Pokies and Slot Machine Information

Slot machine error yields fortunes

August 6, 2006 on 10:01 pm | In Slot machine articles online |

A misconfigured slot machine in a US casino has paid out a huge cash surplus to punters:

“The Caesars Indiana casino lost nearly half a million dollars over two-days last month on one slot machine that had been incorrectly set to give players credit for 10 times the amount of money they put into it.”

Courier Journal Article

Its interesting the error is of a type that could be allowed to occur in the first place.

The slot machines in the venue are TITO - ticket in, ticket out. Paying out in ticket form rather than via cash or attendant certainly has its advantages. Less cash handling and lower numbers of gaming attendants required will lower casino costs overall.

In the days before TITO, most payouts would have occurred with the assistance of a gaming attendant. The unusual payouts at the machine would almost certainly have been detected and dealt with. Half a million dollars coming out of one machine over two days is a huge amount of money.

A “not so smart” award goes to those players who used the malfunction to knowingly reward themselves whilst using their player loyalty cards in the slot machine in question.

The whole incident begs the question - why didn’t the slot management software detect the ridiculous payouts coming from one machine. From the article its clear that it was instead an honest player who reported the faulty machine configuration that led to its detection. Lets hope they rewrite their management software post-haste, to prevent an expensive recurrence.