The Vegas Guy - Week of 01/15/2001

Week of January 15, 2001

SPECIAL REPORT: Las Vegas Comp Couple

LAS VEGAS -- It's still the holiday season, so Jean Smart is dressed in Grandma Chic: bright green sweatshirt, red pants, and, sticking out of her curly blonde hair, reindeer antlers. She's parked at the complimentary cocktail table while her husband, Grandpa Brad, plays in the Arctic Blues Slots Tournament at the Rio Casino. Jean is 61, a retired schoolteacher. Brad is 68, a retired naval electronics expert. And they're one of those inseparable couples who can finish each other's sentences. They could be poster grandparents for the vast horde of senior citizens who like to pass their declining years in bingo halls and keno parlors.

Not really.

Jean Smart is not her real name--she doesn't consent to be interviewed unless you protect her identity--and Brad Smart did not come to the slots tournament to kill time. Jean and Brad are a two-person S.W.A.T. Team who have dedicated their lives to beating the casino system. The last time they paid for a meal was 1988. They can't remember the last time they paid for an airline ticket. In 1999, they spent 191 days in Las Vegas hotel rooms, and didn't pay for one. Jean is a petite blonde whose hair is always beautifully coiffed, because the salons and the spas are always free. Recently they purchased a condo with their gambling winnings--it's conveniently located less than a mile from the laidback Orleans casino, which they regard as their "home"--but unfortunately there was no casino promotion that would take care of their utility bills. "We just have to use our 'cashback' to cover our utilities," says Jean, referring to the cash payments casinos give to frequent slots players.

The "Smarts," Jean and Brad, have 100 per cent of their needs taken care of . . . by casinos.

But there are problems with such a life. Inside the new condo is one room entirely given over to gifts they don't know what to do with. They have crystal vases, jackets, T-shirts, sports bags, fanny packs, lamps, shot glasses, beach towels, drinking cups, and dozens more giveaways, and the only time they make use of the room is when their grandkids come to visit. "We let them choose the things they like," says Jean.

Then there's that one gift that wouldn't fit into the room-- so Jean decided to simply sell the Mercury Mystique he won in a drawing.

In other words, Jean and Brad Smart haven't really paid for anything in twelve years, and beyond that they've shown an actual profit from the twenty hours a week they spend gambling.

"My favorite word," says Jean, "is 'free.'"

Brad walks up, fresh from the slots tournament, which is an invitation-only promotion made available to Rio's best customers. The machines are set to run without coins, and each contestant has two 15-minute sessions to make as much money as possible by repeatedly pressing the "spin" button. Whoever ends up with the most credits wins $10,000, but everyone wins something.

"So how'd you do?" says Jean.

"Terrible. Five hundred dollars," grumbles Brad.

Brad decides to console himself with some video poker while Jean is being interviewed.

"Wait!" she calls after him. "Take one of these."

She pulls a thick stack of casino "slot club" cards out of her purse, unties the rubber band, and searches for the right one. "It's like throwing money away to play a slot machine without a card," she explains to me.

Jean Smart, professional gambler and grandmother, came to this life the way many gamblers do: she was born into a fundamentalist household. The daughter of a preacher in the ultra-conservative Wesleyan Methodist denomination, she was taught that cards and dice were sinful. As a girl moving from church to church in Ohio and Pennsylvania, she was not allowed even to play "Old Maid"--"because that might have the appearance of gambling."

"I didn't learn the suits of the cards until I was 35," she says, "and I still think of a spade as a 'digger' and a club as a 'clover' because those are the words I learned them by."

After her first marriage ended in divorce, she was able to leave the fundamentalist world and take up the decadent game of . . . gin rummy. That's where she met Brad, playing in a penny-a- point neighborhood game in Indianapolis. ("He won a lot of money from me, but I married him so I didn't have to pay.") She was a natural at cards, becoming adept at games like Tonk and Euchre that have long been part of the social fabric of the Midwest. But when she and Brad took their first vacation to Las Vegas in 1984, they both fell in love all over again--with blackjack.

"We played slot machines and blackjack and we lost our whole bankroll," she says, "which was about a thousand dollars. But the pit boss asked me my name and then sent me things in the mail. Well, this was just too much fun. I had to go back. But first we took a blackjack seminar in our hometown, and then I got all the books and started learning to count cards."

For the next five years they became weekend high rollers, playing blackjack at such a level that they were given free vacations several times a year, including free rooms, free food, free gifts, free shows, and a private plane to take them to and from casinos as far away as Monte Carlo. ("The real Monte Carlo," she emphasizes, to distinguish it from the Monte Carlo Casino on the Vegas Strip.)

"We would gamble with a budget of $3000," she says, "and, of course, that would be all we needed to take because everything else was comped. We learned that, by making the casinos know we were $25 bettors, we could get virtually anything."

Unfortunately, they hit a bump when Jean was caught counting cards during a junket to Harrah's in Lake Tahoe. She was mortally embarrassed. "They didn't throw me out or anything. They just told me that I could play any other game but I couldn't play blackjack any longer in that casino. I think it was because I move my lips. I have this habit of moving my lips. And, you know, counting cards is exhausting anyway. You have the real count, then you adjust that for the multiple-deck count, then you have to manage your money, you have to spread bets just right so that they don't notice you. I was only spreading one to four so I think it was my lips. It had to be my lips."

But Jean and Brad were already tiring of the high-roller life. "The way we got into this," says Jean, "was not trying to actually make money. We just liked the free vacations. But it could be exhausting. They were short trips with heavy action, and sometimes we would lose the $3,000. Not often, but it can happen on a short trip. What we really loved was the environment of the casinos, all the little extras, the shows, the dinners--we loved the whole experience, and so we thought, 'What if we could take this $3,000 and instead of using it on a three-day junket, we could make it last a whole month?'"

They then made what they regard as the happiest decision of their lives. Brad took early retirement from the Navy, at the age of 58. Jean quit her teaching job. And they devoted themselves full-time to using the casino "comp" system to support their lifestyle.

"I had always been a coupon clipper anyway," said Jean. "I always shopped sales. So I just started learning the system. The casino can't give you anything unless they know you're there. And they always knew we were there. I've actually found that the casinos want to give you things. A lot of times all you have to do is ask. If you say to the pit boss, 'How long do I have to play to get a free buffet?,' usually he'll give you a free buffet! The policy on food comps is sometimes a secret, but if you ask they tell you."

Overnight they switched from high-rollers to low-rollers, but somehow they continued to get high-roller treatment. They became adept at wagering $25 only when the pit boss was watching the table, then reducing their bets to $5 when he was away. They learned to take frequent "bathroom breaks," getting credit for time at the table, when they were actually taking a "concentration break." Jean saved every coupon mailed to them by casinos, and started clipping new ones as soon as they hit the Vegas airport. They learned how to work special promotions that paid $10 for a $5 blackjack bet, or gave them $50 in chips for $40. They befriended slot bosses. They registered for everything in both names so that, if a casino offered three free room nights, they ended up with six. They even perfected a system of getting free airfare by always getting "bumped" off of flights--a system they still use today. Jean did research to figure out which flights are consistently overbooked, which times are busiest, and how the overbooking "bump list" works. They would make confirmed reservations on these flights, then volunteer to take the cash vouchers (up to $400) and free tickets awarded to volunteers who give up their seats. They never booked direct flights--"more chances to be bumped if you use a connecting city"--and they were never happier than when they got bumped four times on a single trip, racking up hundreds and eventually thousands of dollars in airline credits.

"We once got bumped twice on the same night in the same airport," says Jean proudly. And they spent many nights in airport hotels, which was fine with them, because everything was paid for and "we're in no hurry."

Then, in 1989, they discovered video poker. Brad discovered it first, playing as a way to take a break from the intensity of blackjack. Then Jean started researching the limited books available on the subject. Once they discovered that "9/6 Jacks or Better" video poker is one of the few positive-expectation games in the casino, they knew they had found their life's work.

There are two video poker games--"9/6 Jacks or Better" and "Deuces Wild"--that, when played with perfect strategy, will return more than 100 per cent of your investment over time. If you combine this with special promotions--certain days of the week when casinos pay double or triple--you can actually make a living at the game.

"The problem is that the casinos are really dead set against professional video poker players," says Jean, "so we try not to play too much in any one casino. And we don't play too long in one day. They have tracking systems that will tell them whether you use perfect strategy or not."

In recent years casinos have introduced all sorts of video- poker pitfalls. If you play the game any place other than Las Vegas, you're not likely to get the "perfect" pay table that the original "9/6 Jacks or Better" machines have. And pit bosses have turned especially nasty when they discover video poker "teams"-- professional gamblers who relieve each other in two-hour shifts so that they can play a single machine long enough to get a clear mathematical advantage.

"It's not that hard," says Jean, "but it does take study, because there are so many different games, and most people are not willing to do the study. A knowledge of real poker can actually hurt you because so many of the correct decisions don't make sense."

But the biggest advantage the video poker player has is the casino "comp" system. Video poker machines are not technically slot machines, but they're treated the same way by casinos. And serious slot players are considered among the most desirable customers a casino can have--second only to the true high-rollers who play baccarat in rooms rarely seen by the public. "It's very hard to get comps if you're a table player," says Jean, "and very easy if you're a slot player. I had to play 500 francs a hand, or about $81, to get comped at Monte Carlo. It used to be that managers weren't so mathematically inclined. But the casinos really love dollar players. A dollar slot player is equal to a $100-a-hand blackjack player."

In recent years there's been so much competition that, in addition to free rooms and buffets and shows and the like, casinos have started giving back actual cash based on the amount of play recorded on a credit-card-type ID card that is inserted into the slot machine while you're playing it. By figuring the "cashback" into the equation, and by playing only the machines that return more than 100 per cent on days when casinos have special promotions, Jean figures she has at least a one per cent edge on the casino.

"This is not for everybody," she says. "But video poker is one of the few things you can win at. You can win at live poker if you're very good, and you can win at blackjack if you are a counter. You can win at sports betting if you study it all the time. But most people don't want to study. So I tell people that you should evaluate your goals before you do what Brad and I do. We play a lot. We're probably in the top one half per cent of rated players. But if you're not going to study, you should choose slow games, so that you can soak up the ambience and lose less per hour. For example, if you play keno for one dollar a game, you might only lose a couple of dollars an hour, and if you have two complimentary drinks, then you're still ahead."

Yet, even after the Smarts get their "comp" credits, they massage the system even more to make sure they end up with everything the casino truly wants to give them. For example, many casinos award food credits or show credits but don't advertise them.

"You have to ask," says Jean. "I tell everyone: ask, ask and ask. You'll be amazed what you get. People always say to us, 'Well, you must have to lose a lot of money to have all those credits.' Not true. The comps are based on how much money you put through the machine, not how much you lose. There are even people who don't join slot clubs because they don't want the casino knowing their name and address. Believe me, you want these people to know your name and address."

Three years ago, at the urging of her daughter, Jean started putting some of her more subtle tricks down on paper. For example, there's a technique called "wonging" that can be used on certain brands of slot machines. These machines have a "bonus round" feature that is enabled after a certain number of credits are built up, but players will sometimes abandon the machine before they reach that point. If Jean sees such a machine, she'll immediately sit down and play it until the bonus round pays off. "One type of machine is called Piggy Bank. When the count gets to 25, you should sit down. But so many people know this now that, if someone gets up from a machine with a high count on it, fights can break out over who is going to get that machine!"

She also wrote down all of her techniques for exploiting slot club systems, special promotions, triple credits nights, and the like, and the result is a book called "The Frugal Gambler" that has had pretty steady sales through the Las Vegas-based Huntington Press. That led to an on-line column called "Frugal Fridays" and articles for a magazine called "Strictly Slots."

"They call me the Queen of Comps now," she says, "but it's getting to be too much like work. I have to keep a Tupperware box in the car with all our coupons in it. One reason we bought a condo here is that, even though we never paid for a hotel room, we did have to change hotels every three or four days, and that got to be tiring. My idea of relaxing now is to sit at home, read the paper, see a movie. We love it when our grandchildren come out. We take them to Wet 'n' Wild and Grand Slam Canyon and the roller coasters. But then I start working again, because there are just so many good promotions!"

Brad shows up again as the interview comes to a close. "I just saw this family over here pay for a meal," he says, "and I'm always shocked to see that. We've never paid for a meal. I see this guy with his family, and he's been gambling for a while, and he is going to pay for that food anyway. In Las Vegas! It just bothers me."

They say their goodbyes and walk away with their arms wrapped tightly around each other. Suddenly Jean realizes that her interviewer mentioned playing video poker before he leaves. She scurries back over.

"You're not going to play without joining the slot club first, are you?"

"Jean! Leave the man alone!" Brad calls after her.

"Well, okay." He gently pulls her to him and they walk into the main floor of the casino and disappear among the hundred serried rows of slot machines.

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