Ridiculous Prop Bet

Recently a fellow poker player and I were talking about how much stuff we see on the floor of the casino. For example, cigarettes, lighters, hair pins, players cards, etc. And of course to a lesser extent, cash, chips and slot vouchers. I joked that I could improve my EV by walking around all day, picking up the latter. It then went from joke to serious discussion. Having seen umpteen vouchers with 0.06 left on it in a slot machine, as well as some as large as $120, as well as having found numerous $100 chips on the carpet with not a soul in sight I came to the conclusion that if someone worked hard enough, and got lucky enough? They could make a couple hundred bucks a week.


Right away he disagreed with me and said he would bet me $3000, that I couldn't aquire $300 in a weeks time using the method. After eventually realizing he was being serious, I declined. However, after thinking about it more, I think it's an easy $3000 in my pocket. I've decided to take it on, given we can agree on a detailed set of rules.

The very first thing that crossed my mind was bringing on attention and being shown the door. Although, in my years in this casino (which is in Canada btw) I've seen 100's of people walking around doing this, and no one seems to care, other players and slot attendants alike.

Title says it all really, any thoughts?

You'll have to give us more details. Are you allowed 24 hours a day, seven days in the week? Or some defined period of time, say, 12 hours a day? Are you limited to one casino? If you get shown the door at that casino can you move your 'action' to another casino? Must you be able to cash in those slot tickets for actual cash... I assume you would have to.... Maybe I don't look as hard as you, but I think I may have found a few $5 chips at most in my entire gambling career. If you are allowed all 168 hours in the week that is less than $2 per hour, by the way.
What casino in Canada?

Quote: SOOPOO

You'll have to give us more details. Are you allowed 24 hours a day, seven days in the week? Or some defined period of time, say, 12 hours a day? Are you limited to one casino? If you get shown the door at that casino can you move your 'action' to another casino? Must you be able to cash in those slot tickets for actual cash... I assume you would have to.... Maybe I don't look as hard as you, but I think I may have found a few $5 chips at most in my entire gambling career. If you are allowed all 168 hours in the week that is less than $2 per hour, by the way.
What casino in Canada?

Fallsview Casino. We briefly discussed some general rules.

1. I can search around as long or as little as I want
2. Fallsview is the only casino I can use
3. I cannot accept money from people, whether it be a purple chip, or a copper penny
4. The money accumulated cannot be gambled

Quote: UltimateHoldem

Fallsview Casino. We briefly discussed some general rules.

1. I can search around as long or as little as I want
2. Fallsview is the only casino I can use
3. I cannot accept money from people, whether it be a purple chip, or a copper penny
4. The money accumulated cannot be gambled

I would tend to guess that you would not succeed, but I certainly think it would be interesting! I really don't know how many of those small slot leftovers there are, and if there are that many, are there others out there looking for them, too? I go to Fallsview occassionally for Pai Gow Tiles. If you take the bet with your friend let me know and I may come up and watch you scour.

I say you can't do it. But it would be too hard to actually monitor unless I trust you completely.

True story about 12 years ago at the Mirage I was with a group of friends for the week. On the first day a friend found a crumpled up $1500 ticket on the Cubs and laughed saying he wonderd if anyone ever made the mistake of throwing away a winning ticket. On the next to last night it was preseason football we were just lounging in the sports book and i noticed two discarded torn-in-half tickets sitting next to a trash can. One was a loser the other was a $200 2 team parlay with the falcons -6 and they were up 10-7 at half, and the under in the 49ers redskins game under 34 and it was 23-10 at half. The tickets had been purchased from the Imperial Palace. I figured the guy thought that the under was a sure loser and it probably was but I put both pieces of the ticket in my pocket. I came back 2 hours later and boom Falcons won 20-7 final score of the Redskins 23-10 NOONE scored in the whole second half. My heart was racing. So I got two of my friends and they walked me over, I thought the guy might be waiting there to see who found his ticket. There was noone there I cashed it in for $720, the cashier even remarked you got so excited you tore your ticket I was like yea imagine that. I gave my friends $100 each and kept the $520.

I think being limited to one casino will make it tough. If this was in a place with multiple casinos I think you should take the bet. In Vegas or Atlantic city i would take this bet for sure.

Quote: SOOPOO

I would tend to guess that you would not succeed, but I certainly think it would be interesting! I really don't know how many of those small slot leftovers there are, and if there are that many, are there others out there looking for them, too? I go to Fallsview occassionally for Pai Gow Tiles. If you take the bet with your friend let me know and I may come up and watch you scour.

There is a great deal of variance here, depending on the final set of rules we come up with. For example...

Fallsview has the promotion where they load players cards with slots money that can be downloaded onto a machine. The stipulation of course is that you have to roll it over, although I think just once. I've seen people download the credits, attempt to withdraw, get annoyed when they can't, and leave. Kind of weird how they wouldn't even stick around and see what happens with the "free" spins. To add to this point I've then seen someone walk up to the machine and successfully rollover $15 of the $25 bonus dollars and cash out.

Second, I believe that when a voucher with a denomination under 5 cents is put into the automatic ticket teller, it spits out no less than a nickel. For example a 0.01 voucher would actually net you 0.05 when cashed.

Lastly, I've actually found quite a few chips on the floor in Fallsview, and ironically enough it's never by the table games, it's always when I'm travelling through the slot areas. That's not to mention cash. On one occasion I witnessed no less than 10 people walk on, or around a $20 bill that was on the carpet. When I finally picked it up and looked around to see if anyone was running back to claim it, no one within 20 feet in any direction even looked at me.

i don't know about AC, there are tons of fleas scouring the floors already.

largest find on casino floor: voucher for $94. right next to cashier, covered in footprints.
largest chip found on floor: $25. twice in 27 years of going to AC.

as to finding $300 in one casino in one week: i would vote NO.

Whats to stop you taking $300 into the casino and 'finding' your own slot ticket on the floor?

Quote: FinsRule

I say you can't do it. But it would be too hard to actually monitor unless I trust you completely.

I can honestly admit I'm not honest about 100% of things, but when it comes to money and a bet, cheating is the last thing I would do. I can see your point though.

One more thought,if you could do it over a seven week time frame ie.. one day per week,then I think you could succeed.
Saturdays or fri nights would probably be the best and then you would not have so much exposure by being in the casino everyday.

Quote: UltimateHoldem

I can honestly admit I'm not honest about 100% of things,....

Quote: WongBo

lol, my point exactly :)

Quote: Hunterhill

One more thought,if you could do it over a seven week time frame ie.. one day per week,then I think you could succeed.
Saturdays or fri nights would probably be the best and then you would not have so much exposure by being in the casino everyday.

I brought this up actually. I told him seven consecutive Saturdays, and he immediately said no, lol

needless to say (but saying it):
if they see you panning the floor, just say you dropped a chip/bill/voucher.
if they see you picking one up just say you dropped it.
never admit that you found anything that wasn't yours to begin with.
legally, if it's on the floor it belongs to the house.

I've thought more about this....
Will your friend trust you to just tell him, yes, you succeeded, or, no, you failed?
Not knowing anything about you, is $3000 enough to absolutely ruin an entire week of your life? I mean staring at the floor for hours on end, walking endlessly around the slot machines, scouring the urinals for the occassional nickel.....
And let's say you have $240 with one day to go.... knowing you may spend the next 24 hours straight doing this....

I'd say the real bet here is whether you will take this bet!!! I say, NO!!!

Quote: SOOPOO

I've thought more about this....
Will your friend trust you to just tell him, yes, you succeeded, or, no, you failed?
Not knowing anything about you, is $3000 enough to absolutely ruin an entire week of your life? I mean staring at the floor for hours on end, walking endlessly around the slot machines, scouring the urinals for the occassional nickel.....
And let's say you have $240 with one day to go.... knowing you may spend the next 24 hours straight doing this....

I'd say the real bet here is whether you will take this bet!!! I say, NO!!!

$3000 isn't a drop in the bucket for me, but I'm not so sure it's worth spending the better part of 7 days in a row in there, looking like a flea for cents at a time. Not sure if I'll accept, but right now it's a slight lean yes.

I think you'll hit the $300 mark easily, if you don't run into trouble. But trouble can come in several forms.


First, technically, it's illegal. Abandoned money, chips, slot tickets and even slot credits, belong to the casino.

Second, there are plenty of homeless people who do exactly what you're talking about, and make far more than $300 per week. Should one of them take exception to you working "thier turf," it could get ugly.

Third, if you go thru with it, try to look homeless. The casinos turn a blind eye rather than risk the bad publicity of having the homeless arrested while trying to gather nickels. I don't think they'd be so kind if you don't look homeless.

if all you can do is walk around and find money, then I don't know if you'd make it.

If you can also find items of value (I found 2 cell phones in Laughlin in 45 minutes on Saturday night, and turned them in) then you'd likely succeed.

If you could either gamble your found money or gamble your own money on found machines, then yes, you'd make it. I know a group of guys who watch for progressives nearing their upper guarantee ($100 reset, $500 upper threshold) and then wait for people to leave. Those same guys also wait for players to download free play and then forget about the non-cashable amount and leave the machine before they've played it through.

My biggest finds: $430 in non-cashable freeplay on a VP machine (turned that one in), $100 chip on the floor at Rivers (kept that one), $87.xx voucher sitting on top of a slot machine in WI (kept it), and an iPhone 4 and Razr Maxx both at Riverside in Laughlin (turned those in).

Quote: DJTeddyBear

First, technically, it's illegal. Abandoned money, chips, slot tickets and even slot credits, belong to the casino.

Canadian law may be different in this respect to American Law.

I love the idea of you having to pretend to be homeless for a week. No bathing, brushing teeth, same clothes. That'll make this bet more interesting.

For what it is worth, I would bet the no. $200 would be around my indifference point.

If you do go ahead, my strategy would be to concentrate on abandoned slots tickets that were too low to cash. Look on top of machines and other places not in plain sight.

Quote: UltimateHoldem

$3000 isn't a drop in the bucket for me, but I'm not so sure it's worth spending the better part of 7 days in a row in there, looking like a flea for cents at a time. Not sure if I'll accept, but right now it's a slight lean yes.

If you'll split the $3,000 prize with me. I'll fly up to Canada and "drop" a $300 slot voucher in front of you.


Just kidding.......

Quote: CrapsForever

If you'll split the $3,000 prize with me. I'll fly up to Canada and "drop" a $300 slot voucher in front of you.

You're joking, but the first thought that I had was have
a friend put my $300 in a slot, play it down to $255,
and drop the ticket on the floor for me to 'find'. There
are so many ways to cheat in this bet its mind boggling.

My first thought is I would have security ready to bust him !

I would like to state for the record that during the week in which you perform this search at the casino in which you perform the search, I have lost / will lose $300 in unpaid slot tickets. So, if you find them, they belong to me.

Quote: SOOPOO

I've thought more about this....
Will your friend trust you to just tell him, yes, you succeeded, or, no, you failed?
Not knowing anything about you, is $3000 enough to absolutely ruin an entire week of your life? I mean staring at the floor for hours on end, walking endlessly around the slot machines, scouring the urinals for the occassional nickel.....
And let's say you have $240 with one day to go.... knowing you may spend the next 24 hours straight doing this....

I'd say the real bet here is whether you will take this bet!!! I say, NO!!!

You haven't answered my first question..... $3000 is a lot of money for a friend to give you by you just saying "I found $304 during the week".
I can't imagine 'the friend' watching you the entire time....

Quote: SOOPOO

You haven't answered my first question..... $3000 is a lot of money for a friend to give you by you just saying "I found $304 during the week".
I can't imagine 'the friend' watching you the entire time....

He trusts me, and I wouldn't cheat. Easy to say, but being a welch or a cheat when it comes to a bet is the last thing I'd ever be.

I recently posted in the, "Found Casino Chip," thread that I average about $8-$10 found in slot machine credits that I ticket out in a two-hour session. The most I have ever found abandoned in a machine was $23.00.

I have certainly had days where I have found nothing, and sometimes many days in a row, but I'm not really looking, either. I pay attention, don't get me wrong, but just to the machines around me in the normal course of play, or moving from machine to machine. I don't zig-zag or cut through rows, either, I take the shortest possible path to my destination.

If I go with my low-end and call $8.00 the average for two hours, then I have you needing 75 hours to reach $300. $300/$4(hour)=75

That would be approximately Ten hours and forty-five minutes per day you would need. That estimation is greatly mitigated by the fact that you would be doing this exclusively as opposed to playing any machines. In fact, I would probably say that I only spend twenty (or so) minutes of my time doing that, and half-heartedly, at that. The best place for you to look is $0.01 and $0.05 machines because people often leave in excess of $1.00, assumedly, because they no longer have enough to max bet. I would focus your attention there. I usually play $0.25-$1.00 flat-tops, but most of my findings are when I happen to be passing penny machines. I'd focus your attention there.

Based on twenty minutes per day and an $8 average, you're talking about only twelve hours and thirty minutes. $300/$24 (hour)=12.5

I'm going to have to offset that by the fact that you could get banned from the casino. I know my casino does not take kindly to people that do that exclusively, though the unofficially don't have a problem with people who do it while playing. Jackpots and handpays are voided, however, if you don't add anything.

If you agree to go (at least) eight hours for the first two days and (at least) four hours on the third day, or twenty hours total in three days, then tell your friend I have $25 on you doing this in three days if he gives me 2:1. If you are banned from the casino and can not return during the three days, he wins.

"$500 upper threshhold"? How does that work? I've never heard of that on a slot before.