Who knew Chuck E. Cheese would raise a generation of hustlers?
Most of this scene centers around “adult Chuck E. Cheese” chain Dave and Busters. I assume advantage play has been going on since these stores started opening, but broad public awareness and an online community developed around 2012 or so.
You can’t win cash, but Dave and Busters has all sorts of good prizes with high resale value and low shipping weight available. The idea is to spend less than the prize value and then flip it, usually by selling online. People seem to particularly focus on the games that run up big jackpots.
The reason this works is that unlike a casino, many D&B games are legitimately skill-based or at least have some little hink or oversight by the developer that makes them exploitable. There is some investment in actually practicing the games and getting good at them. Aspiring advantage players will also probably have to learn the ropes of becoming an eBay or Amazon seller to most efficiently and profitably move their prizes.
There is also an inherent difficulty here in that the more information is made public about exploitable games, the more people abuse them and thus the more likely they are to get nerfed or disappear. For example, detailed guides to winning games were posted on the D&B Reddit up until around 2015 or so. Too many people used them and started putting big dents in D&B margins, so the company nerfed all the games in question.
D&B isn’t the only opportunity going, though. The company’s current iteration has been around for almost two decades now, so a lot of local independent knockoffs with similar games and prizes have popped up. Also, you can find these games in onesies and twosies all over the place – everywhere from casinos to convenience stores.
Arcade AP is all about pounding the pavement to see what’s around you and keep up with new releases. You have to actually get out and observe the games, using personal knowledge and any manuals / online info that can be found to determine if they are beatable (in the sense of consistent money out > money in). It’s basically like slot hustling, but not confined to casinos and with way less of a degenerate community. It’s all about doing your own due diligence, though. The easier an opportunity is to find from a trail of online breadcrumbs, the more likely it is that other people have already blown up the spot or will very soon.
Resources:
- Dave and Busters AP Introductory Guide
- Ten Commandments of Dave and Busters AP
- Wired article that originally blew up the spot
- Interview with one of the most prominent Dave and Busters APs
- Intro to arcade AP
- Claw machine tips