Jean Scott, born Merla McCormick in 1938, is a retired teacher, an

advantage player Advantage gambling, or advantage play, refers to legal methods used to gain an advantage while gambling, in contrast to cheating. The term usually refers to house-banked casino games, but can also refer to games played against other players, suc ...

/ comp hustler, and a

gambling Gambling (also known as betting or gaming) is the wagering of something of value ("the stakes") on a random event with the intent of winning something else of value, where instances of strategy are discounted. Gambling thus requires three el ...

author who is best known for her 1998 book ''The Frugal Gambler.'' The book features gambling advice for novice gamblers, including money management strategies and how to procure the best casino comps and discounts. Scott was featured on '' 48 Hours'' as a successful

video poker Video poker is a casino game based on five-card draw poker. It is played on a computerized console similar in size to a slot machine. History Video poker first became commercially viable when it became economical to combine a television-like moni ...

player in 1995, which showed her winning a

Mercury Marquis The Mercury Marquis is a model line of automobiles that was marketed by the Mercury division of Ford Motor Company from the 1967 to 1986 model years. Deriving its name from a French nobility title, the Marquis was introduced as a rebadged counte ...

car. She has claimed to win over a million dollars at casino gambling as of 2006. Scott published a sequel to her first book, ''More Frugal Gambling'' in 2003. This book gives more details to help all levels of gamblers to lose less/win more. She went on to publish three more books in her Frugal Gambling series: ''Tax Help for Gamblers''; ''Frugal Video Poker'', a step-by-step guide to becoming a skilled VP player; and ''The Frugal Gambler Casino Guide'' (2017), which updates the information in the previous books to help gamblers adjust to the changing casino environment. Scott allowed the ''Las Vegas Review-Journal'' to shadow her and her husband, to shed light upon the casino lifestyle of

Stephen Paddock Stephen Craig Paddock (April 9, 1953 – October 1, 2017) was an American mass murderer who perpetrated the 2017 Las Vegas shooting. Paddock opened fire into a crowd of about 22,000 concertgoers attending a country music festival on the Las ...

, the American high-limit gambler, fellow advantage player/comp hustler, and mass murderer responsible for the

2017 Las Vegas shooting On October 1, 2017, Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old man from Mesquite, Nevada, opened fire on the crowd attending the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip in . From his 32nd-floor suites in the Mandalay Bay hotel, he fired ...

. Scott was also profiled by her granddaughter Kaity Howard in a documentary ''Merla & Jean'' about the dual identities involved in being a public advantage gambler, which revealed her birth name to the public.

References

External links

Official site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Scott, Jean American gambling writers Living people Year of birth missing (living people)