Thoughts on two lucky slot players

Hello,

I desperately need your opinion on this situation. First of all go to the website [Soaring Eagle casino in Michigan] and click on the winners tab and look for "Randy P" select each month to see the winners and you will notice that he wins on average $100,000.00 dollars or more a month!!!!!

So my question is "how is this possible"? Yes, he plays high-stakes slots usually $10 slots and $25 slots and his wife "Angie P" also wins a bunch!!

I have read that slots are a terrible gamble and will take all your money and for me I never win anything hardly at all and the same with all my friends who play $1, $5, and $10 dollar slots but "Randy P" and "Angie P" always WIN!! How can someone win $100.000.00 a month on slots!!!! when they are designed to take your money and how does the casino allow this..?? Please google Soaring eagle casino in mt. pleasant michigan when you get to the home page click winners tab and look for yourself...very interesting isn't it? PLEASE LET ME KNOW YOUR THOUGHTS..........

Thanks,
Larry

Dear Larry:

Randy and Angie certainly do appear many times on the winners pages. How is this possible?

Two reasons. First, as you pointed out, they play high-limit slots. A payoff of $1,080 on a dollar slot doesn't make the website but a payoff of $10,800 on a $10 slot does, yet both are the same 1,080-to-1 payoff and both may have the same probability of hitting. The numbers are bigger and more impressive on the high-limit slots merely because the bets are bigger.

The second reason is that Randy and Angie seem to spend a lot of time playing at the casino. Looking at the dates on their pictures, they had website-worthy wins on three dates in January, four in February, and six in March. They may win just as frequently as any other player, but because they play more, they have more significant jackpots.

I almost said "they win more" in the previous sentence. We really don't know how well they're doing. Certainly they've won many juicy jackpots, but we don't know how much they've lost. They might have lost money overall.

How does the casino allow this? If a player puts money in a machine and the RNG selects a winning combination and the machine hasn't been tampered with, the casino has no choice but to pay off on the bet.

Best of luck in and out of the casinos,
John

Send your slot and video poker questions to John Robison, Slot Expert, at slotexpert@comcast.net. Because of the volume of mail I receive, I regret that I can't reply to every question.