| Similar to how a casino can work, has the management ever approached you and asked you to leave because you were performing too well? Did anyone ever try to steal your tickets as they flowed ceaselessly out of the dispenser? | I was eagerly waiting for this question - glad to see it came in so early! |
| I'll use a casino analogy of my own. |
| There are good casinos, and bad casinos. A bad casino will "sweat the money" and remove anyone they suspect of counting cards, whether or not they actually are. They actually expend more effort (and thus, more time and money) into stopping counters from making a profit that they could better off be directing elsewhere...and they end up pissing off non-counting players who happened to get lucky. |
| A GOOD casino, however, realizes that they're making millions upon millions of dollars, and unless a counter or group of counters is/are winning so much to heavily impact their bottom line, it's best to just let them have at it. They're, in effect, allowing those players to consistently win as advertisement - other players being seen cashing out big wins encourages others to try their hand...others that might not have the same skillset, and will most likely lose to the house. |
| Similarly, there are bad and good arcades. Bad arcades will change payouts and ask players not to play...good arcades will realize they're taking in a vast amount of money from most or all of the other games, so they'll allow advantage players to turn a profit (within reason). I won't release the exact figures, but from what our 2nd-in-command at my location has told me, between myself and another advantage player who does exactly what I do, with the same level of skill, we're taking less than 0.5% of their total weekly profits. We're a drop in the bucket to them and they realize this, and let us go because of it. |
| EDIT: Realized I missed your other question. It's very seldom anyone tries to take my tickets. When a little kid does, usually a parent steps in right away to pull their kid back from them. |
| I can't imagine the profit margins from arcades to be comparable enough to casinos to justify not sweating the small stuff as much. | A large chain arcade? I'd say so. Now if it was a hole in the wall in a mall, that'd be different. |
| This is a near-perfect analogy to film and video game piracy. | Goddamn right it is. Let 'em pirate - the ones that truly appreciate your work will pay you back in other ways, and it does get your game or movie out there and create buzz for people who will be paying customers either now or later. |
| How long do you usually spend at D&B straight? Do you play for 3 hours and take a break, or power through? How long is a usual "session" for you? | I usually plop my ass down in front of a game, play straight through to earn 100,000 tickets, then let the machine drain of the tickets owed. |
| Usually I spend 3-4 hours playing, and then 3 hours waiting for the remaining 45,000-50,000 tickets to dispense. |
| Sessions are 7 hour days, twice a week. (My D&B will tolerate me and another guy doing 200,000 a week each; any more APs would be overkill, and any more than 200k/week/person would be overkill. We've found a good balance.) |
| Do you ever tell new APs to fuck off because it is your turf? | I've had one other AP, who I've worked things out with (blokassassin), and one AP who I've asked that, if he were in the area, to not kill my game of choice because of how much they're paying out on it already, and he understood that (but he goes to all the D&Bs across the country so he has many other opportunities.) |
| They haven't figured a cutoff point for the machines? like, anything ovr 10,000 tix and it just directs you to get an employee? Seems they could start making money on the machine that much quicker if they could fast forward that process. | They'd actually lose MORE money to me manually posting tickets to my card...and they'd tip off regional management to the fact that there's one player hitting so much, if that could easily be audited. The people down there NOW are okay with what I'm doing...but what's to say a corporate hot-shot trying to make a name for themself by "cutting costs" wouldn't see this and order my AP games to be shut down? That'd just make that way too easy for them. |
| Wait, does it take literally three hours to spit out all those tickets? I feel like the first 20 minutes would be euphoria and the remaining time would be unbearably boring... | Yes, it does. The machine's able to dispense 10,000 tickets every 35 minutes, so if I have it up to an average of 45k when finished, that's almost 3 hours of wait time. |
| What do you do to pass that time? You said elsewhere that you sometimes eat diner while waiting, but what about the rest of the time... I want to imagine you standing in front of the machine laughing like a madman for the entire duration... | Usually I'm listening to my iPod (which, ironically, was won as a prize from this D&B.) Oftentimes I'm explaining to people who ask me "how in the fuck did you win all those?" the basic strategy, and I'll play 1 or 2 games to show them. |
| Wow! that's a long time! can't they just give you the credit so all that paper isnt lost? | All the tickets are recycled anyway, and it's better for them if I'm stuck with the waiting period. |
| What would you estimate the conversion rate of tickets to $ is? What kind of margin are you making on the prizes i.e how much on average are you spending to get an iPad and then how much do you sell it for? | Okay...the conversion rate is SUPPOSED to generally be 1 ticket = 0.5 cents (so 100,000 tickets is supposed to get $500 worth of stuff.) |
| The iPad HD is 120,000 tickets, so they're asking $600 in tickets for a $500 (+ tax) prize. Video games that sell for $60 are usually 12,500 tickets, Wii games that are $50 are generally 10,500 tickets, and so on. |
| There are a lot of circumstances that will change how much I spend to get an iPad HD down there; it's never less than $80, never more than $170, but averages out to $120 each. |
| (And on average, right now, I'm clearing $50/hr.) |
| That's pretty damn good man. Just curious - were you an online poker player? Rarely hear anyone else mention + and -EV when talking about stuff like this. | No, but I counted cards for a while. I picked up some of the lingo from there. |
| Cross your fingers the US regulates it in the next few years because you seem to have the right mindset for it. | I honestly have no desire to get into poker. There are big wins...but there are equally big losses. This is consistent. My WORST day, I'm usually still making $350. |
| Any games that you see as "steer clear", as in, rigged to lose? Also, can you beat THE CLAW GAME? | The claw game...I never bothered with that. I know for a fact Mega Stacker's rigged, I'm fairly sure Super Monkey Ball and Price is Right: Shell Game are both rigged from paying out their top pays, and Big Bass Wheel just isn't worth playing at all. |
| You're absolutely correct about Mega Stacker being rigged. When you actually get to the top, it shitfts the block to the left and claims you've lost even after the winning screen has flashed, in some situations. It's complete BS and i've been cheated out of several PS3's Ipods etc. | Rigged as fuuuuuuck. |
| How do you know that those games are rigged? Just curious. Thanks for the IAmA. I buy / sell ipads as well so I enjoyed reading your part on that. | I read the manuals. Most game companies put their manuals for the games on their websites, and you can clearly see from the settings when they can, or have set a game to be impossible. |
| On the big bass wheel i did win almost 5,000 tickets with around 10 bucks... which isn't terrible... got about $50 worth of stuff lol. | 5,000 tickets should only garner $25 worth of stuff? |
| What do you do with your prizes, especially the ipads? sell em, give em away, or hoard them? | I sell 'em. This is a profit venture for me. |
| I assume you've kept one for personal use? | I kept an iPad 2, but that was about it. |
| Have you ever been cheated or harassed by arcade owners/employees? maybe not at d&bs, but i feel like some of the seedier arcades wouldn't take too kindly to someone walking in and harvesting their tickets. | The worst arcade experience I ever had was in Kennywood; a machine called "Spin Doctor" had a 200 minimum jackpot for getting three 10,000 spaces on skill-stop slot reels. I had figured out the game within a couple dollars, and was hitting the jackpot better than 50%. I left to count my tickets when I'd finished playing, and when I came back, they'd lowered the payout to 50. I honestly should have gotten the news media involved, but I was too young then. (Any arcade that lowers any payout on me at this point will have some kind of a public backlash.) |
| Do you still enjoy actually playing the games? | I do enjoy playing the games, but the reaction from people around me is more enjoyable than playing them now! |
| I honestly should have gotten the news media involved, but I was too young then. Do you think the news would have really cared? | Local news? At something about Kennywood? They air stuff about the furries, I'm pretty sure they would have given a blurb to this. |
| Kennywood! I love that place. Never did like their arcade though... | And now you have a good reason not to like it! |
| So let me see if I understand this. 50$/hr if you wait for tickets. 100$/hr if you don't wait for tickets. Why not pay someone 10$/hr to wait for the tickets while you are on another machine? | Trust factor, and the 2nd best machine in there is, at most, a $20/hour venture for me on Wednesdays, and not worth it on other days. Now if there was a second Tippin'... |
| What is a common arcade game that is really easy? | For a game that has a low cost, Match 'Em Up would be the easiest to learn - Link to www.amusementtrader.com |
| The light generally isn't set to go around too fast at most locations. |
| For a game that's higher cost, but higher payout, Spin-N-Win, IF SET TO DEFAULT SETTINGS, is a great game to learn. |
| Link to www.bmigaming.com |
| The basic strategy for Spin-N-Win involves going at the top dot (so you can see more of the wheel, so you don't have to jerk your head around to follow the light), standing with your left foot back (again, so you can see additional segments of the wheel), only having the base of your palm touching the button (so you're not picking your hand up to hit the button - this reduces variance) and doing a verbal count to 3 for each revolution the light takes around the wheel (so you get it in your head exactly how long the light takes to make one full turn - this will make you more accurate.) |
| You don't happen to be a middle aged businessman in atlanta, do you? If so I'm pretty sure I met you once when you were cleaning out the spin-n-win. | I have a feeling you met Andrew. I know about him, he used to focus on the east coast but now does all the D&Bs nationwide. (Us advantage players have to stick together and pool info, after all!) |
| Thanks! I was also wondering, do you ever use cheats on games? | Trying to cheat at games would be very, very -EV. |
| If I were to cheat at a game, they would have cause to void the ticket balance on my card, and possibly try to recover losses from prizes I've collected. |
| I don't even take "glitch" tickets (tickets a game pays out that it's not supposed to) - I just alert the techs/management that a game's malfunctioning and overpaying. I don't want there to be any gray area as to what I do in there. |
| May I ask why the term "advantage player"? I mean I know you have to call yourselves something, just curious how ti came about. | When you refuse to play games where the edge is with the house, and only play games where the edge is with you as the player, and know how to get that edge consistently, that falls in line with those who count cards or do other things of that nature, and the term Advantage Player came from that. |
| Like a true gentleman. | Also, and I left this out earlier, what you lose in not taking "glitch" tickets generally gets made up elsewhere. Techs do have a bit of discretion as to when to give "comp" credits to someone; a technician who puts 5 credits on Tippin' Bloks to either repay me for letting them know a game was overpaying or letting a group of kids play through, might as well have just handed me a $10 bill because that's the extra value of those credits on average. |
| Trust me, even if I'm not taking what would be an easy freebie, I'm still getting mine. |
| At an arcade once, I threw the skeeball a little too hard at the machine and it suddenly said I had the new high score and spewed out 200 tickets. I felt like such a badass when I realized I had enough for a stuffed animal. | Must have been a faulty sensor that kept triggering. |
| Tippin blocks! That's my main game man. Is that your go to game as well? Also, what do you do if people are in line and clearly want to play? Do you rip your tickets and let them jump in or explain to them "Not now chief, I'm in the zone." | Tippin is my main game, yes. |
| What's your jackpot percentage, and where do you play, if you don't mind me asking? (Trying to keep the APs spread out if possible!) |
| And the only time I ask people to allow me to continue playing is if I am on a long win streak and I ask them to wait until I lose one game. I've never had anyone ever ask me to break a streak; everyone's been quite understanding. True to my word I let them get on and play it as much as they want as soon as I lose that one game. |
| What do you do with the stuff you win? Do you sell it, keep some of it? | I sell almost all of it. I do keep one of each new high-end item that comes out for the most part. |
| What is the most expensive thing you've ever won. | The most expensive thing that I've won down there would be the iPads; right now I'm earning just under enough tickets to get 2 every week. |
| How much money out of pocket are you spending to win these two ipods? | My out-of-pocket is roughly $120 per iPad HD. |
| Are you able to use this as your only source of income? | If I knew the particular games I played were going to be set like that forever, and there was at least one other Dave & Buster's within an hour of me, I would be able to, but I do have a stable job to go along with this. |
| Do you just resell them? I'd kill for a $120 iPad. | Yeah, they're selling for $534 now. I figure that'll drop to $480 when the market calms. |
| But there's a Reddit discount, right? | Equal to what my eBay fees would have been, if we make a transaction off of eBay. |
| Pew pew. | Link to www.reddit.com Link to imgur.com Here's the latter. The former, we'll talk once I get another pair in. I'd love to not eat any more eBay fees. |
| I'd like to buy an iPad HD from you! | |
| I'd also love it if you posted some photos of massive piles of tickets. | |
| What got you started doing this? | I was always an arcade rat - usually I went to the mall every weekend to blow a few rolls of quarters on this or that. I was always the one that went to Kennywood (amusement part near Pittsburgh) that would be more interested in the arcades than the rides. |
| One year, Kennywood got a game called "Stop the Clock at 1000" - and I was pretty good at it right from the beginning, knocking out a jackpot maybe every 5th play or so. |
| Around my 18th birthday, a Dave & Buster's opened up near me, and from what I'd been told, it was an arcade that blew Kennywood's out of the water. |
| They also had a Stop the Clock at 1,000, with a 500 ticket jackpot, 50 tickets for being off by 1, and 25 tickets for being off 2, 3, 4, or 5 from the jackpot. |
| Pretty much from day one, I was getting prizes that exceeded the cost of play from the game, even without 1/2 price day, promotions, coupons, and only being able to get 100 chips for $20. |
| Dave and Buster's down at the Waterfront? I go there all the time! | I'll be there Wednesday if they have my machine fixed. Once I know my game's back up, I'll let you know when I'll be down and we can meet! |
| Cool to see Kennywood :) I used to ride the Jackrabbit as a kid; it is so old but still so much fun. | So totally not worth $37.95 to get in there though. |
| I once won 1,000 tickets from the kennywood arcade on a deal or no deal machine. | Well, it IS a fair 1/16 shot...but it's an expensive game there. |
| How do you keep track of how many tickets you have? | Tickets are put on a scale and weighed. The scale is set to err 1% in the player's favor (it's calibrated with a 6,000 ticket brick which is set to read as 6,060.) |
| How do the D&B people count your tickets to confirm for a reward? | When doing a full session, I take in a notepad, chart wins and losses, and keep a running total of tickets earned every 10 games, and stop once that number goes over 100,000 tickets for the day. |
| If they're weighed, what's stopping you from soaking a bunch of tickets in water to add some weight? | They know to watch out for that and won't accept wet tickets. |
| Unless you have teenagers running the ticket booth and then they don't notice when you wet them... | Still not worth it and just isn't right to do. |
| Which game gets you the most tickets and (it might be the same game) which games is your favorite? | Tippin' Bloks is my game of choice right now, with a 500 ticket jackpot and my effective win rate on it being between 71% (on my worst day) and 83% (on my best). |
| Stop the Clock at 1000 will always hold a special place in my heart though, as that's the game that taught me that advantage play in an arcade is possible. |
| My friend used to beat Stop the Clock at an absurd rate. That's around the time we figured out how to win consistently at D&B. | What was his JP rate? Do you have an idea? |
| Whoa whoa whoa 500? MY D&B only pays out 290, am I getting ripped off? Also, do you stack 2 up until the 3rd or 4th row? | Yes, you are - it should be at least 500 everywhere. Actually, it should be EXACTLY 500 everywhere. Call their Guest Services number? |
| I used to hit Tower of Power 1 in 5 or 6 if I was lucky. I might have overestimated my friend's numbers on Stop the Clock - small sample size + general bragging and BSing around with friends means I wouldn't take those numbers seriously. | Good point on those numbers. This is why I keep logs of my play. A sample size of 2,000+ recorded games is sufficient, I'd think. |
| I'd love to see what I could do over 2,000 games on a fairly set Stop the Clock! |
| Meant to respond to another point in this thread... the Tippin Blocks in my area is a 1000 ticket jackpot. | Oh holy fuck, what's your location? |
| What is the luckiest or best day you've had? What was the payout and what did you do with all the tickets? | Hmmm....luck doesn't enter into what I do, at all, nor should it. Best day...well I guess that's a tie between all the days I earned 100,000 tickets. But that's so commonplace it's hardly noteworthy now. I guess I could say the day I finished with an 82.9% jackpot rate. |
| How do you carry all the tickets? Do you ever worry about someone snatching a few from the pile in passing while you are focused intently on your game? | The machine isn't that far from the Winner's Circle, so I wait until it's paid out all 12,000 that it can hold, take them up, and let them know to page a tech over to refill it. That way I'm not abandoning tickets at the machine. The tickets pay out by my right leg, so if someone actually did try to jack my tickets, I'd be able to manage a trip if they tried to run. |
| Have there ever been days where you lost money, or didn't turn a profit? How often? | There hasn't been a day in the last six months I haven't come out way ahead. There may have been days I didn't make too much money when Spin-N-Win was the only game worth playing, and I was struggling to hit the 1,000 at all. |
| What would you say is the worst game to spend money on at D&B? | Worst, hm? Well, if we're talking from a ticket perspective...Big Bass Wheel is probably the worst offender. I did a write-up of just how bad this game is in my FAQ. Deal or No Deal's pretty bad as well, but it would be decent if they'd raise the ticket payouts. |
| But definitely Big Bass Wheel. But it prints money for them, and if it weren't for them having enough games that return very little, they couldn't afford to allow me to do what I do so consistently. |
| As a joke I recorded three different Deal or No Deal games to see if the million dollar suitcase that is shown matches up after the scramble. Get home slow down video and they all matched up. Surely for someone who is a genius that game screams profit? | If only you had an app that could track it that quickly on the spot, rather than having to watch it back at home... |
| I won 1000 tickets on that wheel! | And your odds of doing so on a random spin were 1 in 168. |
| Once some people I knew figured out the Deal or No Deal case scrambling algorithm and won about 3 times in a row. Card stopped working for a few minutes and when it worked again the algorithm had changed. Might have just been coincidence with the card not working but you never know. | Well, shit. Sorry to hear. If you figure it out again, keep me posted? |
| This is fascinating to me. Have you ever had anyone try and steal the tickets while you were away? Thanks for doing this IAmA! | Usually only little kids. Only once did a kid that should have known better actually try to take my tickets, and I looked at her, then her dad who was standing a few feet away, then back to her, and said "You wouldn't take something that isn't yours, would you? I know he raised you better than that." |
| Awww. Do you ever give little kids a couple of tickets here and there? | Usually parents ask me to win for them, so as a favor I'll ask them to swipe their card enough for me to win 2 jackpots, one of them will be for the kids, one of them will be for me. |
| Right now this is actually -EV for me; mainly because a 50/50 split isn't profitable to me when I'm getting over 75% jackpot rate on my own money, and I can't in good conscience ask for more than 50/50 on someone else's money. |
| You mentioned earlier that you intentionally limit the amount of tickets you win per week. Since your payout is essentially fixed, aren't you just trading time for reduced costs? That seems like a prudent move to me. It might lower you $/hour but it increases your $/week by letting you earn the same amount of tickets with a lower investment. Do you factor in the amount of time a game take to play? Or are you more concerned with it's cost/payout ratio? Are you unwilling to increase the amount of hours you put in (at a lower average rate) in exchange for a higher weekly profit? At what hourly wage would you consider winning to be "not worth your time?" | If I were to expand, I would be going to a second Dave & Buster's, as even with the travel time it'd be worth it. |
| Were you well known by the D&B staff? Because I was friends with one of the Food & Beverage directors in Dallas (2003-2005). He used to get us free tokens for the horse racing game. Did you have tactics for that game? | I was, and still am, known well by the D&B staff - I still do this! The only reason I'm not doing it right now is because my game of choice is temporarily out of commission, and they had to order a part to repair it. (On the plus side, when it is fixed, it'll be running better than ever and I'll have a great day hammering tickets out of it.) |
| Horse racing game...you mean D&B Downs? I don't believe that gives out tickets, so unfortunately I don't know too much about it. One really basic thing I did notice from watching people play it is that they whipped the hell out of the horse early and had no energy at the end... |
| Have you seen this video? | Skee Ball is really the only thing of value he does in this vid. Stacker's rigged against the player. |
| Nothing else that he plays turns a profit. Fail. |
| Do you eat there, too? At D&B that is. | Rarely. I use a buy one get one coupon if I do, eating at a table next to the game while the tickets are dispensing, and I take the other meal home for the next day. |
| Last time I just placed my order through the bartender and tipped him. I didn't really know the process for ordering from a waitress, if I was only ordering takeout. I might start getting desert more often. Their desert is quite good. | I remember when they used to do free dessert coupons... |
| Are you concerned that your FAQ's and Youtube videos will lead to more traffic at the machines that you play? I guess not since you've been advising people for years, but do you worry that you advertising/describing how to beat these games will lead to less profit for you? | The only way it would hurt me is if someone were to come and AP at my local D&B to excess where their net profits were being hurt too badly. I've worked things out with the other AP at my location and we avoid stepping on one another's toes. |
| I ran the same AMA, with pretty much the same guide, last year. That, and the game I concentrate on is difficult to learn, exceedingly so. |
| Information was meant to be free. |
| I dont think I saw this question, are you getting 1099'd for your prizes? | No 1099s are filed; even when getting larger prizes, it's not considered employment. |
| Though I do advise people that are seeking to follow in my footsteps to be careful about just how many items they sell, and where; the last thing one wants to do is sell over $20,000 worth of items spanning over 200 transactions in the same calendar year on eBay, lest you get a 1099-K automatically filed on your behalf... |
| Thanks for getting back to my question! Our city is growing and I am hoping we get a D&B sometime soon. I think I would be good at playing for profit. | I thought Philly already had one? :p. |
| So, if you can't offload all your stuff on ebay, where do you sell it? | Usually locally. That and there seem to be enough Redditors who are interested! |
| Do you ever get asked to leave a certain machine so other kids can play? I guess I better question is how long do you stay at a certain machine without leaving? | I let people "play through" - that is to say, if I'm playing, and I see someone else waiting with their card in their hand, I will step off, let them play, and whatever number of tickets they would win, I tear off for them out of my own stack, that way they don't have to wait hours for my tickets to dispense and I look like a Good Guy Greg to the management and technicians (and if the management has a choice to lower a payout on a game or leave it alone, they wouldn't be apt to screw over a Good Guy Greg.) |
| What sort of skills do you need to be able to do what you do? Do you play any strategy games or other video games to help you practice speed and accuracy, etc. I know a guy who plays some RTS games at a super high level, and can super good mouse accuracy/speed and I was just thinking he'd probably be able to do something like this for income maybe? Idk. | Most of the games I've AP'd are timing and reflexes. Stop the Clock, when they had it, was basically starting a stopwatch and being able to stop it on 1/100th of a second. Spin-N-Win is being able to hit a button within the 5 milliseconds of it being on the jackpot light. Tippin' Bloks...that's part reflexes and part strategy. |
| What got you started to do this every week? And how long have you done this? | See above - someone beat you to the "what got you started" question just a couple minutes ago, I replied there. |
| As for how long? Been playing games at a slight profit since 2001, a profit exceeding my main job since 2007? 2008? (Whatever year they started 1/2 price Wednesdays) And making about $50/hr since this last November. |
| Do you have any games you like to play for fun/general enjoyment? I'm sure you've collected a great deal of console games at home. | I generally play Pump It Up (and would play DDR if they had it, I prefer that) when I'm not APing. |
| If they ever run that "$10 gets 60 minutes of non-redemption play" special again, I often go through a full season of NFL Blitz 2000, a full game of Police Trainer, or throw a shitload of credits on Pump. |
| I don't do much console gaming; I hate the direction current-gen gaming is going with achievements, DRM, online passes to discouraged used game sales...that and the fact that I absolutely despise Nintendo ever since they didn't put Mewtwo in Brawl is keeping me from ever supporting them again (until they release a new Smash, if they have Mewtwo playable.) |
| This guy is serious about his Mewtwo. | If it wasn't for the positive things that came into my life specifically because of my Mewtwo fanatacism, I would not have had the money and been in a good enough situation to get into ventures like this one. So yeah...I owe him a debt, so to speak. |
