No way this guy was making tons of money at a casino, especially playing “video poker.”
Yeah I don’t think high stakes gamblers are at the video poker machines. That’s where I hang with my cup of quarters. :-)
You are absolutely correct.
Maintaining each square foot of casino floor cost money. Each square foot has to earn its keep. The best that one can hope to do on a slot machine is about 95%. That means that on average one receives back 95 cents for every dollar wagered.
If the payback is more than that, the casino can't pay its bills. If its a lot less than that, the player loses interest in playing the machine because his initial stake is lost so quickly.
My wife and I played slot machines today. We each wagered a total of $100 playing a nickel at a time. We were entertained for about three hours. The casino rewarded us with $10 each in free play.
My initial calculation for how the day would go (on average) is that each of us would give up $5 of our initial stake in order to wager a total of $100. From the $10 each that we received in free play, which we would have to wager, we each expected to have $9.50 remaining. At the end of our stay, then, we would each expect to have a net gain for the day of $9.50 minus the $5, or $4.50. That would be a net gain for both of us of $9.
Somewhat surprisingly, we actually left the casino with a net gain of $10.
I expect that our results in the future, if we pursue the same offer from the casino, will vary quite a bit from this outcome, both higher and lower than today's result. Over time, however, there is little expectation that our average results will be higher or lower. That's just how random processes work.
For this shooter to have claimed to his brother that he won $250,000 dollars at the casino tells me that his level of wagering is extremely high and thus that his losses overall are also very high. At his level of wagering it is unlikely that the casino would be subsidizing his play.