(These set of articles are written by a reader who would wish to remain anonymous. This reader has been gambling for over 40 years, and has some absolutely amazing stories to tell. At the risk of his life, we cannot reveal his actual name. You’ll know why when you read his stories.

Therefore we are proud to introduce to you: The Masked Gambler)

Tom was the smart one between the three of us. He was always thinking. He would tell us how to block the machine if it was overpaying to much. He would remind us how important it was to keep your mouth shut when you got caught and if you had to answer anyone, keep it brief. He told us how to make it look like you were losing money on the machine. He would say if a supervisor tries to provoke you, just stand there and look bewildered. He would cover anything and everything, to make sure we would never get into trouble.

The most important thing that Tom told us about, was the casino commission.

The casino commission was in every hotel casino, and there booth was always located next to the security desk. The casino commission was there if you had any complaints or discrepancies against the casinos. His theory was, if you want me to play in your casino, then don’t complain to me if your machine is overpaying. Just fix it, and I’ll play another machine.

Tom would orchestrate what shifts we would be on, in accordance to the shifts the slot attendants would be on. We did eight hour shifts, and once in a while, we would do 10 hour shifts. On weekdays it was always crowded, and on weekends, it was so crowded you didn’t have to worry about anything and there were always jackpots going off all over the casino. In fact, it was hard to get slot attendants, so you didn’t have to worry about getting caught. We very seldom got shut down on a weekend.

You never knew where you were going to find an overpayer. Sometimes you would be on the end machine and sometimes you would be in the middle of the row of machines. Some locations were better than others. Two out of the three of us smoke cigarettes. So you would have an ask tray on one side of the machine and a beverage on the other side. And you always had quarters in a cup on one side or the other. This way, if a slot attendant was walking down the aisle, and you were in the middle of cashing out, you could shift your body towards your ash tray and take a drag off your cigarette, or shift the other way and pick up your drink.

You would try to keep the ash tray and your drink back a little bit, because you would want to lean inward to block the coin counter. You never wanted your body to come in contact with the machine. There were always empty cups piled up on the side of the machines.When you filled up a cup with quarters, you would put a pile of empty cups on top of the full cup, and then a shorter pile of cups in front of it, so it gave the illusion that there were two stacks of empty cups.These cups were always far back as they would go, on each side of the machine. There was always a glass divider separating your machine from the machine on the other side. I guess this was so thieves couldn’t reach there hands through from the other side, and steal peoples cups of quarters.

Obviously, the night shift was the hardest shift to be on. There were a lot less people in the casino. At night, most attendants would have to cover more sections of the casino. You always had to be aware of your surroundings. Most casinos would have a wall that was a complete mirror. Learn how to use the reflection of the glass on the machine. And if you were unsure of you surroundings, and you needed to cash out, I would purposely drop a quarter on the floor while I was trying to put it in the machine.

This enabled me to thoroughly look around. Even if I seen the quarter on the floor, I could pretend to be looking for it. Now, if I was on the night shift, especially in the middle of the week, who ever I took over for, would take a full cup of quarters. Sometimes two cups of quarters. They would cash them in, and keep going. We always knew that a cup held around $150.00. I would just replace the cup or cups of quarters with rolls of quarters.I would purposely wait until a slot attendant walked by , and I would ask her, if she seen the change person, to please ask he or she to come over.Sometimes the slot attendant would volunteer to get the quarters for me if there was no change person on duty.

If there was three hundred missing out of the hopper, I would ask for $160.00 in quarters. I would put all the rolls in the tray for everybody to see. I would break open a roll of quarters and start playing the machine. Anybody that would walk by would see a lot of rolls of quarters or they would see a lot of empty quarter wrappers laying around the machine. I always wanted to create an illusion that I was spending a lot of money to play this machine. Casinos were well aware that there were a lot of sick slot players.

Later, I would get another $160.00 in quarters.Now, it looks like I’m playing a lot of money , but all I was doing is putting the money back in that was taken out when Mike or Tom left the machine. The only thing wrong with this maneuver was it was time consuming. And when you play an overpayer, speed is very important.

But you had to do what ever was necessary.

(Part 4 Coming Soon)