Jean Scott, born Merla McCormick in 1938, is a retired teacher, an advantage player/comp hustler, and a gambling author who is best known for her 1998 book The Frugal Gambler.[1] [2] 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 player in 1995, which showed her winning a Mercury Marquis car.[3] 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.[4]
Scott allowed the Las Vegas Review-Journal to shadow her and her husband, to shed light upon the casino lifestyle of Stephen Paddock, the American high-limit gambler,[5] fellow advantage player/comp hustler,[6] and mass murderer responsible for the 2017 Las Vegas shooting.[7] 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.[8]