Fun video, Alan!

It reminded me of yet another story I once read a long time ago from John Scarne's old gambling books. To the best of my memory he talked about a pair of Idaho farmers who discovered a weakness in mechanical slot machines around 1945-1946. They realized that if you timed the pull of the slot lever in certain ways you could set yourself up for a jackpot. These two guys took their discovery to Vegas casinos where they won many jackpots that left all sorts of casino owners very baffled and concerned as to how they were doing it. As the years passed more people gradually learned their methods and it was literally threatening to crater the Vegas slot industry back then. After quite a few people were using these guys' methods the total loss to Nevada casinos was in the hundreds of millions if I recall correctly (enormous amount of money back then and even today!). They were called "rhythm players" and it took the casinos several years before they counteracted the Idaho boys' discovery with a new slot gizmo called a "variator".

I'm pretty sure if someone researched Vegas history this story would be found somewhere. It was a huge financial maelstrom for the casinos back in the 40's-50's.