How does someone make a living playing slot machines—and why would casinos let them? After joining professional gambler Chris Huang on a casino trip in Atlantic City, I talk with him about the unusual career of casino “advantage play” and how pro slot machine players capture the money left behind by other, less knowledgeable players. We explore why manufacturers create beatable machines, the psychological tricks that machine makers use to attract players, and the unethical actions some slot machine pros take to manipulate players into leaving profitable seats. Chris explains the risks pro slot machine players can encounter, how seemingly promising opportunities can turn into expensive mistakes, why a little knowledge can be dangerous, and what happens when you run out of cash in the middle of a long-term play. We also discuss online gambling “gurus” selling dubious claims of expertise, the secrecy and competition among slot professionals, and the appeal—and pressures—of making a living this way. Learn more about Chris at youtube.com/@gamblingeducationwithchris.
Episode links:
- YouTube (includes video)
- Apple Podcasts
- Spotify
Major takeaways from this talk about the lifestyle and strategies of professional slot machine players:
- Professional slot players focus on a small percentage of machines that become profitable to play under specific conditions.
- Their profits come largely from money other players have contributed to jackpots, rather than from beating the casino out of its share.
- Much of the work involves studying games, learning their rules, and recognizing when a machine offers a worthwhile opportunity.
- Daily routines can involve walking through many casinos, checking machines and collecting small profits along the way.
- Managing risk requires enough cash, realistic expectations, and sometimes a partner to share long sessions and cover breaks.
- Competition encourages secrecy: professionals may hide which machines they check to avoid teaching rivals their strategies.
- Ethical boundaries matter: Chris avoids manipulating recreational players into leaving valuable machines and criticizes professionals who do.
- The lifestyle offers independence and perks like free rooms and meals, but demands discipline, constant decision-making, and dedication to learning from mistakes.
TRANSRIPT
(transcripts are generated automatically and will contain mistakes)
Chris Huang: I think anyone that’s been doing slots for a while has this, uh, horror story where they misjudged the play. There, these long plays that can take hours; you have to be prepared. ‘Cause all of us, uh, that’s been doing this for a while has, has hit a situation where we ran out of money. Either call someone at 2:00 AM in the morning and be like, “Hey, I need you to, I need you to come and bring money to me,” right?Or you actually had to leave the play. And that’s like, that’s like, that’s like the worst outcome, right?
Zach Elwood: That was a clip from my talk with Chris Huang, who’s a professional slot machine player. People who make money by exploiting casino games are also known as “advantage players,” so Chris can also be called a slot machine advantage player.
I recently hung out with Chris in Atlantic City for a couple days as he showed me how he makes money. Atlantic City isn’t a great place to do such work, for reasons we’ll mention in this talk, but it did allow me to watch him do what he does.
My name is Zach Elwood and this is the People Who Read People podcast. If you don’t already know who I am, I used to play poker for a living and I’m the author of some respected books on poker tells, so I was interested in what the life of a professional slot machine player looked like. But even apart from my interest in the gambling world, I’m also just interested in unusual jobs and pastimes people have. So I think I would have been interested in following Chris around the casino even if I wasn’t a poker player.
I knew almost nothing about exploiting slot machines when I first hung out with Chris. I had some basic questions about it that you might have, too. For example, isn’t it hard to beat the casino at its own games? Isn’t it nearly impossible to, as they say, “beat the house”? But what I learned from Chris is that exploiting slot machines has a lot more in common with poker than it does with playing house games like blackjack and roulette, in terms of it involving taking money from other players, and not about taking money from the house.
So in this talk I ask Chris about the ins and outs of this rather unusual profession. One interesting topic we get on is how some advantage players will bother amateur slot machine players to try to get them to leave a profitable machine, or otherwise manipulate them into letting them play — which by the way, Chris does not do, and we’ll also get into why he doesn’t do that and where he sees the ethical boundaries.
We talk about why it is that slot machine manufacturers decide to make machines that can be beat in this way; because not all slot machines are exploitable, only a small percentage of them are; so what drives the creation of those? We talk about psychological tricks that slot machine makers use to attract people to their machines, and their motives.
We talk about the risks involved in trying to exploit slot machines, like the risks Chris was talking about in that introductory clip. We talk about the considerations in knowing how to avoid high risk situations and how experience helps with that, and about how Chris thinks about risk management in general, as a professional gambler.
We touch on fake advantage player con artists who claim they have secret systems for gambling but are just using that to gain followers online and get attention and so on. We also talk about the rise in popularity of prediction markets and other online gambling platforms, and the risks to people who get into such things thinking they know what they’re doing when they really don’t.
I also ask Chris some cultural, ethnographic questions about the lifestyle: like what the relationships are like between fellow slot machine advantage players; and how it’s possible to easily recognize serious slot machine players in the casino; and why Chris is drawn to such a lifestyle as opposed to more traditional ways of making money.
By the way, if you’re listening to this on audio, this episode is also available on youtube, and in the youtube video I’ll include some video I shot in Atlantic City of Chris showing me what he does; him actually playing the games and talking about what he’s doing. I’ll include some of that at the end of the youtube episode.
Regarding that Atlantic City trip: I’ll add that after getting several hours of tutoring from Chris, I did succeed in going off, on my own, and spotting a slot machine in a profitable state. So that was kind of the high point of the trip, sending a pic to Chris of a specific machine and asking him “I think this machine is playable right now, right?” and him saying ‘yeah, it is’. So that will probably be as far as I go into the world of slot machine advantage play, but it was fun to get even that far into it.
Chris also just recently started up a youtube channel; his channel is called Gambling Education with Chris. I’ll have a link to that in the episode entry on my site behavior-podcast.com and in the youtube video description. If you want to learn more about him, you can check that out.
Okay here’s the talk with Chris Huang.
Zach Elwood: Hey, Chris. Thanks for joining me.
Chris Huang: Hey, Zach. Good to be here
Zach Elwood: Maybe a good place to start is the thing that confused me when I first learned about what you do, which is how is it that slot machines can even be beatable in the first place? Because I think a lot of people would be like, “Well, why would they give you a house edge?”
So maybe you could talk a little bit about where the edge a- and the money is coming from.
Chris Huang: Yeah. So I totally understand that, and for a long timeI felt the same way. You look at people playing slots and just kind of dismiss them, right? It’s very silly, uh, that slots can be beat. But basically, um, 90% of slot machines I totally ignore, but there are like 10% where there are kind of two main features.
And so the first main feature is that it’s what we call a must hit by. And it’s, and it’s kind of, it’s in the rules of the slot machine. And there’s this jackpot, and it basically says, um, “This jackpot must be hit by a certain number.” The must hit by is at 200. If the jackpot’s at one, 199.99, it’s like, uh, you’re guaranteed to hit it on the next spin.
So the closer and closer you get, uh, you want to, um… It’s actually plus EV to play it, uh, at, at a certain point.
Zach Elwood: And people… A- And the reason they can be in those states is people just don’t notice. They leave them in a state that’s positive, uh, expected value without really knowing- Right … that it’s in that expected value state.
Chris Huang: Yeah. Yeah, positive expected. So other people play it, and they… The jackpot starts at a smaller number, and then it, it kinda climbs up, right? And then, uh, when it gets closer and closer, uh, and then, like as… My job, or our job, is to kind of figure out the break-even point. At what, at what point am I going to play this game, right?
And once it gets onto it, I play it and I finish it. The, the s- the second example is what we call a progressive jackpot. So that’s similar to, uh, the lotto, the Mega Millions, where the jackpot, it gets progressively bigger and bigger. It’s not guaranteed to be hit, but the math kinda works like, you know, the jackpot hit one billion a few years ago.
At that point, you know, you can… It’s actually positive to play.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. At some point it gets large enough where i- i- it’s a, it’s a positive expectation to play it, yeah.
Chris Huang: That’s, that’s kind of the foundation of all, like, advantage slots.
Zach Elwood: Right. And maybe you could talk a little bit more about that point about how this is a…
There’s only a small percentage of slot machines that are even possible to, you know, play for an advantage. There… Because, like, when I hung out with you in Atlantic City, you know, you’re walking by, you know, 90% of them looking for the select few that actually have these, these qualities that you mentioned.
Maybe you could talk a little bit about why are some manufacturers creating those machines that have those features. My understanding is that it’s related to, you know, making the machines more exciting. Is that, is that right?
Chris Huang: Yeah, it is, it is a little strange that these beatable machines are only make up a small portion of them, right?
When I go into a casino, most of the time I just disregard 90% of the machines because there, there’s no progressive and there’s no m- must hit by feature that I’m looking for.
Zach Elwood: They’re just, they’re just static. They’re just like- Yeah … they
Chris Huang: act
Zach Elwood: the same way every time, basically.
Chris Huang: Every time you s- you play and you spin it, your expected o- outcome is just, is constant, yeah, it’s static.
It’s the same. But a must hit by a progressive, y- you’re actually, you’re playing advantage because either the reward is big enough or the must hit by is close enough.
Zach Elwood: It, it has a dynamic nature. It’s like it change… The state of the machine changes over time- Yeah … and you’re looking for those change states.
Chris Huang: Yeah. And so what’s happening is the, the public is playing these games at a significant disadvantage. They’re losing a lot more than the standard, uh, what we call RTP, return to player, which is like 80, uh, 88%, 90%. They’re losing a lot more because they have to d- they’re contributing to these kind of jackpots.
What, what I do is I’m able to capture, like when I’m playing, I’m playing at above 100%, or there, there’s reasons to play it at, um, below 100%, but let’s just, you know, we’re playing at 100%. I’m able to capture a lot of the value, uh, from, from the public player pool. Uh, the reason why slot manufacturers do this, uh, I can’t speak on their behalf, but generally, um, these, what we call persistent machines, they’re…
Yeah, they, they, they attract more players, right? So-
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm …
Chris Huang: the p- regular public plays it, and also, uh, APs play, advantage players play it, right? Basically, they’re able to go to the casino and say, “Oh, hey, this game gets a lot more play.” The business model is they’re leased to the casinos, and they sign these contracts where popular games, they’re able to kind of have better contract terms for the manufacturers.
And the casinos are kind of… And on the one hand, it’s like, they’re like, “Okay, slots are so profitable, we just, like, we have to do everything to have a good relationship with our vendors,” right? “We just wanna have all these slot machines.” But on the other hand, they’re also kind of making a, a, I think, a big mistake, in which they’re handing a lot of power to the slot manufacturers in, in their kind of contract rate.
Having these machines, uh, is not exactly… There is a cost associated with it, in which your best customer that’s actually losing a lot more than expected, you’re not, like, identifying them, or you’re not compensating them with comps as well. And you’re transferring all this money to, to, to APs, which is okay.
Like, they still make their money, the casinos. But there is kind of negative externalities that the casinos have to deal with. They don’t, they don’t realize that they’re kind of paying a price for it. So the manufacturers- Right … get to win in allowing, uh… Just yeah, they’re incentivized to do this because it gets more play from the public, and it gets extra play from APs.
So they’re able to kind of use this as leverage in negotiating with, uh, with their casinos.
Zach Elwood: The thing that stood out, I mean, they, they are more interesting games. The dynamic nature of them does make them more interesting, e- even from a, just kind of an addictive level, where it’s like you’re playing the game, and you see this kind of like go through a cycle- Yeah
where you know, like, there’s, there, there might be some decent payoff at the end of s- whatever cycle kind of thing it’s doing, or it’s the jackpot’s building, whatever the, the, the dynamic nature is. So there i- it makes sense that it’s a, a more engaging game, which… And, and there’s something interesting there too, where it’s like-
Chris Huang: By
Zach Elwood: them trying to-
Chris Huang: The most
Zach Elwood: interesting- By, by them trying to make it more…
Oh, go ahead
Chris Huang: The most interesting thing is there’s a lot, there’s a trend of fake persistence. So-
Zach Elwood: Oh, yeah. Talk, yeah, talk about that. Yeah.
Chris Huang: Yeah. So-
Zach Elwood: And when, and when you say, and when you say persistence, we should say persistence is like the dynamic, dynamic nature of like- Yeah … the game state is changing, and that game state stays, you know- Yeah
for, until the next person plays it, right?
Chris Huang: So- That’s what we mean by persistence … we’ll say, like, there’s true persistence and fake persistence. So true persistence is that, that must hit by or progressive gets bigger and bigger or gets closer and closer, right? So that’s true persistence. This is important is that you, you read the rules, which we did during our trip, was there’s pages and pages of rules for every single slot machine.
Um, if you, if you go to a slot machine, there’s like a question mark or a game menu. Like every game has this. Well, I mean, I guess they’re required by law or there’s legal reasons, but, um, the rules kind of tell you, they can explain how this persistent feature works, and in some cases they’ll tell you that this persistence is actually fake, fake persistence.
So- Right.
Zach Elwood: So what’s an example of
Chris Huang: that? Yeah. You go to the last page, and it will say, “The size of the pig has no relationship to the bonus being triggered.” Yeah. Um, um, and when you play it, like the pig gets bigger or the, the character gets bigger. The money
Zach Elwood: pot.
Chris Huang: Yeah, yeah. For people that don’t know what’s going on, they’re like, “Oh.”
They’ll, they’ll be like, “Oh, I have to keep on playing. It’s about to be triggered,” right? But there is, but there, uh, in a, in a lot of cases, it’s fake persistence. There’s no relationship at all. Uh, the fact that it’s getting bigger or the fact that you haven’t hit it does not mean that you’ll hit it soon.
You’ll see two of the same similar games right next to each other, and one is actually real persistence and one is fake persistence. I think they’re doing that for, like, a natural experiment. They’re kind of- Testing,
Zach Elwood: yeah …
Chris Huang: they’re kind of collecting data. Okay, like if we have the same game and one has true persistence and one doesn’t, um, does the true persistence machine d- does this do better on the casino floor?
Um-
Zach Elwood: Yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah, ’cause they might be like, “Wait, maybe we can get the same payoff for fake persistence or something.” Yeah, like maybe they don’t need-
Chris Huang: Right, right. Like- …
Zach Elwood: need the true persistence
Chris Huang: here … th- th- there’s enough data, they can say, “Okay, true persistence is worth this much more, and that, you know, we should do it,” or, “Fake persistence is, is equal, like, uh, we shouldn’t do it.”
Zach Elwood: Mm. Right. Yeah, that’s interesting. Um, there’s something kind of interesting, or at least it seems interesting to me, like the fact that they, they’re incentivized, at least there’s some incentive to create these more complex games that we’ve talked about-
Chris Huang: Mm-hmm …
Zach Elwood: to engage people more, to attract them more, but it’s the act of making the games more complex that makes them, you know, that, that makes you able to exploit it, right?
By, so by making a game more complex, you create more avenues for people to exploit it, right? Or-
Chris Huang: Yeah, yeah. That’s, that’s- Does, does
Zach Elwood: that sound right?
Chris Huang: That’s something that I like more, more complexity.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. That’s
Chris Huang: good. Yeah. Uh, for two reasons. More complexity means, uh, the manufacturers, they might make a mistake.
Um, and that’s, uh, th- th- this has happened where, um, they’ll release machines into the wild. They’re not set up properly, or they, yeah, they didn’t do their homework and there’s something to be exploitable. There, there’s a few examples where you actually have teams traveling throughout the country looking for certain machines and just being like, they’re just primed to hit, uh, when they’re first installed or stuff like that.
Zach Elwood: Mm.
Chris Huang: And when it’s more complex, sometimes it makes, it makes the, the audience feel like they figured something out. And they’re like, uh, “Oh, I, I, I figured this out.”
Zach Elwood: It gives you a, a perception of, like, coming up with strategies even if you don’t. Kinda like playing, like, table games and people are like- Yeah
I figured out a way to beat it, right? Like, it gives- Right, right. Yeah … the perception even if they, even if they have not figured out a way to beat it.
Chris Huang: Yeah, yeah. Like, I think very simple games, there’s not much to discuss. It’s very straightforward, right? But complex games, you can kind of talk yourself into saying, “Oh, okay, when this thing happens and this pig gets bigger,” or, “When, when this pig gets bigger combined with this other-
Zach Elwood: Right
Chris Huang: with this other thing,” and you’re like, “Okay, well, that combination…” Yeah, it’s, it’s easy to, to kind of get yourself lost and wrapped a little bit more complex.
Zach Elwood: Right, which people do. You always hear- So. Yeah, g- speaking of- Yeah … like we were talking about off pr- pr- before the, before the, uh, call, we were talking about these people that, you know, fake, uh, fake gambling people who tell you they have all these systems for beating things that are very, you know, uh, un- unlikely.
You know, like, uh, Mickey Mace saying he figured out a secret- Right … baccarat, uh, thing for, like, such a s- The most ridiculous thing about that is baccarat is such a simple game that everybody knows you can’t beat, you know. Uh, but he, he- Yeah … claimed he had some amazing system for it, and there is just such a demand amongst the, you know, the less sophisticated…
Not talking about advantage players who put in a lot of work, but amongst the unsophisticated, regular, you know, Vegas goer who might be like… I, I know people personally who would tell me, like, “Oh, I figured out a system for roulet- roulette,” you know. I’m like, “Okay.” Yeah. “Sure you did. All right.” Yeah.
Chris Huang: So a few things.
It’s like- If someone figured out something really valuable, they, they wouldn’t talk about it.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, they’d just-
Chris Huang: Right? Like it’s- … quietly
Zach Elwood: exploit it as much as they
Chris Huang: could. Yeah … it’s, like if you found money on the floor, uh, you wouldn’t go like, “Hey, whose $100 bill is this?” Right? You would kind of quietly go and just grab the $100 and walk away and hope no one notices, right?
So when I saw early videos of Mickey Mouse, uh, the first thing that, that kind of popped out was that when you start winning, the casino is gonna… They’re gonna watch you like a hawk, right And you start winning large amounts, like after the first million dollars, they’re, they’re, they’re, they’re not stupid.
They’re gonna be like, “You know what? I don’t know how you’re beating us. We’re just not gonna let you play anymore.” Like- Cutting
Zach Elwood: you off, yeah …
Chris Huang: the second thing that was always a little weird was, um, he never explained actually what he was doing. Uh, it, it was always like a charming story where the casino was cheating and then I reversed it and I kind of turned it back on them.
I’m like, okay, like if he did that, they don’t have infinite money to just give away, right? They would just be like, “You’re not playing this game.” Instances of casinos cheating is actually very, very rare. Um-
Zach Elwood: They don’t
Chris Huang: need to … the reason why is because, yeah, they don’t need to, right? They’re allowed to run these games and make a profit.
Like, there’s no need to take that risk, right? There’s no need to be greedy. Every game in the casino is basically a, a money printing machine, right? As long as you can get people to play it, they’re going to win. Like, uh, blackjack is, is an exception. There’s some games like, you know, uh, they actually, like, you know, that can be beat and though so they have to kick those people out.
But like, there’s no reason to make like an extra million dollars and to put your casino license… Like, everything is about the long run. Don’t kill the
Zach Elwood: golden
Chris Huang: goose. You’re, you’re, you’re building a casino. There’s no one customer that’s gonna lose enough for you to put your license at risk, right? Because yeah, like gaming, um, gaming commission, my few instances of, of dealing with them, like they take these, uh, these issues seriously.
It takes a lot of time and money to get this casino license, right? And it- it’s just, it doesn’t make any business sense to put that at risk.
Zach Elwood: I thought we might go back to the point, ’cause we kind of passed by it kind of quick, of like- The f- the reason that slots are beatable is because that money is coming out of the player funds.
Like for, so the l- the rules are such that every slot machine, at least in the US, uh, has to give back a certain amount, right? Like it has to return whatever it is, uh, 90% or whatever the percentage is to players, right? So- Yeah … the fact that you’re exploiting it is coming out of the player funds, which is why the casinos don’t care, because it’s, they’re making their, you know, cut of, of every money that goes into it regardless.
So that’s helps explain why it’s just not an area that casinos really care much about, right? Am I, uh, ag- am I explaining that okay?
Chris Huang: Yeah. Let me explain it a little more clear. A few terms is RTP, return to player. These are machines. They’re designed to take money from the player and give it to the casino, right?
So what the RTP means is that if it’s at 90%, every dollar that you put in, in the long run, 90% is returned to the player, and that also means 10% is given to the house, is given to the casino, right? Based on how they’re settings, they can change the RTP from like 85, 85, um, 80%. Well, like, like act- manufacturers don’t, um, generally they don’t allow very, very low RTP settings.
Zach Elwood: Hmm.
Chris Huang: They don’t want their games to be s- to have a reputation of being so tight that people don’t wanna play them anymore.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, they want, they want,
Chris Huang: they want those- So actually- … loose
Zach Elwood: slots as you see all the signs for, loose slots.
Chris Huang: Yeah. These machines, like there is a limit to how, uh, how- Tight or loose
tight- Yeah … that they can be s- Yeah, like they still have a reputation of their own to kind of preserve. Uh, so the casino generally takes about 10%, right? And then 90% is returned to the players, but that 90%, it’s not, it’s not distributed evenly, right?
Zach Elwood: Right.
Chris Huang: Yeah. Quite often you’ll lose dol- you’ll lose a dollar, you’ll lose, you’ll lose, you’ll lose, and then you win $15, right?
Or you lose, uh, you’ll win 20. And what that means is that, like, um, that money that’s locked into those jackpots is part of that 90% return to player. Right. Right? However, only one person actually gets to collect all that that’s locked in there, right? When I play, when I play that progressive with a must hit buy, when it’s very, very close or it’s very, very big, I’m able to capture a much larger share of the return to player.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Chris Huang: So the casinos, they, they don’t really care. They still take their 10%. They take their cut. The money that I’m making is also not from the casino. The money that I’m making is actually from other
Zach Elwood: players. Right. Which helps explain why they don’t care much. It’s not like it’s nothing, uh, analogous to, like, taking money from the house via blackjack or something.
Yeah.
Chris Huang: It’s not a, uh, zero-sum game or it’s not an adversarial, uh, game. I’m capturing a much larger share of the return to player. Mm-hmm. And so it’s, it’s a little bit hidden. Games have been around where they’re, they’re probably aware of what’s going on, but there’s not a real incentive to, to stop this. I think egregious examples, they, they have done things.
I think, uh, one example has actually been, uh, in Las Vegas. It was at The Venetian. There was a guy called Vegas Matt- He’s a big, uh, YouTuber, and he was actually kicked out of the Venetian High Limit Room-
Zach Elwood: Hmm …
Chris Huang: uh, because he was, yeah, he was, he was actually chasing a, um, a must-hit buy, uh, over there.
Zach Elwood: Interesting.
Chris Huang: Yeah.
Zach Elwood: Okay.
Chris Huang: So casinos, they’ve started to realize that this might actually be a problem, but it, it’s not affecting their bottom line, so-
Zach Elwood: Right. There’s more indirect negatives like you were saying, like it-
Chris Huang: Yeah …
Zach Elwood: takes money away from their best customers and puts in the pocket of the advantage players.
There can be elements of people, like forcing, kind of like intimidating or, or getting people off of machines or in good states, that can be another aspect, right?
Chris Huang: Right. Right. I, I’ve seen examples of this and it’s really, yeah, it’s really bad. Like when you, when you see someone basically lying or kind of coercing someone, it’s like, um-
Zach Elwood: Smoking near them?
Chris Huang: Yeah. They know something’s valuable and they kind of engineer a way to get them to leave their seat. Yeah. Right? To me, that’s pretty, uh, that’s really bad, uh, because it’s, it’s basically stealing. The s- the casino, the slot attendants are … They don’t really know or understand or they don’t really care.
Being a, being an advantage player doesn’t mean that you get to be a bad person or that you get to steal from-
Zach Elwood: Well, yeah, you, like you’re, you’re saying it’s a- Right … it puts it in an entirely different category, like, uh, using a machine after somebody left passively is much different than like, uh, trying to get somebody off- Right.
Right.
Chris Huang: Yeah … a machine. Yeah. Like, yeah, they left of their own free will. They, their lack of understanding. Like I, I’ve seen examples where it’s like, yeah, there’s this old guy playing and then this young guy goes and he says like, “Old, can you teach me how to play?” And they’ll, and they’ll, and he’ll be like
And they’ll put their ticket in.
Zach Elwood: Uh-huh.
Chris Huang: Um, the guy will, “Oh, you can spin once or twice.” And then they sit there and they spin it multiple times until they, they hit it and they walk
Zach Elwood: away. Hmm.
Chris Huang: Right? I can’t even report it. You, you tell the casino what’s going on, you’re like, “I…” They don’t know what’s going on, or-
Zach Elwood: They don’t care much, yeah
Chris Huang: I think this just reminds me of poker where it’s like, don’t tap the glass. Your behavior kind of encourages the casino to maybe crack down or do something about this.
Zach Elwood: Right. Yeah, you’re making- And- … you’re drawing too much attention to yourself maybe. Yeah Aside from the ethics of it, yeah,
Chris Huang: yeah. Right. Like, uh, what you’re doing is actually stealing, and if the casino actually understood what was going on, like, you should be punished.
Yeah. Right? Like, it’s a privilege to do, to, to, to have the life that I have. To take free
Zach Elwood: money.
Chris Huang: Like-
Zach Elwood: Yeah …
Chris Huang: my job is to go… I go to Vegas and I just walk around all day. I just, I’m able to just kind of print money from the machines. Like, it’s, like, it’s, it’s- You’re like a scavenger- That’s a very simple explanation
you’re like a
Zach Elwood: scavenger of money laying around.
Chris Huang: Yeah. There is, there’s gold left to, left to be mined, and I’m able to kind of extract, um, that gold, right? Yeah. Like, it’s, it’s so silly. All, all you have to do is just work harder. You don’t have to take advantage of people’s ignorance and kind of do these kind of things.
Zach Elwood: Um- You’re, you’re, like, you’re, you’re like a bee- Yeah … uh, flying around from flower to flower collecting, you know, leftover nectar, you know? That’s just a-
Chris Huang: Yeah. … a
Zach Elwood: meta, you know?
Chris Huang: There
Zach Elwood: is- Maybe too poet- That, that, that- Getting too poetic. Maybe that’s not a very good analogy.
Chris Huang: Yeah.
Zach Elwood: Uh- Uh, I-
Chris Huang: But I
Zach Elwood: like it. It’s- I was, I was gonna ask you, I, I was gonna get into, like, the day-to-day aspects of it, ’cause when I hung out with you in Atlantic City, you know, a lot of, a lot of what you did was, like, very quick because a, a machine would just be, like, in a state where you would get, like, one or two, you know, uh, spins on it, and then move on because it was just very much temporarily in a small state.
You’d collect, you know, a buck or a few bucks, you know, maybe from it. You know, they, you had an expected value. So a lot of those were really quick hits, and the other ones were, like, the longer term play where you’re like, “Oh, this is in a good state and I’m gonna sit here and play it for, you know, 10, 20, 30 minutes or longer.”
You know, maybe even- Mm-hmm … I wasn’t with you when you played it for hours, but I d- I know that that can happen, too. So that, i- w- is that a good- Yeah … explanation of, like, the day-to-day of what you’re, what you’re going around doing?
Chris Huang: Like most things, like a lot of the work is done before I enter the casino.
I, I’m not trying to figure out these games, uh, while I’m at the casino. Uh, but similar to poker, there’s, uh, in poker there’s this off the table work where you’re kind of studying and doing the, your homework and work, uh, before entering the casino, because, yeah, you enter the casino very prepared. I, I know the location of the machine, I know exactly, uh, you know, how to play it, if it’s fa- like if it’s a very short play, how much to-
Zach Elwood: Yeah, you know a lot of games from your years of doing this.
You know what the states- Yeah … of them are very quickly from, from looking at them. Yeah. And it’s-
Chris Huang: So, yeah, that’s right. I, I’ve been doing this for a while, and so it’s just like, it’s like- Second nature … you, you want to be very efficient. So I’m in Las Vegas. If I’m on a strip or downtown Fremont, I’m trying to make one big circle to cover as many, uh, casinos in one loop as possible without, uh, without returning to the same casino, right?
There, there’s plays to be found after people have played them.
Zach Elwood: Right. A good amount of, uh, churn or whatever, yeah, of the machine.
Chris Huang: Yeah. There, there has to be, there has to be, uh, turnover. Uh, that’s- Turnover … that’s the term that I like to use. Um, there needs to be turnover from other players to play it. So, uh, there’s no reason to just keep on looping in the same casino, uh, unless, unless you’re in a small market.
So that, that, that’s one of the, the big things in Las Ve- like why I, I spend the most time… The reason why I’m in Las Vegas most of the time is, um, one is I have free rooms, which is which is, which is, which is actually, I am kind of beating the casino that way. I do get comped rooms from, uh, multiple properties.
Zach Elwood: Which he- which helps explain why it’s sometimes okay to play at a slight disadvantage because you’re getting the comp points anyway. So it’s like- Yeah, that’s right … if it’s, if it’s near break even, that’s, that’s good for you. Yeah.
Chris Huang: So there, there’s a few benefits from, uh, playing a lot of slots is you get, you get the comps, so free meals, free rooms, free cruises.
Um, so if you value that, if you play at 99% or 98%, um, that’s okay because you’ll, you’ll get a rebate. They’ll give you an offer. Uh, they’ll be like, “Oh, okay, you, you get, you know, $100 or $1,000 in free play, uh, in the future,” or something like that, right? So that, that kind of, uh, is a part of your calculation, and it’s different for all people.
Like for me, I get… I actually have multiple cruise offers from multiple casinos, and I rarely use them because, um, I just don’t like cruises. So they’re they’re worth, they’re worth nothing to me. But for someone else, it’s like they’ll, they’ll, they’ll take the… They’ll, they’ll go on cruises, um, all the time.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Chris Huang: So the, the day today, yeah, so, like there, there’s a lot of walking. I’m just, I’m trying to hit as many casinos as possible. Um- Get
Zach Elwood: some good
Chris Huang: steps in Yeah. So generally I get 10 to 15,000 steps, uh, in a day. And, um, yeah, it’s str- it’s, it’s strange. It’s like you’re actually really active. Uh, I have different routes and it’s, it…
You’re, you’re kind of like treasure hunting- Mm-hmm … which is, which is kind of fun. You’re, you’re actively looking for… Like, a lot of slot players actually, uh, also used to be, uh, poker players, similar to me. Hmm. Uh, and, uh, you don’t just have to sit around waiting for cards or, uh, dealing with other people.
You can go at your leisure and kind of search and hunt for new slots, slot plays.
Zach Elwood: The, um, it was kind of interesting when you were pointing out that it’s really easy for you to recognize, or for anybody to recognize advantage players and, uh, advantage slot players because they’re the people walking around with a purpose in the, a- amongst the slot rooms.
They’ll, they’ll, they’ll go up to the slot machines and, like, do what you call- Yeah … playing the piano and then move on, right? Right,
Chris Huang: right.
Zach Elwood: Dun, dun, dun, dun. What’s the, what’s the playing the piano thing?
Chris Huang: Uh, yeah, so playing the piano, like certain machines you have to, um, there’s different screens, so you have to change the bet sizes or you have to change the denomination.
And the machines, uh, are sometimes they’re really, really loud. This is when I actually lower the volume quite often on these machines. Oh, before you check- Like- … the different screens? Yeah, yeah, because- I see … I’m, like, I’m, I’m a little, like, so I, I come from a more traditional background of gambling where I did, um, blackjack, and card counting, and poker.
I’m, I’m much- You don’t wanna draw attention to yourself. I wanna be, I wanna be a ninja. Yeah. Basically, I wanna be a ninja where no one notices me, and I’m in and out, and I’ve got the money. No one knows I’m- I’ve won anything, right? I’m not trying to attract attention. I see other slot hustlers, they’ll just check machines right next to other people, and I think that’s, one, that’s very rude.
Um, but also, like, you’re… Yeah, it’s just very strange behavior, and so like for, like, I, I, I never do anything like that because, yeah, I just- It
Zach Elwood: kind of, it kind of reminds me of, uh, it’s like poker players talking strategy at the table. It’s, like, not good for business. Right. Yeah. It’s not good for business.
Yeah.
Chris Huang: Yeah. I, I, I see that, and I just, I cringe a little bit. I’m just like, especially in a market like Las Vegas, there’s like, there’s 1,000, there’s 1,000 other machines to check. You don’t have to be so thorough, and to go right next to another person and just, like, play the piano, dun, dun, dun, dun. And they’re, they’re just like, “What the hell is this guy doing?”
Right?
Zach Elwood: Yeah.
Chris Huang: Yeah. Like, I, I- Yeah, that makes, it
Zach Elwood: makes them wonder, like, “Hey, uh, sh- could I be playing these better?” You know?
Chris Huang: Yeah. It just, it just attracts a bit of attention. And playing the piano, like, um, yeah, like, it, it’s kind of necessary for some games. Um, there’s more complicated versions where some games you actually, you have to put a ticket in-
Zach Elwood: Oh
Chris Huang: in order to, um, change the bet sizes or, um, to get more information.
Zach Elwood: To your point, though, yeah, it’s kinda interesting ’cause it’s, like, nobody, nobody else pretty much except an advantage player is, like, cycling through the different screens, checking the different states, right? Like, hard- basically hardly anybody’s doing that.
Yeah.
Chris Huang: For me, uh, when I, when I do see another, uh, advantage player or hustler, I, I just, I walk in a different direction, right? I don’t wanna interact with them. Uh, more importantly, I don’t wanna give any information away to them, you know. There’s different levels of skill level or knowledge, and I, I consider myself to be- Very knowledgeable o- on the slot machines.
So I don’t, like, there are certain machines where I’ll only check if I know the coast is clear. The market or the competition just doesn’t, isn’t aware of that machine or what to look for, how to play it. And I, I take- They don’t wanna clue, clue them in, yeah. Yeah, I take extra effort to kind of make sure that they don’t figure out because of me.
I treat everything as kind of adversarial, zero-sum game. I don’t wanna give any information to anyone, uh, just out of principle. It’s like, you’re not gonna get it for free from me. You’re gonna have to work for it.
Zach Elwood: Well, yeah, it’s like, you know, amongst a bunch of vultures, like, you don’t really wanna give away your you know, it’s like any, any game with ad-
Chris Huang: Yeah
Zach Elwood: edges, you don’t wanna, uh-
Chris Huang: Yeah, you don’t, you don’t wanna give your edge away. That’s exactly right.
Zach Elwood: So, the, I was gonna ask you about the, the, the camaraderie versus the competition aspect. Are, are, you know, do people make friends with other advantage players or, or how does that happen?
Chris Huang: Yeah. So I think it really depends on your market Um, so in Las Vegas there’s actually a really good problem in that there’s too many casinos.
Zach Elwood: Right.
Chris Huang: And there’s so many casinos- There’s plenty of action. Yeah … in that you’re not gonna run out of casinos to check. Um, you’re so- You don’t have to stay in the same place for, uh… Yeah, so you can vary your rou- your routine or where you go and all that.
Zach Elwood: So you can afford to be more friendly.
Chris Huang: Yeah, right.
But in smaller markets, like if you’re in a city and there’s only one casino, it’s just the same people there every day.
Zach Elwood: Yeah.
Chris Huang: Right?
Zach Elwood: I would imagine it’s like- And- … fighting over scraps. You get a little bit more territorial and aggressive with each other and that kind of thing.
Chris Huang: Yeah. So actually when I’m in New York, I don’t, I…
There’s, uh, we have, um, we have the Resorts World in Jamaica, or the, the horse track. I, I, I don’t go. There are, um, Asian hustlers that are there all day long, and they have nothing better to do but sit there and I, I am not gonna go and compete with them. I’m not… Uh, my edge is not from working much harder than other people or like, you know, putting long hours.
It’s more from, uh, the knowledge. Like, like actually, like this is what happened in Las Vegas, over time there’s a lot of, there’s actually a lot of machines that I don’t check anymore. Like cer- certain games are just really obvious and very easy to figure out. They’re checked over constantly. In, in a market like Las Vegas, it, it’s not worth my time to check those machines.
Your, your chance of finding anything is just, it’s just much, it’s just much more rare. And so I’ve kind of specialized, over time I’ve specialized in which you figure out the new games or you figure out, um, like yeah, you figure out valuable games and you focus on that. And that’s, that’s a, it’s kind of a luxury where that’s a, you can do that in Las Vegas in that market.
When, when you’re thinking about advantage play or like, or winning in gambling, you have to look at it as a market and how do I wanna participate in this market? I am not trying to participate by outworking other people who are working very hard. It’s like I’m trying to outsmart them.
Zach Elwood: Work smarter and…
Yeah.
Chris Huang: Yeah. Not harder.
Zach Elwood: When it comes to the risks involved, uh, you know, the one obvious risk that occurred to me was You know, say you’re, you judge a machine to be in a positive EV state, but you know it’s gonna take a while to pay off, right? Yeah. Um, there’s, there’s always gonna be that element of chance as to when it pays off.
And so theoretically you can imagine either the machine’s not in, actually in a positive EV state as, as you thought, or for whatever reason through chance it takes a long time to pay off, and you end up sitting there for hours and, and you’re, you’re, you’re burning up cash, and you’re starting to wonder, like, “Is this thing really gonna pay off?
Was it a positive EV play?” How do you, how do you make those decisions for, like, the things that you know are gonna take longer? Do you know … Do you make the decision going in, like, “I’m gonna commit to this until it pays off,” and then you have to have plans of, like, playing it continuously or maybe getting help?
May- maybe you can talk a little bit about that, that risk- Yeah … or, or those edge cases.
Chris Huang: I think anyone that’s been doing slots for a while has this, uh, horror story where they misjudged the play. I, I remember when I, when I first figured out some things, you think it’s easy money. But, like, your knowledge is incomplete.
You are overconfident or you overestimated what it would take to actually play this game, or what it would take to- Or maybe, or
Zach Elwood: maybe they changed it, maybe theoretically. That
Chris Huang: they changed- Yeah … the machine maybe. Yeah. That’s, that’s, that’s, that’s a really good point. So I’ll tell- You can’t see that coming sometimes,
Zach Elwood: yeah.
Chris Huang: I’ll tell you one, i- one example. So my father was with me in Las Vegas. Um, so my father, he, he doesn’t really approve of me gambling, or he, he, he doesn’t like that aspect of it. He, he’s, he’s, he’s come around. But, um, so he was with me, and there was, there was a specific machine, we were just crushing it for, like, like a month.
That same machine was being installed in a bunch of places, and I was like, “Oh, great. This is, this is fantastic. Like, we’re just gonna print more money.” And, uh, what happened was, yeah, they adjusted the machine somehow. And so I was playing the same game, my, my criteria was still the same, and I just started losing, I started losing a lot of money.
But, like, you have to take a lot of punishment before you actually realize, “Oh, okay, something has changed.” Right?
Zach Elwood: Right.
Chris Huang: Because for an entire month I was just printing money, and I wa- I was doing so great.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, you’re like, “Maybe it’s just evening out,” or, you know, maybe the- Yeah … maybe the, the long
Chris Huang: run’s gonna mean- It really has to hit you over the head before you kinda give up, and you’re like, “Oh, okay, stupid.”
Uh
Zach Elwood: It’s like playing a really bad poker player, and all of a sudden he’s beating you, and you’re like, “Well, it makes-” Right, right. “I gotta ke- I wanna keep playing.” Yeah. I mean, he can’t have suddenly gotten good. Like, no, like, yeah.
Chris Huang: There are these long plays that can take hours, it, you have to be prepared. ‘Cause all of us, uh, that’s been doing this for a while has, has hit a situation where we ran out of money. Either call someone at 2:00 AM in the morning and be like, “Hey, I need you to, I need you to come and bring money to me,” right?
Or you actually had to leave the play. And that’s like, that’s like, that’s like the worst outcome, right? Because basically, um, you found a play and it was, uh, it was a positive play, and then you put more money in it so you actually grow, the must-buy actually gets closer- … or the, the reward gets bigger.
Zach Elwood: Right. You’re
Chris Huang: closer to it. And then you run outta money, and then you have to give it, you have to give it to somebody else.
Zach Elwood: Yeah.
Chris Huang: Right? So those are lessons that you have to learn. If I’m tackling a big play that, that I expect to take hours, I try to have a partner with me So I’m gonna have a partner, we can switch, do bathroom breaks.
Um, like, like again, act- and I have to make sure, like, okay, do I have enough money on me? What’s the plan if I run out of money? Right. What’s the backup plan?
Zach Elwood: Yeah, what’s, what’s the maximum I put in before I give up maybe too? Like, do you have to think about that?
Chris Huang: Right. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, there are certain progressives that you should never chase.
Zach Elwood: Hmm.
Chris Huang: Or you have, like, a… There’s like, okay, I’m only… Like, after I lose 1,000, I’m gonna give up on this. Um, there’s, there’s very high risk, high variance plays like that. The, the, the problem is, is when you’re up against a new game where you don’t have much information, right?
Zach Elwood: Right.
Chris Huang: Um, that’s when- Other people, other
Zach Elwood: people haven’t gathered it in the various books and websites about the game, that
Chris Huang: game.
Yeah, where, where there’s no guide on it-
Zach Elwood: Yeah …
Chris Huang: where there’s no information on it. It’s again, sometimes it’s like it’s overconfidence. You’re like, “Oh, this game is similar to this other game, and so I should play it the same way,” right? And that’s, that’s how you learn. You get punished, and you’re like, “Oh, okay.”
Like, that
Zach Elwood: was a mistake. Yeah, and
Chris Huang: I,
Zach Elwood: I would imagine like, uh… I mean, that’s where really the experience pays off, ’cause I imagine there’s some inexperienced people that don’t know as much as they think they do, and they get in those kinds of spots, and then, then they end up, you know, getting, getting burned a bit.
And, you know, the other thing that I would imagine too is, like, I’d imagine there’s a lot of people that get into advantage slot play that are kind of, like, pretty kind of addicted to gambling. And so th- if they’re not disciplined, they’re not gonna do, do very well at it either. You know, it’s kind of like they pursue it, but they still have weaknesses.
Like, they might play too long and justify it to themselves, or I imagine it’s kind of rare for advantage players to be, even amongst advantage players, to be, like, doing quite as well as they could. Like, I… You strike me as very professional in it, but I imagine there’s many people that have various leaks and weaknesses and don’t put in the time of studying and all these kinds of things, yeah.
Chris Huang: Yeah. I think this, this applies to all gambling. What, what’s interesting about gambling is that there’s different skills to work on or to develop. And so discipline is one part of it, and the math is another part of it. There’s a lot of things to work on. A lo- discipline is probably the most common pitfall that you see.
You see, you see people like they’re too ambitious or this happens a lot where you have a little bit of knowledge, but having a little bit of knowledge is actually the most dangerous situation because you’re like, “Oh, I know how this works.” And then you tackle a big play and then you just, you, you lose your entire bankroll.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. What they call the, the kind of the Dunning-Kruger thing of overestimating your intelligence and such. Yeah.
Chris Huang: Yeah. And people, people get punished. So yeah, quite often, um, a lot– people don’t succeed. It’s not like, it’s not just knowledge, but it is, it is a, it is a bit of discipline. Like-
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm …
Chris Huang: uh, when you get punished, you actually learn the lessons from that, from that, uh, punishment, right?
Uh, and a lot of people don’t. They’re just like, “Oh, it’s just a fluke.” And they, they attempt it again, and then and then they’re, they’re totally bankrupt, right?
Zach Elwood: Yeah. You gotta learn from your, from the pain. Yeah.
Chris Huang: Yeah.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, for sure. In any, in any pursuit really, it’s like you gotta, you gotta absorb the learnings from the failures and the pain.
Yeah. I was curious, obviously, uh, what you do is an unusual and rare, um, way to make a living. Do, do you see yourself ever, um, taking a, a so-called normal job and… Or, uh, you know, are you, are you gonna do this for quite a while?
Chris Huang: Before this podcast, I actually, I did a timeline of my, um, of my career. Hmm. And it re- it really kind of s- shocked me when it was like, oh, I’ve been doing this for, like, eight to nine years.
Yeah, what I usually tell people is I’ve been doing this for five years, and then I never update that number. It’s like, yeah, it t- it takes a lot of, um… There’s a lot of responsibility to… It’s kind of like running your own business. Like, you have to make all the decisions-
Zach Elwood: Yeah …
Chris Huang: take all the risk. It’s not just the hard decisions, you have to make the easy decisions and the medium decisions, right?
It’s a lot of decisions. So there’s, there’s a lot of… I’m just kind of used to, I trust, I trust my own judgment. I, I don’t have to get appro- Like, I, I, yeah, I don’t think I could have regular job where… I think the moment someone above me told me to do something that I disagreed with and I thought was dumb, I would just tell them that.
Like, “You’re an idiot.” Like, “That’s, like, we shouldn’t do that.” You’re just used to a certain level of independence and responsibility.
Zach Elwood: Right.
Chris Huang: And I don’t, I don’t think I could ever, like… It, it would take a lot of money to, to get me to like-
Zach Elwood: Hmm …
Chris Huang: put up with tell, someone else telling me, uh. But like, if, if, if it was someone that I respected and that had, that I, that was clearly was a lot smarter than me and that there’s trust, I, I could see that.
But it’s just, um, yeah, you’ve been doing this for, for, for eight, nine years. You’re not really gonna… Like, uh, the thing is, like, I’m not, I’m not willing to put up with bullshit. Right? Because as a professional gambler, uh, you can’t afford to bullshit other people.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. You like-
Chris Huang: Like-
Zach Elwood: You like making
Chris Huang: optimal- When-
Zach Elwood: decisions. Yeah.
Chris Huang: Yeah. When, when there’s a mistake, like, it, it comes out of my paycheck. Yeah. Like, uh, there’s, there’s real consequences for me. So, you know, I think for, for a regular job, it’s like there’s a lot of bullshit because there’s just the consequences, like, you’re still gonna get paid your salary and no one’s gonna
Like, there’s no real consequences, right? So if you, if you fudge the numbers or, you know, if you claim that you did the work and you, like, you really just half-assed it, like, there’s not much, right? But like, if, um, if I was to … Like, if I was lying to myself or telling other people that I was working hard and I actually didn’t work hard, like, I’d just make less money.
Or be like, you know. All of the, all of the, the punishment or the bad effects, it, it, like, it affects me. So, like, I, I just, I don’t … There’s no, there’s no room or space for bullshit for me. And I, I, I feel like in a more corporate or just like a regular job, there’s just a lot of that. You know, I just, I, I wouldn’t be able to help myself.
But like, yeah, like, like I think either- What about,
Zach Elwood: what about, what about my advice for, uh, like turning down the Care knob thing, uh, you know?
Chris Huang: Yeah, yeah. Like, it would, it would just, it would have to, it would take a lot of money or like it would take like a real good reason for me to kind of be able to put up with that.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, yeah.
Chris Huang: Like yeah. I know
Zach Elwood: at that point I, I like see- But I get your point. I, I can see your … I mean, I see, I get your point of view. It’s like back when I, when I was playing poker when I was younger, and o- one of the reasons I was really into poker was like you’re doing your own thing, you’re not relying on anybody else, you know?
And I, there is something very attractive about that. And also the- Yeah … the being, you know, there is a lot of bullshit when you work with other people, that’s for sure. That’s like part of the, uh- Yeah … you know, learning. Y- you ha- have, you ha- you definitely have to h- tolerate a lot of stuff that you disagree with and think is like arbitrary or bad or whatever.
Yeah, yeah.
Chris Huang: Being a professional poker player or a gambler, it’s very romantic.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Chris Huang: But there is a lot of responsibility and work that comes with
Zach Elwood: it. It’s a decision overload- Yeah … really. It’s like, I mean, I found that from, you know, whether it was doing, whether it was playing poker or whether it was like doing my own business stuff, you know?
It was like it’s a lot of decision fatigue for me, and I- Yeah … and it’s like there, there’s something nice about that, but it’s also can be quite, uh, tiring ’cause you’re always basically having to think all, everything through and you’re making, you’re making decisions that matter literally many times a day, which is like something that most people You know, really don’t do, I don’t think, in most nor- you know, most everyday jobs.
You’re, you’re not making like a bunch of decisions that impact you directly every day, right? Yeah.
Chris Huang: It’s just the, the, the decisions all matter. And so you just kind of c- get accustomed to making those hard decisions. And, and, and also, w- with those hard decisions comes responsibility, right?
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Chris Huang: And so you just kind of, yeah.
I, I, I, I can’t take bullshit. Like, I’ll just call people out because it’s just like, one, I’m not impressed, and two, just because you’re not getting punished for, for it, doesn’t mean that like it’s right, like that you can just say this bullshit. Like, like always, don’t try to sell me bullshit, right? Give it to somebody else, I don’t care.
I don’t want it. So get, okay,
Zach Elwood: so you’re allergic to the bullshit- … basically is what a way to put it. Um, okay, thanks Chris. Yeah. This, this has been great. Um, anything else you wanna share before we’re, before we sign off?
Chris Huang: I am planning on making, uh, a YouTube channel, and I haven’t figured out the name yet, but it’s going to be, uh, about gambling education.
I think, um, gambling has become really mainstream with, um, Cal-Shoe, with the sports betting. They, the industry, they, they promise a lot of ways to win, right? You’re constantly, there’s, you know, you could win thousands of dollars, you could win a big parlay and all that. Uh, but there’s actually, yeah, like people gamble without any knowledge or any preparation or any study, right?
And if you’re, if you don’t actually put the work in and actually learn and figure these things out, you’re just, um, yeah, you’re gonna, you’re gonna lose. There’s, the games are, are rigged. So I think that there is a space for, um, for gambling education. When, when people listen to your podcast, I’m gonna work hard to make sure that there’s a, uh, a video ready for them that they can visit.
Zach Elwood: This is awesome. Thanks, Chris, for y- for your, uh, knowledge dropping. Appreciate it.
Chris Huang: No, it was great. I, I, I really enjoyed this, Zach. And it was great. I, I think this was very special in that you came to me to Atlantic City to actually do a trip. I don’t think, I probably as a, as a podcaster, I don’t think you’ve ever done that.
Zach Elwood: That’s only one of two times I did something in the real world for like, kind of like… But a- but anyway, regardless of, of the podcast, I would’ve just done it ’cause I wa- I was interested. Yeah. You know, like so, yeah. It was-
Chris Huang: But I, I just felt like, um, you coming with me, it a- allowed to have a better conversation.
Um,
Zach Elwood: but- No, it was cool to see it in person and yeah, and I’m gonna share some video I got. But yeah, no, it was interesting to see what you did in, in person, and it was, it was pretty cool
That was a talk with Chris Huang, and you can learn more about him at his recently started youtube channel Gambling Education with Chris. I’ll have a link to his youtube for the entry for this episode at my site behavior-podcast.com and in the description for the youtube version of this episode.
Again, if you’re listening to this on audio, just a note that I’ll have some video at the end of the youtube version of this episode of me hanging out with Chris in Atlantic City and watching him do his thing.