My story of beating Piggy Bankin' and other +EV slot machines in Laughlin

[mickeycrimm]

(Dan Druff's note: I moved these posts from another thread, since I felt it deserved its own)

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I worked room and meal comp heavily in Laughlin over about a five year period, from Oct, 1996 until May 2002. It was a thing that started out slowly but built up over time to where I was getting a totally free ride in Laughlin. In the forums I called the strategy Laughlin RFB 362. That meant I could get 362 room nights, along with the meals, comped every year. The only 3 nights a year I couldn't get comped was the last weekend of April, Biker Weekend.

The story starts when I was thumbing down Hwy 99 in California in Oct, 1996. I was almost broke and on my way back to Las Vegas where I could at least credit hustle the machines. At Bakersfield I hit Hwy 58 and got dropped off at Tehachapi Pass. I spent the night in my sleeeping bag by the on ramp to the freeway. The next morning I got up, went to the convenience store, took a whore bath in the restroom, then bought a cup of coffee. I walked back out to the interstate. I counted up the change in my pocket, a whopping 99 cents left to my name. I had about a half pouch of tobacco left. I stuck my thumb out.

After a while a man in a van pulled over. He asked me where I was going. I said Las Vegas. He said he was going to Laughlin. I asked if he could drop me off in Laughlin. He said sure. Laughlin had machines and I wanted to be on those machines before the day was though.

He dropped me off above Harrah's. I stashed my sleeping bag and day pack in the desert and walked down to Harrah's. It was going to be a fateful day. I'll finish the story later. Time to go back to bed.

Walking down to Harrah's I was a guy that basically knew nothing about making money from machines other than how to hustle abandoned credits on them. I had played video poker before but it was all sucker stuff. Although I had been reading Lenny Frome in Card Player Magazine about FPDW, 9/6 Jacks and a game called Flush Attack. But I had never seen those games before and had no strategy.

I get into Harrah's and I'm hustling credits. I picked up maybe $6 in about an hour. I spied another credit hustler and struck up a conversation with him. He told me he came into Laughlin on a 3 day package, went broke on the first day, and had nothing to do but walk around. Some local showed him how to hustle credits. Then he said this local also showed him the Pigs. I asked what the Pigs were. He said they were some machines some of the locals were beating. I asked him to show them to me. He took me over to the smoking side and showed me the machines. Here is a screenshot of a Piggy Bankin' machine.