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Cheating Fruit (Slot) Machines
ebbdr writes "Ever think that fruit machines cheat you? You would be right, at least in the UK. This article provides proof that fruit machine outcomes are predetermined and that the players inputs have little, if anything to do with it. And it lets you download the emulators and machine code required to test the hypothesis for yourself...."
It thinks it's running on a real physical fruit machine and acts in exactly the same way in all circumstances (except money doesn't actually come out of your PC).
Whew, thank god they put in that disclaimer, or I would've wasted the next 7 hours sitting here waiting for that one big payout from my PC.
for the love of god, does anyone have the ROMs for the machines in vegas?? i'd love to see what the hell is going on there
I can't seem to find -where- they got the ROM from? Seems like a crucial part of it to say what particular model/version.. I mean, even the screenshots have different quality graphics.
Not to say they're lying, but I'm not convinced of their "proof". Anyone else see something I missed?
The Random Number Generator (RNG) can be
made to change its percentage by simply changing it's seed number. There
are several ways this cam be done.
1) Change the Eprom Chip with a new program and/or seed number which any
computer technician can change a chip.
2) Use an Eprom that has a cyclic program that will keep changing the
seed number after predetermined numbers of cycles.
3) Posibly change the seed number through a signal from the master
computer or mainframe. There is no doubt that all these machines are
hooked up to the mainframe for monitoring and/or recording data for
expert review. It is known fact that comp cards and players records
are fed back to the mainframe, why not other data.
It is for this reason why I am an advocate for all Gambling to come under
a Federal or State controlled Gambling Commission. All of what I say is
not intended to infer that there is any tampering with slot machine
programs and controls. I can only say from my experience as a computer
programmer, that if the possibility exists, the probability resides.
Therefore only an astute Gaming Commission that can oversee these
computers and their control, will clear up this doubt and mistrust about
slot machines.
I don't know how it is in Britain, but it's well-known that U.S. slot machines pay a fixed percentage that is set by the house. The symbols that come up on the reels aren't random, and aren't advertised as such. So I'm not entirely clear why this is news.
...
Maybe these kinds of machines are different in Britain, or maybe they're advertised differently
Heh, I remember the gool ol' Random Runner, before it had its programming upgraded. It would offer you exactly the same gamble as the article mentions, ie. two flashing lights with 'win' and 'lose', you hit a button and one of the lights stays on. What you did on the Random Runner was keep the button depressed. If you lost, too bad, but if you won... the next level bet would start but you'd win automatically, and the next bet, and so on.
Random Runners were popular with proprietors as well, as it was easy to obtain ROMs for these machines that would drastically lower the payout. Seeig this kind of machine is like a red flag for inspectors; they'll be sure to inspect the ROM in the machine.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
...because if this had happened in the US, lawyers would have already delivered a C&D to get the website shut down, and the guys who uncovered this would've been slapped with a huge DMCA lawsuit over their duplication of the functions of the machine on a PC.
The issue of massive, provable fraud (of which Joe Average is the victim) would have been glossed over in favor of the copyright infringement nonsense (of which Huge Heartless Corp is the "victim").
I've thought about this myself. The whole key to a slot machine or a fruit machine is that you need to be able to set the "payout" percentage, typically something high like 98%. 98% means that the player gets back $0.98 on every $1, assuming he plays an infinite amount of times.
The only way to guarantee this is by determining what the payout is as soon as the money's in the slot. The "pick high or low" and all of these other things are just meant to help keep the player interested, so that the player keeps playing.
Slot machines use other tricks, too: You can play on multiple lines, or you can play multiple coins for higher bonuses. Obviously the bonuses are multiples of the number of coins you play, so they have zero effect on probability. Multiple lines increases the probability you'll win per spin, but it doesn't affect the probability per coin, which is what matters to the proprietor.
This isn't a scam or cheating or anything like that. It is the same principle behind coin-op arcade machines: You pay to play. On a machine that has 98% payout and takes quarters, that means you pay (theoretically) half a cent every time you spin. In reality, you spend more or less than that depending on random outcomes, but over millions of plays on thousands of machines it means a good twopence on the pound for the Brits and two cents on the dollar for Americans.
Companies, that is. Not for the players.
I keep telling people to play the change machines instead, at least you're gonna break even on each slot session.
that's why we need an open source lottery.
here's how it will work:
everyone sends me a buck and when I have a million, I'll pick a name from the people who sent them in (at random)
I won't take a cut because I'm such a nice guy.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
Sorry, but no. On the machine tested, the pre-determined outcome of losing affects a chance to improve the winnings on an original bet. Either collect the 40p winning now, or gamble on high/low for the chance of a 60p win. Thus it is a gamble, which should carry with it the chance of actually winning.
As stated, this equates to selling raffle tickets where there's no winning number - dishonest and should be illegal.
~Cederic
I think this quote from the article demonstrates that kind of behaviour:
The pseudo-code would probably look like this:
(How do I create indents? :)
From the article: "And in almost all cases, no matter what you chose, the result would be the same.",
Almost? Hmmmmm.
Anyway, what does it matter? Everyone knows that those machines have always given out less than they take in. What difference does it make what method they use? My dad has an old British slot machine that is 100% mechanical. Even it has dials inside that allow you to increase or decrease payouts to players. Anyone who buys a slot machine intends to make money with it. If it was a gamble to own the machine, nobody would. Vegas slots are all wired together to collectively "rip you off". Is this really a news flash to anyone?
If you can't afford to lose the money, you shouldn't put it in the machine.
I doubt if anyone in history who has ever won the lottery put more into it than they got out. It's this possibility which excites people, let them have their fun.
Of course, if you drive a few miles to the store to buy a lotto ticket, your odds of dying in a traffic accident are similar to your odds of winning (both about 20,000,000:1).
Maybe playing lotto has more in common with skydiving than most people think.
Reading this article I can't help but wonder what this group is thinking. Just because the outcome of the next roll is figured out ahead of time doesn't mean it wasn't randomly generated. It was just randomly generated earlier than anticipated.
It's a good thing I play blackjack...
I know it's a great /. tradition not to read the articles, but, for once, could you make an attempt?
To summerise the problem, the ROM shows that the outcome of slot machines is predetermined. In the acticle it gives an example:
"The machine has a number reel, with numbers from 1 to 12. On the reel a "10" is showing. Should you go Higher, or Lower?"
Apparently the machine doesn't pick a number at random from 1 to 12 and compares that to your guess of higher or lower. Instead it is predetermined whether you win or lose, so whichever button you press doesn't matter.
An emulator enables you to save and restore previous states, so that you can find out what would have happened. In this case, the author/s of the piece are saying that slot machines are predetermined things, at least in part.
This is probably illegal, as the machine is strongly implying that your guess will affect your chances (higher than 10 is less likely than lower than 10), which is shown to be untrue. It's almost like having a fixed dice game. In a fair game you'd expect to have 1/6 chance of winning when you roll a dice. In the above slot-machine example you'd expect a 1/6 chance of winning if you pressed Higher, and a 3/4 chance of winning if you pressed Lower, and this isn't the case.
Why not just stone the winners instead?
(it's not offtopic, if you've read Shirley Jackson's The Lottery)
A few years ago someone won over $600,000 from a machine at the Montreal Casino by analyzing patterns in the numbers that came up. The sequence repeated because the machine wasn't seeding the pseudo-random number generator properly. More info in Risks Digest.
The problem with digital gaming machines is that it is too easy for the programmer to add twists to the algorithms that tweak the odds. It seems odd that they would bother, since the laws of probability come out in the casino's favor, they don't need to tweak the algorithm, just do a little basic math first.
As I recall, the Nevada casinos are required to post the expected payout and odds on the machines. For example, the expected payout might be 98%. That means the casino collects on average 2 pennies every time a patron shakes the hand of a one armed bandit with a dollar bet. The casinos don't need to pull any tricks beyond calculating the expected payouts for the different states of the machine and make sure the expected payout is less than one.
It is disconcerting knowing that there are machines which go even further.
As I understand, a well run gaming commissions tries to assure that casinos don't bend the rules any further than that.
And guess what... When YOU are the one using this "feature" to gain money, the casino owners will kick you out of the casino. It's ok when they cheat you by controlling the outcome of slots, but when you cheat them, they kick you out. That's why:
- I don't go to casinos.
- Except when I go to Indian casinos (for the food) and when I do, I do not "gamble."
Gambling is just plain stupid anyway.The example they have is that, if you follow the sequence on this page, the machine reaches a point that's supposed to be a gamble, but in fact you cannot win. And it's not because the output is predetermined, or the seed is the same and it happens to be a losing bet. It's a high/low gamble, so you should have a chance to win regardless of what the seed was. But if you pick high the machine picks low, and vice-versa. An 'honest' machine would pick the same number regardless of which button you picked.
Of course, the legal/ethical issue is more complicated than the simple mechanical issue. The basic problem is that machines are never fair, and cannot ever be fair because their purpose is to redistribute money from your pocket to the machine owner. The large number of people who seem to think that gambling is ever fair are deluded or naive. And the problem with the specific machine referenced above is that it has the extremely difficult task of mapping a percentage payout (they mention it's probably 70%) to a more fair operation (high-low with a pair of dice). Therefore, it has to cheat sometimes to ensure it doesn't payout too much. Which is perfectly legal, and really is the only way to do it. If they actually get a law passed saying that machines cannot cheat in any circumstance, it will mean the end of gambling, because no owner in their right mind would take a real gamble, where they could lose all that money they've been raking in.
Something I have a vague recollection of from my lectures in Psychology can be applied to gambling machines.
Apparently, the most effective way to get someone to keep doing something is to provide a reward at random intervals [of button pressing, lever pulling etc.], centered around some average. It doesn't matter how large the reward is, just as long as it is something. Most studies were carried out on rats, but humans are so similar to rats that you might as well generalise.
For "Fruit Machines", you can encourage people to play by rewarding them randomly, but on average, say, about every 20 button pushes. The amount returned from the machine doesn't really matter in terms of how addictive the machine will be, so a 99% payout would work as well as a 80% payout.
But then again, who ever listened to a psychologist and believed what they were saying?
Ask me about repetitive DNA
I've been in at least 6 car accidents in the last 30 years. I figure I'm past due to win the goddamn Lotto ;-)
In the study involving rats there were three groups:
Group 1: Every time they pressed a lever, food came out.
Group 2: When lever was pulled, they sometimes got more food, but most of the time, none at all.
Group 3: Did not get any food when they pushed the lever.
Groups 1 and 2 constantly pushed the levr in order to get food. Goup 3 stopped pressing the lever after the lack of food. At one point, the researchers stopped providing food. Group 1 stopped pressing levers, given tht there was no food. However, Group 2 thought that the big payoff and kept pushing levers anyway.
Actually, there probably is a random number generator....the thing is, it's always being initialized with the same seed. That's how they can be sure of what will happen in each spin of the game in the examples.
The place where it isn't being used is the "high-low" pick (and other places). That's the kicker.
First off, the article (yes, I read the article). The author's biggest peeve is that the outcome of the "double or nothing" option on the fruit machines is determined before the user even chooses. Big whoop. Whether the magic number is determined before or after you choose is meaningless; it does not affect the odds.
Second, a previous poster mentioned the RNG. In IGT slots (and I would imagine most modern ones), the RNG device is a super-sensitive measurement device that detects tiny vibrations in the chassis. This is a much better way of seeding a number generator than any software-based solution. No, banging on the chassis won't increase your odds, but it will cause the machine to tilt and will probably get the attention of a security guard. ;) Also, the machine uses this entropy to re-seed itself thousands of times per second, not just once in the beginning.
Lastly, there's the method for choosing if you win or loose. As soon as you press the "spin reels" button (or pull the handle on machine that still support that), the outcome is already known. Let me repeat: THE OUTCOME IS KNOWN before the reels start spinning. The actual spinning of the reels is just eye candy.
This part takes a bit more explaining: say each reel have three symbols on them (we'll call them A, B, and C; in reality, the reels have maybe a couple dozen). In this example, C is the most favorable; you get a jackpot if you get three C's. You would think that this would mean that you would have a 1 in 27 chance of hitting the jackpot (3^3). Nope. The internal mechanism works like so: Okay, you have 3 symbols on each wheel. Inside the program, there are 3 arrays of symbols, but the number of elements inside the array is much more than 3. Say these are the arrays:
- Reel 1: AAABBBBCCCCC
- Reel 2: AAAABBBBCCCC
- Reel 3: AAAAAAAABBBC
The machine picks a random element from each array. Do you see what's going on here? There are more Cs in the first reel array, making it very likely to hit a C on the first reel. Next is a slightly less chance to hit C again. The third time is nearly impossible. Yet it builds you hope up, thinking you're about to hit the jackpot.Is this deceitful? Yes. Does it prey upon the stupid? Yes. Is it illegal? Nope. These methods produce a certain payout percentage, and the techniques for producing them are "public" knowledge, usually regulated by your state's gambling office.
In conclusion, stick to blackjack.
Apparently the 'proof' that sliot machines, fruit machines as those wacky brits choose to call them, is that, if you 'freeze' the state of a fruit machine at some point and then repeat the next step, the machine will generate the same outcome.
No, that's only half of it.
The machine gives you a choice (typically "high" or "low" in the examples they gave), but you will always lose, NO MATTER WHICH ONE YOU CHOOSE.
A deterministic slot machine is one thing: even if it simply paid out exactly 1 in every 10,000 spins, that would be legal.
What's illegal (according to the authors) is that the machine presents a game and says that it's a gamble: if you choose the correct alternative (high or low) you will double your winnings, otherwise you will lose. But the machine has already decided that you will definitely lose no matter what you pick, and that's what they think is illegal under U.K. law.
In other words, playing the game at all is a gamble. If you play, you might win (no matter what you press), or you might lose (no matter what you press). However, the game is presenting choices in the middle of the gameplay as "gambles" when in reality they don't affect the outcome.
As a casino employee, I can tell you that casinos are some of the most depressing places in teh world. It is amazing that these people come back, some of them every day (one customer told me he has been there every day for 18 months) and lose and lose, but when they win the sligtest bit they feel like winners. Hey moron, I just watched you put a ton of money in that machine and you're excited about $250? Wow, you're only down $300 now!
The thing about casinos is that people think, oh maybe I'll win the nix spin/hand whatever, so they keep playing. Then when they do win, suddenly they thing they're "on a roll" and poof their goes the money they just won plus some more.
You want to know what is even more amazing? At least half of the people who work there are just as adicted to gambling as teh customers. You would not beleive how many of my fellow emploees spend their days off at the casino down the road. See, a lot of them were former customers of the casino i work at, lost a bunch of money and were forced to get a job, so they got one at the casino. One would think that this would cure them of their addiction, but I suppose it is like an alcoholic working at a bar.
Long story short, don't go to casinos. if you do leave your credit cards and checkbooks at home.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
It's totally possible to tweak probabilities to get the desired overall payout average. The fruit machines in the story are a scam.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I know this is a joke, but this is very similar to what the mafia does.
If there is a pick 3 game (1 in 1000 shot) in your state which pays says $500 on a $1 ticket, the local mob is probably offering $700 dollars on the very same ticket.
Now they are both terrible bets, but at least the mob is offering you better odds than the government.
Of course the gov't will cry bloody murder, because it wants to keep its lottery monopoly.
I work at an online casino, and this is exactly how our games work. When you press the button to spin the wheels, the result of the game is decided then and there. This includes the results of any bonus games. The amount of your win was decided by the spin, and the bonus game itself will show whatever it needs to to show you that total amount.
Our terms and conditions for each slot spell this out however, stating the the results of the bonus games have no effect on the actual win amount. Presumably other online casinos work the same way, and I don't think it's too big an extrapolation to state that most physical slot machines work the same way.
I write software for slot machines. I can confirm that it is not the display that awards prizes, but the prize that selects that display shown to the user.
Who is the first person to handle a fledgling slot machine game? The product manager? The software engineer? The graphic artist? No, it is a mathematician, deciding the selection and frequency of pay-outs. A table of prizes is created and the reels of the game (the number of stops on each reel is tweaked to adjust the outcome) are displayed to correspond to the probability of a given pay-out.
When you see those billboards that advertise "the loosest slots" what they mean is that the software at that particular casino has been configured to pay out, say, 95% instead of only 94%.
The gambling industry is the only one I know of to set it own profitibility. The earnings of the casinos are assured as long as the customers play.
All this said, so what? Even if they don't understand the math behind the games, most people are intuitively aware that "luck" is not a basis for a business plan, and that the casino always wins in the end. I don't see what all the furors is about.
Actually, the Vegas casinos don't cheat. They don't have to. Take roulette. They pay 35 to 1 on a winning spin. Now there's 38 numbers on an American wheel, 1-36 plus 0 and 00. That's 37 to 1 odds of winning a 35 to 1 payout. If the wheel's honest, the difference between those is 5.26%, which is the house's edge. If they don't cheat, they will get 5.26% of the money you play over the long run. This same thing applies to just about every other game on the floor, be it slots or blackjack or craps or whatnot.
It's only "just about", though. You can spot the exceptions by a simple question: who are you playing against? In craps and blackjack, for example, you're playing against the house. The house will win over the long run. In poker, OTOH, you're playing against the other players. The house just acts as bank and neutral dealer, and takes their cut from every pot. That's because in poker there's no house edge.
Sure, with computerized slots and such the casino could cheat, but why risk it? Nevada Gaming Control, believe it or not, is honest and all but incorruptible, and they've got enough experience that any cheating scheme a casino could use will be spotted pretty quick. The house gets their money, with honest games the nickel slots alone will pay the bills for the entire casino and everything else including the pit is pure profit. Why risk that gravy train for an extra fraction of a percent for maybe a year tops?
This sequence is not random at all, but completely predetermined. Re-seeding merely jumps within the sequence to some point along its length. Re-seeding must be done at intervals to ensure some degree of randomness. Traditionally this has been done using some measure of time elapsed between switching the computer on and starting the program running; the units used must be small compared to the variance of this interval.
True randomness would require some totally random event, such as the time interval between particle decays in a radioactive substance, or thermal noise in a semiconductor junction. {The static picked up by an unconnected input of a sound card would be an example of this phenomenon, but would also include local noise sources such as mains hum and local RF interference.} In the case of a fruit machine, the time between player operations, and the sequence of hold and cancel operations, if applicable, can be used as entropy sources.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Ten years ago the cycles were a lot more reliable. I used to hang out in an arcade on Leeds railway station during rush hour.
The way to play was to pay attention to how much other players were dumping in machines. If a machine had received 75% of the jackpot without paying out, as soon as the current player left, go over and put in up to 50% of the jackpot value. Play until you win a jackpot (ignore/gamble smaller wins). 80% of the time, you'd get it. The hard part was to walk away if it hadn't paid by then :) But if you stuck to that, you were pretty much guaranteed to come out up overall. I used to make around 20 quid ($30) a night when I played - over a couple of hours, so the payback wasn't that great :)
But then the cycles gradually got longer, with longer baron patches followed by an occasional triple jackpot (paid over three pays to avoid breaking the law!). At that point it was no longer statistically worth while playing.
The manufacturers though are experts at intermittant reinforcement. It took me a while to quit while losing.
Now I live in California so I don't have to worry about being able to do anything dangerous, addictive or interesting because the State very kindly makes all my bad habits illegal :) To paraphrase Eddie Izzard, "We all go down the library for a wild time" :)
.02
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
Read The Autobiography of Malcolm X. He was a numbers man at one point. You'd pick a number, and they'd use the close of the Dow Jones on the next day, down to the appropriate decimal. Public info, impossible to spoof, and pretty darn random.
It's a terrific book!
Let's take a simple 5 symbol slot machine. With a mechanical device, the player can know they're a loser when the second wheel stops. A video slot machine can keep the suspense going right up until the last symbol... oh look! Two bars! Three! Oh sweet Jesus a fourth bar! That's 5K if the next bar comes around!
At this point, speaking as a programmer, I'd make damn sure that the winning symbols just drifts past the window before flashing the "Deposit another $5 to NUDGE?" button.
Since you have total control, the programmer can make the sucker believe they are coming arbitrarily close to winning without actually paying out anything. The idea is to give the sucker a lift, a high, a thrill. A glimpse of that "big win", that will keep him/her putting the money in.
Not illegal. Just behavioural conditioning. The same thing B.F. Skinner did with pigeons.
In his experiments the pigeons were taught to repeatedly peck a switch to get a small food reward. If the food was delivered after set number of pecks (even dozens), the bird would only peck away when it was hungry. But if the reward (food) was delivered after a random number of pecks, the bird eventually came to peck at the button continually, even frantically.
A slot/fruit machine is nothing more than a behavioural conditioning machine that skillfully supplies small, random rewards, all the while sustaining the belief in the player that the big reward is just waiting for the next game.
Illegal? No. Ethical? Well, gambling is a tax on the stupid.
because I just put away 180 bucks at a local casino, and I may have been able to see this article earlier.
- what is the definition of simultanagnosia?! I've been meaning to look it up!
Though I doubt I am one of the friends of which you speak, I have written slot machine ("pokies") software for Tatts Victoria.
I can confirm that it's heavily regulated, and the RNG used is carefully analysed for randomness, with the the payoff tables (and to a lesser degree, the ordering of the symbols on "fruit machine" types) controlling the payout (which usually varies between 83% and 91%)
The results are only "pre-determined" at the time of the user starting the roll, but are completely random nonetheless. In other words, when the user pulls the arm (if the machine has an arm), the results of the roll (and any related results, e.g. from a "double-up") are randomly pre-selected, then the reels are spun to those positions.
What struck me most was the incredible security and redundancy the system has. In Victoria, the legal accounting requirements are very stringent, and the manufacturers themselves have a long list of attacks they have to be proof against (from long experience - everything from massive magnetic fields to electrical cattle prods have been used to defeat a slot machine's defenses).
For example, not only is the casing solid steel, locked and with mil-spec proofing against EMI, the CPU board and coin trays are both locked within separate steel compartments within the unit, and each requires a different key to unlock. All locks have failsafe mechanisms to record opening, and the cabinet door has a randomly-pulsed optical sensor as well.
Particularly, the win-loss game data is recorded into triple-battery-backed static RAM, in multiple CRC'd locations, with the same data being recorded simultaneously onto physical counters, printed in duplicate to a roll of paper (on some machines), and sent in real-time via encrypted LAN to a central host, which must verify all large payouts. Every coin and every game must be accounted for under any circumstance, particularly power failure in the middle of a game.
The coin sensors and payout mechanisms were equally sophisticated, and had to accurately deal with punters feeding large numbers of coins very rapidly into the machines, whilst still defeating "coin-on-a-string" style attacks.
It was an interesting project, but involved considerably more than I first expected. I can say that, after many all-nighters testing, I have come to truly dislike the sound of a slot machine :-/ (Ironically, for some years my next job required me to go to tradeshows in Las Vegas - from the very moment you step off the plane, you're assaulted by pokies on all sides)
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
The emulator sounds like it is operating correctly - the game, and all double-up/nudge results, are determined at the start of the game. The article proves that this is pre-determined, but not that players are being ripped off. The nudge results (at least in the slot machine software I wrote) were exactly a fifty-fifty chance, regardless of choice (and this was a legal requirement - slot machines are games of pure chance; no user skill element is allowed, regardless of how it appears).
The game on the page you mention wins four nudges and loses the fifth, but the page itself is misleading. It suggests choosing Low then High then Low again in order to win the first four games, but it fails to mention that it does not matter what you choose! You can choose High then Low then High again, and the numbers will be different but the result will be the same - you will always win the first four games and lose the fifth, regardless of your choice.
(Disclaimer: I'm too lazy to download the emulator and confirm this myself, but logically (and from my experience) it must be so - I'd happily make a bet of it ;-)
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
BTW, I used to travel to Las Vegas to work several times a month, and often chatted with a "slot mechanic" who lived in Phoenix. He fixed the machines, set the odds, and was absolutely forbidden to set foot in a casino in Nevada except in the company of a casino official (they usually brought the slots to him, except in cases of a huge payout). He told me which machines to play ... the ones at the ends of the aisles along both sides of the route leading from the front door to the check-in desk are usually set to pay off small and often. The casino wants incoming guests to see winners. For bigger, but far less frequent payoffs, it's the machines in the middle of the rows.
I think that your math may be bad as well...Read this this.