On my main channel (Brian Christopher Slots – please subscribe!) alone, I offer up hours of free content every single week. Sometimes players question my methods:
All the years I have been watching you I notice you do something frequently. You do really well on a specific bet ($10-$20). Then you raise your bet to $40-$50, change your timing and blow all the profit from your wins + your original buy-in. Then you say the machine was RUDE. It wasn’t Rude to you at $10-$20. What happened to backup spins and cash out with profit?
Melvin G.
First off Melvin, thanks for the question, and for being one of the viewers who see that not all my videos are winning ones – as I’ve covered here in the past, there’s a lot of people who think I somehow always win, but clearly I don’t!
But on to your question. When filming my content, I film daily videos that average 30 minutes in length. On a live stream, I’m probably more likely to do back-up spins and move on, but for the daily videos, there’s other considerations often in play. Here’s a few.
The Theme of the Video
If I’m doing 30 minutes on a single machine, I will keep going for the simple reason that it’s the point of the video. We have a couple of variations on this we’ll sometimes do – playing all bets, min bet vs. max bet, etc. – but we’ll decide on a video concept and we’ll film it however it turns out.
It’s important my play is authentic – so I will show you the highs and the lows. Purposefully cutting things off after a big win doesn’t necessarily show both sides of the game, and changing the rules mid-stream to emphasize the big wins is also creating an unrealistic expectation for players.
Setting Up Can Take Time
There’s generally two cameras we set up for each segment we film – the “Brian Camera” and the “Slot Machine Camera”. We also have a third camera capturing other angles at times as well. Each move to a new slot requires a series of steps – grab all the equipment, find an open slot that has space, set everything up, make sure it’s all capturing correctly, etc. And when we move, we get stopped by fans along the way to take selfies – which we love – but adds to the time.
With all that in mind, we often avoid video ideas with a lot of quick starts and stops, so if I hit big quickly, I’m less likely to do a back-up spin and move on because of the additional time per segment it can take. But if I’m further into a session, I’m more likely to lock in that gain or big win. When I first started, it was just me and my phone without other people or equipment, and I would sometimes leave after three spins which literally only added about 30 seconds to my time. Now it adds more like 5 minutes, multiplied by about 50 games played in a day.
Live streams tend to be different, because I only have the one camera and am generally able to be more mobile. I’m more inclined to do a back-up spin and move on at that point.
Sometimes I Like to Ride the Momentum
Sometimes, if I get off to a good start and I’m ahead, I like to push my luck and see if I can make something happen at a larger bet. Of course, as you point out, I sometimes can wipe out my gains and then some. Sometimes, I get lucky again and the outcome is even better! (Or occasionally, not so much, but hey a bonus is a bonus.) I’m only human too, so when I’m UP, I sometimes get greedy and hope to be just as lucky on a larger bet.
But like I said earlier, it also shows some of the realities of gambling – it can be a smart move to lock in a profit or move on. I certainly advocate for the use of Winners Banks too, so you can lock in those wins. That works best for the average player, rather than someone creating content.
Takeaway
I know I’m not the only one that likes to take a chance, and don’t forget that my goal is entertainment – I’m oftentimes doing things other players may be too scared to do, or simply don’t want to take that risk. That’s fine! And if your takeaway is maybe don’t raise your bet after a big win, or to cash out and move on, I’m certainly on board with that too – learn from my mistakes :)
If I had to go back and count the wins and losses from smaller or larger bets, I probably would say that I both win more on larger bets, but also lose more too. So as always, play within your entertainment budget!
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