For most of my adult life, I have believed a very simple rule about casinos: the house always wins. That is basically the entire business model. Casinos are giant buildings filled with flashing lights, ringing bells, and people willingly handing over their money one spin, one hand, and one bet at a time. If casinos didn’t win in the long run, those giant buildings wouldn’t exist.
But lately I have been hearing something interesting.
Apparently, some people claim there are ways to beat the casino. Not by getting lucky for a night, but by actually having some kind of edge. I have been seeing more and more videos online from people who claim they make a living doing exactly that.
Now, I have no idea whether any of that is actually true. But I will admit something. The idea has been sitting in the back of my mind for a while now, and curiosity finally got the better of me.
So on Sunday afternoon, my brother-in-law Scott and I made the short 35-minute drive down to Gun Lake Casino to see what we could find out.
The Idea That Started This Trip
This whole little experiment started with a few videos I stumbled across on YouTube. One channel in particular that caught my attention was a guy named Jay Fructose. The guy is a little bit of a nut and honestly kind of annoying at first, but after watching a few videos, I had to admit they were pretty entertaining.
The basic idea behind a lot of these videos is that casinos might not be quite as unbeatable as most people think. Most people already know blackjack can technically be beaten if someone knows what they’re doing. But what surprised me was hearing people claim that certain slot machines can also be beaten under the right conditions.
I have been watching blackjack advantage play videos for about ten months now, mostly out of curiosity. The slot machine stuff is much newer to me. I only started going down that rabbit hole a couple of weeks ago after hearing people claim they make a living playing certain machines.
On the drive down to Gun Lake Casino, I was explaining some of this to my brother-in-law Scott. Most people have at least heard that blackjack can be beaten, but the idea that slot machines might sometimes be in a beatable state was completely new to him. He listened with curiosity while I tried to explain what little I understood so far.
My casino bankroll at the start of this trip was a modest $390, thanks to a $250 win on Super Bowl squares at work earlier this year. I keep my casino money completely separate from everything else, and with blackjack tables often starting at $15 minimum bets, that bankroll doesn’t exactly leave a lot of room for error.
So the plan was simple. I wanted to play some blackjack, but I also wanted to walk the casino floor and see if I could spot any of the machines I had been studying. I had actually learned how to identify three specific machines that are supposed to become favorable under certain conditions.
After walking the entire casino floor, though, I ran into one small problem.
I didn’t see a single one of them.
Walking the Casino Floor
After parking in the garage, we walked inside, made a quick restroom stop, and grabbed a couple of free sodas at the self-serve beverage station. With our drinks in hand, we started walking the casino floor just to see what we could find. I had a few machines in mind that I thought might be worth looking for, but honestly, I was still pretty new to all of this and wasn’t exactly sure what I was hoping to spot.
Scott didn’t really know what I was looking for either. At one point, we did find a machine with a visible progressive jackpot that had a “must hit by” number displayed on the screen. I was able to show him how that worked, but none of the jackpots were anywhere close to the number where they had to hit. It was interesting to see, but it certainly wasn’t an opportunity.
We walked the entire casino floor, just getting our bearings and seeing where everything was located. At one point, we even wandered into the high-limit slot room just to take a look around. Toward the back of the casino, we also found a whole section of video poker machines. I’ve heard some of those games can be beaten, too, but that’s a whole different rabbit hole that I haven’t gone down yet.
The place was extremely busy for a Sunday afternoon. Slot machines were packed with players, and most of the table games had full tables as well. Whatever the secret to beating a casino might be, it definitely wasn’t going to be obvious just from walking in the door.
Eventually, Scott sat down at a machine along the back wall of the casino that caught his attention and put in $100. Within about ten or fifteen minutes, he had his balance up to $150 and quickly cashed out the ticket before giving it all back to the same machine. He walked over, grinning, and announced that he was buying drinks.
Scott grabbed himself a beer while I stuck with my Diet Coke. While he moved on to another machine, I wandered over to one of the newer graphic-heavy slot machines and decided to give it a try myself. I had no idea what I was doing, and if there was any sort of advantage there, I certainly wasn’t aware of it. I was just another guy feeding money into a machine and hoping something interesting would happen.
It didn’t.
My $100 slowly drained down to $60 without even a hint of a decent win. After watching Scott play for a bit, I tried one more machine, this time an old-fashioned three-reel slot with sevens and classic symbols spinning around. That experiment lasted about ten minutes before the remaining $60 disappeared as well.
At that point, I felt a little stupid. I had come to the casino hoping to look for some kind of edge, and instead I had just gambled away $100 like every other fool in the casino.
So I decided it was time to go play some blackjack.
Meanwhile, Scott cashed out of his machine again, this time holding a ticket worth more than $240 from his original $100 buy-in.
Settling in at the Blackjack Table
Gun Lake has a couple of different card pits on the main floor that sit fairly close to each other. Before sitting down anywhere, I circled both pits just to see what kind of games were being offered. Three of the blackjack tables were running $15 minimum bets, while two of them were already at $25 minimums.
If I’m being honest, I would much rather play $10 minimum blackjack if I can find it. Those games seem harder and harder to come by these days though. Even $15 minimums can eat through a small bankroll pretty quickly if things go the wrong direction.
My bankroll going into this trip was $390, thanks mostly to that $250 win from Super Bowl squares at work earlier this year. Unfortunately, I had just handed $100 of that money to a slot machine about twenty minutes earlier. That left me with $290 to work with, so I bought in at a $15 table for $200 and hoped for the best.
As it turned out, I sat down at exactly the right moment. The dealer was just about to start a brand new shoe when the pit boss walked up and announced that this would be the final shoe at $15 before the table went up to $25 minimums. That meant I had exactly one shoe to play before the stakes jumped to a level I didn’t want to touch.
Luckily, that shoe got hot almost immediately.
The dealer’s name was Debbie, an older lady who definitely wasn’t the fastest dealer in the casino. What she lacked in speed, she made up for with personality. Several of the players at the table clearly knew her, and they were playfully heckling each other while the cards were flying. The whole table had that rare mix of good energy and good cards.
After losing my first three hands, things suddenly turned around in a big way. I went on a streak where it felt like I couldn’t lose. The chips in front of me kept growing, so I gradually increased my bets from $15 to $20, then $25, then a few hands at $30. At one point, I even pushed out a couple of $50 bets while the table kept winning hand after hand.
By the end of the shoe I had completely erased the $100 I lost on the slot machines and added another $25 on top of it. When the dealer finished the last hand, and the table minimum officially jumped to $25, almost the entire table colored up and left. Most of us had no interest in sticking around at that level.
I took my $325 in chips from the original $200 buy-in and walked over to the other card pit. Over there, I found another $15 table with only three players, and they were just beginning a brand new shoe as I sat down.
This second table didn’t have quite the same energy as Debbie’s table, but it was still a fun group to play with. I played two full shoes there. After the first one, I was down a little bit, but things turned around in the second shoe, and I slowly built my stack back up.
I like to stack my chips in groups I can easily keep track of. Ten $5 chips in a stack make $50, which makes the math easy while playing. When I looked down and realized I had built up about $100 in profit at that table, I decided it was a good time to color up and call it a day.
Leaving the Casino Ahead
When I colored up at the second blackjack table, the dealer counted out $425 in chips in front of me. I also still had $90 in cash in my pocket. Considering I had walked into the casino with a $390 bankroll and had already handed $100 of it to a couple of slot machines earlier in the afternoon, I was pretty happy with where things ended up.
My casino bankroll was now sitting at $515, which meant I had managed to dig myself out of that early hole and finish the trip ahead by $125.
Scott had spent most of the afternoon playing slot machines while I was working the blackjack tables. Every time I walked past him, he seemed to be doing pretty well, and when we finally decided it was time to leave, he was still ahead too. I don’t remember the exact amount, but I’m pretty sure he walked out of the casino up around $100 himself.
Not bad for a quick Sunday afternoon trip.
The funny thing is, the whole reason we went to the casino in the first place had nothing to do with blackjack. I had gone there hoping to see if I could spot any of the slot machines I had been studying over the past couple of weeks. As it turned out, I didn’t find a single one of them anywhere on the floor.
Instead, the only real success I had came from the blackjack tables.
Now, I’m not claiming to be some kind of casino expert. But after spending the past ten months watching videos and learning more about how blackjack actually works, I will say this. It definitely feels a lot less like pure luck than most people probably think.
Let’s just say I might know a little something about the game.
As for the slot machines, the jury is still out. I’ve heard enough stories and seen enough interesting explanations lately to make me curious, but I still have a lot to learn before I would feel comfortable saying I know what I’m doing there.
One thing is certain, though.
This probably won’t be my last little casino experiment.
Something tells me I’ll be making that 35-minute drive to Gun Lake Casino again soon.