Man Arrested For Exploiting Error In Slot Machines

An anonymous reader writes "A man awaiting trial in Pennsylvania was arrested by Federal agents on Jan. 4, and accused of exploiting a software 'glitch' within slot machines in order to win payouts. The exploit may have allowed the man to obtain more than a million dollars from casinos in Pennsylvania and Nevada, and officials say they are investigating to see if he used the method elsewhere. The accused stated that 'I'm being arrested federally for winning on a slot machine. Let everybody see the surveillance tapes. I pressed buttons on the machine on the casino. That's all I did.' Apparently, slot machine software errors are fairly common. The lesson here seems to be that casinos can deny you a slot machine win any time they wish by claiming software errors, and if you find an error that you can exploit, you may find yourself facing Federal charges for doing so."

Comments

double standard

[v1]

I suppose the most glaring issue here is the double standard that software errors can be legally taken advantage of by the casinos, while they are illegal to take advantage of by the gambler. (or at least that looks like how the recent verdicts have been swinging)

Re:double standard

[Daengbo]

The house always wins. Duh!

Re:double standard

[joaommp]

Last year I joined (and left) a major manufacturer of slot machines. I was hired as R&D manager and I was absolutely terrified when I saw how things were done. No good software development practices, their concept of version management was dumping source on a network share, the previous manager was the only one using a VCS and was for his private use, and the code was absolutely disappointing to say the least. The bad practices were so deeply marked on them that things were taken to a new facility, with an entire new team that I personally interviewed and trained them from the start, people that still didn't have any of the bad habits the old team had. Eventually I left because whoever was above me was far worse and I soon realized the company was off to die, because top level management were the ones that messed up in the first place and were about to destroy the company by killing all R&D and training and having the new team do sustained engineering on the bad code produced by the old team. This is the state of the gambling industry.

Re:double standard

[pwizard2]

Are we really surprised? There are very few games in a casino where the house doesn't have a significant advantage. The house wants you to lose money because their business model depends on it. They only pay out winnings to keep people coming back. The whole gambling industry (including lotteries) is nothing more than a system of wealth redistribution. The rich love casinos (if they own the place) because it makes money for them and the government loves casinos because it means more tax revenue. Everyone else loses.

Re:double standard

[NevarMore]

Why aren't you telling the gaming commission about this?

Re:double standard

[StikyPad]

I'd say the most glaring issue is that this article appears right above one about hackers manipulating the stock market. Since we all seem to be gambling, any bets on which "hacker" will see jail time?

Re:double standard

[Threni]

YOU'RE going to be paying for his trial and incarceration, because he made use of software errors to profit from a company which profits from other people's gambling. Why? Isn't this the free market at work? If it's a problem, then fix the machines. Or...don't fix them - I don't give a shit how much money you lose from using shitty software. Good luck to him; he may have broken the law, but he's done nothing wrong.

Re:double standard

[CitizenCain]

And what would he say? It's not like the abysmal state of security on electronic gambling machines is new news, and evidently, no one cares enough to do anything about it. (And why would they when you can just have the feds arrest anyone who profits from flawed code and sieze their assets anyway?) Being stupid isn't a crime, and horrible practices for writing code aren't against gaming commission rules. No, being smart is against the rules and profiting off of crappy code (as a "gambler"/player) is a crime. Three cheers for the land of the free and our awesome justice system. :/

Re:double standard

[Kitkoan]

Because the Gaming Commission isn't really interested hear this information. Its like the Diebold voting machines during elections. They were known to be faulty, documented to be faulty and had been warned many times that they are faulty and should never be used because of all the issues and problems that had. And they were used multiple times in multiple voting situations. At the end of the day they are more concerned in who is paying their fee's and not how it effects the public.

Re:double standard

[joaommp]

I could, but:

1) what gaming commission? The company is spread around the world, with the first team of programmers being in a country one ocean away from the second, that was set up in my country. And in my country we couldn't even sell or explore the machines, just develop them.

2) don't forget that before machines can operate in a particular country they have to pass the analysis of that country's gambling commissions or certification companies and they must have access to the entire process, including source code. For some reason, this particular company didn't have a single machine in the USA for several years.

3) what the hell would I say? "hey, the company that hired me to save it from itself had bad practices before I joined it"?

Re:double standard

[icebraining]

George Carlin later apologized, but I think it's one of the cases where "truth hurts".

People who go to Las Vegas, you've got to question their fucking intellect to start with. Traveling hundreds and thousands of miles to essentially give your money to a large corporation is kind of fucking moronic. That's what I'm always getting here is these kind of fucking people with very limited intellects.

Re:double standard

[kheldan]

I used to work in the coin-op game industry, which shares many similarities to the gambling industry, but where it's most relevant here is that both industries exist to produce one thing and one thing only: profit. That's all they care about, and very often they don't care how they do it, so long as they can divest people of their cash, and the less they have to spend doing that, so much the better. I for one am not in the least bit shocked to hear your story; I'm just nodding my head, and reminding myself that no matter how much I hate where I'm working now, I can be thankful that 20 years ago I got the hell away from the coin-op game industry and bullshit like you're talking about having put up with.

Re:double standard

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

"Grasshopper always wrong in argument with chicken."

--Book of Chao

Re:double standard

[selven]

Even if you have an unlocked door, it's still illegal to break into a person's house. This is completely different - the man paid for the right to interact with the machines, and he interacted with the machines. He did not take a hammer and break the machine, he played the game according to the rules that the machine enforced. The fact that the casino screwed up and made the rules have a loophole in them changes nothing.

Re:double standard

[chaboud]

He used the interface of the machine as intentionally designed, configured willingly by casino staff. No trick coins, no bump keys, no insertion of a backdoor (that's still up in the air) into the code.

These machines are intentionally set up to pay out anywhere from 85-93% of what they take in, just raking in cash by being there. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Sorry, but it's just not the same thing as a locked door. The intent of a locked door is clear, to signal ownership and provide moderate (not really) protection. The intent of a slot machine is also clear, to engage in a pseudo-random game of chance, biased typically toward the owner of the machine. He engaged in that game and won. If you knew that a roulette table hit a particular number commonly enough to make the odds worth it, you'd play that table. It's up to the casinos and manufacturers to make sure that the games that they've rigged in their favor actually remain so.

Re:double standard

[Genda]

In fact George is immune to everything you mentioned and virtually everything else now, save decomposition... the boy has passed from this mortal coil. By the way, if you actually do research about the man, you'll find that even though he was a thoroughly human, human being, and subject to his fair share of faults, George was one of the most intelligent, hard working, eclectic, and ethically scrupulous people walking the planet, and had no trouble publicly pointing out where he'd been at fault or error. I love what he said about "Political Jokes".

To paraphase; "I don't do Political Jokes. It's not like Politicians fall out of a rift in the universe from a parallel dimension. Where do you get greedy, corrupt, stupid Politicians? You get them from a greedy, corrupt, stupid Society which rewards greed, corruption, and stupidity. What's to joke about?"

Re:double standard

[PhxBlue]

Flynn, is that you? :)

Re:double standard

[bhcompy]

Kind of like counting cards for single deck blackjack. It's illegal to be too smart.

Re:double standard

[Moryath]

Not far off the mark, really.

There was a case of someone winning a jackpot a while back and the casino claiming the jackpot was a "software error" after the fact. Denver Post Article. As the article shows, such "errors" are relatively common.

And of course, the casinos always reserve the right to claim someone is "cheating" or simply "winning too much", or "card counting", and pull all sorts of nasty tricks.

Also remember: in a gambling town, the cops and judges aren't paid by the local government. They're paid by the casinos. Period.

Re:double standard

[h4rr4r]

If you like slot machines you should get into factory work. You can do the same menial task over and over and actually get paid to it!

Re:double standard

[Solandri]

The whole gambling industry (including lotteries) is nothing more than a system of wealth redistribution. The rich love casinos (if they own the place) because it makes money for them and the government loves casinos because it means more tax revenue. Everyone else loses.

It's only a loss if you ignore the entertainment value. My friends who go to Las Vegas do so mostly because it lets them get a weekend's entertainment fairly cheaply (if you're into the sorts of things Vegas offers).

If you ignoring the entertainment value and looking strictly at what material goods or enhanced capability you've acquired for your money spent, then amusement parks, movie theaters, cable TV, computer games, plays, vacation travel, hiking trips, beach trips, etc. are all "losses". You could claim that the people running all those industries have simply created a system of wealth redistribution.

Yes, it's extraordinarily bad for a subset of people who have a gambling problem. But the same is true for nearly any activity.

Re:double standard

[Sancho]

You missed:

2) For some reason, this particular company didn't have a single machine in the USA for several years.

Apparently they don't do business in Nevada, and they don't care.

Re:double standard

[Jane Q. Public]

This is a straw-man argument. It isn't against the law to distract somebody from the fact that they're losing their shorts... as long as they're losing their shorts legally. The only real question here is whether exploiting this error was illegal or not.

Let me give you a real-world example: teams of people in the past have used statistical methods to determine that certain roulette wheels had minute flaws that caused them to pay out slightly more on some bets than others. Then they alternated the players to distract from the fact that they were making good winnings. They were exploiting a flaw in the system... but they were doing so legally. So when some of them got noticed, they could not be prosecuted for "conspiracy", because they weren't doing anything illegal.

In the same way, the only question here is whether exploiting this flaw in the system is illegal. If not, then there was no "con" or "conspiracy". And I argue that there is no basis for calling it illegal. A flaw is a flaw, and it's the responsibility of the makers.

Re:double standard

[shadowfaxcrx]

Damn right. Or at least, if it IS illegal to distract someone from the fact that they're losing their shorts, I expect a lot of casino orders to either get rid of the flashy lights and the whirring and beeping sounds and the complimentary cocktails and the dancing girls, or do jailtime. There's a reason every casino has all that crap in it - to keep you from realizing that all you're doing is pouring money into a vending machine that doesn't actually vend anything.

Re:double standard

[DavidTC]

Going to Vegas is a great vacation. Everything there is rigged to be fun and distracting, you'll never be bored, there are great shows.

As long as you don't gamble. If you don't gamble, half the stuff you do is be subsided by idiots who are gambling.

That $50 dollar hotel rooms? Cheaper than roadside motels in the middle of nowhere? They're expecting you to spend $50 bucks a day in the casino.

That $50 show you want to see? Really costs $80 dollars, but on average people spend $30 dollars waiting for the show to start in the casino.

Hell, that's why so many conferences are there...the space is cheap, because they expect to make a huge amount of money fleecing the idiotic convention-goers.

Seriously, Vegas is a great place to go and vacation on the backs of gamblers.

Re:double standard

[Dun Malg]

They don't have to cry to the government to stop you winning by counting cards. They are allowed to simply bar you from gambling at their tables. There's no law that says they are REQUIRED to let everyone gamble. Truly effective card counters are so few that all the pit bosses know them on sight and instruct the dealers to not deal to them. That's why card counters write books on card counting, because they can't make money at cards anymore.

Re:double standard

[SecurityGuy]

There was a case of someone winning a jackpot a while back and the casino claiming the jackpot was a "software error" after the fact.

Like everyone else, I read about such things with outrage until I actually RTFA. The jackpot she hit was about 100x higher than the maximum the machine was ever supposed to give, so it WAS an error, and obviously so.

Re:double standard

[ShakaUVM]

ast year I joined (and left) a major manufacturer of slot machines. I was hired as R&D manager and I was absolutely terrified when I saw how things were done. No good software development practices, their concept of version management was dumping source on a network share, the previous manager was the only one using a VCS and was for his private use, and the code was absolutely disappointing to say the least. The bad practices were so deeply marked on them that things were taken to a new facility, with an entire new team that I personally interviewed and trained them from the start, people that still didn't have any of the bad habits the old team had. Eventually I left because whoever was above me was far worse and I soon realized the company was off to die, because top level management were the ones that messed up in the first place and were about to destroy the company by killing all R&D and training and having the new team do sustained engineering on the bad code produced by the old team. This is the state of the gambling industry.

I was once hired to write a VR casino game. Pretty cool actually, shame it was never commercially released.

Anyway, the point is that they wanted it guaranteed rigged so even things which appeared to have a certain percentage chance of happening (say 25%) would be indeed 25% until the last piece would cause a win, in which case it wouldn't win except on an exceedingly diminutive chance.

I found a bug in it that would essentially let you 'spin the slots' as fast as the frame rate of the world, and seriously debated not fixing it in case the game ever was released. Damn morals - I fixed it. =)

Re:double standard

[KDR_11k]

Sure. As long as they don't deny the player the winnings he already got.

Re:double standard

[AmiMoJo]

TFA says that this is apparently not uncommon for people who shovel a lot of money into slots. Changing things like the screen brightness or volume is common. In this case there was a bonus doubling feature that is usually turned off because gamblers don't like it. They don't want double-or-nothing risks, they like to play the shorter odds. It is simply an optional feature that happened to be exploitable. I don't see any difference between that and finding an exploit in one of the default features.

Bottom line is that the code was buggy and he found a way to turn it to his advantage. There is no suggestion that the technician did anything wrong by enabling this feature or that it is a particularly unusual thing to do.

Re:double standard

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a case of someone winning a jackpot a while back and the casino claiming the jackpot was a "software error" after the fact.

Like everyone else, I read about such things with outrage until I actually RTFA. The jackpot she hit was about 100x higher than the maximum the machine was ever supposed to give, so it WAS an error, and obviously so.

Perhaps the owners of said casino should not buy into new technology in a mad dash to control the odds and make more money. Life isn't fair.

The casino is well within it's rights to stop purchasing the faulty equipment-- they are perhaps, though not definitely, within their rights to sue the makers of the machine as it did not perform as advertised and caused severe damages. They are not within their rights to sue or criminally charge consumers.

Think of this happening in another industry. I buy a snack machine, it is defective and gives out two snacks per purchase. Do I arrest the individual who paid for one snack and accidentally got two? How about I buy a defective cash register that gives back too much change, do I arrest my customers for stealing money, or do I go after the manufacturer who made a faulty product? A gas station incorrectly updates the cost of premium gas at 1.00 off (actually happened at one my old jobs), do we arrest people for "stealing" gas, or do we reprimand the employee for setting the price wrong?

Life isn't fair, and as a business owner, sometimes you get bad product, bad service, bad employees. For better or worse, unless in extreme circumstances, I don't see how you can take this out on the consumer. In the case at hand, they didn't even do anything explicitly wrong-- they asked for features, features that are offered by the casino to high rollers, to be enabled. They didn't "hack" into the machine, they didn't slip anyone money to enable "illegal modes" they simply asked to turn on modes freely offered by the casino's through their technicians.

Compounding the problem, of course, is that the gambling industry is notoriously lucrative, and routinely ejects people for no other reason than "winning too much". In the previous example of the gas station, no less than three customers within a few minutes told me of the problem and I was able to correct it. They realized that a mistake had been made, and, though legally in the right, decided to do the "right thing" and let me know a mistake had been made. Casino's treat customers, as demonstrated by this case, like criminals-- despite the fact that they themselves actively try to make the odds worse and worse to make more and more money in an already extremely profitable business. Few people feel ethically inclined to take their side when they find a way to actually "beat the system".

What's next?

[ErikPeterson]

Getting sued for picking the winning loto numbers?

Re:What's next?

[Daengbo]

The only way to win is to not play.

Re:What's next?

[jfengel]

If you had some inside knowledge of how the lotto numbers were picked, yes.

They're charging him with fraud. It remains to be shown how he got knowledge of the glitch, and if he merely exploited a pattern he was able to observe, that charge may well not stick. But if he hacked the machines to gain information he wasn't supposed to have, it sounds like fraud to me, whether it was the lotto machine or a slot machine.

Re:What's next?

[Monkeedude1212]

Well it's a LITTLE more complicated than that... FTFA:

In order to expose the glitch, a special "double-up" feature had to be internally activated. The men persuaded casino technicians to alter "soft" options on the machines, such as volume and screen brightness controls. Such perks aren't unusual for high-rollers, who can wager anywhere from a few hundred to thousands of dollars in one day.

One Meadows employee, who was not criminally charged or accused of wrongdoing, agreed to enable the double-up feature on the machine with the glitch.

Normally, such a feature would allow a player to risk doubling his winnings or potentially losing them all. The double-up feature isn't usually enabled on the machines in part because it's unpopular with most gamblers, who are unwilling to risk large amounts of money.

When the correct sequence of buttons was pushed, the machine displayed false double jackpots. No casino officials noticed because the bogus jackpots weren't being recorded in the machine's internal system.

Throughout April 2009, Mr. Kane frequented Las Vegas casinos, practicing his technique in a "test run," according to authorities, before calling his friend Mr. Nestor in Pennsylvania.

From May 1 to June 15 in 2009, agents said Mr. Nestor joined Mr. Kane in Las Vegas, where the duo allegedly cashed in phony jackpots "over and over again" and perfected a scheme to exploit the same glitch in casinos across the world.

So they noticed a glitch in the system - one that allowed them to get a Jackpot without it being reported or investigated. They then went worldwide with this to get as much money as they could before getting caught.

Now, don't get me wrong, a bug in the system shouldn't be the fault of the player, and definately shouldn't result in Criminal Charges, I'd even say taking back the winnings is a bit harsh though it depends on the scenario (obviously guys exploiting a flaw should give back all the money, a person experiencing the glitch once shouldn't have to give any of it back).

But claiming that they are completely innocent in this scheme sets a bad precedent. Oh, this website didn't secure their Logins for SQL injection, it's not MY fault the series of buttons I pressed resulted in me accessing their database records. Oh, metasploit showed me a new Microsoft zero day exploit, its not MY fault I got admin access to the webserver by simply pressing the correct keys!

TL;DR - Just because the Casino claims that the player won by a glitch doesn't mean the Casino is evil and the player is being ripped off. Yeah, it's not their fault there is a glitch, but if the player repeatedly exploits it instead of reporting it, you have to expect some sort of consequences.

Re:What's next?

[Monkeedude1212]

Oh yeah - I don't have any sympathy for the Casinos they've always been stealing for as long as they've been around.

But two wrongs don't make a right, stealing from a Casino does not make you a good guy (Despite how much you may like Ocean's 11).

And making these guys sound like victims is more whats bothering me. They clearly played it like Con-men what with getting Casino technicians to alter the machines.

Re:What's next?

[hairyfeet]

While I agree with part of what you are saying, on the other hand we should be careful not to reward shitty design by making it criminal to exploit it. I mean look at DMCA where ANY encryption, even something as lame and completely bogus as ROT13 could possibly get you busted for "circumventing" it. Or that guy being sued for accessing the hockey game even though they put it on a server with NO authentication methods that would let anyone that knew or found the IP address to help themselves.

And finally let us not forget this is casinos we are talking about, places where the odds are so badly stacked against the player that if anyone that didn't have the blessing of the state tried to set up a similar gaming operation they would be busted for fraud, and rightly so. The last thing we need is to give them an excuse to not to have to pay out what little they do pay without having to go through a bunch of legal hoops. After all as another poster pointed out that actually worked on slot machine code all the code is shitty so one could argue that ANY significant payout could be attributed to "software glitch" and with piss poor badly managed code that would be a legitimate argument.

The odds are already so badly stacked on most of them games you'd have better odds at 3 Card Monty, so I'm just worried about setting a precedent that gives them even BETTER than the already overwhelming advantage they already have. Hell I'd already argue most of those games are legalized robbery, do we really need to let them slide for not bothering to have decent code written as well?

Idiotic Summary

[donutello]

The lesson here seems to be that casinos can deny you a slot machine win any time they wish by claiming software errors

This idiotic assertion does not seem to be supported by the facts of the case.

Re:Idiotic Summary

[tlhIngan]

The lesson here seems to be that casinos can deny you a slot machine win any time they wish by claiming software errors

This idiotic assertion does not seem to be supported by the facts of the case.

It's not an idiotic assertion in that it's true in general (all casinos have a clause like "payouts only after verification"), but it is a bit of a non-sequitor.

Basically, anytime the slot machine gives the jackpot, that machine is usually immediately taken offline and wheeled back for verification of the win. Of course, you're not allowed to see this, you only hope they're doing things like comparing the software against the government-escrowed copy (yes, the government maintains a copy of the software) and verifying the settings. Networked jackpots often have to confirm with the network operators in making sure the server actually sent the "win" command to the slot (networked jackpots are determined by the central server when you pull). At any point the casino can simply turn around and say "sorry, it was a glitch" and deny your jackpot. It's happened before.

Re:Idiotic Summary

[Samalie]

I surmise that the slot machines, or at least progressive (and networked) slot machines, are deterministic to a point. The House knows about when the jackpot will be paid out and where. They're not totally random, and they do want to not pay off several huge jackpots in a short span of time.

Nope, not the case, because that WOULD be illegal. Every single roll of the random number generator must legally be "random" (or as pseudo-random as random number generators are capable of getting), which basically means every spin has to have the exact same 1 in whatever chance of hitting the jackpot.

The "joy" of these progressive machines though is simply...the house always wins, even if they had a sudden rash of wins in a short period of time, because the jackpot re-seeds at some arbitrairly low-ish number, not at the same amount as was just paid out. The permutations and house edge % programmed into the payout tables for the RNG take care of generating re-seed money.

Basically, the algorithms are all in place, and all this is stitistically accounted for. The principle of gambling is that in the short term, every game/slot machine/etc has a chance of you hitting a jackpot, and/or winning some money, over losing. In a small number of trials, any statistically improbable event can happen. In the long term (millions and millians of trials) the house takes anywhere from 1 to 20% per trial.

So, to be clear...

[amRadioHed]

casinos exploiting human failings to make millions and millions of dollars is legal. People exploiting casino failings to make millions and millions of dollars is illegal.

Re:So, to be clear...

[BondGamer]

If you brought in billions in revenue to the state, you too could have special laws enacted for your benefit.

Re:lots of news stories of winnings denied, too

[TheRaven64]

It can backfire, however. Gambling is heavily regulated and one of the requirements in some places is that the thing being gambled on must be random. These regulations exist to prevent casinos from having fixed decks for card games or rigged wheels for roulette, but they carry over to other forms of gambling. If you can show that their machine is deterministic, then they may be in trouble. A software glitch that lets you always win may well count, depending on your jurisdiction...

Re:Don't they have to prove intent?

[TheRaven64]

People get their winnings denied for counting cards. I don't really understand how that's allowed - not only is it impossible to prove, it also seems like it means that the rules prohibit playing to the best of your ability.

job vacancy for large Pokie company...

[mug funky]

i read a job app a few years ago for the dominant "pokie machine" developer in my state. reading the requirements was a bit of an insight into the sort of thing these people do:

- high level mathematical modelling
- statistical analysis
- ability to develop for a statewide networked system ...the house always wins indeed. spread enough bell curves around enough machines and they'll all seem exactly within an arbitrary margin of error while overall they're heavily stacked.

i hope this poor bastard wins his case.

Insider information

[Dan East]

To distill the article, those machines have some software options, such as volume, screen brightness, and some game options, such as whether or not a Double-Up feature was enabled.

Somehow the guy knew that if the Double-Up feature was enabled a software flaw would be exposed, whereby a certain sequence of button presses would trigger a jackpot (and the jackpot would not be recorded in the data log).

The machines did not have Double-Up enabled by default, so this guy would ask casino techs to mess with settings, like the volume and brightness. While they were changing those settings he also asked to have the Double-Up enabled, thus "enabling" the bug.

So the glaring question is how did this guy know about the "correct sequence of buttons" and the fact that it specifically had to be enabled via the Double-Up feature? To me this reeks of a developer slipping in a "glitch" to trigger a jackpot at will, and it was hidden with that Double-Up feature which they knew was disabled by default to keep the sequence from accidentally being discovered (or found via auditing).

The real criminal is the insider that passed this info along, and presumably maintained anonymity and safety while his patsy actually went around and harvested the winnings, which I'm sure the software developer would receive a share of.

Re:Insider information

[Chyeld]

As a youth, I used to play an old game called Sundog on my Atari ST. It was a space faring/trading game where part of your objective was to buy/steal/find the resources a new religious colony demanded.

One of the things I discovered were a series of glitches in the game that allowed me to skip the heavy trading of the game and make good money buying and selling 'inventory' items instead.

From memory, a bug in the shopkeeper interactions allowed me to buy the second item in the inventory for the price of the first item. In weapon stores, the first item was always a cheap healing dodad, while the second item was always a fairly hefty priced force shield.

So it started off with me getting cheap 'armor'. On top of this the shields had a set number of hits on them, and the 'glitched' copies, being uninitialized, effectively got an extra 'hit' out of them as the first hit set their 'remaining charges' to the max amount.

At first I used that and the fact that you could carry more than one shield to 'hunt' muggers in the streets, if you wandered around you could get 'lucky' and suddenly find yourself surrounded by a group of people demanding your cash. If you choose to fight and survived, you could loot them for their cash and weapons and then go sell those on the black market in the nearest burger joint. It was 'OK' money, but I then discovered a way to make it even faster.

You see, whenever I attempted to sell one of the 'uninitialized' shields I could never get more than the cost of those cheap health items. And while they sold at 'full' value when once they were initialized, each hit after that first one reduced their value. BUT what I discovered on accident was that you could SHOW the person you were selling to a fully charged 'legit' shield and once you and they were finished on haggling the price, you could give them any shield, regardless of it's remaining charges.

Weapon costs varied planet from planet, so what I'd do is fly to the cheapest planet I could find and fill my ship with 'knockoff' shields, then head for the most expensive planet and reap 100-200% profits.

My point is, I wasn't more than 12 when I found this out, on my own. There wasn't an internet back then, not for the public at least. This sort of glitch doesn't require insider knowledge, just someone with an idea of how these machines work and a willingness/ability to experiment on them.

Of course, that doesn't always pan out. I loved Sundog but the thing I remember most about it was that the novella/backstory for it indicated that the whole reason I was doing all this was to clear my dead uncles debts and even indicated specifically how much I owed. The final stage of the game involved an extremely well hidden city on a planet that was only reachable once you purchased top of the line parts for your ship. When I got stumped on that stage (because I didn't even know there WAS a city to find) I decided the final part of the game must be collecting that sum so I could officially pay off his debts. I'm sure you can imagine my frustration when a year later, after having collected what I think was over five times the amount, I finally bumped into the hidden city while exploring and finished the game in less than 10 min after that.

Audit the Casinos

[tsnorquist]

So can gamblers audit the casinos to ensure all the times they lost were not due to a "glitch"?

Malfunction voids all plays and pays

[PatPending]

I'm looking at a slot machine right now and I see this notice: "MALFUNCTION VOIDS ALL PLAYS AND PAYS". Period. It doesn't matter whether that malfunction happens internally or externally.

Gaming is heavily regulated by a state gaming control board and the slots machines themselves have incredibly robust state machines (including power-hit tolerance), tamper resistance, history logs (games played; events; system errors; etc.), and must be certified by a state gaming control board (and possibly a third party lab such as GLI).

Disputes naturally arise and there is a state gaming board approved method for dealing with them. If the player is still unsatisfied he is free to seek a civil action in a court of law.

Not just a s/w error

[PPH]

According to TFA:

The men persuaded casino technicians to alter "soft" options on the machines, such as volume and screen brightness controls.

It appears that their scheme went far beyond exploiting a s/w error in a 'deniable' fashion (Anyone could have pushed that combination of buttons by chance) when they had technicians reconfigure the machines.

IANAL, but one problem in obtaining any sort of criminal conviction is that of proving intent. Had the button combination been pushed with nothing else going on, there could have been some question. But once they solicited help from the casino techs, the jig was up.

Re:Not just a s/w error

[fiannaFailMan]

He could argue that he liked that level of brightness and volume, something that is not uncommon among high rollers according to TFA.

Re:Not just a s/w error

[Pollardito]

He should have quoted more of the story, because it wasn't brightness or volume that was the issue:

The pair, according to police, had knowledge of a software glitch in one of the high-bet slot machines. In order to expose the glitch, a special "double-up" feature had to be internally activated. The men persuaded casino technicians to alter "soft" options on the machines, such as volume and screen brightness controls. Such perks aren't unusual for high-rollers, who can wager anywhere from a few hundred to thousands of dollars in one day.

One Meadows employee, who was not criminally charged or accused of wrongdoing, agreed to enable the double-up feature on the machine with the glitch.

Normally, such a feature would allow a player to risk doubling his winnings or potentially losing them all. The double-up feature isn't usually enabled on the machines in part because it's unpopular with most gamblers, who are unwilling to risk large amounts of money.

Read the story and you'll see that there's a lot more to it then just his preferences. For instance he was using a third-party to cash in winnings that he knew would raise eyebrows.

Re:Not just a s/w error

[kaiser423]

This does add another layer, but I'm still not too sure.

I mean, so he got some technicians to enable a feature that is disabled because most gamblers do not like it.

Then he won enough and had someone else cash it out because he knew that it would raise eyebrows. That just seems like an intelligent move.

The casino's got to audit the code, so did the gaming commission. Maybe they should have better audits rather than rubber stamps? Because it sounds like some guy did a better audit than them and used it to gain an edge usually reserved for the house.

Now if he planted the bug, or paid someone to or whatever, then there's crime here. But otherwise, I'm not seeing it.....

Groups track roulette tables religiously in order to find ones that have an players edge if certain numbers are played, and that is legal. Casino's swap the tables overnight retire popular ones, conceal, etc. In this case, the casino's jsut need to audit the code a bit better.

That's not a bug

[iceaxe]

That's not a bug, it's an easter egg.

Games You Can't Win.

[goodmanj]

I like seeing stories like this. Maybe if we have enough of 'em, people will realize that gambling when the house has a stake is a sucker's game.

There's an anecdote in the book "Games You Can't Lose" by Harry Anderson (who played the judge in Night Court, and is a longtime stage magician and collector of cons and swindles). To paraphrase:

One day on a whim, this guy places a bet at a sidewalk Three Card Monte game and of course he loses. So he starts watching carefully how the game is played. And he notices how the dealer ignores bets that are placed on the right card when someone else bets on the wrong one, and how a Monte game always has a bunch of shills around who will helpfully make the wrong bet in case none of the marks do.

So the guy comes back the next day, and when the dealer calls for bets, the guy pulls out a staple gun and staples his dollar to the Queen. Bam! The first guy to ever win at Three Card Monte.

And he pocketed his winnings, after the nurse at the emergency room un-stapled them from his forehead.

Re:Don't they have to prove intent?

[geekoid]

I did casino security in the 80s. I could never find in actual evidence of that happening. In fact we had a notice from the gaming board that counting card is NOT illegal.

They can refuse business to anywhere.

Not about him winning

[jjohnson]

In order to expose the glitch, a special "double-up" feature had to be internally activated. The men persuaded casino technicians to alter "soft" options on the machines, such as volume and screen brightness controls. Such perks aren't unusual for high-rollers

This wasn't about hitting buttons, they were using social engineering to enable a flaw that became exploitable. This is no different than screwing someone at a cash register by confusing them on the amount of change they're supposed to give you, an age-old grift.

Re:Don't they have to prove intent?

[LetterRip]

People get their winnings denied for counting cards. I don't really understand how that's allowed - not only is it impossible to prove, it also seems like it means that the rules prohibit playing to the best of your ability.

AFAIK you cannot be denied your winnings for counting cards. They can however refuse to let you play if they believe you are a successful card counter. (They actually like card counting since most people make errors frequently enough that the edge from the counting is lost).

Card Counters cannot be denied their winnings

[gurnec]

This is a common misconception which the likes of Vegas and Atlantic City would love everyone to continue to believe. There are no jurisdictions in the United States in which card counting (without the use of any devices) is illegal. Additionally, a casino has no right to take back any winnings which were legally obtained. In Nevada, casinos *are* permitted to deny you entrance or ask you to leave if they suspect you may be a card counter. AFAIK, they are also free to share ban lists with other casinos as they see fit. In New Jersey, casinos are not even allowed to go this far. Players may not be denied entrance simply because they are too skilled (see Uston v. Resorts International Hotel, Inc.).

only in Nevada

[YesIAmAScript]

And as far as I know, their winnings are not denied for counting cards.

Instead, the casino just bans you. In Nevada a casino can ban you for any (or no) reason. So if they think you are counting they just tell you your business isn't welcome here anymore. You get to cash out what you have but you must leave and not come back.

However, gambling to your best ability is not illegal, however using an assistive device is. You can be prosecuted and your money taken for using a computer to help you count cards.

In Atlantic City, it is not legal to ban you for arbitrary reasons, so the casinos take other anti-counting measures, most notably continuous shuffling machines. With these, literally any card not on the table at the moment could come up next (instead of those also in the used pile), so the odds what could come as the next card never change enough to take advantage of through counting.

I do not know the legality of assistive devices in Atlantic City, I suspect they are illegal there too.

Re:I think this probably ought to be illegal

[qeveren]

No, he used the interface provided by the device as designed. That the device is faulty is the casino's problem, not his. How did he forge anything at all?

Re:I think this probably ought to be illegal

[LrdDimwit]

"As designed?" We're clearly dicussing an exploit. Nobody designs slot machines and deliberately inserts autowin codes. He used the device "as is" in a way that clearly violated the anticipated design of the machine.

What makes it a forgery is this: The machine claimed he won. He did, in fact, not win. He forced the machine to incorrectly indicate that the casino owed him money. This is not exactly a "written" instrument, but it's close enough: The machine's "you have won!" display functions equivalently to a document purporting to entitle him to a large amount of cash. But it was not produced as a result of a legitimate game of chance, which is what the machine is supposed to do. Instead it was produced as a result of deliberately triggering a malfunction, which was then misrepresented as legitimate.

When he claimed the jackpot, he presented the printout, the winning screen on the slot machine, whatever as proof that he had won the game of chance. Playing the slots at the casino is effectively entering into a contract with the casino: Play this game of chance according to the rules, and if you win, we will pay you according to the reward schedule. He didn't play according to the rules, instead, he misused casino property to made it appear as if he had. As I see it, that definitely falls under 'the fraudulent making and alteration of a writing to the prejudice of another man's right.'

very similar to game show exploit

[tal775]

This is the same exploiting a "software error" concept as the mid-80s game show "Press Your Luck" where a contest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Larson won far bigger than anyone before him by taking advantage of a poorly planned game, in a legal way.

In that game, CBS reluctantly paid the winnings, and fixed the error so that no one else did it. The casino should do the same since he wasn't shaking the machine, putting coat hangers up the coin return or other such hacks that clearly aren't ok. Asking to turn up the volume or brightness, was ok with the casino employee, even if it unknowingly activates the bug.

I don't see how this could hold up in court. If they can't get the devs to fix it, then take the problem machines off the floor, or implement security in the same way as done to watch card counters. If someone wins more than x times at a machine, or racks up more than $x winnings, pay it out and ask them to leave. Card counters aren't charged with "receiving stolen property", and that's also exploiting an inherent flaw in those games. The casinos bought and paid for the software on their machines, and should be accountable for any flaws in their purchase.

I've been to the casino in question, and have to wonder on any future trips, if I win legitimately even without exploiting anything, will I have unknowingly hit the "Stop" button at a time that could be considered a hack, and be in the same boat as this guy?

Re:I think this probably ought to be illegal

[AmiMoJo]

Slot machines are not a legitimate game of chance though. If you examine the disassembled code you can see that supposedly random outcomes are actually decided by the code to keep the player feeling like they might win.