Net Vegas

Makarand writes "Vegas has to have the best of tech to keep the plotters away. Popular Science has an online article on how networks are playing an important role in Las Vegas. Welcome to Net Vegas where slot machines are networked and surveillance grids monitor everything that goes on. Net Vegas proves to be the best and the harshest test pad for new tech. Net Vegas will eventually move out of the city and into your homes using the web."

Comments

My friend does this

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a friend that works on these things at a casino in my area (indian res, not vegas) and I guess it is basically a net admin position. He works on slot machines and stuff over there, they use some Linux, NT, and Novel? We discussed it a bit, I was pretty surprised that slot machines where that techy now.

One of the senior projects at the college nearby also involved computerising the casino. They developed some sort of tracking system involving PDA's for dealers...not exactly sure because I didn't see it - only heard about it. I guess they already had it sold a few times before even finishing :P

Yep, where people throw money away other people can pick it up :P

NR

Of course

[tcd004]

Technology is always first developed for one of four things:

1. The Military
2. Sexual Urges
3. Easy Money
4. Security (making sure the above services are properly paid for)

If we can't have sex with it, blow it up, or make loads of cash off of it, we're just not interested.

Visit Richard Gere's Ass Zoo

tcd004

How closely are the casino's being watched?

[updog]

Interesting article about the technology used to watch and catch potential thieves of the casinos... but how closely are the gaming comissions watching the casinos to ensure we're not getting ripped off? With the millions of dollars passing through, the old "fraction of a penny" trick seems like it's a possibility, unless the casinos are watched very closely...

Re:How closely are the casino's being watched?

[ender81b]

The casinos are watched fairly closely, though not perhaps by the gaming commissions. Here is how I figure it. The commisions establish relatively fair laws, the casinos make money and people come away happy. Not only that there is the fairly famous gambler's ruin mathematical theory that shows that the gambler never can break even, it is always in the houses favor.

Now, of course, the casinos might want to make even more money by cheating people. Here is why this wouldn't work on, most likely, a grand scale. Even if they managed to bribe a large contigent of inspectors ( a distinct possibility) what would happen, you suppose, if word of this got out? I mean, las vegas cheating people on a grand scale? You would have investigations upon investigations and it could ruin business in vegas. As I see casino operators are making money hand-over-fist right now, why attempt to ruin a good thing? Also, what happens if a rival casino operator finds out you are cheating? I'm sure a fair ammount of self-policing goes on to make sure one bad apple, so to speak, doesn't ruin it for the rest of Vegas. You think atlantic city and other places wouldn't jump on the chance to be the new 'fair city of gambling?'

This is not to say they don't cheat - I'm sure it happens, but not on any grand scale. Lets face it, if you are going to vegas odds are you aren't going to come away with more money than you brought.

Re:How closely are the casino's being watched?

[Kierthos]

I seem to recall reading somewhere that for craps and blackjack, the house takes are the lowest (around 2%). In other words, they only expect to keep 2% of what is gambled there.

This does not mean that if you have $100, you will walk away with $98, especially if you insist on betting all $100 on one throw. What it means is that over a statistically significant period of time, your wins and losses combined will relieve you (and everyone else participating in that game) of about 2% of your cash.

However, the house _always_ wins in the end. In most Las Vegas casinos, you can get free drinks while gambling, which affects your judgement, makes you more likely to increase the size of your wager, etc.

Also, on those low "house take" games, the payouts tend to be smaller. Sure, on roulette, you can win 35 times what you bet if the ball lands on your number. But it has a 1:36 chance of doing so. You can bet on black and get a 2:1 payout, but there is slightly less then a 1:2 chance that it will land on black.

Gambling casinos are designed to take money out of your pocket and put it into the casino's pocket. Never forget that. Don't go there with the idea of breaking the bank.

However, if you have a $100 or $200, or the room gives you free chips to play with, and that's all you plan on using, have fun. If you come out ahead, great. If you lose those room chips, don't worry, you haven't dipped into your money yet. Just keep a level head on you, and you can have fun in Las Vegas.

Kierthos

Re:Hacking Roulette?

[cwis42]

Quoting the article: None more so than Ronald Dale Harris, whose job as a software engineer for the state Gaming Control Board was to write slot machine anti-cheating software. Harris surreptitiously coded a hidden software switch--tripped by inserting coins in a predetermined sequence--that would trigger cash jackpots. After retooling more than 30 machines, Harris and accomplices made the rounds, walking away with hundreds of thousands of dollars. Harris was caught when one of his confederates implicated him after being busted in Atlantic City for rigging a Keno game. In 1998, Harris was sentenced to seven years. (Emphasis mine.)

Another Interesting Article

[denisonbigred]

Here's an interesting article from a month or two back in wired. True story about some kids from MIT breaking Vegas.

Security on Progressive games

[ChicoLance]

I used to be work on the communications software for slot machine, and although every machine in the building is wired together via fiber optic cable (fiber optics aren't as suseptable to a lot of the noise generated in the casino, such as neon, among other reasons), it's important to realized that there isn't a whole lot data on the line that's really a security risk.

Every machine has generates it's own random numbers and determines if it hits the jackpot by itself. The methods to do that are faily secure, but since there are a lot of variable to pick from, such as the number of milliseconds between user buttonpresses, randomness is not much of a problem. The command to win the jackpot does not come over the network.

All that's really on the network are things like coins in/coins out, number of plays, and a lot of accounting data. This data goes to the casino for their own accounting, and also goes into a box which then computes how much to increment the progressive jackpot. If an individual machine says "I won the big one!", then everything is shut down, the individual machine is checked to make sure the software hasn't been tampered or any other security measure broken, then the winner is paid (sort of). The command "to win" doesn't come from the network, so security is not a problem from the network.

On some lottery setup, an administrator can send a command to shut a particular machine down, but on the whole, the machines are pretty autonomous. Casinos are considered pretty secure environments anyway.

I always thought this was pretty interesting when I've explained it to others, so I thought I'd repeat it here.

Re:Yeah right, and

[blair1q]

The racetrack heist was an inside job by a guy with the password to the database. That sort of security problem will be with us until we get the human factor completely out of the system from conception to implementation to validation.

And then there will be no need for money, because the human slaves of the master machines don't have time off to shop.

Player Tracking Technologies

[ChicoLance]

A technology I always thought was interesting at the Casinos was the whole "Player Tracking" aspect. The marketing people just drool to know what and when individuals are playing.

Just like the grocery "club cards", a player can sit down at a machine, put in their tracking card, and play away in the hopes of getting credits towards a hotel room or something. In the back room, some guy is looking over the reports, and sees that you tend to come in on Friday nights, play for a little while, have dinner, then bet a little bit more for a couple of hours. You stay an average of 20 minutes per machine, tend to gravitate towards the red machines, but stay longer at blue ones, and that you like to play "Double Diamond". The waitress can view a summary screen near the drink station and see a list of everybody in her area, have it highlighed in red if you're a top player, highlighted in green if it's your birthday, and if it's both, well, you'll get a nice bottle of champaine delivered to you without even asking.

The whole "science" of which colors attract which people for how long, which seats are the best, and which layouts work is a fascinating subject, but really only studied by a select few.

No slot machine credit cards

[ChicoLance]

Ever wonder why you haven't seen credit cards on a slot machine?

Besides it screaming to be a bad idea because you know people would abuse it, but that normally doesn't stop the marketing people.

No, the main problem is that you're only liable for $50 on your credit card if the card is lost. What's to stop somebody from running up $2000 on a machine, then claiming to "lose" the card. They'd be personally liable for only $50, and the casino would have a chargeback for the rest. Not a good business plan.

There was a pilot program a while back (there might be others now), that used an ATM like card where you can put money on a card, then withdraw it at the individual machines. It was scary to look at the reports and see some guy at a machine withdraw $10k from his card, then 20 minutes later, withdraw another $10k, over and over again.

slots underbelly

[octalgirl]

In Vegas a couple of years ago, there was a whole row of slots in repair. They tip the row over on its side, showing the mounting plate and everything underneath. Very clearly you could see the RJ45 jacks in the floor and what looked like regular Cat5 going from the jack to up inside the machine somewhere. There were outlets of course, and other cables, similar to large computer/mainframe setup where the cable trays are underneath. My thought was, if they are on a traditional network, then the guys at the other end can control just about anything on that slot.

Same trip, different casino, hubby and I walked up to a $1 progressive slot, and he started hitting 100 and 250 each pull. (it was near the back of a casino and we were the only ones there, it was also at 8mil, which is around when they hit) After about 4 hits, these men in suits with earpieces showed up. 2 right behind us, and 2 on the other side of the slots. They kept talking into their lapels (I kid you not!) like some sort of spy movie. I watched one guy look over hubby's shoulder, give a look to the other guy, talk to the lapel, and then we started losing. After a couple of pulls and losing, they walked away. I really don't think it was coincidence.