The Vegas Matt persona is a stubborn gambler who cherishes his wins and mourns his losses without ever growing outright despondent. My Instagram algorithm is littered, alongside Vegas Matt, with deep-fried, postironic gambling memes, all of which seem to simultaneously celebrate and parody the impotence of this enterprise. While I’ve thought of him mostly as a gambling cryptid—Bigfoot if he were in way too deep at the roulette wheel—I was also mystified by his persona. Because that’s what we do every day.” “What would happen if you were in Vegas, every day, and gambled? “Our watch hours on YouTube in December were, like, 5.7 million hours. “People give estimates of what they think we’re making, and it’s always way low,” he told me from the plush interior of his Rolls-Royce, which was still scented with a synthetic new-purchase aroma. All told, in 2024 he reportedly suffered $404,000 in gambling losses.
That was a bold decision, especially in such an infamously paranoid business. Any money the man bleeds comes from his own bank account. “We’ll sit there and watch him for an hour,” said Schachinger, who owns an IT company and plays slots at $30 a spin. They wince at his defeats and toast his victories, and all are fluent in the jargon Morrow deploys on his YouTube channel. 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. Vegas Matt is generous, flashing a big smile for everyone in line—after all, it’s really his fans who pay his bills. He avoids the tactics of other gambling influencers, who seem to mostly post their massive jackpots.
Vegas Matt, on the other hand, is unable to take a break from reality with the intoxicating assistance of excess. All of my frugalities are thrown out the window, bad ideas become good ideas, until, before long, I’m buying a pack of Marlboro Reds at 4 in the morning. A great Vegas trip, for my money, consists of a sudden and violent psychological displacement. And when I do lose, there isn’t a private dinner of stone crab claws waiting to balm my sorrows. The thrill of risking money that I can never recover, with YouTube metrics or otherwise, is one of my most cherished sins. I was actually on a bit of a hot streak by the time lmct pokies 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.
Merchandise
“And then he loses, like, $15,000 and walks out.” He told me that other properties around Las Vegas, ones that have historically obfuscated the misery of this business, are not. Vegas Matt has correctly identified a sea change in the gambling industry. If I did a meet and greet and they promoted it, I could get 2,300 people there, but instead of a bunch of screaming girls, they’d be gamblers. “This place will pay Carrie Underwood $2 million a weekend to get 2,300 people into that theater. “I could have this place as busy as the El Cortez, but the geniuses who run these companies don’t get it yet,” Morrow said, from the middle of the alabaster Crockfords game room.
However, there is one time when hitting the jackpot might not be as satisfying as you’d expect – when you’ve had to put in more money to actually get it. He has mixed business with pleasure, and naturally, business is winning out. The next day, after a couple of way-too-strong gin and sodas, I withdrew the $100 I had, at the beginning of the trip, made peace with losing. “This is cliché, but for someone who had a hard time getting a date to the prom, or who wasn’t picked to be on the basketball team at recess, it’s fun to be like, Hey, maybe I am doing all right.” “Even at 61 years old, it’s a rewarding experience when people from your past, going back decades, reach out. Yes, Vegas Matt has managed to nullify the perils of gambling, but he has done so by leveraging social media—yet another casino, replete with long odds and enthralling opportunity—where the numbers can always get bigger.
There is no better feeling when playing slots than finally taking down a huge jackpot. YouTuber Vegas Matt shared his biggest ever win on a podcast – but there was just one slight problem. 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. The other half was cheerfully loaned out by the casino.
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? The thrill of the chase, and the ability to win a huge sum of money for a small wager is the main attraction of the game, and what keeps slots as the most popular game to play in casinos. His videos are actually where I learned the rules of baccarat and discovered it’s not nearly as complicated as I previously though. 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. Vegas Matt films at the El Cortez because, since 2017, it’s been one of the few casinos in the city that allow patrons to shoot video of their table games. High-limit slots and table games can produce massive upswings, but they aren’t a reliable wealth-building engine for most people.
Now it’s idiots like me, whipping out their phone on a Thursday night, destined to endanger another $20 on a doomed three-leg parlay. Yet, somehow, he has managed to turn losing money into an enviable living—and is one of the only people on Earth to do so. Vegas Matt’s legion of fans follow him for exactly one reason, and that’s to watch him lose—and, on seldom occasions, win—unconscionable amounts of money. There was no way he’d end the night with dignity, yet here he was, perched at the baccarat table, trying to get even. Howie Mandel asked Vegas Matt what the largest jackpot he’d ever hit on the high limit slots was. Having picked up nearly a million a followers across the various social media networks, Vegas Matt’s videos are everywhere and Howie Mandel recently invited Stephen Matt Morrow onto his show where a hilarious exchange called into question the age old ‘reality versus Instagram’ paradox. Speaking on the “Howie Mandel Does Stuff” podcast, gambling YouTuber Vegas Matt was asked the most he’d ever one on a single jackpot.
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