We last saw our pair of anti-heroes, John Kane and Andre Nestor, with high expectations after their massive breakthrough, going out to conquer Las Vegas, with a view to picking-up jackpot after jackpot on Video Poker.
The 2 had found a winning sequence which would get them the jackpot on Video Poker - by pressing various buttons in a certain combination, a small winning could be reversed transforming the bet from the minimum to maximum and multiplying the initial jackpot 50 times.
They rushed back down town after their first night in the city of sin and started getting stuck into some Video Poker machines.
The pair were in buoyant mood, thinking ahead to when they’d be rich men - John Kane even asked Andre Nestor to make a list of the ‘10 things you’d do if you had a million dollars’.
Optimism started to dampen a bit after day 3, however. After testing their routine at various different casinos, they were unable to find a Video Poker machine where the sequence could work even once more.
For some reason, it had worked only at the casino in downtown Fremont where Kane had first noticed the loophole.
After a frustrating week, Nestor went back to the East Coast with an US$8,000 profit. Whilst this was one of the largest wins he’d ever had, it still made a mockery of his expectations.
Kane decided to try out his luck again on the machines back in Fremont. To speed things up, he decided to use the ‘double or nothing’ feature. Which is a strange move if you’re trying to win a jackpot.
To his surprise it worked, and in just 5 weeks he had won over US$100,000!
But as expected, the casino noticed this. Every machine in a modern-day casino is linked to a central computer that keeps track of all profits per machine.
Those which deviate significantly from the norm will start warning security of the unusual activity.
And in this case, 4 machines standing right next to each other had suddenly gone from a stable gain of about US$15,000 a month to a minus US$75,000 in the month of May alone!
And May was not even over yet!
On 25th of that month, a slot manager intercepted John Kane when he sat down at a Video Poker machine, again setting the ‘double or nothing’ feature. The manager was convinced that the abnormal profits had something to do with this feature.
John Kane for his part was seemingly unconcerned. There was a bug in the system and he was convinced that his sequence facilitated the big winnings, and not the double or nothing feature alone.
In any case, when he went back the following day, the magic sequence wasn’t working any more.
He called Andre Nestor right away, and complained that their system appeared to have run out of luck.
In fact, Nestor knew that the ‘double or nothing’ feature had been a crucial feature of the system all along -  as a matter of fact, most casinos have the ‘double or nothing’ feature disabled, so that no one can use it.
But they can reinstate the feature should anyone, or at least a high roller, ask for it. This could be the final step towards conquering Lady Luck!…
So Andre Nestor immediately got the first plane back to Vegas.
To be continued in the next blog…
Written by Ken Lennáard.
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