Sorry if this subject has been beaten to death elsewhere, but I
didn't want to wade through thousands of posts to find out! I used to
visit Vegas 2 or 3 times a year from 1998 - 2002 and this era seemed
to be the peak of professional level play, based on the amount of
decent games available ($1 FPDW at Barbary Coast, Sams Town, all the
Locals casinos etc plus 10-7DB at quite a few places)and the
reasonable slot club %'s - remember when the Golden Nugget had .67
cashback & the Sahara and the Hilton were at .55?
I only get to Vegas once a year now if I'm lucky but I keep up with
the scene through forums like this and it's obvious that the beatable
games are few and far between, even for .25 players. Jean Scott and
Bob Dancer may not be everybodies favourite people but they at least
gave the impression that it was not an unrealistic ambition to make a
decent income from playing VP for anybody with the ideal temperament
and bankroll.
I almost toyed with this idea myself until I read a frankly
disturbing article in Strictly Slots which detailed one years real
world play from a semi-pro player who lives in Vegas. He dropped
$7,000 in twelve months (playing .25 machines) despite playing only
100%+ games and taking advantage of any slot club promotions, coupon
deals etc. He was playing 40 hours a week (retired I believe) so you
couldn't say that these results were based on a small sample, he
estimated he had played 160,000 hands.
I think it is this kind of experience that must have wiped out many
an aspiring pro, and this is when the good games were relatively
plentiful. Extrapolating from these figures you can see how someone
with a 20,000 dollar bankroll playing dollar machines would be wiped
out in ten months. To his credit, Bob Dancer didn't try and pretend
that these results were a remote statistical outlier, in his analysis
he estimated that it was just about a 2SD event, and therefore a
cautionary tale for anyone seriously considering turning pro.
This made me think that the bankroll requirements offered in most
serious VP books are way too optimistic, but then who is going to buy
a book that says 'Oh and by the way if you want try and do this for a
living make sure you have 50 thousand dollars behind you when you
start'?
Sorry for rambling on, just wondered if making a living solely from
VP is still a viable concept!