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. It’s a sentiment that clarifies the twinge of humiliation I felt after watching him cut out a baccarat bet of roughly the same value as my 401(k). Over and over again, he told me that the only thing he’s ever wanted to do with his life is have fun. For the first time in our entire day together, there is a flash of venom. He lived in Los Angeles, where he unsuccessfully tried his hand at stand-up comedy and ended up helping finance a couple of kitschy horror movies in the late 1980s, including the infamous Night of the Demons. Wiesberg has put faith in the idea that people like me have become immune to the traditional ways the gambling industry has marketed itself.
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.
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.
How Vegas Matt Made His Money
Because I too have sat at a blackjack table deep into the witching hour, and even on my best nights, I don’t think I’ve ever wandered to the payout window feeling totally satiated. “We’re looking for cool people,” he said, advocating Commonwealth casino for Vemma. To become a gambling influencer, one must already be pretty rich, and that tracks with the single ambition Vegas Matt seems to have. They say, ‘Oh it’s a scam,’ ” he said. “So many people fail, and they don’t want to take responsibility for their failure. And yet, after several hours together, I’m still unable to pierce Vegas Matt’s gaudy persona. Halfway through my day with Morrow, it became clear that he intended to impress me.
The other half was cheerfully loaned out by the casino. He has mixed business with pleasure, and naturally, business is winning out. Vegas Matt, on the other hand, is unable to take a break from reality with the intoxicating assistance of excess. Those doses of depravity—meted out in 36-hour intervals—are the spice of life. A great Vegas trip, for my money, consists of a sudden and violent psychological displacement. The thrill of risking money that I can never recover, with YouTube metrics or otherwise, is one of my most cherished sins.
Vegas Matt is generous, flashing a big smile for everyone in line—after all, it’s really his fans who pay his bills. 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. Around that time, a renewed interest in the game minted a fresh generation of stars, like Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth, and Phil Ivey, who had clairvoyant talents on the felt. It was always possible to become a celebrity by gambling, but, historically speaking, the luminaries of this world were expected to win. But most of all, I wanted to know if his life was as enticing as it looked on camera. How can he stand to lose so much money? 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.
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.
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, 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.
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.