Misc The VCT Thread!

I'm still waitin for the uber-tout, r-e-dietz to tell us all his lifes-time w-l record across all sport over the course of his 4+ decade of touting strong, hey hey.

 

Well, first of all, I don't bet all sports. College football is more than 85% of my betting volume, not counting futures and hedges of those futures. But if you wanted a long-term view of my college and the NFL football results from 1982 to 1995, go collect issues of "Tipsters or Gypsters?" Also known as The McCusker Report, it was published in Las Vegas by former Seattle Times reporter Mike McCusker. "Tipsters or Gypsters?" -- at its peak -- monitored the results of roughly 120 handicappers. I've been in The Wise Guys Contest 30 years (I retired this year). Two games every week of every football season ATS for 30 years. Contact Playbook to verify that and my record. I suggest emailing Marc Lawrence or Marc Lawrence Jr.

As to some general overall 40-year stated record ATS of all wagers, tough to quantify in a simple manner. You'd have to decide whether or how to grade asymmetric middles shots where I have more on one side than the other. You'd have to decide how to grade pure middles shots where the wagers are balanced. Then you'd have to decide whether to count teaser wagers in the general ATS record. My lifetime NFL ATS record, not counting asymmetric middles shots and teasers, is between 53.5% and 54%. The reason I ballpark it is that I include McCusker Report numbers, but they are based on a specific line at a particular place in a 24 hour period in LV, and that was not the most favorable line. So anyone graded at 54% with McCusker was actually winning 1 to 2 percentage points higher long-term. College football, roughly 57% ATS lifetime.

In addition, I have been monitored by The Satellite Cable Handicap (out of Buffalo), by Handicappers' Report Card, and I've been in many public competitions under my own name.

And no, I don't sell anything and haven't sold anything for a decade or longer. I have partners, and I don't need any more partners.

 

What I get a kick out of at VCT, as they discuss KewlJ's sports betting and bonusing, is that it takes place in a thread called "Professional Sports Betting."

And yet, it appears that the only person who ever filed taxes as a professional sports bettor in that thread was (ahem) me. So you have a "Professional Sports Betting" thread whose primary feature is people who aren't professional sports bettors explaining why they are right to a professional sports bettor.

The only person in the latest kewlJ discussion who has any clue is AxelWolf, and frankly, he knows less than your average experienced sports bettor. I have accounts at the two offshores kewlJ mentioned, and I've had these accounts for 20+ years. But nobody asked my opinion. LOL. The naivete of these "APs" is comical. It's really bad when someone like me doesn't butt in and you just allow them to speculate and pontificate. They come across as less and less savvy the more you allow them to banter with each other.

 

I know what you mean. It's crazy over there. The dumazzes should stick to what they know about. Hey, they got this one idiot over there they call The Ditz . Claims to be a professional sports bettor. Appears to have some knowledge about it. Trouble is, he don't stick to what he knows. He's always posting in threads about shit he knows nothing about. You know, threads about shuffle machines, blackjack, slot AP, baccarat. Shit he don't know anything about. What can you do about an idiot like that?

 

You should probably use direct quotes where he does what you claim. Not sure the last time I posted about shuffle machines, blackjack (other than testing visual limits and table distances), slot AP, or baccarat. Nope. Of course, I'm sure if you had some examples on hand, you would have used them.

I'm a great believer in the Dirty Harry line from Magnum Force, "A man's gotta know his limitations."

If for example, I were on GWAE and someone asked me what I won at besides football, I'd say, well, I earned three varsity letters in high school and two in college at cross-country and track, but that's about it. I won a few races.

As far as gambling goes, I'm within 1K of even at both poker and fantasy sports lifetime, but it would be too much work to figure out which side of the ledger. And I don't really gamble at anything else.

I'm not one of them thar Leonardo Da APs, conquering the gambling world with freshman college math and my inimitable wits. I am ahead at college hoops and baseball and even hockey, but that's due to a handful of longshot futures, not actually betting games. I don't even know hockey rules, but when one of my partners said "bet this hockey team," I did. And they made it to the final that season. Ka-ching. Didn't watch a minute. As I said, I don't even understand the rules.

And I would pass a polygraph on anything in this post, as per usual.

 

Yes, direct quotes will work just fine. But you go first. You are always telling people to do this and do that. But you never do it yourself. For example, you recently said Shack bragged about his published NFL stats and not giving anyone else credit. Half Smoke showed that Shack had given credit and he challenged you to put up the quote of Shack bragging. How come you haven't put up the quote? Well, it's because you never practice what you preach.

But here's a link where you can go thru all of the ditz posts on VCT and see him interjecting himself in all kinds of gambling subjects that are not his expertise.

https://vegascasinotalk.com/forum/search.php?searchid=5186661

Oh, and the math? It's not even college freshman level. It's more like 8th grade level. But it goes way over your head don't it.

 

AxelWolf on how UNKewLyingJ is an out and out fraud: If I had to ask myself and wonder why someone would stay and keep taking a pounding while taking into account all the bad things they claim have happened to them....

I would have to guess that it's all BS, therefore nothing bad has ever happened to them, and therefore there's no real reason to leave/ stop.

 

Haven't been around for months. Just checked out scanning through the VCT forum. It's amazing that place still exists. The same exact small group of assholes saying the same exact shit they always said.

Kiwlj and MrV better known as Batman and Robin are still there exposing their inherited stupidity. Some people it appears just can't help themselves. It has to be the DNA.

 

Genes ain't got nothin' to do with it.

My parents paid a lot of money for my "stupidity:" college ain't cheap, ya know?

And then I paid for law school, magnifying the problem: egad, what was I thinking?

 

Took a look at the forum VCT today. Noticed a new thread started by the owner Dumbo Dan the great poker player. The title of the thread was “Bizarre no-offer situation.”

Imagine being so concerned about offers dropping to, $5-$25 free play a few times a month and a few free buffets? What were the offers before they dropped? 10K and $500 dollar dinners?

It is one thing to be a young unestablished kid. It is another to be a grown allegedly established adult to be talking about such petty two-bit shit.

Then you got one of the alleged biggest high roller AP members there chime in and offer to help Dan or whoever with his casino connections. Talk about bullshit in the fourth degree. Of course, Dumbo Dan will not ask for help since the alleged victim sounds like one of his own two-bit complaints. I heard many Jews are known to be cheap but Dumbo over the years took that to a new level. Then again, lots of millionaires behave the same way. Take care of the pennies, they make sense.

If you know this site and some of the 15 other members that post constantly there, you should by now get the whole picture of just a place for degenerate gambler veterans having a place to try and justify their foolish decisions in life.

Actually, it’s very sad.

 

I see this kind of thing all the time, blackhole. People who are immersed in gambling have little direct control over the vagaries of probability, so they try to micro-manage what they can control financially, and it comes across as autistic obsession regarding amounts that don't really matter. In many ways, I am a nitpicking penny pincher, but I'm not this obsessive. Sometimes you have to put amounts in perspective.

Back in my youth, we'd refer to behavior like this as "being a Jew." But God forbid anyone use that phrase these days. And Todd is Jewish. LOL.

 

We have an excellent example here of a couple of ignorant stupid asses, blackhole and ditz, not knowing what the fuck they are talking about....but thinking they got it all figured out.

What Druff described is a classic AP move. Play a game in the 98 to 99% range. Run 30 or 40K in action in a short amount off time, 5 or six hours. Then wait on the casino offers. Druff said the game was in the high 98's percentage wise. That's perfect to bait marketing into thinking you are a pure ass sucker.

The purpose of the play is to induce marketing to send offers they send to pure ass suckers. Like a thousand dollars a week in freeplay for the next six months. In which case you just go in every week and run off the freeplay.

What's the upfront cost of the play? Say it's a 98.5% game. The theoretical is 1.5% of 35K or about $500.

This is a classic play. I can understand BH not knowing but redietz should know better. I'm surprised, no shocked he doesn't know.

 

Blackhole is just ignorant to AP stuff. But, I have tried to give Red some slack with his anti-AP rhetoric. For a guy who has spent "100 days a year in Vegas for the last 20 years, he also seems to not have any idea about some of this stuff.

Druff's "classic move" is exactly to the letter, what I did for 10 years supplementing my blackjack play. You hit the casino with a big coin in. Collect the top bounce back free play for 3-4 months. Then they cut offers in half for a month or 2. Then in half again. And then it is time to take a month off and hit them with another big coin-in and start the cycle all over again.

The only trick is that you can't play the very best games.....the games with over 100% payback. You can't even play full play VP (if you can find it). You need to play 99% or slightly less to get the top rate bounce back amounts.

I did have someone steer me towards this whole thing when I moved to Vegas, but I figured out all the details. Play 99% return or less, when offers start to decline, skip a month and start the cycle again. If I could figure it out, why could a guy who spent 20 years in Vegas not do so?

The only problem for me, was it is time consuming. At my prime I was getting mailers and offers from 30-40 different casinos, and usually 2-3 accounts at each. That was a lot of mailers hitting my mailbox the end of each month. It was very time consuming to figure out a schedule to hit all offers at the right time. And since this was not my primary source of income, blackjack was, I quickly pushed this exercise off on my partner. And I don't think he was completely disciplined as you need to be to optimize the play, but he did well enough that we both averaged about 20k for 10 years.

When he passed away, I just didn't want to spend that kind of time on it anymore and some of the chain places in Vegas like Boyd and Stations seemed to be reducing their offers, so I just let it go. I am thinking about picking it up again, because I have a little more time, since I play blackjack less (and differently) and have heard that some of the independent type places (not chains) still have good offers and you can still play exactly as Druff described and it works just as it did before.

 

Bigger problem on all these forum, is the guys like Blackhole and Red, and all the trolling. Most of these guys don't know shit about almost any topic that is being discussed and yet, they still will tell you their opinion as if they do.

A good example, it a thread I started at VCT about Renting my condo out Next weekend over Superbowl weekend. All of the sudden, every M-Fer was an expert on why not to do this, and you can't do this. People will steal from you and you have to lock up every thing that isn't nailed down and so on and so forth. None of that is true. You aren't renting to some stranger on craigslist. There are companies like Vbro that this is their business. They screen and have repeat clientele that rents vacation properties like this. And if something should happen, you are insured.

Now of course that doesn't mean you leave cash or chips or jewelry or other small valuables laying around. Because of what I do, I have a safe in the unit. But even if I didn't, you either lock up your small valuables or take them with you. And the renters aren't stealing your TV's or other appliances like these clowns say. These people are vetted and you would know exactly who they are.

So you have the morons on the forum saying one stupid thing after another, when they have zero experience with what is being discussed and seem to have less that zero (<-) knowledge about any given topic.

It really gets frustrating after a while dealing with these internet experts on evert subject that have no experience or knowledge about any of it. The only thing most of these guys are experts at is trolling and hating. And we will probably see more proof of that in the responses that follow.

 

One other things about the "classic play" that Dan Druff mentioned. While you can figure out a lot of what and how marketing does, you can't figure everything.

For instance, if two players put the exact same coin-in amount, they may receive very different bounce back amounts. Susy Wang will receive better offers that Connie Smith and Connie Smith will receive better offers that Thelma Jackson. Additionally someone in a zip code that has a higher income average will receive better offers that a player who played the exact same amount from a zip code with lower income averages.

These things should be discrimination and illegal, but some how it falls under targeted marketing principals that seem to be legal, although unfair.

Marketing might not get the last laugh if Suzy Wang turns out to be a white woman married to an Asian man, as was the premise of a Seinfeld episode.

 

What exactly is it that I claimed to know? LOL. First of all, Todd quoted $25 to $75 a month at one location. I was commenting on Todd's fixation with the second location not providing identical mailers as the first, when there is never a guarantee. The same slot club at different locales can identify a player at multiple locations as the same player and tailor offers based on total information at all locations. It's in their best interests to do so.

The idea that a single club at two different locations is not sharing all info with itself is ridiculous and overly optimistic.

If someone like Todd is paying 10K on up for a dozen different WSOP tourneys every year, then yes, his being concerned with whether he gets $50 or nothing a month from one slot club mailer is pretty much spinning one's wheels over negligible amounts of money.

Personally, I do a lot of things like Todd, and I am a financial nitpicker. But even I wouldn't concern myself with $50 a month when I have no right of expectation that a slot club will treat me the same at different venues. If you concern yourself over things like these, you are wasting time and effort that should be applied elsewhere. You are also making projections of how much money you will make based on flawed and non-guaranteed formulas that can be changed in the next 10 minutes whenever any casino wants or chooses.

 

Your post here makes it glaringly apparent that you know nothing of advantage video poker. The dude ran a 35K wager probably on double double bonus, 98.9%. The dude is not looking for $50 or $75 in freeplay. That's just stupid. It's not advantage. No advantage player is going to run 35K in action expecting to get that amount. He was looking to get thousands in freeplay, staggered over several months.

And it probably wasn't a shot in the dark either. They knew the casinos ran separate offers not based on combined play. They knew the casino's track record for freeplay offered per amount of action ran. They were expecting to get big freeplay. My guess is the players club snapped to what the guy was doing and cut him off. It wouldn't be the first time that ever happened.

What was that you told me? Stick to what you know?

 

Oy vey, oy vey, the anti-semitism in here is virulent, virulent I say, hey hey!!!!

 

After reading the responses to my above post about two-bit hustling casinos for free play now confirmed by the two-bit casino pros posts afterwards, is all you need to know.

Imagine having to run 30 or 40K in action in a short amount of time, 5 or six hours. Then wait on the casino offers HOPING you fooled the casinos into thinking you are a pure ass sucker. The purpose of this tactic is to induce marketing to send offers they send to pure ass suckers. Like a thousand dollars a week in free play for the next six months. That is $26,000.00 thousand dollars in 26 weeks of free play.

It is amazing how far a degenerate will go to help justify what they do. It is also amazing how fucking stupid casino marketing must be.

I did not read any of the three posts of what the compulsive liar Kewlj had to say. I along with everybody else already know it is bullshit and just part of his attempt to make people think he is straight up. (no pun intended)

Pay attention people. These posts by these alleged pros are a perfect example of how you could end up in your senior years if you keep gambling.

 

The problems I have with the crimm and kewlJ posts are that (1) Todd did not state any of what mickey crimm is hypothesizing. Not my job to make things up so it sounds as if there is an advantage of some kind. And the idea that (2) a slot club operating at multiple properties wouldn't talk to itself is reliant on optimism without evidence and (3) the entire "strategy" is speculative, as it assumes an unchanging set of marketing rules when the rules can change tomorrow. It's poke-and-hope.

Nowhere did Todd say there was a previous established track record at Casino A and Casino B establishing mailers for X amount of play at A and B. He did not state or even imply that, and since he's so detail-oriented, it's not likely he'd miss the opportunity to report that. I believe he said these were promotional sign-ups, in fact. Nothing had been established. Promotional sign-ups can often be cut off or wildly changed in an afternoon. They do not exist in perpetuity.

Much of the "AP" repertoire consists of assumptions. If you want to operate and lay out 35K or 40K for no guaranteed reason on a negative expectation game, that's fine with me. Just don't sell it as "advantage play" when you don't actually know in present or future tense if it's actually any advantage. Because you don't know. You're hoping.

If you want to describe what you're doing in past tense ("it has been an advantage play, but it might not be going forward"), great. Have at it.

Most of these "AP" comments are trying to hammer home the idea that speculating that something is an advantage play is good enough to play it. If that's your philosophy, fine. But you're missing a key strategical issue.

If one in 50 of your presumed advantage plays results in your playing and then getting kneecapped by marketing without the assumed advantage, there goes your overall advantage. Then you've become a sucker, not an advantage player.

The next thing you must ask yourself is whether the tendency in these days of AI is for more marketing advantages to maintain or pop up, or whether it's likely the programs will identify people playing with these previous small advantages and cut off these advantages. If you prefer to believe the former, good for you.

I had a brief conversation recently with a famous AP about the idea of "EV" in sports betting. I had my spiel ready to go, but it turned out that he agreed with me. For sports betting, "EV" is fine in past tense, which is what I've said. But you should not use it as some kind of math formula going forward. Not coin flips. The same argument can be made for all of this sign-up poke-and-hope. The "EV" is past tense. Until you get the mailers you're hoping for, you are speculating at a negative expectation game.

Of course, betting volume-wise, if you are wrong for 1 in 50 of your speculations, your profit is out the window.