The $900 Pickaxe dot com
Many times over the past year of this latest slot machine gold rush, I have stopped to look up a machine title online to see if it carried the potential for +EV play under the right circumstances, and if so, what exactly might be those circumstances.
More times than not, my searches led me to a site called Machine Pro Club, which in nearly every case gave me a sort of teaser blurb about the machines and their payouts, only without the proper instructions for evaluating their EV states. That information, the site promised, was behind a $49 per month paywall, cancellable at any time.
I took a chance and put $49 on a Green Dot Visa gift card, in order to avoid involving my actual credit or debit cards, in the event of a scam. The card went through and I found myself behind the paywall on the site.
What I got for the $49 was instructions on how to play around 88 titles of machines, only many of those machines were duplicates: i.e. the same game marketed under different names, so really I bought information on around 35 slot variants, a small handful of which are at MGM Springfield, and most of which are not.
Most of the remainder of MGM's +EV titles are actually on the Machine Pro Club site, only they're locked behind a second "Lifetime Membership" paywall. And the price for getting behind that wall is $899.
Now look, I've made a lot of money from the slot machines, and if the site had been upfront about the $899 hit, I might have seriously considered it; but instead, the non-paywall part of the site heavily implied that paying a mere $49 per month would give to me the entire keys to the kingdom, when all the site delivered for that price—in relative terms—was a Burger King hat.
Did I make more than $50 from my one month prop bet? Yes I did—quite a bit more—both in EV and in actual dollars. Regarding a couple of games that Machine Pro Club did give me information on, games which I had been playing sort of by ear, along with relying on vague hints from other free sites, I had been been playing those wrong, and hemorrhaging EV. That information alone has saved me a lot more than $50.
But once again, the $899 bait and switch irked me.
So I will not be renewing my monthly subscription to Machine Pro Club. Bait and switch me once; shame on me. Bait and switch me twice...um...
Last edited by suitedjustice; 10-25-2023 at 05:19 PM.