Tickets for Tracking Players in Casinos?

aws910 asks: "I was in Las Vegas recently, and I noticed that most machines now give barcoded tickets as payment instead of coins. These tickets can then be used in other machines as a wager instead of paper money. A basic slot strategy is to move from one machine to another, and play machines in certain areas of the casino floor to improve your odds. With the ticket system, It seems all too easy for someone to build a system to track a player from one machine to another, giving the house the ability to kill the player's (already slim) edge. If a machine knows how much you've already won as soon as you sit down, do you think it will give you good odds? I couldn't find any articles on it. What does Slashdot think about this?"

Comments

Doesn't work like that

[mike_lynn]

I'm pretty sure the Nevada Gambling Comission/Board would have an issue with devices listed as separate games acting in concert to provide an overall odds. They spend a lot of time and money to ensure as much 'randomness' as possible, yet design the games to have very definite odds. I don't think they're about to overhaul the whole system.

working systems aren't always complicated

[GlenRaphael]

If there were a reliable way to exploit any "edge" in a casino it would go out of business in a week.*

*And yes, I've read all the stories about people with fiendishly complicated systems who do actually make shitloads of money, but not only is this very difficult in the first place, it's getting harder. The complexity of the exception proves the rule in this case.

Actually, some of the systems that work to make money are simple. And a casino can easily absorb the losses from a few profitable players here and there. But you are correct that systems that work tend to be short-lived.

For example, here's a system that worked a few years ago:
(1) Find a bank of "Piggy Bankin'" slot machines.
(2) Walk down the row, pushing a button on each machine, causing it to "wake up" from attract mode and display how many coins are in the bank.
(3) If the number of coins in the bank is greater than 30, camp out at that machine and play one coin at a time until you "break the bank", then immediately cash out. and stop playing.
(4) go find another batch of Piggies, or hover in the background while people play these for a while so as to build the banks back up so you can tear them down again.

If the bank was at $40, your expected income was $20 (subtract 20 from the bank to get the expected value), and it should take less than 20 minutes of play to "earn" it.

Sadly, you won't find banks of original Piggies anymore, and even if you did, you wouldn't find them with large untapped jackpots because too many other advantage players know about them. So I'm not giving anything up by telling you about it now. There are other similar opportunities around, but (a) they tend to be short-lived or otherwise limited in scope, and (b) players who exploit them too aggressively tend to get barred.