“He did it mathematically.”
Translation: He counted cards. Casinos would know; he’d be out in short time.
I used to work a few years ago with a smart guy, a statistician. He used to visit Las Vegas & Atlantic City casinos frequently, and he was a card counter. He made some money but not enough to quit his day job by any means. It got harder and harder for him because the casinos captured his face through facial recognition software and he was banned in many of casinos. I don’t think anyone could become a millionaire through card counting in this electronic surveillance age.
How in the hell is video poker “mathematic”?
Impossible. In video poker, the deck is 'shuffled' for each new hand.
What he could have been doing is watching FREQUENCY. The machines take, and take, and take, but they do pay out. It happens in a pattern that would be indiscernible to most of us. If you could predict that frequency, you could wager more and then you might come out ahead. Maybe he had a knack for it.
Most of the time, if you pay in a bunch, you win back some. The longer you play, the better chance of winning something, but in the long run you spend more than you win.
If it was the other way around, there would be no casinos.