Professional Slots Players

Professional Slots Players

By Alex J. Coyne © 2018 Great Bridge Links

Last week we explored the topic of bridge professionals. This week we’re going to see if there are actually any Slot Machine Pros. Most expect that there would be professional players earning a full or part-time living in most forms of gambling: Bridge, blackjack, poker, even video poker. But Slot Machine Pros? We went digging for some news articles, links, books and more to see what we could find out about the world of professional slots players.

Starting to dig

It turns out there are a fair amount of gamblers who earn a living playing slots, but there are very few public professional slot machine players out there. Many are making their living through online play, while some go on casino-sprees and live off the winnings; others are coaching their casino tricks – and some are just professional gamblers that happen to play a lot of slots, enough to list slots as a regular income.

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This Redditor

Do you frequent Reddit? This post from about six years ago got a lot of attention in gambling circles, including TwoPlusTwo Forums. In it, a random Redditor claimed to be a professional slots player for their IAmA-section. In it, the user invited people to ask them anything, and shared what they claimed to be their strategy for playing a winning slots game. The post and original user’s account has since been deleted, but the main thread still remains up – with a huge amount of response, including some who called the original poster out as a fake. Whether the original post was real or not, it definitely got a lot of people talking about the subject.

Earnest Cobb, The Slots Guru

Meet Earnest Cobb, the self-proclaimed Slots Guru. He’s also the author of “Secrets to Hitting More Jackpots: Getting the Winning Edge (2012),” a book where he claims to have won more than $10 million playing the slot machine system. Some reviews have criticized the book for being too close to self-help and the Law of Attraction, while some have said that they did find some useful strategy tips in the book that they could apply when at the machines. He’s also received considerable media coverage for his gambling feats, including TLC on TV, GGB Magazine, ABC Arizona and, of course, Great Bridge Links.

John Grochowski

John Grochowski is a writer, weekly gambling columnist and professional gambler. Among others, he’s written The Slot Machine Answer Book, The Casino Answer Book, The Video Poker Answer Book and more. John has also been happy to pass on his expert advice over the years, which would put him in the category of a professional player in many forms, though part time at slots. In fact, here’s a piece on RGT Online where he discusses playing slots full-time, and his advice is this:

“I have one piece of advice for you: Don’t do this. If you don’t need the money, put it in savings, speak to an investment counselor, make a nice donation to charity, buy yourself something cool — anything. But DO NOT attempt to become a professional slot player. At any game, playing professionally is a pipe dream for most players. Even at blackjack, most players who attempt to count cards can’t really beat the house.”

You can find him on Twitter, Facebook and Casino City Times.

Enrique Free-Pacheco

Okay, so we’ve got one more for you. Here’s the story of Enrique Free-Pacheco, who won big at the casinos in Vegas – between 2007 to 2010. Of course, this was to be taxed like any other winnings. Enrique, however, decided that he wasn’t falling for it: He attempted to sue the IRS for sixteen million back, claiming that slots were his full-time income, and he took the issue to court – but the court unfortunately considered that he wasn’t gambling with nearly enough frequency (and not for long enough stretches at a time) to consider him a professional anything, and he didn’t get to claim anything. The article can be found on Maxwell, Locke & Ritter (“Three Lemons for ‘Professional’ Slot Machine Player”).