Ask the Slot Expert: Scamming a slot club

I finally got around to watching some of the movies I have recorded on my DVR. One of the movies was Hard Eight from 1996. In the first part of the movie, Sydney Brown, an experienced gambler, asks John Finnegan, an inexperienced gambler who has lost all of his money, if he wants to borrow $50 from Sydney and use it to get the casino to give him a room and a meal. Sydney will teach him how.

John bites. When they get to the casino, Sydney says that he lied. It's going to take $150.

Sydney tells John to ask someone to point out the floorman. John introduces himself to the floorman, a man in a tuxedo, and says he likes this casino and is going to play in it. He says he's an impulsive gambler and needs someone to track his spending. Then John asks for a rate card.

The next scene shows John excitedly telling Sydney that they gave him a rate card.

I was a little surprised too. I suppose there is a difference between impulsive and compulsive and this was nearly 30 years ago. And it's just a movie.

Sydney gives John $150 and tells him to go to the coin booth (30 years age, remember) and buy dollar tokens and give the cashier the rate card. Then Sydney tells him to play a machine off to the side but where the floorman can see him. Play $20, one dollar token at a time, very slowly.

Sydney watches John play from a nearby bar. Sydney sees John order a drink and goes to confront him.

Sydney tells him not to drink and asks if he has finished playing the 20 dollars yet. Almost. When he's done, John is to go to the cage and redeem the tray of 100 tokens for a $100 bill. Then take that bill and go to the change booth to buy more tokens. Make sure to use the rate card.

After John does this, Sydney asks him how much is on his rate card.

"$250," says John. "$150 from the first time and $100 from the second."

"And it's only cost you $20 so far," says Sydney. "Keep circling the bill."

Roll the montage of clips of John playing, one time with the floorman watching him."

The script doesn't address what happens if John loses the $50. No matter. He ends up hitting a jackpot and shouts, "I need a bucket! I need a bucket!" (30 years ago) We see him buy $300 in tokens from the booth.

Cut to shot of him relaxing in his presumably comped room.

Some people in the past have tried to game their table game ratings by buying in for a good amount, betting big when the pit boss was watching, and betting less when he or she wasn't. I don't know if they were ever successful.

Manual recording of token purchases is before my time, so I never tried the scam in the movie.

The closest I've come to scamming a slot club is around the same time as the movie when The Golden Nugget used a ticket-based slot club. The machines had metal boxes bolted onto their sides. The boxes spit out a carnival ticket for every $75 played in a machine.

I used to take any tickets I saw left at machines or found lying on the floor. Once when my machine ran out of tickets, the technician who loaded in a new reel left a long leader sticking out of the dispenser after he threaded in the new reel. I took those tickets, of course.

I think I'm safe admitting my ticket scavenging. The statute of limitations must have run out long ago.

If you would like to see more non-smoking areas on slot floors in Las Vegas, please sign my petition on change.org.

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