he does nothing to explain how anyone might go about finding the right machines.

After that, we get into him saying that offers are meant to pull people into the casino during certain times. Of course, we are most of the way through the video and have not detailed any of the so-called steps to success, but that hardly comes as a surprise.

Professor Slots also gets into how casinos make it difficult to find the exits (yeah, ones designed before 1990...and even this is a pretty widely-held recognition these days) and how they don’t have, ‘Wall clocks,” you know, that thing that you might have needed before smartphones if you don’t wear a watch or are so introverted that you can’t bring yourself to ask someone with a watch, “What time is it?” You’d think that he would have mentioned the lack of windows, that’s a big one, as it leads to not noticing the natural passing of time.

He says that slot advantage plays are limited in casinos built before 2012, but they seem to mostly have the same machines there that I would play at casinos built since then. Professor Slots either does not know, or simply does not care, that there are mathematically legitimate ways to play slot machines at an advantage. He’s more interested in his theory that casinos finely tune their payout percentages on an hourly basis...and that this is also done only in newer casinos.

Of course, that’s not even true, because some of the most popular and profitable casinos ARE casinos that were built before 2012 and that DO have updated systems. How many casinos on the friggin’ Las Vegas Strip, for example, does he think were built AFTER 2012?

How many casinos does he think were built in Atlantic City post-2012, for that matter. There are a few casinos that have technically opened since then, but are in physical buildings that existed before that. I guess Revel (now Ocean Resort) opened its doors for the first time post-2012, at least, during 2012.

Anyway, all of this goes back to his notion that, “Newer style casinos,” are always, “Tinkering,” with their payouts in a way that creates patterns.

You’ll notice on his website, by the way, that none of the testimonials are talking about how people are just beating the casinos up week in and week out. Quite the contrary, in fact, one of the featured reviews discusses hitting a single jackpot.

Another one of the testimonials he published discussed a trip to Mountaineer Casinos, which was built WAY before 2012, so this should not have worked according to Professor Slots who said that, “Older-style,” casinos have the, “More random,” machines.

The next video discusses Step #1 and is called Assessing Casinos for Success.

This video starts out by discussing whether or not Las Vegas casinos or local casinos are better. He points out (correctly) that gambling has become legal in a great many states in recent years and that many people in the country will have casinos closer to them than was true before.

I will give him credit for throwing in a disclaimer that people should only be playing with money that they can afford to lose comfortably.

The next thing that we do is get into the different type of gambling establishments, with he separates into casinos, casino resorts, racinos and parlors.

After that, he goes on to discuss that a place must have Table Games to qualify as a casino, but that’s not true whatsoever. Legally speaking, many places are considered casinos regardless of whether or not they have Table Games. For example, many of the smaller properties scattered throughout Nevada do not necessarily have Table Games, and yet, are licensed as casinos. Having or not having Table Games does not instantly change whether a place is a casino or not, that usually comes down to licensing.

The next thing that he says is that places without Table Games are, “Slot parlors,” which might be a true statement from his perspective, but most jurisdictions do not have a legal definition of, “Slot parlor.” Those run by state lotteries, for example, are usually legally termed Limited Video Lottery locations.

Professor Slots also states that most, “Slot parlors,” do not have Video Poker, but again, that’s not at all true. I will allow that most such locations in West Virginia do not have Video Poker (though there are a few that do on the older model Game King machines), but if you look at chains of places in Nevada, such as Dotty’s, all of those I have seen DO have Video Poker despite not having Table Games.

Furthermore, there are many smaller places in Nevada that have slots and video poker, but do not have Table Games, even in addition to the chains. If you go to Montana, which technically operates on a limited video lottery terminal model commercially, most of those locations also have Video Poker machines.

In other words, most of what he is promoting as categorically true is not categorically true, but at least it is incorrect in a way that is not harmful, at least, in this instance.

He also lists states such as Alaska, Hawaii and Utah as being the exceptions, but there are many more exceptions than those. For example, Connecticut is a state that has casinos that operate by compact with the state (Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun), but is also a state in which Commercial Casinos do not currently exist.

There are other states with various forms of Commercial Gambling, such as pari-mutuel wagering, that do not have any commercial casinos or legal slot machines. Examples of such states are Kentucky and Texas, though there are others.

Until recently, so-called, “Games of Skill,” were legal in the State of Virginia, which has since seen a few cities authorize commercial gambling, though none of the state’s casino have opened yet.

There are also a few states that allow for both lottery and charitable gambling, but do not have any places with legal slot machines whatsoever. Two examples are South Carolina and Tennessee.

With that, his categories are missing a lot. It hardly matters, though, because none of this is particularly relevant to winning at slot machines.

He also says, “Racinos typically have a dog or horse track or allow remote betting at such facilities,” which is interesting phrasing, because that’s literally the only thing that makes a racino a racino.

The next thing that he does is get into the different ways that people can find casinos near them. That being said, if you don’t know how to do a Google Search for casinos and then how to search for the distance to them from your house, maybe you shouldn’t be gambling.

After that, he pops his states lists for all of the various states and what they have to offer in terms of casinos and certain other gambling offerings. Credit where it’s due, his listings aren’t nearly as in-depth as my Real Money Action listings, but they’re reasonably good.

The next session on assessing casinos involves going into high-limit rooms and observing (or asking) how many jackpots have been hit either within the last hour or since the current slot attendant has come on shift.

In my opinion, that’s an excellent way to get information that means absolutely nothing!!! To his credit, he does suggest going to casinos and making this inquiry on equally busy nights...but even then, it ignores many things, such as:

1. Natural variance.
2. How busy is the high limit room, specifically?
3. What machines in the high-limit room were being played?
4. What was the average bet being made per spin?

For example, you can take a half dead high-limit room, but if you have people in there who are betting $25/pull on slot machines, then there is a fairly reasonable chance that they alone will generate more jackpots than a high limit room with ten people in it who are only betting $1 apiece.

In other words, Professor Slots is encouraging you to go in and gather information that is ultimately meaningless. Here’s a fun quote:

A clean restroom is a beautiful thing, and shows they care about getting the details right.

Yeah, I’m sure that how much toilet paper is left on the restroom floor is going to provide me with tremendous insight as to what machines have the best returns…

After that, he recommends looking into payout percentages that are reported to the state, preferably by month and denomination. Of course, that tells you absolutely nothing about any individual machine in the place, but at least it’s better information than what has been given so far.

Here’s another quote I just love:

Otherwise, I’d be careful of online casino reviews when assessing casinos. They can be so subjective from honest people and you can’t know which ones are legitimate.

I wonder what his opinion is of online testimonials related to people who sell slot machine seminars for hundreds of dollars per hour? Do you guys think that those testimonials can also be subjective, from honest people and there’s no way to know which ones are legitimate? He sure doesn’t seem to have a problem with promoting testimonials favorable to him on his website.

The next video refers to his Step 2 and is called Choosing Candidate Slot Machines.

By this time, you have already established what casino you think is your best bet. You have assessed all available casinos and selected the best casinos and, though he doesn’t say it, I assume, denominations with the highest payout percentages.

For the love of God, now he’s getting into a concept that he calls, “Bankroll cycling,” which he refers to as being able to run your bankroll through the slot machine several times based on the fact that your bankroll is not decreasing quickly. In his opinion, if your bankroll is slowly depleting, then that is still a winning machine because you can make it up on comps.

Where’s the math? What comps? How much free play? Does he know that different casinos market more or less aggressively than others?

After that, he says that, “100-120 bets is the right amount to play to determine if you are sitting at a winning (or breakeven) slot machine.”

No. Absolutely not. Total garbage.

So, what he’s telling me is that 100-120 bets not only gives me an indication, but should be enough to determine whether or not it is a winning or breakeven machine? BASED ON WHAT? The biggest pays from most slot machines are going to have a cycle that is much longer than that, and some slot machines tend to have a high percentage of the overall return to player (Expected Return) concentrated in the higher payouts.

Furthermore, some slot machines with Free Games features (which often represent as much as 40% of the game’s overall return) have cycles longer than 120 spins, so losing might just mean that I haven’t hit any Free Games, or if I did, that they just didn’t pay particularly well.

In short, 100-120 spins is NOT enough to tell you if you are sitting at a winning or breakeven slot machine, except here’s one thing that I am generally confident of: You’re probably not. Most slot machines are simply not set to return more than 100% in the long run, or at any given specific hour or whatever he suggests. If a machine currently has an expected return of 100%, then it is either some sort of progressive or a variable-state/perpetual-state type of machine which, in many cases, what puts you at an advantage to begin with (especially on certain perpetual state machines) is likely to no longer be the case 100-120 spins later.

If you take nothing else away from these reviews, take this away: Short-term results mean absolutely nothing. In fact, Professor Slots himself said just that in one of the earlier videos, but apparently, has since changed his mind and has decided that 100-120 spins is enough to decide whether or not the machine is any good.

More to that point, what if a person is betting $5 per spin and the machine has a House Edge of 10%. That 100-120 spins comes with an expected cost of $50-$60 in that situation, so what is a player supposed to do, just hop around from machine to machine and eat expected losses of $50-$60 each time to hopefully stumble, as if by magic, on a, “Good,” machine?

This is all just flat nonsense.

Here’s a quote:

Yes, be careful initially, making as few as 20 bets to determine if it is a, “Bad,” machine. Trust your instincts!

No, no, no, no and no. Do NOT trust your instincts. Your instincts, combined with the fact that the notion of pattern recognition re: slot machines is fundamentally faulty is NOT the way to win at slot machines and does not help you determine the payout of a slot machine. Quite simply, you’re either at a mathematical advantage, or you are not, and knowing if and when you are will have to do with analysis of a specific machine and will have nothing to do with your instincts.

He also says that tight slot machines won’t pay out anything at all in the space of twenty spins. Again, that’s just a limited sample size and is meaningless. The machine could simply have a low hit rate such that such a small sample speaks nothing to the return.

The next thing that Professor Slots suggests is reading the paytable before playing, which of course, tells you exactly nothing if you do not know the probabilities of hitting certain results. The paytable by itself is useless.

This video also has some crap about bankroll management, but I could barely listen by that point. Next video.

The next video is called Identifying Your Gambling Goals which is his Step Three.

My advice for gambling goals, if you are a slots player, is either search for some true (and free) information on variable-state or perpetual-state machines, or alternatively, to stop playing slots. If you’re playing a slot machine that you have not extensively studied, by definition, the only goal that you can expect to achieve in the long run is losing.

If a small bankroll is all you feel comfortable spending, then that’s perfect.

SPENDING!!?? Why the hell am I spending anything? Do you charge hundreds of dollars for hourly seminars to teach people how to spend? If people just want to know how to spend, then I can tell them exactly how to do that in three easy steps:

1. Go to a casino.
2. Select a slot machine.
3. Lose. (This will happen eventually as long as you play long enough.)

Those are my three free steps to how you spend money gambling in a casino. Alternatively, you could place your entire bankroll on any Table Game bet and keep letting it ride until you either lose or hit the Table Maximum. If you hit the Table Maximum, feel free to abandon the original plan of losing.

Seriously, why the hell is he talking about spending? I thought that his entire website purported to teach people how to win? I should be making money, not spending it.

After that, he discusses the three possible goals, which are maximizing comps, take home money or entertainment value.

The first possible goal he focuses on is entertainment value. With that, he explains that people should use the players club in order to get comps, which I guess is fine. Again, to his credit, he advocates gambling only with money that the person can afford to lose and to not withdraw money from ATM’s and such.

After that, he says that it’s fun to win a little bit to win the respect and awe of their friends. I’m not sure why you need to win at slot machines to gain the respect of your friends, but from what I can tell, that just means that you should seriously consider finding different friends.

After that, he gets into comps such as small physical gifts and offers to slot tournaments. I don’t know what possible value random household appliances are going to have to people, but for me, I just tend to go out and buy whatever I need in that regard. I have no use for the casino’s free $15 blender, but if that means a lot to you to get a blender that they probably got at a substantial discount as bulk lot inventory anyway, you do you.

He then discusses how these goals can conflict with this quote:

For example, let’s say you walk into a casino, select a slot machine, put some money into it, bet and win a taxable jackpot...if your goal was to maximize comps, then you will need to spend all of that jackpot to push up your player’s club points...but if your goal is to maximize take home money, then you have a decision to make. Or, is that machine a winner, if you decide it is, then you might choose to spend a bit of that money to check.

LIMITED. SAMPLE. SIZE

The sad thing is, other than charging money for his stupid consultancy, I’m not sure that any of this is actually coming from a malicious place. I think that he might actually believe a ton of the stuff that he is promoting.

If you hit a jackpot, for example, then how does he know you’re not already at a high player’s card level? Maybe you have run tens of thousands of dollars through the machines prior to hitting that jackpot, in which case, walking with the money might not really hurt your goal of getting comps...which shouldn’t be a goal in the first place!

The only time...and I mean the ONLY time...anyone should be playing for comps is if they can put an actual cash value on the comps (such as free play), understand the expected loss (which varies by machine and you probably don’t know, for slots) of the machine that you are playing and then make the decision that you are at a monetary advantage overall by giving the casino the amount of play necessary to get the comp in question.

That said, such a notion would only apply if you are an advantage player in the first place, and with that, recreational slot machine players should absolutely never be playing for the purpose of getting comps. If your goal is to, “Maximize take home money,” then my advice is not to play negative expectation games to begin with.

In my opinion, players should walk into a casino with only two possible goals:

1. Advantage players should walk in with the goal of accumulating positive expected value, which happens either by playing in situations with a positive expectation, or alternatively, playing in a way with a quantifiable overall expected outcome. For example, an advantage player might play slots in a casino, but could only be doing that because he knows the free play that he will get as a result of that playing, in total, will exceed his expected loss on the machine.
2. The only other possible goal for playing should be to simply have fun with money that you can afford to lose. If you have lost more than you can afford, then you shouldn’t have done that, but don’t keep going (generally speaking) just because you are close to getting comps or a higher players card tier. The only exception would be if, “Going the rest of the way,” had a positive expected value relative to the additional amount that the player expects to lose...but most players are going to have no clue whether or not that’s the case.

The last part of the video is the only decent information that was given during the entire video, which is that players should keep written records of their casino trips so that they can use their losses to offset any taxable jackpots that they might accumulate during their visit(s).

The next video discusses why slot machines use Fruit Reel Symbols, which is honestly totally irrelevant to this review. I’m honestly not sure why he posted this video other than to lend credibility to his assertion that he is some sort of slot machine expert.

Of course, that’s a pretty good tactic. The truth lends credibility, so you bury the lies/myths/misrepresentations in a sandwich of truth, of sorts, so that it lends the parts that are untrue or mythical credibility by association. Anyway, I listened to this short video as I was typing this and, for the most part, it basically agrees with my understanding.

What he doesn’t mention about the fruit-flavored gum is that the people would not actually chew it, they would sell it back to the store for money instead, so the chewing gum was a total front. The same thing is true for the machines that someone would play for cigars or other little prizes. Similar to the, “For Amusement Only,” machines found in bars even in some states today, whether or not they would pay out in actual cash mostly depended on whether or not you were recognized as a regular.

Of course, I’m sure they didn’t mind the suckers who walked in, played the machines and walked out with cheap and, probably stale, fruit flavored chewing gum.

The next video that I am reviewing asks how machines pay out taxable jackpots, so I’m probably not going to have a whole lot to say on this unless he says something wrong. He makes a comparison to machines such as ATM’s with computer microprocessors that can recognize when certain results have been hit.

After that, he (for some reason) gets into whether or not a machine will accept or refuse a bet based on the credits available, which I would like to think even the vast majority of slot players understand. With that, we are more than halfway through the video and haven’t even begun to discuss the tax situation yet. He’s now talking about players club cards and cashing out and receiving a ticket...I’m sure we will get into the tax information at some point.

Four of six minutes in---finally. He correctly says that the tax threshold for W-2G is $1,200 in winnings and that the slot attendant will have to come and get personal identification for the tax form and then will pay the player by hand, so all of that is fine.

That video obviously didn’t contain anything about how to win playing slot machines, but I guess is at least useful if someone has never received a handpay before and wants to know what to expect during that process. Professor Slots should know, he once got ninety handpays in a ninth month period, as he so frequently likes to share.

Do you know what is even better than that? I’ve gone nine month periods without ever making any negative expectation bets. He can keep his handpays...he’s going to need that money if he thinks that his slot, “Strategies,” actually work.

The next video is about who builds slot machines throughout the world. After that, he shows a list of companies that he apparently purports to be all of the manufacturers in the entire world. I will say that he got most of the major ones, but he did miss a few. After that, he gets into how many of these companies are consolidating and getting into other areas of the casino (such as table games) or other gaming segments altogether (such as online gaming, both casino and social as well as doing stuff with the lottery).

Just listening to it once through, this information all seems reasonably and mostly true, but it has nothing to do with winning at slot machines. I really have no idea, at this point, if he’s purporting to be a channel and website that will teach you how to win at slot machines, or if he is just a general gambling information content creator!

More Videos…

From here on out, I’m going to be skipping videos whose titles suggest that they do not purport to discuss winning at slot machines. If Professor Slots wants to be a content creator who just gives general gamblinhg information (as to the industry side of things), then I really don’t care whether or not his information is right or wrong. The only thing that I am interested in is what he is selling to would-be clients and what he is promoting in his videos that would lead would-be customers into paying for his seminars and other materials.

With that, we will skip to the video called, “5 Ways to Make a Living Playing Slots,” and I’m pretty sure I can already smell the bullshit...and I haven’t even opened the video yet!

The first thing that Professor Slots points out is that the IRS considers some people professional gamblers, and additionally, that there are definitely casino professionals in other types of casino games. With that, he discuss the difference between professional and semi-professional gamblers...but points out that the IRS is concerned only with whether or not the person makes a profit.

Professor Slots then points out that some people he has met have claimed to be professional slots players, but he has never inquired whether or not those people ONLY play slots.

With that, he says that the IRS will grant professional gambling status to some slot machine gamblers, and will not revoke it once it is granted, but then states that the IRS may not accept that a person is a professional slot machine player if they attempt to file as such. With that, Professor Slots says that professional slots players might find themselves in court having to defend that slots are beatable.

This is because, in his opinion, people cannot win at slot machines in the long run, as far as the IRS is concerned. I’m perfectly fine with the IRS’ inclination, personally, here are my losing statements that will offset any W-2G’s that I have hit throughout the year. If the IRS wants to maintain that people cannot play slots profitably over the long run, then I am perfectly happy to agree with their analysis and provide them the paperwork to back up their assertion.

Besides, if someone is wanting to file as a professional gambler and is telling the IRS that they are showing profits (therefore, income) for a given year, why the hell would the IRS not want to accept whatever taxes the person is willing to pay?

With that, Professor Slots explains that people have discovered, “Patterns,” of winning at slots, and therefore, players were able to profit. Of course, that has absolutely nothing to do with winning at slots. It’s pretty funny because the professor was asked this question by RS, who I presume is the same as the RS that posts here on the Forums.

Finally, a few minutes later, he touches upon variable or perpetual state slot machines without directly calling them such. In my opinion, it’s quite possible that his phrasing that would lead one to that conclusion might have been an accident.

Professor Slots also suggests that a player could make playing slots their business in other ways, such as monetizing via Youtube or starting a podcast. Personally, I have no problem filing my taxes to my satisfaction with the IRS not considering me a professional slots player, but maybe that’s really important to some people.

I guess, in addition to Youtube, Professor Slots way of making a living playing at slots is to sell online courses and one on one seminars for hundreds of dollars an hour purporting to tell people how to win at slots.

The next video is one of several called, “Winning Slots Strategy,” which should be fun.

Professor Slots said that he has recently found a racino at which he hit six taxable jackpots over two months and turned a profit overall. Essentially, Professor Slots says that the casino floor was set up so that patterns became apparent to him. According to Professor Slots, the key to this casino was moving around a lot as the slot machines would quickly give what he calls a, “Taste,” within a few spins, then proceed to lose for several minutes or horus thereafter.

This is absolute nonsense. Professor Slots then said that he went to the high-limit machines and then decided to play exactly five spins on each machine that he chose and that the pattern applied to every machine. He would then place max bets until he had lost five bets or won any amount of money. He claims that he won a jackpot playing this strategy within a few spins using less than 25% of his bankroll. Specifically, he claims to have won three jackpots in a 25 minute period...which is half of the total jackpots he claims to have won in the two month period!

Personally, if I had any reason to believe that this method of playing slots had a long-term expected profit, then I certainly wouldn’t hit three jackpots in 25 minutes and then what...call it a month? That doesn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t you just go in and do it every day?

He says the biggest, “Disadvantage,” with this method is that other people might notice how it works and start doing it. If that’s the case, then why would he be on Youtube telling everyone how to do it and selling his, “Secret,” for only a few hundred dollars for one of his hourly consultations? I could go into the casino and play exactly this way, after doing his other bullshit first steps of course, and my expected loss will be whatever the average house edge is on the machines relative to my average amount being bet per spin.

In short, everything about this video is nonsense. It is quite possible that he hit three handpays max betting in the high limit room over a period of 25 minutes, but that’s just short-term results that are not indicative of anything whatsoever that is mathematically relevant.

I’m honestly starting to believe that this poor man is simply delusional.

He says that the reason for five bets is because the casino wants to give the player a quick pace and play until all of their money is gone. With that, he suggests that the machine is designed to give players a, “Taste,” of winnings within a few spins, though he suggests that some use ten bets or three bets.

Ultimately, what is the key word when it comes to slot machines?

ANSWER: Random.

If slot machines were intentionally designed such that they could be expected to give players a sizable win within the first five spins, then they would no longer be operating randomly. Each particular result on a slot machine has a particular probability of occurring, and that probability for each result exists with every spin, so if what Professor Slots says is true (it’s not) the casino is somehow skewing the probability of winning such that players are more likely to win on an individual spin, in the first five spins taken, than they are on other individual spins.

Obviously, this suggestion is patently nonsensical and runs contrary to how random number generators are literally designed to work. Casinos cannot change the return to player on the fly as a machine is being operated, and even if they could, it would require substantial manpower to watch every single player to know when to change the probabilities. Again, for the overall return to player to change, either the payouts or the probabilities must change. It’s obvious that the payouts haven’t changed within the course of a few spins, which leaves only the probabilities.

However, slot machines literally are not legally permitted to be designed such that previous results in a short period of time influence the probabilities of future spins almost immediately. The slot machine cannot dictate, “Okay, he has won a spin of these first five spins, so now the remaining spins he takes are going to be mostly losing.”

To be perfectly honest, this is so fundamental that I cannot even believe that there is a need for me to type this and the fact that I have to is a total disgrace. This is Slot Player Myths 101 territory, professor.

With that, I regretfully move on to the second video about slot machine winning strategies:

This machine gets into progressive machines, which should be interesting. Essentially, Professor Slots suggests that progressive machines choose the next winning jackpot from within the limits when the jackpot is reset. I will give partial credit here as that can sometimes be true of must hit machines, but progressive machines that rely upon certain results on the reels (such as hitting a particular number of symbols) do not arbitrarily choose a new point at which that jackpot will hit. If they did, that would change the probabilities of hitting those symbols--which is simply not the case.

With that, he gets into the different types of Progressive slot machines such as stand-alone, in-house (which I would call, “Linked”) and chain (which I would call, “Wide-area”) and what he calls Wide-Area, which refers specifically to jackpots that are shared in machine types within casinos of different chains.

Professor Slots says that you can use his other tips if you are not going for the Progressives, and instead, are going for the smaller jackpots. In his defense, he does state that Progressive machines, particularly wide-area, have lower returns to player overall and uses MIssissippi and MegaBucks as examples.

After that, he says that Progressive machines sometimes have better returns, as evidenced by those months in Mississippi in which the progressive returns were a full percentage higher than those returns of other games.

So close.

In reality, an individual month is meaningless and could simply reflect a really high jackpot or two being hit within that month. It’s important to recognize that monthly return statistics reflect actual payouts over that period of time and have nothing to do with the theoretical return percentage over the long run. No, one month is not the long run...especially not when talking about jackpots that are sometimes more than a million to one to hit. By definition, there’s going to be a ton of variance in short-term actual returns.

Professor Slots also maintains that players should play only when the jackpot is near the maximum that it can possibly happen, which would be good if he was actually talking about must-hits. Unfortunately, that’s not what he is talking about.

Beyond that, these so-called, “Maximums,” that he is referring to are often not maximums at all. Given the amount that feeds the jackpot meter combined with the probability of the jackpot hitting on any given spin, what you end up with is a certain point that the jackpot can be, “Expected,” to hit, or where it will hit on average. Players can do the same thing for Royal Flush progressives on Video Poker, which are definitely random in terms of when players hit them.

The one thing that Progressive Slots seems to totally ignore is actually tracking symbol frequencies to determine the probability of hitting the combination of symbols that triggers the jackpot...which would be the only good advice he could give in this regard. Of course, a highly advanced way would be to also track the frequency of other symbols (and corresponding payouts) to get a rough overall return percentage for the machine. That overall return percentage combined with the probability of the jackpot can work together to tell a player when the return is more than 100%...in the meantime, nothing Professor Slots is suggesting amounts to anything more sophisticated than guessing.

With that, we get into Part 3 of winning slot strategies.

The first section of this video is headed, “Comps as a Gambling Goal.”

Here it is: DO NOT PLAY FOR COMPS!!!

Again, the only way that you should ever play for comps, under any circumstances, is if you can put a hard cash number on comps that YOU KNOW YOU WILL GET and determine that this cash value...which ideally would be entirely cash or free play, exceed your expected loss.

When players card program advantage players play, they are concerned almost entirely with free play. For my purposes, I assign all non Free Play comps a cash value of $0.00 and anyone serious about slot advantage play should do the same. In my opinion, you are either profitable monetarily or you are a losing gambler. The comps are worthless otherwise, and what the casino is giving you costs them a hell of a lot less than whatever face value would otherwise be assigned to them.

Here’s a quote:

Let’s maximize winning earning complementary gifts as a winning slot strategy.

NO!!!!

He then recommends finding slot machines that, “Cycle bankrolls,” which essentially means finding low variance machines in order to generate a lot of coin-in, except, he doesn’t say it that way at all. He suggests that these are the best machines for earning comps and can cycle your bankroll for hours.

House Edge * Bet = Expected Loss

That’s it. If you’re looking to maximize comps, then you are not winning at slot machines, especially when discussing non-cash comps. Basically, all this advice amounts to is losing in a controlled way.

If the casino is offering you a free cruise, as Professor Slots likes to cite so often, you can be sure that the expected loss based on your action greatly exceeds the cost that you could expect to pay, in cash, for the very same cruise. Have people never priced cruises before?

The rest of the video is literally entirely about defining the comps that you want or, ‘Need,’ and then determining the best casinos for getting those comps. The only good piece of advice that he gives here is that players with a high players club tier going to a new casino should inquire with the new casino as to whether or not they do tier matching.

Bravely, I march onward to the fourth video about, “Winning slots strategy.”

With that, the video starts with talking about special casino events, such as car giveaways, that are designed to drive business into the casino. According to Professor Slots, the special events are a bad time to play as the casino will pay out less during these high traffic times. He also suggests that the casinos will offer reduced payouts in the hours after special events.

The long and short of what he is suggesting is that the casinos might find, during the busy special event, that they have paid out too much. As a result, Professor Slots suggests that they will drastically decrease the returns in the hours after special events so that they can ensure that they are meeting their desired return percentage.

This video is wrong for so many reasons that are so fundamental it makes my head hurt.

First of all, it assumes that the casino having lots of lost players can ever be bad. On the contrary, slot machine players will sometimes have winning days and losing days whereas, barring some huge jackpot being paid out on a high-limit slot, casinos will mostly only have winning days. The reason for this is that casinos play the same games that the players do, except they have a tremendous percentage advantage and achieve, “Long-Run,” results much more quickly than players.

The fewer players that there are in the casino, the fewer spins players have taken and the less coin-in that players have played at a fundamental disadvantage. In other words, given variance, casinos are more likely to have lost money for a day (not that it’s ever especially likely at all) when there are fewer players---not when there are more players.

Again, assuming that the casinos have the mathematical advantage on slot machines to begin with---and, if that’s not your assumption, then nothing I can say will ever help you---having a ton of players on the floor for several hours is the equivalent of players in there on several slow days. Simply put, more people playing, in terms of expectation, is ALWAYS better than having fewer people playing---how could it not be?

With that, casinos are not going to instantly adjust their machines to payout lower in the hours immediately following some special event. In all likelihood, they do not change the overall return of the slot floor, and possibly not even of any individual machines, whatsoever. Why would they? If they have a packed slot floor of people playing at an average disadvantage somewhere around ten percent, then that’s pretty much the most ideal, and profitable, situation that can happen for them.

The goal behind even having special events, drawings and giveaways is that the events will fill up the slot floor for exactly that reason. The plan that the casinos have is simply that the coin-in generated during these times, and the increase to expected loss associated therewith, will contribute to the casino showing more in revenues during that time than whatever the item is being given away actually costs. What Professor Slots is saying is that the casinos would prefer slower times because the short-term results (percentage-wise) are more predictable when, ironically enough, it’s the opposite that is actually true.

After that, he suggests that if the casino has not paid out enough during the special event, then they can simply, “Give out,” a few large jackpots in the high-limit room to balance it out.

Again, no. The casino cannot simply choose for the machines in the high-limit room to, “Give out,” jackpots anytime they will them to do so. That’s why random number generators exist. If the hold percentage is greater (actual) than what the casino has in mind, then they might adjust a few machines upward, but they have no short-term control whatsoever over the high-limit machines paying out huge jackpots as if on command.

It’s utter nonsense.

With that, he suggests that the casino might pay out less during the event and then make it up with a few high-limit jackpots in short order. Professor Slots suggests, by playing at the right time, a player can drastically increase his odds of hitting a large jackpot.

Again, absolutely not. This is complete and total balderdash. It’s absolutely ridiculous. I stop just short of calling it a lie because I think he might actually believe what he is saying---which is sad. Players either have a mathematical advantage or they do not...you cannot have that knowledge based on whether or not there has been a special event or the inaccurate perception that you can guess what the casino’s strategy pursuant to the special event is.

My inclination is that he sometimes wakes up early in the morning with an inclination to play slot machines and he is trying to find a way to justify such odd behavior.

I Have Changed My Mind!!!

I have changed my mind and will not be watching all of Professor Slots’ videos. I simply cannot do it. It’s possible that I will do a part two review at a later time, or as he puts out more videos, but for the time being I am going to watch the rest of the winning strategy videos and then pick and choose a few others with titles that are intended to be eye-catching.

The fifth winning slot strategy has to do with, “Identifying Holiday Patterns,” what fun.

The first thing that he notes is that he won three Thanksgiving jackpots playing at a casino once. Other than that, he said he could recall playing one other time before keeping strong records and winning a jackpot.

Professor Slots also suggests keeping detailed records so that you can use the information to determine which holidays are winning ones or losing ones. According to him, the holiday patterns will emerge quite clearly, such as his tendency to win jackpots early in the morning on holidays between 4:00a.-6:00a. after there has been a large crowd the night before.

Professor Slots suggest that attending the casinos the mornings after major holidays will lead to huge jackpots. Of course, Professor Slots also seems to forget about limited sample sizing. Also, if he is spending a lot of time in casinos on particular days of the year, then it stands to reason that he will hit more jackpots on those days.

Once again, Professor Slots gets back into mythical territory and basically suggests that, if casinos have held a lot on the holiday the night before, they will, “Give out,” a few jackpots during the hours that he is targeting.

Please make this make sense.

Once again, casinos cannot simply choose to have high limit machine pay out jackpots whenever they should happen to will them to do so. Beyond that, what reason would the casinos have to hand out huge jackpots during low traffic times when there are barely any patrons there to see these jackpots happen? Would it not make more sense from a marketing standpoint, if you could give jackpots out at will at all, to simply toss out a few the next time that the casino is busy in an effort to encourage the other players to keep playing?

It simply makes no sense for the casinos to toss out the compensatory jackpots, or whatever you would want to call them, when nobody is there to see it.

Again, if Professor Slots is doing the better part of his playing during these hours, then those are the hours when he is going to hit jackpots.

Also, it does not escape my attention that Professor Slots is, “Finding patterns,” when he is intentionally trying to establish patterns in his results. It’s the exact definition of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Even in looking at results on legitimate advantage plays, I could probably find, “Patterns,” in my results if I deliberately went looking for them.

I must hate myself, because I’m going on to the sixth video of so-called winning strategies.

This video is opening up by getting into the, “Five Pull,” method again, which is complete and total nonsense. Again, the machines simply could not both be random, yet be programmed to be more likely to give players a jackpot, or other sizable win, within the first five spins than they are at any other time. What he is saying simply does not make any sense.

With that, he goes on to combining his supposed winning strategies in a way that can employ both at the same time. Naturally, Professor Slots goes back to his results and starts looking for patterns in which he was employing multiple strategies at the same time.

Here’s where it gets good. Professor Slots says that if a machine is showing the last spin was a winner, then many players have a myth that says they should not play it because it is more likely to lose after that.

It is true that most players do have that myth.

Where it goes completely off the f$&*%^ rails is that Professor Slots says the exact opposite. In his opinion, the fact that the machine has won recently gives you a reason to play the machine as it has already been demonstrated to be a winning machine. Of course, this is just the countering a nonsensical and illogical myth with the opposite nonsensical and illogical myth.

At the very root of it, it’s making a decision to play or not play a slot machine based on a sample size of one spin, no matter which myth you prefer.

Also, Professor Slots suggests in his five spin method that players should play until they have either had five losing spins, or have won a decent pay---at which time they should quit. How does that advice even make sense with what he is suggesting now? HIs previous suggestion is that, with the five spin model, the machine is going to give you a, “Taste,” within those first five spins and then not allow you to win anymore. Now, he is all but directly advocating for the opposite.

In fact, if visitors to these casinos were following his five spin strategy, then he would see many wins that are showing a winning result, as those players would have quit after hitting the winner.

The only thing worse than being wrong is being wrong in a way that is not even consistent, but we will continue.

He says, “I haven’t given this tip a strategy number, let’s call it a best practice.” Why has it not been given a number? Does he not even know what number would come next? Didn’t he write these things down? Do numbers not go in the same order in his world as they do in mine?

Okay, now he is saying that the machine has to have been idle for some time for this to work, otherwise, it runs into the problem that I presented above. In his opinion, he doesn’t know how long the machine has to be idle for the slot machine to go back to being a winner. In his opinion, however, he thinks he does know how long it has to be idle for his casino---and that amount of time is six hours.

I picture Professor Slots sitting in a high-limit room observing a machine showing a jackpot on the screen and continuously checking his watch to see if it has been six hours...and I smile. He says that low occupancy in the casino can give a clue, but as anyone with a functioning brain can recognize, if there are more than zero people in the casino, then someone could have recently played that machine. The only way anyone can possibly be sure is to have seen the jackpot hit, or alternatively, to watch and see that nobody has played it in six hours.

It would also seem that Professor Slots could go to those casinos that close for a few hours at night and make an absolute killing, right?

Here’s what a slot machine with a win showing tells you, are you ready? I have identified ten pieces of information that gives you:

1. That the most recent spin was a winner.
2. That the most recent spin was a winning spin.
3. That the most recent spin was a profitable spin.
4. That the most recent player of that machine was happy, if only for a moment.
5. That the symbols lined up in a configuration associated with a win on the previous spin.
6. That the most recent spin on that machine was not a losing spin.
7. That the slot machine is, probably, capable of spinning.
8. That the return represented by the spin result can, in fact, happen on that machine.
9. That the previous occupant left the machine after the winning spin.
10. Why are you even looking for this? Okay, that’s technically a question.

In other words, ABSOLUTELY FREAKIN’ NOTHING. Nothing. Not a damn thing. The fact that the last spin was a winner conveys no usable information whatsoever in this place where I live that I like to call, “The real world.”

Onto winning strategies #7:

We start out by hearing how his initial goals were a combination of profit motive as well as generating a lot of comps. He states that it’s obvious when a player is giving a lot of play, but not so obvious when a player is winning a lot of money. I’m guessing he doesn’t know how the player’s club system works. The casinos, I promise, are absolutely not afraid of this dude.

Personally, I would extend him a personal information to my casino if I owned one...and immediately feel really bad that I did it. Oh well, profit-motive, you know what it is.

His advice in this video is to go home after hitting a decent sized jackpot and then come back one week later to play the exact same machine starting about five or ten minutes before you won the previous jackpot. I promise that I am not making this up.

Besides that, how can he advocate for that so-called, “Strategy,” in this video when he was just talking, in previous videos, about racking up three handpays all within a half hour? Again, Professor Slots remains an intoxicating blend of both wrong AND inconsistent. How can you hit three handpays in a half hour if you were supposed to have gone home after the first one?

He claims that there was a reason, without guessing as to what that reason might be, that the slot machine produced a particular jackpot on that day of the week and at that time. With that, he theorizes, whatever the situation is that caused that to be the case might remain in place until the following week and the player could hit the jackpot again.

Why is it a week, anyway? Couldn’t it be the next day? Could it not be that exact second every hour? Why do you start playing again five or ten minutes before the time that the previous week’s jackpot happened? Why not two days? Why not three days? Why not that day of the month?

If we’re going to select an arbitrary time during which we are expecting the jackpot to be reproduced, then why are we going with a week on this one? Why is a week the magic amount of time that these unseen and unknown circumstances are most likely to be in place again?

This gambling, “Rule,” does apply for special events one week apart.

Okay, let me make sure that I understand this. Professor Slots wants me to believe that a casino will cause its slots to be tighter or looser, “Give away jackpots,” within a few hours of a special event, but at the same time, I’m also supposed to believe that they will treat different special events the same way regardless of the financial and percentage results of the previous special event?

Which one is it? Do they change the returns of particular machines frequently, or don’t they?

Also, wouldn’t a machine programmed to give out a jackpot on a certain time of day on a certain day of the week be INCREDIBLY exploitable by people working in the casino?

I mean, let’s ignore for a second that the machine would no longer be at all random which, by the way, could result in serious fines or even in a gambling license to be revoked...but let’s talk for a second about how exploitable this would be. Employees armed with the information as to exactly when (or within a ten minute window) jackpots are going to hit on machines could send their family members in there to hit jackpots almost at will. By way of this process, most of the casinos players not, “In the know,” would do even more poorly than expected, which would lead to more of them not playing and the casino ultimately losing revenue.

Not only is what Professor Slots suggesting nonsensical, even if it were true, it would ultimately result in casinos losing massive amounts of money as the players leave in droves never to be seen again. On nop possible level does this theory make even the least amount of sense.

I’m done. I can’t do this anymore today.

CONCLUSION

The Professor Slots website, as well as his Youtube channel has nuggets of good, and sometimes borderline useful, information which is designed to give the outlets credibility. As we can see in his Youtube videos, they started out being somewhat reasonable and became a slow progression into what I consider insanity.

Similarly, his website has some useful information on it and his listing pages are pretty good. That said, I don’t know why he needs to charge several hundred dollars for individual coaching sessions, or nearly $100 for his online seminar, if his methods work so reliably. One would think that he would just go out and make his living playing slot machines, especially since he seems to think his five spin method not only works, but also, would not require being at the casino very long.

In terms of his previous results based slot playing, ultimately, that is a simple matter of finding patterns in his results because he was specifically looking for patterns in his results. Every single word he said in his, “Winning slots strategies videos,” or almost every single word, is either totally inaccurate or is predictive of nothing. At a few different points, he almost gave decent advice re: progressive machines and borderline touched on variable/perpetual state slot machines, but he didn’t quite get there. Any actually true information probably would have been accidental, anyway. You could knock me over with a feather if he could even identify half of the beatable machines in any given casino and explain what sets of conditions lend themselves to the machine being at an advantage.

Other videos on his Youtube channel include clips that are only a few seconds long of his purported results using his slot playing methods. I don’t know how much easier than that it could possibly be to selectively choose his clips, but I mean, come on...it’s obvious.

Ultimately, I am going to decline to give Professor Slots Youtube videos or playing strategy a score on a 0-10 scale because to give them a score would imply that I take them at all seriously, which I don’t.

My favorite thing that he said, or at least the funniest, was when he countered the myth that a slot machine has to, “Be cold,” after recently hitting a win with the myth that means that the machine will keep right on winning, provided it has been idle long enough. Honorable mentions go to any one of the many times that one piece of advice given directly contradicted the other.

The other reason that I will not be giving any of these a rating is because, quite frankly, I pity the man if he believes anything that he is spewing. In my opinion, he seems sincere and earnest and, sadly, he might actually believe this. If not believe it, then it certainly seems as if he wants to believe it.

It would actually be much easier if I thought that he was intentionally misleading people with his nonsensical ideas so that he could sell his seminars. If I believed that he was just spouting off total bullshit to take advantage of suckers, then I could simply dislike him. As it stands, I think it’s possible that he actually believes in this stuff, which means, it’s possible that I actually pity him.

Another sad thing is that he seems smart enough to learn actual slot advantage play techniques. He could take the mental horsepower that he has used to look for non-existent patterns in everything to instead try to dissect certain beatable machines and he might actually be good at it. Unfortunately, most, “Vulturing,” involves the grinding out of small wins in advantageous states with only the occasional high value play or play that pays out extremely well just as a result of variance. I don’t think that would appeal to the man because his strategy, if it can really even be called that, seems mostly centered on trying to only hit home runs. Real slot advantage play is mostly singles and walks.

With that, should he happen to read this and consider anything that I have said unfair, then I will accept a one hour Zoom meeting with him (I won’t even charge for my service) where he is free to offer a rebuttal to anything that I have said and we can have a debate as to the merits of his strategies.