SLOT TIP 1: STRING THEORY
When all slots were three-reel games with coin slots, cheaters worked a scam in which they tied affixed a string to a coin.
They’d drop the coin into the slot, trip the mechanism that gave them credit to play, then use the string to pull the coin back out.
One woman in Nevada was caught using a coin on a brightly colored piece of yarn, easy to spot from a distance. Others were less obvious, but those who were caught were prosecuted.
Manufacturers designed more secure coin acceptance devices to make this cheat impossible. Today, most slots accept only paper currency or tickets and no longer have slot heads.
SLOT TIP 2: SLUG IT OUT
Fake coins, or slugs, were a problem for casinos as long as slot machines accepted coins.
Some were no more than a rounded piece of metal, with no design. Others were more elaborate, and counterfeiters in the eastern U.S. stamped slot tokens that looked much like those used in New Jersey.
As long the metal and manufacturing costs were a lot less than the value of a real slot coin, there was incentive for cheaters.
Coin recognition software grew progressively more sophisticated to combat the problem.
SLOT TIP 3: MAGNETIC FORCE
Some slot machines in the 1960s and ‘70s were vulnerable to ordinary magnets.
Cheaters could use the magnets to make the reels float freely instead of stopping on a spin. The scam artists would remove the magnet only when the reels had aligned in a winning combination.
More sophisticated were top-bottom devices, used into the 1980s. The top was a metal rod that was bent on one end, and the bottom a strand of wire.
The wire would be inserted in the coin slot to hit a metal contact, and then the top would be jammed in the coin slot. The combination completed a circuit that would activate a coin dispenser and send free coins pouring into the slot tray.
Protection had to be built into the games to shield vital parts from magnets and to make it impossible to hit contacts and create an electrical circuit.
SLOT TIP 4: INSIDE JOB
This scam was pulled on so-called “Big Bertha” slots in the 1990s. Big Bertha's are bigger and wider than other slots.
A team was arrested in Nevada after they crowded around a Big Bertha. The front of the machine was opened, a woman climbed inside and the machine was mostly shut. She then rigged results.
With team members blocking view, everything looked normal to casual passers-by, but security was alert enough to halt the cheats.
SLOT TIP 5: CHEAT BY CHIP
A software engineer for the Nevada Gaming Commission programmed chips that functioned normally in slot machines, except those in the know could take advantage of a cheat code.
When the cheats inserted specific numbers of coins in a specific order, the machine would pay out.
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