In the case of actual malfunctioning, denying a payout makes senses, yes. But there is clearly room for abuse of this rationale, particularly when the processes of determining malfunctioning is opaque.

At issue here is what constitutes a malfunction when the randomization mechanism and the prize total are software based? Was it a malfunction because the prize total was more than the presumed max value? Or was it a malfunction because the randomization was also wrong? Does the casino knowing place slot machines that have the possibility to malfunction on the floor and if so does it do it to restrict payouts?

Depending on how one answers these questions, the woman may be entitled to a prize total of some sort, at least morally, since legal remedies likely favor the casino. For instance, if slot machine was "scheduled" to payout insofar as its randomization routine was functioning properly, but the prize total was calculated wrongly, then we would likely say the woman is owed _something_, possibly more valuable than a steak. I take it that slot machines are scheduled to pay out certain sums {S1, S2, ..., Sn}within a certain number of plays P at a random or pseudo random intervals N. I further suspect there are logs that tracked P and could be reviewed to deduce which Sn's were at play within the current N. This should at least determine a range of Sn's the woman might be owed.

It's only reasonable and fair when all malfunctions are addressed. In this case, only malfunctions that benefit the player are recognized. Those that benefit the house aren't.

She should be content in the knowledge that if she can piece together her exact series of plays she likely could exploit the bug to make some big bucks at casinos elsewhere. Which I'm sure you would agree, based on your line of reasoning, is perfectly reasonable and fair, as this is exactly what the casino is doing.

Uhmm...reverse that. I meant the house benefits, player does not. The wood chipper in my driveway right now is a little distracting, it seems.

I seriously doubt that there's no legal way for the casino to give this woman 6 thousand dollars, but if the regulations for comping people have tightened, that's probably a good thing. They're probably afraid that if they give the woman 6000, they'll have to pay out everytime a machine is discovered to be malfunctioning. There should be some hard and fast rules about this, so that the outcome is predetermined.

What's obviously fucked up here is that if a malfunctioning machine takes someone's money, that will stand. If it pays out, that won't stand. The casino should be accountable for thieir goddamn machines, and this is the opposite of that.

At the very least, they deserve all the bad publicity they're going to get for this,. and the more bad publicity, the better.

>>Which I'm sure you would agree, based on your line of reasoning, is perfectly reasonable and fair,

It would be, if that were what was happening. Sadly, it is not: as I pointed out, denying payouts in the event of a malfunction is common practice, and is printed on the machines themselves. Even if she COULD duplicate the glitch (which is unlikely; even given perfect knowledge of the software, which is impossible, this could well have been a hardware issue and thus beyond her control), every casino she goes to will react the same way. When your 6k jackpot machine offers up a 43m jackpot, even the most thickheaded casino manager will realize something is up.

Game the system if you want, but this particular avenue is not one you will be able to exploit.

Furthermore, I should point out: while this specific ruling was reasonable and fair, that doesn't mean EVERYTHING to do with casinos need be reasonable or fair! In fact, casinos are based upon being extremely UNreasonable and UNfair, then exploiting human greed and the difficulty of grasping abstract statistics in order to offer willing customers a profitable entertainment service. It's part of the territory. '"Fairness" and "reasonableness", in the context of casinos, are simply a function of you and the house having a mutually consensual framework of profoundly unfair, unreasonable conditions.

Oh I disagree: there is a long history of such exploits being discovered and used until arrests happen. Generally they look quite like those clips that get posted here about doing some super speed run or making mario into a transexual by collecting a certain number of items under certain conditions etc etc until a buffer is overrun.

Could you perhaps cite one such instance, in which a slot machine was glitched to provide a successful payout of over a million dollars?

https://www.wired.com/2013/05/game-king/

Wired article entitled "Use a Software Bug to Win Video Poker? That’s a Federal Hacking Case"

That's not a slot machine, but a video poker machine. I think that makes Oscar's point plausible.

Well, no. For one thing, there's still no evidence that she *could* duplicate her glitch, even with perfect knowledge. What's more, the payouts in the case you just cited, Mr 666, were not readily obvious as malfunctions; the machine reached an unlikely, though still believable, outcome, and offered up a perfectly legitimate payout to the winners. Nobody disputes that, like four Aces, jackpots happen - what they dispute is that you can get a million dollar jackpot off a thousand dollar machine.

I'd like to see an explanation of how a glitch like this was even possible. Slot machines are relatively simple compared to say, video poker. Even though they've gotten a lot fancier these days, most of the variables boil down to how many lines you with to play, and how much you wish to bet per line. Wouldn't think you'd even need a human to playtest something that simple.

Basically this. If a glitch removes the casinos obligation to pay out, they should be tracking down every player who played on that machine to give refunds. And you know they have the tape and the electronic trail to see exactly who paid what.

If a casino were to find out a latter point that a payout within the proper range was caused by a glitch do they have a right to ask for that money back?

$1,000,000, does this work?

Yeah, I just changed it to 43 Million instead.

Let me try something real quick.

$43M

$43 Million

You have to grab the mushroom on the exact frame that a goomba is colliding with the third-from-the-final pipe on world 4-3 but before it changes direction.

Floating point variables for money?!?!

not if Yes Man and I have anything to say about it...

yeah i mean winning is great and all but i can just take him out of his stasis chamber/semen gathering machine.


perhaps that could be the solution to this woman's problem