2a. Shutting Down A Paying Machine
Date: Tue Apr 3, 2007 4:10 pm ((PDT))Last week I was in Vegas and saw something I had never seen before.
I saw a guy playing $1 DDBP machine and he was apparently winning
like crazy. After each jackpot, he was cashing out and re-inserting
another hundred dollars. Twice a slot attendant had to come over and
get information from him for a W2G for what I believe were $2k wins
(4 Aces with the kicker). He was having a good time and was
obviously on a good streak, although he was being somewhat loud and
obnoxious about it all. After about an hour, security walked over
with a guy in a suit and they asked him to leave the machine. He
seemed upset and honestly I don't know why he was asked to leave, but
after he left they opened the machine and shut it down - Out of
Service. I honestly don't know if they were asking him personally to
leave, or if they wanted him off a hot machine. A little while later
I saw the same guy in another bank so he wasn't kicked out of the
casino. I was just curious in knowing if anyone had ever witnessed a
casino closing a machine because it was paying too much. A few hours
later the machine was playing again and I sat down without much
luck. I know they cannot tinker with the RNG or manipulate wins or
losses, but does shutting it down temporarily cycle the machine
somehow to the benefit of the casino? I suppose so but was surprised
that they would take such a brash approach to close down
a "seemingly" hot machine. Just curious for anyone's thoughts on
this.
It would seem reasonable, and good management, to track such matters, and when the "hits" seem to be above some threshhold (personally, I'd look for less than one chance in a thousand, or maybe even up to one chance in 100,000) where those are the "odds" of it happening just by chance, to check the machines for malfunction. While it's illegal, machines can be tampered with (not very easily, would require very high level of knowledge, would need to be an "inside job" and probably would require the cooperation of some "confirming" employee as well), and the casino certainly has reason to take appropriate measures to assure that this has not happened in such a situation.
This "threshhold" of 1 in 100,000 (or whatever) would be applied to a series of wins, not just hitting something that is EXPECTED to come up about that often that occurs ONCE.
Hitting a royal is an uncommon event. Hitting two in a row is highly unlikely - it happens, and we've had reports of it, but the casino might want to do a tech check on a machine where it happens.
Same probably goes for the frequent high pays the described player was hitting.
The first time I ever hit a royal on a $5 machine, a tech had to open the machine for some kind of check, and they said they had to review their tapes, before I was paid (I was scared to death that I was going to be denied payment, because I was just starting to play serious VP, and was frequently using a strategy card at that time -- long time ago).
I sometimes get pocket Aces in holdem - odds 1:221. I have gotten them twice in a row - odds about the same as hitting a royal. If someone at my poker table got them four times in a row, I'd probably change tables, not because he was so "lucky" but because it's not unreasonable to suspect something illegal going on with such great "luck".
On "Breaking Vegas", a TV series a couple of years ago, I think there was an epsiode about something like this - on a NON-videopoker slot, though, as I recall.
All this said, if the machine "checks out", there's no good reason not to put it right back in service -- it SHOULD still give the casino it's expected "hold", and taking it out of service is wasting a valuable casino asset that should be out there producing income.
Unless they decided they couldn't tolerate the potential occasional loss from a machine that only "holds" 0.5% or so, and that they had to put in worse pay schedules (better from their perspective).
If I were a consultant to a casino, that would be my advice -- if I'm missing something major here, I'd like to know about it.
--BG
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