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Malfunction Costs Couple $11 Million Slot Machine Jackpot
ainandil writes "Engineering mistakes, while frustrating, seldom definitively alter the end user's life. Not so in Cripple Creek, Colorado — MaryAnn and Jim McMahon thought their money troubles were over when they hit an $11 million jackpot at a casino Tuesday. Before paying the jackpot, the Wildwood Casino turned the machine over to the Colorado Gaming Division for inspection. A glitch was found, aha! The Wildwood Casino blamed a slot machine malfunction for the $11 million jackpot. Total actually won by the McMahons? $1,627.82."
in recent history that gambling casinos have used "mechanical problems" to evade honoring their promises?
I wager it will be used again. After all, aren't most winners too poor to afford lawyers to fight the casinos? It's the same problem with corporate abuse of DRM and DMCA lawsl.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
A woman recently won like 42 million in a jackpot and they refused to pay her saying it was a bug.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/colorado-42-mil-jackpot-winner-jack/story?id=10235836
A quick google shows that this happens all the time, whenever someone wins a large number its always blaimed on a bug, and for some magical reason the winners do not get paid.
The casino's are ripping winners off.
I live in Argentina and about two or three years ago a woman won like 3 million Argentinian Pesos in slot machine. The casino claimed it was a fault of the machine. They went to court and the woman won because it didnt matter if it was a machine error, she did not cheat or anything. So whatever the problem was, it had nothing to do with the woman. She played, she won, she should receive her prize. The real problem was between the casino and the company they bought the slot machine from. So the woman was left out of the equation.
Everythiing visible is empty.
That actually was a mistake.
I read an article a while ago about a guy who uploaded the software of a slot machine to a vmware-like environment. This way, he could revert back to the very same state over and over again. The machine always gave the user the impression that if he had made another decision, he would have won the jackpot. Except for when the user actually made that decision.
So I think any slot machine paying big bucks is either programmed to do so periodically as a way of marketing the casino or otherwise suffering from a serious bug.
.sig: No such file or directory
So presumably everyone who played the machine previously can claim their stakes back...the machine was faulty. You can't have it both ways.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
I worked in an arcade repairing machines for 3 years... we bought a few dozen decommissioned slot machines from casinos that I retrofitted to dispense prize tokens as opposed to money.
I can tell you that the machines are absolutely programmed to make you lose even if you hit the buttons at the exact right time to stop the rollers. Basically the operator programs the payout to be a ratio of the money deposited. Our machines were programmed to dispense 2 cents worth of prize tokens for every 25 cents deposited. The machine word operate honestly until the ratio got too far in the user's favor, then it would cheat on the last roller to correct the ratio. a jack pot scenario would only be allowed to happen if the ratio was already deep in the favor of the operator.
It was pretty comical, with the machine open I could stop the rollers right in the position I wanted by hand, and if the machine decided to "correct" the ratio it would use the stepper motor to index the last roller one or two positions past where I had stopped it. Pretty much undetectable to the human eye while the thing is spinning.
Collector's Edition
When I was younger, the local football club used to sell scratch-cards in the town each weekend. They sold them for years. They were 25p each, with a max possible win of £20. I can remember buying a few from time to time, maybe winning £1 very occasionally.
Then, when we were about 14 somebody found out that a shed near the football club had boxes and boxes full of these unopened (and by then out-of-date) cards, and we took tens of thousands of them. We would spend ages scratching them off, looking for 'winners'. Took so long, that we gave up on that and we learnt just to scratch of the 'void if removed' box and recognise the most common codes... something like 18414 would always mean a loser, 85413 would be a £1 winner etc... we were always looking for a really unusual number that would be the £20 winner.
Any we never found one, not one £20 winner, despite examining tens of thousands of cards over several months.
Or am I missing something important here?
Most US casinos are operated by native American tribes. Their reservations are their own legal jurisdictions. If you have a problem, your recourse is to sue them in tribal court ... which, of course, is operated by the casino owner. Good luck with those odds. Pity the customer. And how about the employees? The casino employees I know here in Minnesota are keenly aware that their employment rights are severely limited.
Obi-Wan: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were sudden
Then the onus should be on the casino to ONLY allow functional machines to operate and be played.
If the machine is on the floor, the casino is stating that the machine has been tested and is fit-for-purpose. Otherwise they're essentially saying, these machines might be broken; where the error would result in OUR loss we will void your winnings; where the error might be your loss, that's tough cheese.
That's basically a scam. The law should be changed, or they should basically admit that 'anything goes' and the casino can always weasel out of any situation. (Maybe in big neon letters above the door).
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce