Let's be completely honest. Would you give up your life now to be a pro gambler?

Quote: Dieter

I believe that for it to be an insult, the accuser must know that the accusation is without basis.

A genuine accusation with a reasonable basis is merely a statement of fact.

There's no reasonable basis for the assertion.

For what it is worth, attorney Bob Nersesian, who for those that don't know is a las Vegas based attorney, who specializes in gaming law (especially Nevada law), has stated several times on various radio interviews that in Nevada, this is technically a crime. Bob only respresents gambler against casino's, so he certainly isn't biased towards the casino industry.

He said something along the lines that rarely is anything more than 86ing of offenders done. It is seen more or less as a nuisance activity. I believe he said something along the lines of in his mind it SHOULD be a "finder's keeper's" situation, but the law is written in such a way that property lost or abandoned in a casino, or any business for that matter, becomes the property of that business. To hear his exact words, go back and listen to the last couple interviews on Gambling with an edge between Munchkin and Bob N.

Just because casinos generally ignore "buffalo hunters" doesn't mean buffalo hunting is illegal.


Cops generally ignore people who are going a few MPH over the speed limit....but that doesn't mean speeding by a few MPH is legal.

Bob is wise

Quote: Mission146

There's no reasonable basis for the assertion.

Fair enough, I just read your statement to imply that all accusations of criminal conduct were insults, and I don't believe that to be the case.

Quote: EvenBob

I've done it, my wife does it, most
people I know do it. Except Axel,
who is apparently terrified of arrest.
I do it in Vegas if I see it, never gave
it a thought.

Yes, but you have already confessed to being a thief in the past, so your opinion is kind of so much sparrows fart in a gale.

Quote: Keyser

Bob is wise

Thanks..

In MI, we have a similar situation with cans
and bottles. There is a 10 cent deposit and
not everybody takes the cans back to get
the deposit back, so there is a couple
million a year in extra money that used
to go to the state. This encouraged people
to bring in cans from out of state (Seinfeld
episode) because there was no law against
it. But the stores sued the state and they
get to keep the extra money now. So they
got a law passed making it illegal to
bring in out of state cans. Before that
people made a living doing it.

Quote: EvenBob

I've done it, my wife does it, most
people I know do it. Except Axel,
who is apparently terrified of arrest.
I do it in Vegas if I see it, never gave
it a thought.

You indicated I walked around and did it for AP reasons.

I'm Not really worried about arrest I doubt they would even notice an occasional find.

Regularly credit hustling is absolutely a big no no. I have known many guys who have been busted an 86ed for doing it on a regular basics.

I know a very successful AP who got his start doing this.

Im not scared of going to jail. It's not worth the risk of being 86ed for a few credits.

This used to be so rampənt , security would set the hustlers up.

During the coin age, guys had regular credit hustling routs. The knew all the machines and every trick in the book . Some machines had crevices in the trays that hid coins, 70% of the time, after someone cashed out they found something. They swiped player cards under the coin trays on particular machines, hung out at the flip it machines. checked under popular slot chair bases.

Quote: AxelWolf

I'm Not really worried about arrest I doubt they would even notice an occasional find.
.

Why would they, it costs them more in paperwork
because they give 75% to the state. If you're homeless
you can cruise all day. The casinos were dead set
against this law, you think they're going to enforce
it for the state? They aren't and they won't.

Quote: EvenBob

Why would they, it costs them more in paperwork
because they give 75% to the state. If you're homeless
you can cruise all day. The casinos were dead set
against this law, you think they're going to enforce
it for the state? They aren't and they won't.

That's where you are wrong. If you look homeless and walk the same casinos day after day, security will find the one machine you find credits on and 86 you. They don't want these people walking around all the time. For the regular customer who may find credits one time, they will ignore it in most cases. As Axel said, it's not a valid play anymore. Not sure why you want to argue the point.

Quote: Boz

That's where you are wrong. If you look homeless and walk the same casinos day after day, security will find the one machine you find credits on and 86 you. They don't want these people walking around all the time. For the regular customer who may find credits one time, they will ignore it in most cases. As Axel said, it's not a valid play anymore. Not sure why you want to argue the point.

Something tells me this was more prevalent before our friend TITO made his debut. Would that be accurate?

Quote: 1BB

Something tells me this was more prevalent before our friend TITO made his debut. Would that be accurate?

Now that the TITO machines allow fractional crredits, I imagine that there are more people who don't bother to cash out the less-than-a-credit scraps.

Walking away from 20c on a 25c machine used to be impossible.

Quote: Dieter

Now that the TITO machines allow fractional crredits, I imagine that there are more people who don't bother to cash out the less-than-a-credit scraps.

Walking away from 20c on a 25c machine used to be impossible.

Some old machines spit fractional credits out. Some novice drunk or senile or incompetent might walk away thinking the machine spit out their entire credit balance.

Quote: AxelWolf

I'll be glad to show you.

Hahaaaaaaaaa

"Would you give up your life now to be a pro gambler?"

yup.. poker.

the only thing stopping me is myself.
I have the books and strategy websites bookmarked.

I get 1/3 way thru a book or only read the beginners articles.
enuf to eeek out a small profit when I play but no where enuf to survive on.

why am I stopping myself?

Quote: EvenBob

Why would they, it costs them more in paperwork
because they give 75% to the state. If you're homeless
you can cruise all day. The casinos were dead set
against this law, you think they're going to enforce
it for the state? They aren't and they won't. As mission stated I never said I haven't ever played abandon credits. I never implied I was above doing so and I never would. But I dam well haven't went looking like you were implying.

If I find credits on a machine I'm about to play, I just cash it out and leave it on top of the machine.I don't need the casino to have an excuse to 86 me.

Boz has it pretty much pegged

Quote: Boz

That's where you are wrong. If you look homeless and walk the same casinos day after day, security will find the one machine you find credits on and 86 you. They don't want these people walking around all the time. For the regular customer who may find credits one time, they will ignore it in most cases. As Axel said, it's not a valid play anymore. Not sure why you want to argue the point.

Certainly there are guys still doing this, but i'm not sure how many, significantly less Im sure, but I still see them from time to time, now they are after cell phones as well.

Quote: 1BB

Something tells me this was more prevalent before our friend TITO made his debut. Would that be accurate?

That's when I noticed the decline.
No more missed coins in the trays, quarters on the floor(dam things blend in to the carpet or bounce far enough to be not worth chasing) or left behind buckets of coins.

There used to be a subculture of guys that credit hustled . Back then if you spent a lot of time in any of the strip casinos. You began to notice the same guys day after day walking through the casinos. One thing they all had in common

Some of them were very smooth. They didn't just jump on abandon credits they circled the prize and got closer making sure no one was watching or coming back. They would even slow play a machine next to the credits before the grab. They didn't just grab a coin from the tray they put in a $20 bill and cashed it out into the tray.
This sometimes lead to a special discovery called the OVER-PAYER under the right circumstances worth thousands.



Some of them were very friendly and even gave out good information. As I said before, a few of them advanced (six figure yearly AP incomes) and never looked back. With all that time walking though casinos, they had to notice bonus games like Piggy banks, vision machines, Flush attack and even slot teams slamming away on progressives and get curious .(back then the casinos referred to AP's who played vp and slots as slot teams)

Just like in any other business you have good and bad people, obviously more bad in the the credit hustling game. Certain guys you avoided at all costs, you could tell they were up to no good.

I don't spend as much time anymore walking though casinos scouting like before, especially just looking for small plays. They have done away with most of the good bonus games and progressives. I'm not a fan of stalking must hits, Ultimate X and various bonus games. If i'm in the casino and I find one, Ill play it. I just don't activity search.

Djatc spends 5x more time in the casinos than I do, I'm not sure if he notices TITO hustlers , no doubt he avoids them im certain he has had a few problems with hustlers, Perhaps he has something to add but he wouldn't have anything to compare it to.

Quote: 100xOdds

why am I stopping myself?

Because you are the only one that can

Quote: 100xOdds

why am I stopping myself?

I think zippyboy's post summed it up nicely.

Quote: zippyboy

Poker is boring

Those three words echo exactly what I've been saying for years. ("I could go play poker professionally, if it wasn't so boring.")

Poker is waning; if you're going to turn pro, you need to be looking for the next play, not trying to squeeze the final drips from the last play.

Quote: AxelWolf

significantly less Im sure, but I still see them from time to time,

I know they do it, I saw them DT in
3 casinos earlier this year. In the
morning, when security is lax and
there are machines from the night
before that might have $ in them.

I read some of them have a route
they go on, and this wasn't 10 years
ago, it was this summer. They know
they won't get in trouble, you'd do
it too if you had to. The trick is, don't
cash the tickets then, come back when
it's busy.

People have done it as long as there
have been machines that take money.
You've never seen people in the movies
hit the coin return button on a pay phone?
In places like Grand Central Station, where
they had hundreds of phones, guys would
walk around once an hour and they always
got money. Same with cigarette machines
and candybar machines. Jerk on the knobs
and sometimes it gave you something.

Quote: AxelWolf

I'm Not really worried about arrest I doubt they would even notice an occasional find.

I've never heard of a regular playing customer getting pinched for the few cents. But security will be looking for a reason to 86 someone sitting around, not playing or cruising by the machines who pulls a random ticket out. They are usually watching those people anyway.

Oh please. People have some wildly unrealistic fantasies about how attentively security is watching and intervening in stuff. What is "watching" are cameras that are stored to video as mandated by Gaming Control, and a lot fewer live eyeballs. Like the fellow who was just convicted two weeks ago of following a woman all the way across the Flamingo and raping her on the casino floor. He was caught and convicted due to the plethora of video enabling police to easily nab him after he finished with her and left and she went to the hospital, but security never did notice at the time as he was beating raping and sodomizing her. I look forward to the day this supposed intensive watching and 86ing gets real enough that the single biggest car theft mecca on planet Earth is no longer in Las Vegas Strip casino properties, from the same guys doing it again and again every day every week year after year. Please, get a grip. Watch less television, take adver-tainment nonsense spewed 24/7 from the Travel Channel out of your channel list, put down the complementary beverage, and actually look. They can start by 86ing the guys who I had to request to pretty please move their crack pipe party yesterday afternoon so I could pull my car out of one of the largest and supposedly most upscale casinos, and then perhaps they can get around to the guy who lives in the fourth row of the right-hand side of the race&sports book at Wynn and has been routinely panhandling people there in order to get a few more spare sheckels of gambling money to lose again every single damn day that I have been in the place without exception for at least two years now. Geeze. Harrumph, and phooey.

Quote: DrawingDead

Oh please. People have some wildly unrealistic fantasies about how attentively security is watching and intervening in stuff. What is "watching" are cameras that are stored to video as mandated by Gaming Control, and a lot fewer live eyeballs. Like the fellow who was just convicted two weeks ago of following a woman all the way across the Flamingo and raping her on the casino floor. He was caught and convicted due to the plethora of video enabling police to nab him after he finished with her and left and she went to the hospital, but security never did notice at the time as he was beating raping and sodomizing her. I look forward to the day this supposed intensive watching and 86ing gets real enough that the single biggest car theft mecca on planet Earth is no longer in Las Vegas Strip casino properties, from the same guys doing it again and again every day every week year after year. Please, get a grip. Watch less television, take adver-tainment nonsense spewed 24/7 from the Travel Channel out of your channel list, put down the complementary beverage, and actually look. They can start by 86ing the guys who I had to request to pretty please move their crack pipe party yesterday afternoon so I could pull my car out of one of the largest and supposedly most upscale casinos, and then perhaps they can get around to the guy who lives in the fourth row of the right-hand side of the race&sports book at Wynn and has been routinely panhandling people there in order to get a few more spare sheckels of gambling money to lose again every single damn day that I have been in the place without exception for at least two years now. Geeze. Harrumph, and phooey.

I know what you're saying, but your complaint is more of they don't get everybody, than people they are 86ing. I'm basing my views on 12 years in Vegas, admittedly I was only averaging being in the casino 6 out 7 days for the 12 (estimating, and no, wasn't working at one)

They do target vagrants, people sleeping (vagrants), people panhandling (vagrants), people handing out religious tracts, selling items, loud obnoxious people who aren't playing, drunks, gang like folks, under age juveniles, but no, they hardly get everyone. You always meet some of these people in casinos.

Quote: DrawingDead

Oh please. People have some wildly unrealistic fantasies about how attentively security is watching and intervening in stuff. What is "watching" are cameras that are stored to video as mandated by Gaming Control, and a lot fewer live eyeballs. Like the fellow who was just convicted two weeks ago of following a woman all the way across the Flamingo and raping her on the casino floor. He was caught and convicted due to the plethora of video enabling police to easily nab him after he finished with her and left and she went to the hospital, but security never did notice at the time as he was beating raping and sodomizing her. I look forward to the day this supposed intensive watching and 86ing gets real enough that the single biggest car theft mecca on planet Earth is no longer in Las Vegas Strip casino properties, from the same guys doing it again and again every day every week year after year. Please, get a grip. Watch less television, take adver-tainment nonsense spewed 24/7 from the Travel Channel out of your channel list, put down the complementary beverage, and actually look. They can start by 86ing the guys who I had to request to pretty please move their crack pipe party yesterday afternoon so I could pull my car out of one of the largest and supposedly most upscale casinos, and then perhaps they can get around to the guy who lives in the fourth row of the right-hand side of the race&sports book at Wynn and has been routinely panhandling people there in order to get a few more spare sheckels of gambling money to lose again every single damn day that I have been in the place without exception for at least two years now. Geeze. Harrumph, and phooey.

Amazing post. Rant of the day.

Quote: beachbumbabs

Amazing post. Rant of the day.

Be thankful this weekend that I was very late getting to my first cup of coffee today 'till after the cosmic confluence of what provoked that.

It's true that there are very few people actively watching the actual casino floor, however, your rant is, well, just a rant. I know a guy that was 86d for "silver mining". Meaning collecting the slot tickets left behind. It happened to him at NYNY, on the strip in LV.

Doesn't matter if anyone's watching or not. If it's illegal, it's illegal. You're gonna have to persuade me with a lot more money to start doing illegal things for $$$.

Quote: DrawingDead

Oh please. People have some wildly unrealistic fantasies about how attentively security is watching and intervening in stuff. .

Exactly! They don't pay security enough to
give a flying F about anything, let alone
busting small time jerkwads. Good post.

The 21 year old woman who just finished getting through the ordeal of the end of the trial at which Oreste Perez was convicted and sentenced to 10 years to life after grabbing her and dragging her across the casino and raping and beating her there was not engaged in "just a rant" nor, much less important or dramatic, were those very specific direct experiences of mine that occurred within the last 24 hours, which I find gradually over the last half dozen or so years are more and more regularly the commonplace type of complaints of large and growing numbers of people who are in those casinos as both real customers and employees in physically vulnerable jobs working in some of the "front of the house" positions, including some front-line supervisory people I know who informally lament that they feel they've been excessively restricted in recent years at some places from doing anything necessary to meet their feeling of responsibility to looking after their customer's and employee's environment, like getting people who shouldn't be there to leave and stay that way.

I appreciate that you cited something specific Keyser, and with not many degrees of separation in re-telling from him to you and then to here, which I'm partly for that reason readily inclined to believe is probably likely to be pretty close to accurate. And I'm glad to hear it, and would welcome the refreshing change of seeing it. Not because I have any particular opinion about people scarfing up orphaned slot tickets (I presume kinda discretely?), I've never even thought about what to think about that, but because I more generally want someone paying attention to what people are doing there so I don't have to quite so much, with my money and wager tickets and vouchers and property in the form of computer equipment with data that I need to have with me when doing some things.

That, and then on the absolute busiest most important wagering day of the year in a Strip casino book, the unproductive distraction and utter disgust of watching people being shut out of wagering because a regular well-known highly visible and quite scummy "stooper" (what they call people who scoop up discarded race tickets) quite stupidly tied up the automated wagering terminal endlessly cycling literally thousands of tickets through it to identify an occasional one that someone didn't understand was a winner. I don't know about legal status in the civil and criminal sense, but yeah I do know in that case that is definitely a gaming violation to ignore and let someone who you know did not make the wager cash it. And the steady stream of angry people loudly and righteously complaining all day long definitely did not leave any room at all to not know. That is not just my rant, that is something that is a straightforward fact not really very much subject to opinion that I most definitely had to put up with seeing, along with an awful lot of other people unfortunately, even though it didn't directly cost me at my reserved seat with my own individual wagering terminal. I tend to chalk that one up at least partly to "we're so busy today we can't deal with stuff" and I don't claim to know what, if any, role any formal or informal policy and practice may have played at that particular place. They do vary from one company to another, and sometimes among different properties within the same company.

I wonder what that scummy guy calls himself. As in: "So, what do you do?" Purely as a practical business proposition you'd think he'd make just a little effort to be more presentable for some of the places he's in. But, he doesn't. At all. I see him around in the same places on the Strip, and I don't really get the feeling that he'd be online somewhere when not doing his especially dumb version of "stooping" and referring to it as an "AP" play. I just picture him grunting "me want beer." But I don't really know, since my only conversation with him is to growl and glare when passing by, and to imagine some kind of accident involving a runaway propane truck and his bus stop. If he did what he does with any slight amount of discretion and sense, I wouldn't so much enjoy imagining that.

Some people are understating the situation and some people`are overstating it. It's probably best to find out from some casino employees who deal with this.

I'm certain It won't affect me either way.

I highly doubt its worth walking around doing it.

I guess a situation might come up where you run across a significant amount of credits. Are you safe in taking it? What if you add your money to the machine and play a few spins? that's no longer the same ticket.

Quote: AxelWolf

I guess a situation might come up where you run across a significant amount of credits. Are you safe in taking it? What if you add your money to the machine and play a few spins? that's no longer the same ticket.

It would never be worth it, IMO.

Either the amount is so little, it'd be stupid to get caught swooping in on it. Like say, getting caught stealing a pack of gum at a store. Chances are you won't get caught, but if you do, well that's not good. And who cares about a pack of gum?

Or the amount is so large, there's a good chance you're going to get caught. Would be like trying to steal a big bottle of Grey Goose from a store. Good chance you're gonna get caught.



Of course, you have to put weight on how bad it'll be if you get caught. If you're an AP (or regular player) and don't want to get 86'd from a casino (or chain) that you frequent, then you really really don't want to get caught. If you're in a store that you're never going to be in again, then the issue of getting caught goes down, since you don't care if you get kicked out.

If you're a homeless guy who doesn't care what happens, then ok, stealing the credits will be more "worth it" for him, since he doesn't care if he gets 86'd or anything.


But most of all, I don't want to take another person's money. Be and let be.

Quote: RS

It would never be worth it, IMO.

Either the amount is so little, it'd be stupid to get caught swooping in on it. Like say, getting caught stealing a pack of gum at a store. Chances are you won't get caught, but if you do, well that's not good. And who cares about a pack of gum?

Or the amount is so large, there's a good chance you're going to get caught. Would be like trying to steal a big bottle of Grey Goose from a store. Good chance you're gonna get caught.



Of course, you have to put weight on how bad it'll be if you get caught. If you're an AP (or regular player) and don't want to get 86'd from a casino (or chain) that you frequent, then you really really don't want to get caught. If you're in a store that you're never going to be in again, then the issue of getting caught goes down, since you don't care if you get kicked out.

If you're a homeless guy who doesn't care what happens, then ok, stealing the credits will be more "worth it" for him, since he doesn't care if he gets 86'd or anything.


But most of all, I don't want to take another person's money. Be and let be.

It's never getting back to that person. The right thing to do is turn it into security so they can buy dinner that night.

Unless one of you APs has a team of bums surfing machines for credits, I've never saw anyone who I thought was making any serious money at it. In fact, I specifically remember the same guy eating someone's leftovers from a food court trashcan.

Now there was a guy I met in Vegas who told me he rode his bicycle through fast thru drive ups stomping on loose change with duct tape on his feet.

Guys raiding the fountains for loose change have been featured on COPS.

People try all kinds of things.

Quote: rxwine

Now there was a guy I met in Vegas who told me he rode his bicycle through fast thru drive ups stomping on loose change with duct tape on his feet.

Just when I start to fool myself into thinking I've got a pretty definitive collection of very Vegas scam, scoundrel, scuffler, angle-shooter & hustler tales, somebody hands me a new one.

cc: hustler file, emergency retirement contingency plans

Quote: Keyser

It's true that there are very few people actively watching the actual casino floor, however, your rant is, well, just a rant. I know a guy that was 86d for "silver mining". Meaning collecting the slot tickets left behind. It happened to him at NYNY, on the strip in LV.

He didn't get busted with the cash in his car on the way home, did he? Sorry, I had to say it :)

Hustling credits was my first gig in the gambling world. I learned the trade in 1992 and continued to do it until 1996. I specifically thumbed into Laughlin in Oct. 1996, with 99 cents in my pocket, to credit hunt the town. Within a couple of hours of my arrival I was told by another credit hustler that, although he didn't know how they were doing it, the locals were beating a slot game called Piggy Bankin'. He showed me the bank of machines and I used powers of observation to figure out how they were doing it. After I had credit hustled a $20 bankroll I put my first play down on a quarter Piggy Bankin' with 65 coins in the bank and was off to the races. A couple of days later I had $300 and a hotel room. I limped on off with it from there. I've been a machine pro ever since.

Has everything been honky dory ever since. Well, there were a couple of times I almost went broke. But I snapped out of it just in time. I was overplaying my bankroll. A lack of discipline almost took me down. Lesson learned.

So where am I at 18 years later? I tell people that I'm not rich but I'm not broke. I don't live extravagantly. The rent, utilities and groceries run me about $1100 a month. I could go several years without working if I wanted to. But I don't like dipping into my savings. I like to pay current bills with current money earned. And I like to sock away more money for old age-not retirement-old age. There is absolutely no reason for me to retire. What am I supposed to do? If I see a $50 play for 20 minutes seat time am I supposed to say to myself "I'm retired so I'm not gonna pick that money off?" No, I'm gonna sit down and pick the money off.

I wound up in gambling because I had pretty much painted myself into a corner in life. Gambling has been my saviour. I still get to be my non-conformist self. I don't like punching someone else's clock. I don't like taking orders from anyone. About the most authority I allow in my life is letting WoV mods boss me around. And as you have all seen, I'm not even very good at that.

Quote: mickeycrimm

I'm gonna sit down and pick the money off.

As usual, that's a beautiful sentiment.

To picking off the money... (raise a glass)

I love reading about your past, Mickeycrimm. Where can I buy the book of the life and times of mickeycrimm? Lol.

I am fascinated by the low limits, low level, advantage plays being discussed. I realize many are things of the past, but there are always new situations popping up if you keep your eyes open. I, personally am not looking to expand my machine play type AP activities. I concentrate on the good old fashion method of card counting the Keyser thinks is a big waste of time. That makes up the majority of how I support myself. I have a partner that I have relegated all our machine play activities to and not really looking to increase that part of our program, but I still find it all very interesting.

Quote: kewlj

I love reading about your past, Mickeycrimm. Where can I buy the book of the life and times of mickeycrimm? Lol.

I am fascinated by the low limits, low level, advantage plays being discussed. I realize many are things of the past, but there are always new situations popping up if you keep your eyes open. I, personally am not looking to expand my machine play type AP activities. I concentrate on the good old fashion method of card counting the Keyser thinks is a big waste of time. That makes up the majority of how I support myself. I have a partner that I have relegated all our machine play activities to and not really looking to increase that part of our program, but I still find it all very interesting.

kewlj, I find your gambling world to be fascinating too. I avoided blackjack because of what I perceived as a short shelf life. But its fascinating to read how a real pro does it and continues to get away with it.

I'm leaving on about a two week road trip tomorrow. I haven't hit a lick at a snake for almost two months. Time to go make some money. But it will be short and sweet and I'll be back home to lay around through Christmas and New Year's.

I'll start a thread today on the accumulator slots. There were lots of different types back in the day. I won't be able to finish it up until I get back home. You might find it interestingthough. Take care.

Quote: mickeycrimm

Hustling credits was my first gig in the gambling world. I learned the trade in 1992 and continued to do it until 1996. I specifically thumbed into Laughlin in Oct. 1996, with 99 cents in my pocket, to credit hunt the town. Within a couple of hours of my arrival I was told by another credit hustler that, although he didn't know how they were doing it, the locals were beating a slot game called Piggy Bankin'. He showed me the bank of machines and I used powers of observation to figure out how they were doing it. After I had credit hustled a $20 bankroll I put my first play down on a quarter Piggy Bankin' with 65 coins in the bank and was off to the races. A couple of days later I had $300 and a hotel room. I limped on off with it from there. I've been a machine pro ever since.

Has everything been honky dory ever since. Well, there were a couple of times I almost went broke. But I snapped out of it just in time. I was overplaying my bankroll. A lack of discipline almost took me down. Lesson learned.

So where am I at 18 years later? I tell people that I'm not rich but I'm not broke. I don't live extravagantly. The rent, utilities and groceries run me about $1100 a month. I could go several years without working if I wanted to. But I don't like dipping into my savings. I like to pay current bills with current money earned. And I like to sock away more money for old age-not retirement-old age. There is absolutely no reason for me to retire. What am I supposed to do? If I see a $50 play for 20 minutes seat time am I supposed to say to myself "I'm retired so I'm not gonna pick that money off?" No, I'm gonna sit down and pick the money off.

I wound up in gambling because I had pretty much painted myself into a corner in life. Gambling has been my saviour. I still get to be my non-conformist self. I don't like punching someone else's clock. I don't like taking orders from anyone. About the most authority I allow in my life is letting WoV mods boss me around. And as you have all seen, I'm not even very good at that.

You are much valued here, mickey, and this post says a lot about why. Have a good and productive trip.

Maybe being a pro gambler can earn a lot of money, but that's fickle, for most cases, a gambler is hard to become a top one, then he may lose all of his fortune. Life is so great now for me, so I won't give up my life now to become a pro gambler :D