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I was actually on a bit of a hot streak by the time I hit the poker table, where a quintet of players much richer than I bled me dry in record time. Now it was time to become reacquainted with the city as I’ve always understood it. My eight hours as a high roller were officially over. The old world was calling, the one I shared with the other 40 million tourists who come to Las Vegas every year, composed of $10 baccarat bets and gouging ATM premiums. I remembered that in a matter of hours, I would no longer be in his orbit. I was reminded again of just how easy life in Las Vegas appears to be for Morrow, how this citadel of scams seems to loosen at his touch. (“Are you up or down?” asked an inquisitive Mandel at the beginning of the episode.) Morrow, along with the rest of his group, is a special guest of Mandel tonight. It has made Vegas Matt a celebrity, which, as I learned, is much more of a thrill for him than the money is.
On the day of my visit, Morrow entered the game room with a Starbucks coffee in hand. And despite his loss-heavy record, you never quite feel as if you’re watching an addict burn it all down, because it’s clear this enterprise is at least somewhat moneymaking. He avoids the tactics of other gambling influencers, who seem to mostly post their massive jackpots. Naturally, I have watched this disruptive gambling renaissance meld with my social rhythms in real time, as more and more friends embrace the titillation of risk. There was no way he’d end the night with dignity, yet here he was, perched at the baccarat table, trying to get even. His gray hair was molded into a tight crew cut, and he wore a knitted gold necklace low across his collarbone and a Super Bowl–sized ring with a Ruby 777 jackpot dangling from his hand. Learn moreSometimes you may be asked to solve the CAPTCHA if you are using advanced terms that robots are known to use, or sending requests very quickly. I’m not sure you can call it hitting a ‘jackpot’ though when it doesn’t even cover your losses in that same session.
At the very least this ‘jackpot’ deserves a massive asterisk, right? Howie Mandel asked Vegas Matt what the largest jackpot he’d ever hit on the high limit slots was. He’s best known for playing high limit slot machines but I personally see him most frequently on TikTok where he places high limit bets in baccarat. Vegas Matt has emerged as a very popular influencer in the gambling space. It’s a T-shirt emblazoned with a jackpot counter. This time, though, Vegas Matt was the one to turn over an eight. A slot machine repossesses a $20,000 investment in record time. It was business as usual for Vegas Matt.
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But then he revealed they were trying hard to win a specific jackpot (at $170K) and actually ended up losing a ton of money that day… That begs the question, does it really count as a jackpot if you lose $140,000 in the same session? His videos are actually where I learned the rules of baccarat and discovered it’s not nearly as complicated as I previously though. There are plenty of things I will always envy about Morrow, but I’m glad that the sacred, brain-healing ritual of a Saturday night at the casino with the boys will never become routine, or even boring. I might be playing at much smaller stakes—I’ve never come close to losing $30,000 in a day—but of the two of us, it’s me who really has something to lose. I was attracted to his videos for their effervescent bachelor-party texture, a vision of a life unencumbered by anything but gratification. Vegas Matt films at the El Cortez because, since 2017, Commonwealth Casino Australia it’s been one of the few casinos in the city that allow patrons to shoot video of their table games. But by far, the place Vegas Matt is most famous is the El Cortez, where he films the bulk of his videos and, therefore, where people know they have the best chance of running into him. He uploaded video after video of his trips to the casino, fleshing out the character his fans know today.
The El Cortez was packed on this languid Friday afternoon, and there was no question that Vegas Matt was the main attraction. If players could record the intricacies of casino procedure, would they then be able to scratch out an advantage? That was a bold decision, especially in such an infamously paranoid business. Any money the man bleeds comes from his own bank account. For the next four hours, they tail him back and forth across the corridors of the El Cortez, forming jittery semicircles around his seat in the same way one might jostle for a glimpse of Tiger Woods teeing off at Augusta. Many of these people came here just to watch Vegas Matt make some bets.