Ask the Slot Expert: Another video poker machine malfunction

Question: I enjoy reading your articles, especially the ones you have been posting recently about machine malfunctions. I have a story for you from Atlantic City back in the day when coins and buckets were still being used.

My wife loves to play video poker, while I love the live version. But whenever we go to the casinos together I usually spend some time at a machine next to her to kill some time.

I had just finished a live session and joined her at a quarter jacks or better machine (I don't recall if it was a single line or triple play). I put a $20 bill in and was playing for a few minutes when my wife looks over and asks me what I hit. I told her I didn't hit anything and was losing a few bucks because my credits were down to 320 and I started with 400.

She says if you only put a $20 bill in you would have started with 80 credits. Of course she was right and since I am used to starting with a $100 bill I didn't think anything of it. I guess I had a rough day at the live tables so I only put in $20.

So I take another $20 bill out and insert it into the machine and what do you know - another 400 credits. Apparently the quarter machine was thinking like a nickel machine. So literally we could put in a $20 bill and cash out $100.

I cashed out my 720 credits and then put in another $20 - 400 more credits. So we decided to take turns playing the machine for as long as we could. They had to come fill the hopper 4 times - twice while she was playing and twice while I was playing.

When the hopper was empty for the 5th time the slot attendant said something to the effect of "Wow, you again, must be your lucky night". Of course I tipped him well, but then I started to worry that we could be being watched. We played a few more hours waiting for the shift change and then cashed out our "winnings" with the new attendant who had to empty the hopper two more times.

After the 2nd time, I said I think we need to stop. So we went to bed after taking about $3,500 from the machine without really winning anything. In the morning we went to breakfast and passed by the machine which now had an out of service sign on it.

Have you ever heard of a similar situation? And also, if the casino found out while we were playing what do you think they would have done?

I often wonder if something similar were to happen today, could we just keep putting in cash and cashing out tickets until the ticket paper ran out?

Answer: Thanks for the kind words about my columns.

Two topics that are always popular -- cheating and machine malfunctions. Your letter has elements of both.

I have heard of similar situations and I know exactly what happened.

The key phrase in your letter is "back when coins and buckets were still being used."

Machines at this time were not dollar-based but credit-based. Denomination didn't really affect anything but the color of the candle on top of the machine. To change the denomination of a machine, all casinos had to do was change the coin head (the slot you drop the coin in) and the coin camparitor (the gizmo in the machine that attempts to verify that you dropped in a valid coin and not a slug). And some cosmetic changes for the new denomination. Machines were single denomination.

In the early days of bill acceptors, something had to translate between dollars and credits. I don't know exactly how or where this was done. Google's AI overview for "how did early slot machine bill acceptors work" says that "the validator sent a series of electronic pulses to the slot machine's CPU -- for example, sending one electrical pulse for each dollar -- which the machine converted directly into game credits."

In one of the electronic gaming device cheating seminars I've attended, I learned that the conversion factor between dollars and credits was once a software configuration entry available to slot attendants. What could go wrong?

Well, an attendant could change the conversion rate on a dollar machine from 1-to-1, to a rate appropriate for a nickel machine, 20-to-1, for a confederate. Conspirator number 2 could then put in a dollar and cash out $20 worth of tokens.

Does this sound familiar?

Regulators required that this sort of denomination change had to be done with a chip change and not in software, effectively defeating this cheating method.

Now let's look at the situation in the letter. A Jackson in the acceptor resulted in 400 credits. Twenty bucks over 400 credits equals 0.05/credit. A nickel machine, as you deduced.

Your machine had a split personality. Part of it was set up as a quarter machine, but the conversion for the bill acceptor was configured for a nickel machine.

The casino was asleep at the wheel. Remember the scene in Casino when Ace is chewing out the nepo baby over not knowing that people were cheating when multiple jackpots were hit on a bank of machines? He said that it just could not happen.

Well, it could happen. It's just incredibly unlikely to happen. Unlikely enough that it should have triggered a warning to take a closer look at what was happening.

So many hopper fills on one machine in such a short period of time should have triggered a warning to the casino.

Given that this happened in Atlantic City, I think the casino would have cashed you out and taken the machine out of service if the error was discovered while you were playing.

Depending on the generation of slot club, if there was one and you were playing with a card, the casino could have calculated how much money you put in, how much you bet, and how much you won to determine how much you should have cashed out.

But would it be worth it for $3500, unless NJ's regulations required them to try to recoup the money?

Had this occurred in another gaming jurisdiction, I could see the casino going so far as trespassing you from the casino. Players have told me that they've been 86'ed for less.

This can't happen today. Even though you can often change the credit meter display to show credits instead of dollars, internally the machine deals in dollars. A dollar in the bill acceptor adds a dollar to the credit meter. No conversion factor needed.

Was this a malfunction? Well, not really. The machine was doing what it was configured to do. That just happened to be the wrong thing.

Cheating? I think you crossed the line after your third buy-in. First time, hmm. Second, look at that. Third, something's not right.

I won't rat you out. Snitches and stitches and all that.

If you would like to see more non-smoking areas on slot floors in Las Vegas, please sign my petition on change.org.

Send your slot and video poker questions to John Robison, Slot Expert™, at slotexpert@slotexpert.com.

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Send your slot and video poker questions to John Robison, Slot Expert™, at slotexpert@slotexpert.com. Because of the volume of mail I receive, I regret that I can't reply to every question.

Copyright © John Robison. Slot Expert and Ask the Slot Expert are trademarks of John Robison.