Introduction to Professor Slots
Hello! I’m Jon Friedl, Ph.D. Yes, my engineering doctorate does make me Dr. Jon Friedl, but please call me “Jon.” Or, Professor Slots! I’m president and owner of Jon Friedl, LLC.
I call myself Professor Slots because its fairly accurate. I’m a slot machine gambler, and adjunct faculty at two universities, teaching undergraduate and graduate engineering courses. Besides which, the professorslots.com URL was available. 🙂
Like most people, I have several important roles in life. With me, my roles including being a father, gamer, inventor, engineering professor, aerospace engineer, and (as already mentioned) a slot machine gambler. For those interested, here’s my professional biography.
By creating Jon Friedl, LLC and my Professor Slots brand, I’ve taken on yet another role: small business owner. So, thanks to doing whatever it takes to make a successful online business, I’m already become an author, blogger, and (soon) a podcaster.
On this About Me webpage, I’ll be explaining a bit about my
- Goals and Intentions
- Establishing My Engineering Career
- Before Professor Slots: A Casual Gambler
- I See … Patterns
- Learning to Win
- After Winning a Car, I Quit Gambling … Not!
- Professor Slots in Las Vegas and Alaska
- Writing “Learning to Win”
- The Future of Professor Slots
Did you know I have a podcast? I do! Subscribe to the Professor Slots podcast at: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Android | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Radio | Tune-In | SoundCloud | Google Play | RSS.
Goals and Intentions of Professor Slots
As Professor Slots, it is my goal and intention to help people learn more about slot machine casino gambling, especially how to thrive in the casino environment.
My audience includes both interested non-slots players as well as active slot machine gamblers. I’ll be offering fascinating real-world insights into the world of slot machine casino gambling and by divulging a multitude of effective gambling strategies for those active in slot machine casino gambling.
Everyone has their own reasons for wanting to know more about slot machine gambling. Perhaps this is due to expecting future casino visits with friends and family, whether intending to play slots or not. Or, perhaps due to a simple desire to offer knowledge and support friends and family who themselves enjoy casinos.
Whichever the case may be, casinos have become a fact of life in many U.S. states and vacation hotspots, and so people what to understand them. So, I’m here to help.
You might very well ask: What do I know about slot machine gambling and how did I learn it? Well, read on to find out!
When I first started slot machine gambling in 2003, I knew nothing but a few gambling myths. So, I studied. I observed and thought. I played. And, over time, I learned. First, I was lucky. Then, I was careful. Finally, I was prepared.
Over a few months, I figured out how to win 13 taxable jackpots. I also won about a 1,000 small jackpots under the $1,200 taxable limit. I did all this over a six-day period. Yes, you read that right: 6 days.
Here are a few taxable jackpots from back in the day. Look at how young I was!
Establishing My Engineering Career
Shortly after winning the above taxable jackpots, with little more than a dream of someday being Professor Slots, first I had to graduate college. Again. For the seventh time.
If you’ve read by professional biography, you may have noticed I have a lot of college degrees. In fact, I have 8 college degrees mostly in physics and engineering. I was what is known as a professional student – until I wasn’t, anymore. Which is exactly were we are at in my personal history: Time to Get a Job!
At the end of 2005, I finished graduate school (briefly) in the Midwest, before moving to the East Coast to launch my aerospace career. Financial circumstances being as they were, I didn’t gamble much for almost 10 years. But, I sure did think a lot about what I’d learned! That thinking and learning would eventually pay off big.
In 2012, my career moved me back to the Midwest. Unbeknownst to me, it was also a time of great change in the casino industry. All I knew then was the new and renovated casinos opening up in my area. I decided to check them out, along with my 10 years of ideas about slot machine casino gambling.
So, in early 2013, I started going to these new and renovated casinos to play a few hundred dollars every 1-2 months. I’d play though about half my cash, i.e., bankroll, until I’d gotten down to half of what I’d brought to the casino. Then, I’d go home.
But then, something interesting happened. I started winning big money. And, most astonishingly, I could tell why.
Before Professor Slots: A Casual Gambler
For a few months in 2013, I was a casual slot machine casino gambler. I was wonderful. I’d bring in $500 in over-time pay every month or so, then play slot machines until half of it was gone. It was very relaxing, probably because it was my only entertainment activity.
But, fortunately or unfortunately, all that ended in mid-November 2013, starting with winning a single $2,250 taxable jackpot. With that win, I’d made back my $1,000 in gambling losses for the year and had a tidy $1,000 gambling profit remaining.
As wonderful as it was, 10 years of prior thinking had helped me realize that I’d just spent 6 months earning a profit of $1,000. “Really?” I thought, “That’s all?”
I decided, right then and there, this was NOT GOOD ENOUGH! I’m a fairly logical guy, by personal inclination and academic training, but sometimes becoming deliberately passionate is necessary to achieve nearly out-of-reach goals.
So, I got passionate. I DECIDED to DO something. This is where the 10 years of thoughts on gambling strategies started to come in very handy.
I See … Patterns
Filled with passion, with nearly $3,000 in hand, I looked around the casino. I saw the high limit slots room. I went in. I looked around. Then, I CAREFULLY looked around. And, I thought my deep thoughts of the last 10 years. I made decisions, then acted.
The gambling strategy I used is detailed in my eBook Learning To Win, but suffice to say here that I took winnings, added it to my remaining bankroll, and played it all in that casino’s High-Limit Slots Area.
Briefly, what I was doing was looking for patterns at the casino. I was looking for signs of how the slot machines were behaving. And, I was seeing them. Why? Because I’ve both a natural inclination to see patterns and have been polishing those skills over a lifetime in mostly non-casino activities.
Anyway, I inserted my bankroll into a carefully chosen slot machine (a $5 denomination, 3-credit WOF), and proceeded to play my bankroll until it was gone. Anyway, I tried to. And, failed miserably. Here are a couple of photos that explains why I failed (thankfully) to do so.
By the end of that evening, I’d won another 6 taxable jackpots totaling a little over $15,000 in taxable gambling income. And here’s the first lesson. Was this good or bad?
Please remember revenue alone means very little without one more vital piece of information: How much did I lose winning that $15,000? In other words, what was my profit?
That evening, I went home that night with $7,400 in cash. Second lesson: Was that my entire profit? You might reasonably say my profit was that take-home cash minus my walk-in bankroll of $500, making it $6,900 for the day.
Although not entirely accurate, as I’ll discuss later when covering players clubs and tax refunds due to deducting gambling losses, for now let’s say it’s accurate. My profit that day was $6,900 after winning 7 taxable jackpots and countless smaller jackpots.
That minus my original bankroll of $500 was my profit for the day. I was no longer a casual gambler playing for entertainment only. I was … something else, I knew not what exactly, but certainly was no longer a casual gambler. I’d discovered my super power: I had become Professor Slots.
Learning to Win
From that mid-November day until the end of 2013, I won 50 taxable jackpots. My largest was $27,000. I’d show you a picture of that, but the one I took is quite blurry due to how much my hands were shaking.
Winning a $27,000 taxable jackpot wasn’t the largest amount I’d every win, but at the time it was far more than I’d thought possible or even know how to handle.
That was a real lesson for me and perhaps the origin of everything I now do trying to help people understand how to thrive in the casino environment. I wasn’t prepared to win. Are you?
If not, I can help. To get started, see the links I’ve provided at the bottom of this webpage. And, get my Free Report:
In the following year, for the first 7-1/2 months of 2014, I won 49 more taxable jackpots. Throughout, I took careful notes while I continued to experiment and learn.
Even then, I had an idea in my head that I might even write a book about the experience, perhaps a how-to book with lots of great personal anecdotes.
So I continued to learn, taking notes on my ideas about how to win, testing them, and recording both what worked and what didn’t work. I stayed with slot machine casino gambling, but even so my interest ranged far and wide. I tried just about everything, including trying to win a car.
After 9 months and 90 taxable jackpots, I carefully and deliberately won a car. Again, you read that correctly: I deliberately won a car. Oh, of course I took the $40,000 cash option. It is still my largest cash payout. That’s also when I knew I become Professor Slots. I just hadn’t thought of that super hero name, yet.
After Winning a Car, I Quit Gambling … Not!
Well, I tried to. I mostly did quit! See, by then I was a top-tier member of two casino players clubs: These players clubs kept giving me quite valuable free stuff. But, I had to go to the casino to pick each of them up. And, well, since I was there and winning strategies were staring me in the face….
So, I played. A little. Using free slot play the casino gave me. Usually, one or more of my strategies indicated I’d likely win a taxable jackpot on a specific slot machine if I played it. So, I would play it. And, I did win. It was like using an ATM, knowing you’re going to be making a withdrawal but unsure how much it would be. It was just like that.
The 3 taxable jackpots totaling $17,059 that I won in 34 minutes, including 20-25 minutes spent on jackpot paperwork, was just great. It wouldn’t be the last time I’d do this, but it sure was special.
I remember the slot technicians walking away after paying out the first jackpot saying, as they usually do with everyone, “See you soon for your next jackpot!” They’d no sooner said that than I won the next taxable jackpot.
I wish I could share with you the look of disbelief on their faces when they had to turn around and come back. Here’s that second taxable jackpot they had to come back for.
Professor Slots in Las Vegas and Alaska
Along with players clubs come free trips. Higher player tiers in this clubs means really free trips. Part of learning to win at slot machine casino gambling is understanding the system of complimentary gifts.
So, anyway, as a top-tier gambling I tool my free 3-day trip to Las Vegas about 2 weeks after winning the $17k described above. That cash came in very handy when trying to learn about what does and does not work well at casinos on the Las Vegas strip.
What I learned about slot machine gambling is detailed in Learning To Win, but I will be writing blog articles about my experiences in Las Vegas as time and audience interest permits. If you really want to know now, email me (jon@professorslots.com) to let me know of your interest.
I feel I did indeed quit, but it truly was more of a tapering off. Basically, it took awhile to ramp it all down, what with the valuable free stuff continuing to flow to me through two casino players clubs.
One of the complimentary gifts was annual 3-night stays in Las Vegas as well as a free 7-day cruises. The Alaska cruise was very quite nice, especially topped off with all the most expensive excursions!
And, Las Vegas was special indeed. I’d never had a limousine from an airport, stayed in such a great room, had such great food, and overall been entertained so well.
Afterwards, I never really stopped gambling, because my business requires that I keep pushing forward on learning, but the intensity certainty dropped to a level supporting writing a book about slots gambling, casinos, play club comps, and all the rest of it.
Writing “Learning To Win”
I wrote “LEARNING TO WIN: How to Make a Profit at Slot Machine Gambling” over the rest of 2014 through the beginning of 2016. I admit, it took awhile to finish. I’d never written a nonfiction book before.
I started writing with no idea what nonfiction book publishing was like. And, I was working more-than-full-time designing commercial jet engines. Whew!
I started Jon Friedl, LLC in 2016. My eBook LEARNING TO WIN: How to Make a Profit at Slot Machine Gambling was completed next. Next, I built and launched this website on October 31, 2016. And, so it continues.
The Future of Professor Slots
Frankly, I’m just getting started with Professor Slots. I’m determined to make it both interesting and helpful to you.
While I have created a book highlighting what I learned, how I learned it, and including all the amusing anecdotes from along the way, I realized now it was only a beginning. What I most need to do is build an audience.
Why? Because an audience will tell me what they need from me. They will tell me how best to help and serve them. And, this is where you come in. I need your email address.
And, if you thereby make yourself a member of my audience, I’ll give you free stuff. The first complimentary gift is my Free Report:
Otherwise, take a look around my website for various items of interest. Here are a few links to get you started:
- Home
- Professor Slots Blog
- Start Here
- Assessing Casinos for Success
- Choosing Slot Machines
- Identifying Gambling Goals
- Slot Machine Casino Gambling, State-By-State (A Weekly Blog Series)
Summary
This website is all about helping your be prepared to do well at slot machine casino gambling. It’s about having fun, receiving complimentary gifts, and/or winning cash.
Professor Slots is here to help you realize your slot machine casino gambling goals. You can steer your own slot machine casino gambling destiny!
Have fun, be safe, and make good choices!
By Jon H. Friedl, Jr. Ph.D., President
Jon Friedl, LLC