[Part 1]

In Seattle, Washington; the birthplace of Starbucks and coffee capital of the world, there is approximately one coffee shop for every 2,300 people.  This recent article by the Ft. Worth Telegram estimates the number of operating gamerooms in Ft. Worth, Texas to be somewhere around 350.  Therefore, with a population of 895,000 residents; Ft. Worth has just as many operating gamerooms per capita that Seattle has coffee shops.  What is occurring in Ft. Worth is occurring all over the state of Texas.  The proliferation of these electronic gamerooms has evolved into a massive underground scene of speakeasy-style joints bringing in millions of dollars in untaxed revenue and hidden in plain sight.

Texans, for the most part, are completely oblivious to this scene. The only times that law-abiding citizens hear about these gamerooms is if they get robbed or raided and make the local news. It can certainly be compelling footage.  Sparks flying as a police officer takes a saw to the machine cabinet lock.

Perhaps some footage of a daring robbery by armed and masked assailants.

Before I became immersed in this scene, I remember wondering what was up with those gambling machines I saw in the gas stations.  Why are people playing those?  Is it just for fun like a regular arcade game?  Surely they can’t be gambling for real money right there in front of everyone.  That would be illegal, wouldn’t it?

The answer here is yes; 9 times out of 10, the people operating those are breaking the law. On the other side of those machines, there is a gameroom operator that reached the same conclusion I had reached; that the massive reward potential for gameroom operation is well worth the negligible risk. 

Unlawful operation of a gameroom in Texas is a Class C Misdemeanor. This carries a maximum $500 fine and is the least severe class of misdemeanors.  Other Class C misdemeanors include possession of drug paraphernalia, petty theft of an item under $50, and writing bad checks of less than $20.  If one ever wonders why gamerooms have become so abundant in Texas, this is why. 

Where serious trouble lay, however, is if you get busted operating more than one gameroom. If you are found guilty of operating multiple gamerooms, the penalty escalates from a state misdemeanor to federal felony charges with a penalty of 20 years or more. This leaves the misdemeanor realm and enters into a federal organized crime chargeable under the RICO Act (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations.) Along with playing the Drake song and rapping along like we really felt the message of the track, we also used to joke that having to dodge the RICO Act as a gameroom owner sounded like one of those good problems.

The underground gameroom scene in Texas consists of a reclusive network of unaffiliated operators. It ranges from a couple of machines in the back of a gas station to full blown establishments operating in buildings as large as a Best Buy or Dave and Busters. The larger rooms tend to be situated in lower income neighborhoods. Often discretely located in a rundown strip mall, or more frequently tucked away in the back corner of old business parks.

Driving past 1114 N. Riverfront Blvd in Dallas, TX, one typically wouldn’t give DDD’s Bail Bonds a second glance.

From the street it looks like any of the other bail bond companies on Riverfront Blvd.  Dallas County Jail is less than a mile away so there are many bail bond businesses in this area.  However, if one were to post up and watch the incoming and outgoing traffic, they would notice that hardly anyone pulling up is walking into DDD’s through the main Riverfront entrance.  People park in the lot, and then walk straight to the rear and through an inconspicuous black door leading to an enclosed patio with a hidden entrance.

Once inside the patio, you come to a heavy, locked, steel door.  Above this steel door is a security camera and the only other visible marking is a doorbell.  No signage, no instructions, no other posted information whatsoever.  Players ring the doorbell and as long as they know you or you are with somebody they know, they unlock and open the heavy steel door and an armed security guard motions you to enter.  

Once inside, you extend your arms and submit to a quick security pat down. Once cleared, you walk into the gameroom and write your first name only on the sign-in sheet. Once signed in, you pick a machine and signal to the gameroom attendant that you have selected the machine you want to apply your match play towards. A match play is an incentive to visit a specific gameroom and they offer one match play per player, per visit, per day. Below is an old sign in sheet from our gameroom. A single line is a $5 match, two lines is $10, and a circle is $20.

The player then picks a machine and for that first bet only, the house will match whatever you play, typically up to a $20 max. If you select a $10 match, you put your $10 in, and then the floor attendant contributes a house $10. With a $10 match, you may cash out any amount over $40. WIth a $20 match, you put in $20, followed by a house $20 so you are playing $40 worth of credits for $20. With a $20 match, you may cash out any amount over $80. Once you have played the match down or cashed out over the required minimum, you may now gamble at your leisure on any other machine.

In Dallas, popular gamerooms included TI Blvd., Mamma’s, Skillman, and Tiki Island. One gameroom was on the upper level of someone’s disconnected garage in their own house’s backyard.  Arielle turned me on to the Dallas scene and I enjoyed gameroom hopping with her.  She is a social butterfly and was well liked and would always know what gamerooms were matching and where the happening spots to play were at.  She would bring ice or GHB with her stashed in a magnetic lock box stuck somewhere on the bottom of the outside of her car.  The tweakers in Dallas all love their G.  They buy those small rubber travel bottles and just suck on it throughout the day and night.  Constantly taking it out of their purses and taking miniature swigs throughout the day.  One swig too many and they get silly af lol.  Getting fucked up on G is like a warm happy drunk type feeling and pairs well with the cold and icy seriousness of the meth high.

Authorities are well aware of the existence of these gamerooms.  It was not uncommon for them to post up outside of one and wait for someone to leave for a random stop.  Just about everyone gambling at 3:30 AM was spun out and/or at least riding dirty.

There are different levels of a police raid on a gameroom.  The machine cabinets themselves are heavy as fuck and a bitch to move.  Their weight is not evenly distributed and even with a dolly, they take a lot of energy to move around.  If the cops don’t want to deal with having to move and store these big bulky cabinets they just saw the locks off, take the cash, and remove the motherboards.  Since replacement machines and motherboards are readily available online or on Craigslist, game room operators will shut down for a week or two after getting raided and then open up again right in the same spot, lol.  This time they would place a new attendant in place, ready to take the next Class C misdemeanor charge if they got raided again.

Earlier on in my downfall, when I still had a lot of savings, I honed an ill-fated “strategy” that I would employ when I gambled.  As a financial analyst well aware of risk and reward, I couldn’t just walk into the gamerooms without some type of strategy to cling to that would help rationalize the fact that I was about to throw a bunch of money away.  I gave my strategy a name.  I called it “stress-testing” the machines and am embarrassed to admit what you are about to read.

To understand “stress-testing,” it helps to first realize that the gamerooms in South Houston are mostly in lower class neighborhoods. The screens on the machines clearly display how much people are betting and I noticed that most patrons would be gambling 25 or 50 cent plays. I would strut into these gamerooms spun out with a pocket full of cash ready to shock and awe these machines. I figured that all of these machines are used to low bets. Therefore, if I randomly appeared out of nowhere and just started max betting the fuck out of them, the motherboard would malfunction and not know how to handle it, and therefore,would pay out large bonuses (I know.) Some big early wins with Vanessa fucked with my mentality and made me somehow think that I was really on to something.

I can recall the exact moment when I decided to explore opening my own gameroom. I was walking out of a gameroom after a full night of playing with Vanessa in South Houston.  When Vanessa and I went to the gamerooms together, it’s not like we sat next to each other and laughed and talked together while we played.  As soon as we entered, we separated and each went off into our own dark gambling worlds.  If I ever happen to watch her play, I would get anxious and frustrated observing her conservative and controlled betting style.  She would play .50 cent or $1 hands and go soooo fucking slow.  My preferred gambling style was much more offensive and aggressive.

A typical night would start with an ATM withdrawal of $300.  In the honeymoon phase of my gambling-on-meth love affair, I would roam around the gameroom trying out the various machines.  I developed connections and short-lived obsession with many different games. My first gameroom love affair was with Stinkin’ Rich.

“Stress-testing” Stinkin’ Rich was pretty fucking fun. I would max bet $10 pulls for each play.  I would hit a decent sized win; in this example, let’s say $1,200.  I would smirk and sit back in the chair amused at how smart I was to have just taken this gameroom owning chump for a quick grand.  I would raise my hand and yell “ticket!”  The floor attendant would walk up to the machine, hit the reset button, and count out my money. If it was a cute girl, I may have tipped her $60, $40 for the dudes. I would then enjoy the feeling of a nice fresh wad of 20’s bulging out of my pocket.  Shit…now that I was up over a grand, I will have an awesome night because now I have more max-bet pull opportunities.  I could turn this stack into untold fortunes.  The sky’s the limit type-shit.

I had another “technique” where I would spread my cash around between different pockets.  This way, if I ran out of cash in my main pockets, there was always a chance I had stashed some bills in my other pockets.  What would suck is if I hit something like this $1,200 early on in the night.  I couldn’t convince Vanessa to leave just yet because we made the 20 min. drive to South Houston to gamble so we are going to spend at least a couple of hours there.  I still remember my thought process on a typical night.  I have lost count of the times that my nights went as followed:

Holy shit I am way up and it’s early, this is awesome.

I would have moved to a different Stinkin’ Rich machine because the one that just paid out obviously isn’t going to pay out twice.  I would start disciplined with smaller bets.  While making these smaller bets, I would inevitably hit a bonus round.  

Damn, I should have max bet that shit.  I mean, I am up a lot right now as is.  If I can hit another max bet bonus round, I could leave with a few thousand instead of just one. Ehhhhh, fuck it… I’ll just max bet a couple hundred bucks and if I lose $200 then I will still walk out of here with a grand. 

I would start max betting again at $10 pulls.

Once I started max betting, I didn’t realize it at the time, but I entered a mindset where I was either going to hit another max bonus round or leave broke.  I may hit some smaller wins, but at that point, if I can’t walk out with more than $1,200, there’s really no point in any of it, lol.  Another hour or two would pass as the machine teased me with smaller wins and the bulge of cash in my pockets slowly dwindled.

Alright, I have $600 left, buuuiut I did just inject this machine that’s used to 50 cent plays with $600 so it has to pay out any minute now.  Fuck yeah, this machine is ripe and juicy and ready for the picking. Getting ready to take it down to the farmer’s market.  Two plums special.  

I would then max bet my $600 down to the $300 I had originally started with, knowing that if I decreased the amount of my bet, I would miss out on hitting the inevitable upcoming bonus round with a max bet.  Hitting the bonus round on a max bet was the dragon I now realize I was chasing.

Easy solution here, I just have to keep max betting.  This machine HAS to be close to paying out by now.  I could feel that the bulge in my pocket was now just a few bills.  That’s OK though, I have more bills stashed in another one of my pockets. I’m pretty sure I split my cash between different pockets.  When the main pockets emptied, I would check all of my other pockets only to remember that I already emptied them on my last win and didn’t redistribute the wealth around to the other pockets like I should have.  I am now briefly cut off from the gambling high zone and immediately thrust back into a temporary cashless reality.

There’s no way I can already be out of money.  I just had $1,200.  What the fuck?!?

Being unexpectedly cut off from a max betting pattern is unacceptable.  By this point, my blood pressure would have skyrocketed and I would have had a stoic, icy, meth-face of determination.  A silent resolve to beat this machine, beat this gameroom, and beat the gameroom owner. I would tell Vanessa to give me the bowl so that I could go smoke ice in the car or bathroom and re-energize.  

Yeah, that’s it…get REALLY high and then let’s fucking show this Stinkin’ Rich machine that it doesn’t know who it’s messing with.  I always win when I get super high.  This machine just took down $1,200, there’s NO WAY that this machine is not about to payout.  Fuck yeah, this is going to be awesome.

I would walk confidently to the ATM and withdraw another $300.  It would be after midnight so I would have a fresh daily ATM limit to max out.  I loved that feeling of watching $20 after $20 fall out of the machine and into my hand.  A nice fat stack of 15 crisp $20 bills and time to win my money back and turn this night around.

I would walk straight back to that same Stinkin’ Rich machine, passing the poor beginner gamblers with their small bets.  About to show them how we do this. 

An hour later:

Damn, this machine still hasn’t paid out shit… it’s gotta be coming any minute now,  I must be down to like $100 left…

I would pat down my main pockets only to be shocked that the only piece of paper in there is not cash, but the ATM receipt.

Wait what….I don’t think I spread bills to my other pockets, but I must have.

I would pat the outside of all of my cargo shorts pockets and hold my breath as I reached into the last one. Hoping with every ounce of my being that there was a wad of cash in there I had forgotten.  

The last pocket is empty…

There is no way that I blew through $300 that quick

I would have then quickly glanced around the floor.  

Did I drop some cash?  I had to have dropped some.  I can’t have gone through that $300 already.  I just started with it.

The floor attendants would have seen me looking on the ground like I lost a contact lens as I retraced the path between the Stinkin’ Rich and the ATM machine.  Trying to act casual while at the same time raging inside and desperately hoping to see a wad of cash on the ground (which there never was.)

Fuck, there’s that cute girl I tipped $60.  I wonder if she would give me some of that back, lol.

No money on the ground…no money in my pockets…no more credits in the machine.  No more withdrawals allowed from my ATM as I have now maxed out my withdrawal limit for the day and it’s only 1:00 AM. I just put $1,500 cash in this stupid machine while riding an illogical and foolish roller coaster of irrational emotions.

What happened next would depend on whether or not I was the one that drove us there that night.  If I was the one driving, I would have just walked up to Vanessa and said “let’s go.”  We could both sense when one of us fucked up bad and had to get the fuck out of there.  If she happened to drive that night, I would go back and sheepishly sit at a machine somewhere close to her.   I would be absolutely steaming inside.  Raging at the money I had just lost.  This rage would become a feeling I would encounter many many times over the next two years.  I would sit back and silently watch her bet and immediately get frustrated observing her slow gambling style.

Damn why doesn’t she just max bet?!!? What’s the point of gambling small like that?  She is so stupid.

LMAO.

I was walking out of a gameroom after a night like this and all of the anger and frustration had come full circle and morphed into an odd sense of ambition.  I realized that if I can’t beat these gamerooms, maybe…just maybe…I could join them.

The first time that thought came into my head was a profound moment and the more I tossed that idea around in my head, the more sense it began to make. I had left my finance job several months prior and my savings was being depleted quickly.  I knew that I had to act quick on setting something up soon or I was going to be broke before I ever had a chance.  I started reaching out to people I knew from dealing to see if anyone could help.  One of the first people I asked was also a heavy gameroom player and my close friend; Paisley.

Paisley was there from the beginning of my run to the end.  We spent a lot of time together over the course of these two years.  Shoulder length brunette hair and a super pretty face.  She even looks good in her mugshot online.  In 12 screws and 3 plates Part 2, there is a photo of my broken leg with all the pins and rods sticking out of it.  That photo was taken on Paisley’s couch after her and Marie had bailed me out from the AirBnB fiasco.  When I got out of jail, I went straight over to her apartment for a couple of days before deciding to go back to my parents place in Dallas.

Paisley is super smart and had been active in the escort and meth worlds for several years. Socially adept and able to carry a conversation with street level dealers and high profile clients. Her sister got caught up in a federal meth investigation and ended up getting sentenced to something like 12 years. Paisley was able to get one of her clients to throw down $20,000 to help her with legal fees on the case. She was also a heavy gambler and used to deal meth in much larger quantities than I ever had. She had gone to prison for something like 4 years and like many other people in my circle at that time, had gone right back into the shit. She also used to drive a sweet cherry red M3 and let me drive it on several occasions. We took a couple of road trips to Dallas from Houston in it and I absolutely loved driving it. I probably spent more time over at her place than any other girl over this time period. If she were to ever create a blog or share her life story, she would make my blog look like a PG-rated Disney movie.

When I shared the fact that I wanted to open a gameroom with Paisley, she immediately started telling me about this gameroom owner that was one of her clients. Kevin was a seasoned veteran in the gameroom industry and had been involved in the scene for several years.  At that time he was running his own gameroom out towards Baytown on the east side of Houston.  Paisley reached out to him on my behalf and set up a meeting. Most successful gameroom owners are recluse.  They are making hand-over-fist cash operating in a “grey” area of the law so they aren’t exactly running for the board of their local Chamber of Commerce or posting job offers online.  There are no books, manuals, or online resources available for someone seeking information on operating a gameroom so I felt fortunate to have this opportunity. 

We met up at Paisley’s place and smoked a bowl of ice to kick off the meeting.  Paisley had put in a good word for me as she tended to do with people that she liked.  She had also talked up Kevin to me saying that he was a younger gameroom owner and was cool. I didn’t know much about him other than that. That first meeting with Kevin far exceeded my expectations as far as information gathered and networking my way into the scene was concerned.

Kevin and I are the same age and I got a good vibe from him right off the bat.  He is from Huntington Beach, CA and I used to live in nearby San Pedro when I was in middle school.  He was a huge Lakers fan and was a big golfer before moving to Texas to partner up with three other Asian partners in a gameroom they started on Richmond Ave. He was actually ranked among the best golf players in Houston by the Houston Amateur Golf Association in 2015.

Kevin was educated, spoke well, and would have been someone that I would have for sure been friends with if we met in the neighborhood growing up.  We chatted for a bit about my past and I showed him my LinkedIn profile. I shared how I was recently divorced and wanted to look into starting up a gameroom.  He was super cool and extended an invite for me to come out to his Baytown gameroom the next day to check it out.  I eagerly accepted. 

The next day I drove out towards Baytown and checked out his gameroom. Kevin’s room had somewhere around 50 total machines in a stand alone building at 7501 Decker Rd. in Baytown, TX.  It has since been torn down, but here is a picture of it a little less than a year after it closed.  

The light green rectangle surrounding the front door is actually a huge steel sliding door that was used to secure the front entrance.  The armed security guard let me in and I walked into a smokey dark front room with about 30 machines lining the walls and in the middle of the room. There was a second room in the back with another 20 machines. The atmosphere inside his gameroom was similar to that of a neighborhood dive bar (minus the bar and alcohol.)

It was an old rundown building that he was renting from one of his old gameroom partners. I arrived around midnight and there were about 10-15 people scattered around the room playing. I hung around and chilled for a bit, watching him interact with his customers. He knew them all by name. Definitely a “Cheers”-esque vibe. He had ordered Domino’s pizza for everyone earlier and told me that he always provided food if he had at least 5 or 6 players. He was super nice and accommodating to all of his patrons and you could tell that he took a lot of pride in his business.

After the last player left sometime around 4:00 AM, he let me stay behind while he showed me his daily closing process.  He locked up all the doors and went around putting every machine in “config” mode.  This mode displays the internal master data figures on the screen.

One may think that you could just walk from machine to machine and hit a button to see how much profit was made for the day, but “match” plays complicate everything.  When a gameroom is providing a match play incentive, remember they are putting their own money into the machine.  If you calculate dollars-in without accounting for the match plays, you would artificially inflate the total number of dollars that customers have put through the bill counter.  The machines themselves have no way of differentiating between the player’s money and the house match money.  All they do is track raw figures of dollars-in and dollars-out.

I had planned to interview Kevin on camera and share his insight into how he got started in all of this, but the dumbass got arrested again about 4 months ago.  I had told him that I was writing a post about the gameroom scene in Texas and I asked him to send me anything he had from that time period.  He sent me some old excel spreadsheets from his Richmond room operation which are much more interesting than our own smaller gameroom sheets.  What you see below is real life data providing an intimate look at the numbers involved with a successful large scale underground illegal gameroom in Houston in 2011.  

To give y’all an idea how we track winnings, let’s take one of my favorite games, “Stinkin’ Rich,” and calculate how much money a particular machine made in Kevin’s old gameroom from September 26th to October 2nd,  2011.  These are not hypothetical or made up figures.  This is real money that was played on this machine by actual gamblers in Houston.  

After switching all of the machines over to “config” mode, the Master Figures would now be visible on all of the screens.  We would first write down the MASTER BEGIN-IN figure of 327878.  This is the total number of dollars that have been injected into the machine from its inception to that day.  #47 Stinkin’ Rich would have been an older machine that had been in use for several years to reach a MASTER BEGIN-IN total of over $325k (many of the Pot-O-Gold machines I later came across in my own room had totals exceeding several million.) 

		Master Begin	Master End	Weekly	% Total
		Sept. 26th	Oct. 2nd
47	IN	327878	337442	9564	3883
	OUT	262906	268587	5681	59.40%

As of September 26th, a total of $327,878 dollars had been put into  #47 Stinkin’ Rich.  The MASTER END-IN figure is the total number of dollars that had been put into the machine as of the end of the week/October 2nd; $337,442.   So for the week, a total of $9,564 dollars was put into the machine.  This includes both players money and gameroom match play money.  Match plays are tracked on the sign-in sheet and a later adjustment must be made to properly track profits.

We would next write down the MASTER BEGIN-OUT and MASTER END-OUT figures.  The difference between these figures represents the total number of dollars that have been paid OUT from this machine since its inception. For this week, the dollars paid out started at $262,906 and ended at $268,587.  The difference of $5,681 represents the total number of dollars that were paid out from this machine for the week.  Remember the floor attendant is the one holding the cash and paying out winners, so cash only enters into the machines throughout the day.

The total change in dollars IN was $9,564 and the total change in dollars OUT was $5,681.  So for this week, #47 Stinkin’ Rich retained $3,883 more dollars than it paid out.  Even with match plays, that’s pretty good action for one machine in one week.  

After capturing the weekly numbers I watched Kevin emptying the machines in what would later become my favorite part of the day.  He would walk from one machine to the next, open up the bill collectors, and remove the stack of bills and place them in his red Foldgers can.  It was watching him do this that sold me on the concept and  removed any doubt as to whether or not I would pursue gameroom operation.  

The bill collectors in these machines all have a small, grey, plastic-indented finger tab that you slide your finger down into and depress against the resistance of a small metal spring. The top of the plastic spring-loaded bill collector can then be lowered and your finger would slide down against a then-unknown thickness of cash. Sliding your finger down and feeling an abnormally thick stack of cash waiting to be harvested was quite simply, the shit.

A majority of the pulls result in a thinner stack, but when your finger brushes down and you feel an inch or more of cash, it’s a pretty sweet feeling.  I remember he made a couple of comments like “Ooh, that’s a good one,” as he dumped a 3 or 4-inch stack of cash into his can.  I realize that a thin stack of 20’s is better than a thick 4-inch stack of 1’s, but when you have 30, 50, or 90 machines that all got play on a busy day, you knew that all the hard work had already been done and it was now time to reap the reward.  Straight-up cash.    

Everyone, including his floor attendants and security, had gone home and we chatted a bit in his office as I watched him tally up the day’s totals and stack the cash.  I had already been dealing by this time so I broke out my shit, we smoked and he shared his process with me:

Damn man, looks like you had a pretty good day.

Yeah today was pretty good.  Traffic was up and no big payouts.  Jose hit on Pot-o-Gold but he played it all back.

He played it all back? Ha! What a dumbass!! (😬)

He dumped out two or three red Foldgers cans full of cash onto his desk.  Some of it fell onto the floor and he arranged it all into a big messy pile.  I was feeling pretty envious watching this all.  As we sat and talked more, I watched him take every single bill out of the pile and triage them into crisp and clean bills, wrinkly bills, and then bills that were the most damaged.  If one of the bills had even just a tiny part of the corner folded over, he would carefully bend it back the other way and straighten it as much as possible. Each and every bill was examined and treated with much care.  All four corners had to be unfolded and the creases and bends had to be bent back the other way to try to make it as straight and flat as possible.  He also would grab many bills from the ends and rub the flat side of the bill across the corner of the desk to straighten and smooth it over.

It didn’t matter if the bill was a $1 or a $20; they were all treated with the same amount of respect.  Each bill received an equal amount of delicate care. If any bill had even just the tiniest little tear; he had tape on his desk that he would use to fix it.  Placing a small piece of tape on each side of the imperfection and trimming the excess tape away from the edges.

Once all of the bills were in acceptable condition.  He separated and stacked the bills according to their denomination.  He not only made sure every bill was in as good of condition as possible, but he even went so far as to make sure they were all facing face up and all facing the same direction.  

He then put each stack of cash through the bill counter.  A must-have for all gamerooms.  I very much enjoyed the sound and function of these machines.  As stacks of bills fluttered from the bill feed down into the receiving tray, the red indicator light quickly showed the total number of bills in each stack.  Each face on the bill facing the same direction, and each bill flattened, pressed, and repaired as much as possible.

Damn man, you really make sure the bills are all in good order huh?

He stopped messing with the bills for a second and looked back at me.

Yeah…I learned this from my old gameroom partners.  You see alphatweaker, this cash is our product. This cash is our livelihood.  We never want to just crumple up our livelihood and toss it in the safe.  We are professionals and must treat the cash with respect.  If we take care of the money, the money in return will take care of us.  You never want to just toss the money half-assed into the safe. 

He caught me off guard with this, but I respected the sentiment and the fact that he was opening up with me on something he obviously felt was important. That statement stuck with me and became something that I emulated when I later had my own gameroom.  Every night, no matter what chaos is emerging and no matter what the fuck happened that day, the part of the day where I collected, stacked, and tallied up the days take from my machines was a temporary moment of deliberate clarity and calmness.  

I mean yes, this is an illegal operation and yes, most people see gamerooms as shady cesspools of criminal activity; but Kevin was also a small business owner and entrepreneur in every sense of the word. I had to respect the guy for that.  Also, the fact that he’s Asian and speaking like an old master to a young grasshopper fit perfectly with the whole visit.   

Alright man, yeah…I get that.  I hear what you are saying.

Yeah, in my old gameroom, our closing would take much longer and we had much larger stacks of money, but I was splitting that four ways.  This one isn’t making as much as what I used to make with them, but I am making enough and growing.

Damn man, so how much were y’all making?

On average, we were clearing over $40,000 a month, split four ways.

$40,000 a month!? Fuck man what happened?? Why did y’all stop?

One of the partners got flashy with his money and brought heat down on the whole thing and we had to close. 

Kevin had later told me in greater detail how that gameroom had come to an end. It had something to do with one of the partners purchasing ownership into a legitimate business with cash.  They started investigating him and when they started, they immediately shut that one down and Kevin decided to go out on his own.  

He would mark the totals down, confirm that the dollar amounts taken from each machine match the amounts shown on the config mode, and then calculate his daily percentage payout which he tracked religiously.  

Alright, so today looks like total profit is going to be about $800.  That will be good to add to the house bank.

At this point, I had seen everything that I needed to see.  I had found someone that I felt was trustworthy and could teach, help, and guide me into this industry.  Kevin’s gameroom had enough space in it for about 9 more machines.  He said that if I wanted to give gameroom ownership a try, I could use his space to operate my own machines and see how I like it.  9 machines represented 20% of the total number of the machines in the room, so I paid 20% of the fixed monthly expenses.  I couldn’t have asked for a better entrance into the industry.  I liked Kevin, everything felt right…and so I went for it.

[To be continued…]