Posted on 10/09/2017 8:48:39 PM PDT by Drew68
Stephen Paddock wanted to win and, like any savvy video poker player, knew which machine to lock down at Mandalay Bay.
There was only one in the casino — a Jacks-or-better 9-6 machine, meaning it paid 9-to-1 credits on the full house and 6-1 on the flush and offered the casino only a slim advantage. Mandalay Bay was having a contest for a $100,000 drawing and players, based on the amount of their play the next day, would get tickets to enter.
He got ready to work.
David Walton, a video poker playing pro, headed down to the casino floor early to nab the good machine.
There sat Paddock. Not playing it. Just sitting there. Waiting.
Walton settled into the machine next to him — not one with as generous a payout schedule — and waited for midnight. When it struck, Paddock hit the machine lightning quick, going at a rate of $120,000 per hour. He barely spoke.
Walton said Paddock played 24 hours straight that day in 2007. Before the drawing, Walton wandered over to look at the 4-foot-by-4-foot drum holding all the tickets to the drawing to size up his chances at the $100,000.
Those hopes were diminishing quickly.
“Every ticket on there I saw through the mesh said ‘Stephen Paddock. Stephen Paddock. Stephen Paddock,’” Walton said.
“He won.”
A decade later, Paddock, 64, would ride the elevator up to the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay, smash out two windows in his suite with a hammer, and aim a 10-minute, rapid-fire volley of gunfire at the 22,000 people gathered below for a country music festival. He hit hundreds, and killed 58.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Thus showing the silliness of the idea that he got rich from gambling on video poker. More likely gambling was a money laundry device.
He got rich from real estate, I believe.
Nobody ever got rich playing those things. Anything made by man can be fixed. They didn’t build casinos to give away cash. Anyone who plays any sort of video poker, either in a casino or the local VFW or volunteer fire department social hall is a moron.
Here's what I think: He got rich from real estate and with his riches became addicted to video poker. He'd travel to Vegas, bet beg to earn the high roller perks, occasionally win big but occasionally lose big as well.
Over time, he was probably winning 97-98% of what he played but eventually those 2% losses started adding up.
>It sounds like the tech changed a circuit board in Paddock's favorite machine when he wasn't looking.<
This is quite possible. The article states tat they started changing the machines to increase the advantage for the house. For someone as addicted to "the crack cocaine of gambling" as Paddock was, this would've been tantamount cheating!
I think this is what pushed him over the edge. It wasn't ISIS or AntiFa, money laundering or gun running. He just started losing more than he could afford to, blamed the casinos and plotted his revenge.
It’s not necessarily a glitch. If you are betting hundreds of thousands of dollars and riding high on your comps, a minor change in either of those programs can be crippling if you are a gambling addict.
A change from 1.5 to 3 percent could mean tens of thousands of dollars in losses and if you suddenly aren’t getting the suites you used to get, you might see a conspiracy in the casino.
West Virginia has poker machines all over the state now. I know of at least three people who pumped their houses into those machines. It’s a very dangerous game, particularly if you have any ADD/ADHD tendencies. It just triggers the pleasure centers of your brain so quickly and efficiently.
The old media is remarkably uninterested in Paddock’s political beliefs.
He wasn't registered to vote. He didn't donate money to campaigns. He had no social media platforms to promote his political beliefs. His friends and family claim he had no interest in politics. If the old media is remarkably uninterested in Paddock’s political beliefs, it's because it doesn't appear he had any.
Increasingly, it appears that Paddock's only interest was video poker.
If the old media outlets were honest brokers of information, your argument would carry more weight. However, they routinely pretend that leftist murderers are really conservatives. Their failure to do so with Paddock is therefore worth noting.
Voter registration and campaign contributions are easy to verify. Paddock had neither. Nobody has been able to find any social media activity. And to be honest, the MSM as been pretty evenhanded lately regarding the political leanings of killers. When James Hodgkinson shot up that GOP softball practice, CNN published an in-depth story profiling Hodgkinson's liberal affiliations and interests. When Omar Mateen committed his massacre at Pulse, it was widely reported he had sworn allegiance to ISIS.
This being said, Newsweek did publish an inflammatory, disgraceful op-ed piece charging that Paddock was representative of the typical white, male, Christian gun owner. It offered no research and seemed to have been written for no other reason than to piss people off.
I'm just not seeing where this guy was political. People are trying so hard to find some sort of political or religious conspiracy behind this, they're overlooking the obvious; Paddock was addicted to video poker to the point where this obsession drove him crazy.
I spent a month in Vegas years ago working on a project at CENTEL of Nevada. I stayed in the Golden Nugget on the old strip. I had a lot of time to kill in the evenings. I walked around a lot, observed and played some. I found one place that had nickel slots and served Coors in a bottle for players. I usually went there after work and bought one roll of nickels and could nurse them until I had finished my 3-4 beer happy hour. I even won a bucket or two full of nickels.
Mostly, I observed. I saw a lot of really sad souls gambling every penny they could panhandle. When I read “professional gambler”, I see these people. I don’t even think winning can make a real gambler happy over a long period of time. It’s quite depressing in reality.
I think there a small number of “professional” gamblers who are math geniuses and also have complete control of their emotions. That rare type can be successful at it. Though personally, I’m convinced that you pretty much have to be on the Spectrum to make it work, because any emotion is crippling.
The vast majority of people get addicted to the rush of it. Artie Lange tells a funny story about watching football with a friend who got bored. He asked the friend, “how much do you have in your bank account.” The friend said, “$1000.00.” Artie says, “Bet $1100 on the game. It will be more exciting than the Super Bowl.”
That’s gambling addiction in a nutshell. You want the rush that comes with the possibility of losing everything.
Spends $120,000 an HOUR to win $100,000 for the whole day.
Yeah.... that’s how he got rich.
...
The way I understand the article is that he beat the casino by losing a bit of money on the machine so he could win the drawing.
I was skeptical that Paddock could make millions from video poker. Casinos don’t let you win in the long run. But what if Paddock had discovered a glitch in the software for a particular machine that allowed him to win consistently.
...
I agree. Nobody wins against the casino in the long run. If somebody does, they will get banned.
According to the article, the evil nutcase won money by using video poker to win a big drawing.
Yeah.... everyone that gambles beats the casino. They only make a 3% profit. Yeah.... why do I not believe that ?
I know that people don’t win against the casino. It’s rigged.
I guess I should have put my statement in quotes. I figure he lost on the poker machine, so he could get a bunch of tickets for the drawing that he won. Is that winning against the casino, or is it finding a loophole by someone who knows he can’t win any of the regular casino games? The drawing was a special case.
Agreed. He might have won it big once. The problem is they have been saying he got rich(er) year after year doing this.
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