Playing club fruit machines and making a living

Professional fruit machine playing in clubs.

I started playing fruit machines heavily in my local snooker club way back in 1986 with my mates, when the jackpot was just £75. After losing many hundreds of pounds, no sorry, many thousands of pounds, we eventually got to understand how most fruit machines worked and we discovered hundreds of tips and tricks that gave us an enormous advantage. The edge is not just the ability to beat the machine but also to learn to play it so much better than everyone else. Making money is not all about getting the jackpot from a £250 or £25 machine. The key is to walk away from it with more than you started with. Sounds easy when put like that, but it isn't, especially when you have to put the time in to work the tricks out for yourself. If you actually have a genuine gambling problem it becomes even harder. Personally there weren't many times I actually enjoyed playing them but it was a good living. Many pro fruit machines players have a gambling addiction. They know how to make money but they don't maximise their profits because too often they get their teeth stuck into a machine they know they should not be playing.

In 1991 we took our information down to Dover and found that at weekends we could make a fortune on the cross-channel ferries. We met up with other players doing the same thing and our knowledge grew from exchanging tips. The competition got fierce by 1994 as dozens of other players from London and Liverpool started to swamp the ferries so we decided to campaign in all the clubs around Surrey, Berkshire, Hampshire and West London. This proved very successful for three years. The 'touring' as we called it involved going around local golf, snooker, British Legion and CIU clubs in the area. We would make a list of all the best fruit machines and 'hit' them roughly once every 10 days, some more frequently in the busier places. For about 3 three years my friends and I averaged about £100 per day each. Our touring was on the club fruit machines but doing the same in pubs is the same, and probably a bit easier because the of the choice of places you have and the less conspicuous you are. The only problem with pubs these days is the amount of competition from other players, at least in clubs there is virtually none. (Chris. S, Founder member since 1996)

The secrets of playing fruit machines for a living.
Throughout this site we have highlighted some key points about doing this for a living. Now we appreciate that you are probably reading this out of curiosity and have absolutely no intention of giving up your day job to go gambling for the rest of your life, but, what we do want to do now is highlight the key points we have written plus a few others we may have missed, so even as a casual fruit machine player you will have an advantage over the other punters and not find yourself getting barred from places.

Dress Smart: Ok you may laugh a little at this but it is a key point. Nearly every young lad who gets an emptier and goes around all the pubs in t-shirt and jeans will himself getting barred. Look respectable and you will get respect. A shirt and tie is good.
Carry enough money: We don't just mean the folding, you should always carry enough coins, or at least have a backup supply in the car.
Be polite: Always offer the barman a drink if you think it will help. Having a chat always helps too. Never rush into a place and dive onto the fruit machine without getting a drink first (unless its a Weatherspoons, where the staff are clueless).
Be inconspicuous: The worst thing a player can do is brag to others about the latest tricks he has learnt. Enter the pub / club, get yourself a drink and play quietly. When you leave, if its not completely obvious, try to make out you only broke even, or made a small loss. You can do this by buying more change from behind the bar than you actually feed in the machine, and then at the end of your session just cash up a portion of your winnings.
Be alert: Always have a good look round and one ear open. If you do have a good trick there's no point in sharing it with anybody else. Often a punter at the bar will watch you play. You should leave and return another day.
Be patient: If you do a get a nice little route going you will often find dead machines. Don't play them just for the sake of it. The worst thing a player can do is get sucked into a machine which is doing its utmost to skint you. On most fruit machines you can tell in £5 to £15 what the score is. You must stomach your losses and move on. This saves time too.